Attending Ecom's Best Kept Secret
I spent three days at Smart Marketer Live in Denver, capturing raw conversations with agency owners, brand founders, and Meta reps about what's actually working in 2025.
This isn't your typical conference recap. We're talking about Meta's Andromeda update that killed everyone's ad performance over the summer, why TikTok Shop might be a trap, and how a chicken supplement business owner plans to poach employees like she's manifesting herbs.
Featuring Beav Brodie (Tactical Baby Gear), Brett Curry (OMG Commerce), Attila from Smart Marketer, and Celia Hatch (Buff Clucks).
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The Unofficial Shopify Podcast is hosted by Kurt Elster and explores the stories behind successful Shopify stores. Get actionable insights, practical strategies, and proven tactics from entrepreneurs who've built thriving ecommerce businesses.
Kurt Elster
This episode is sponsored in part by Swim. Okay, here's a depressing stat. 70% of shoppers who want your products never actually buy them. They browse, they consider, then they forget. That's revenue walking out the door. Swim Wishless Plus turns browsers into buyers. Customers save products they want, get notified when prices drop, or items restock. You can also engage them in personalized fashion through your marketing or sales outreach. It's like having a personal shopper reminding them to come back and buy from you. instead of your competitors. And forty-five thousand stores already use it. And it only takes five minutes to install. You could try it free today for 14 days. Go to Git Swim dot com slash curt. That's swimwithay. com slash curt. Turn those maybe later into sales today. Get swim. com. Hey Kurt here, and I got good news. You are going to Denver with me. Well, sort of. See last week I went to Denver, Colorado for Smart Marketer Live. It's a small marketing conference that bills itself as not your typical marketing conference. Well, we're gonna talk to the attendees, hear a few clips, and we're gonna figure it out for ourselves if that holds true. Let's go. Those are airplane noises? Alright, we're here with beef brody, tactical baby gear, fight soap, other things, serial entrepreneur. And we're at, geez, Smart Marketer.
Paul Reda
Smart Marketer Live, Denver, Colorado.
Kurt Elster
Alright, give me, this is day two for you. Yes. Give me your your impression of the vibe, the people.
Paul Reda
The vibe and the people, the vibe's great. I mean everybody in the community is awesome. Um the people are great. The presentations have been been really good. There's a lot happening, obviously, with Meta's platform and the Uh whatever the new update is. Andromeda, yes, thank you. I mean, so far the vibe of the event is creating volumes of very different content that will find find the avatar and they're they're talking about how that is, you know, really the the targeting is happening with the creative. It's not happening at the ad set level or the campaign level uh these days. So that's been a lot of the uh the buzz around here is just like creating lots of variety of content to find different kinds of customers.
Kurt Elster
Okay, yes. That is the takeaway I got was like, hey, to succeed with performance marketing You need to consider hook avatar product offer, but then also, you know, ultimately we need like 30 types of content to try for one thing, and then maybe you get lucky in one of those really outperforms.
Paul Reda
Yeah, and then you can double down on the spend of it or whatever, but yeah.
Kurt Elster
Alright, so everything's about it when you talk about performance marketing at one of these events, it's always about meta. But then everyone wants like, all right, what's the what's the hot new thing? And what is it?
Paul Reda
I'm hearing discussions about TikTok shop. There'll be a presentation on that that we haven't seen yet. feelings about TikTok shop where it's there's there's people who are like generating lots of revenue on it but there's other brands who are like yeah we do really well on it but it's A lower average order value, kind of a shittier customer. You're really dependent on organic virality, uh, you know, some of that kind of stuff. And there was and in their case it was really depending on sending Lots and lots of free product out to creators to create to create that potential virality.
Kurt Elster
Yes, like it works, but that only works for a very specific kind of business.
Paul Reda
It does, right? And it's kind of a flash in the pan because if you're depending on that organic virality like that'll hit and it'll go away and uh the margins are thin on stuff like that because you're sending out so many products. for free and commissions and the platform fees. Uh and then um you know the creators there don't really have any brand loyalty. Yeah, so if they're whatever's hot trend that week is what they're gonna push and promote. So um
Kurt Elster
It's not something we're going to look into any of the things that we're going to do.
Paul Reda
So We were pushed pretty hard on App Levin to do app lovin' a few months ago and we had some opportunities and we decided to pass it up. It didn't feel like it was Right for our brand.
Kurt Elster
Uh it kinda it's an odd, it's a new, it's a different thing.
Paul Reda
It wouldn't be a little different for us and we weren't so sure that our customers would be there and how that would integrate and you know with brand we're like really intentional about what we pair our brand with and how that might get perceived. But then we heard a story last night of a brand who has I was there for this. It was a delight. Major success and had spent a like three million dollars on the platform they spent because of the success they were having and it was unreal. And uh the guy who is trying to convince me, Mr. Attila from Smart Marketer, just comes out of the blue with a, I told you so. He did. So I was eating my words with that. Oh yeah. But uh you never know. I mean, to his point though, you have to kinda trust your gut and uh just because it works for some one brand doesn't mean it would work for Also true. So Yeah.
Kurt Elster
And you know, grass is always greener. That's right. Okay. Not in any talk have I heard this brought up, but in the hallway track, you know, just being around people talk seeing other attendees talk to each other. I've heard multiple people ask this question, what are you doing about taros? And then everybody just goes, uh-uh.
Paul Reda
Yeah, I mean, I don't deal with any of that stuff within our business. That's uh something my business partner handles. Obviously we're paying the increased tariffs. We're eating some of it. A lot of it isn't where it has settled to for us in the countries we manufacture in. isn't much higher than what it was previously. Um but we are considering a potential price increase to make up for some of it. But um that's how we're handling it right now.
Kurt Elster
I mean that's like that was the response a lot of people had Isn't the isn't the easy way out with just move manufacturing here. Why not just manufacture backs here, babe?
Paul Reda
you know, we do a a fair amount of revenue. But we're not the type of business that can just open a factory in the US tomorrow and and bring that online, train people to work. US people trying to find people to work in a factory in the United States to do cut and sew would be difficult. Yeah. Asia is really good at it. Like there's no one better. Um and it it it would cost so much. that no one would buy the product. Yep. You know? And it's like I understand the sentiment of, you know, bringing manufacturing back to the US. And I think that's more applicable to Apple, to Ford, Chevrolet, like you know auto auto manufacturers, maybe appliances, you know, s like some of that kind of stuff. But to think that any of these small brands are gonna like suddenly open up a factory in the US to do something like it's just preposterous, truthfully. Yeah. It's really frustrating.
Kurt Elster
No, I agree with you. Uh okay. When you get back to Hilton Head What like what's one thing you're gonna try, one thing you're gonna do differently? Like we heard a lot of tips from about meta today. One thing.
Paul Reda
So Ezra really made a point to uh to harp on of on the point of slowing down. And you know, we're all so busy in our lives and we're trying to be busy and do all this stuff and make things happen and You know, slowing down to really to think about what you're doing, being more methodical about it, be more intentional with what you're doing, uh, and then um He he said that there was a statistic, you know, it's like four percent of your actions generate like sixty-four percent of what happens. Meaning of all the inputs you're you're putting in, it's like such a small percentage of it actually moves the needle that like Try to be more methodical about what you're doing and like eliminate that other ninety-six percent of bullshit that you know what I mean? So that's a big takeaway. Um I try really hard to just s block out certain days in my schedule because we're so big in content creation and like trying to trying to turn off the brain and r eliminate the inputs um and sort of slow down and and think. That's my big takeaway right now.
Kurt Elster
Alright, and alright, talking Shopify. Tactical baby gear. Yep. It's on Shopify. It's one of the like one of the best looking Shopify sites. I use it as an example site when I show people like here, you know, this is about what you could build. I think what's incredible about that, that is not a custom theme. Almost none of that is customized. Yeah. It's just like that's just a straight up Shopify premium template. Why do you not go harder on well you know talk to me about that, like actively avoiding, hey, let's build a custom template and instead just filling it out with content.
Paul Reda
Yeah, I think there's several approaches to that. I think as as we mature as a business, first of all, we found a template that I thought worked well for the size catalog we had. For sure. And knowing that we have lots of different collections and we could kind of navigate that and having different carousels and blah blah blah.
Kurt Elster
I think it's enterprise.
Paul Reda
That's right.
Kurt Elster
Clean cannabis enterprise.
Paul Reda
Enterprise. It's a great theme. And I think it could use it really well with a small catalog as well. Yeah. Um but the more we've mature and the more You know, the more we think we can do on the front end to attract customers to us, you know, makes the conversion rate easier. One but it's a really great layout to begin with. It doesn't need a lot. Like maybe we adjusted some padding and some stupid shit like that, right? But like Um I don't think that you're gonna widget your way to success You know what I mean? Like you're not just gonna layer on a bunch of apps and widgets and like suddenly change your business overnight. It just it just doesn't happen. There's like a lot of other fundamental things that need to be done. to get to that point. So the content and and by content I mean if you're educating your customer on the website with what the product is, how it works, answering their questions along the way, removing any objections on why they would buy. It it it should just work, you know.
Kurt Elster
You know, and I think that's we're gonna wrap it up there, ending on it should just work. Oh my gosh, and not widgeting your way to success. I love both these takeaways.
Paul Reda
Yeah, yeah
Kurt Elster
Be broke, baby.
Paul Reda
Thank you so much.
Kurt Elster
Appreciate you. Alright, I'm here with Brett Curry from OMG Commerce, who at this point has become a recurring character anytime I do lightning interviews. Because he is at every event. He As Harley Fickelstein said I was like furniture at the Shopify Ends. He truly the designation of furniture belongs to you.
Speaker 3
Furniture like a rash that won't go away. Something.
Kurt Elster
Like I I'm always there. What piece of furniture do you identify as?
Speaker 3
Oh that's a great one. I think like a good comfy couch, you know, I'm like I'm I'm not small enough for just a chair. I'm a pretty large guy, so I think like a comfy O Couch, oversized couch, or maybe one of those old leather couches, something like that.
Kurt Elster
I embody like some kind of practical storage. Just full of bearish trivia that's useful.
Speaker 3
Storage bin. Yeah. Storage bin. What yeah, what furniture is? Great question. Yeah.
Kurt Elster
Why do you come to Smart Marketer Live? Like year after year, it's not a big conference. Right. You know, it's a small one. I like the small ones, but what are you getting out of this?
Speaker 3
I mean, at the core, it's really hanging out with Ezra and Molly and and John and and the crew. And it is seeing people like you. You know, they they attract other you know, uh individuals are doing some pretty cool stuff up there. And so that that opportunity to reconnect is really cool. Yeah. I like sharing from stage. So this year I'm talking YouTube, which is a recurring topic for me as well. And so Yeah, I just I found that like the best connections that I've ever made often happen at events. Uh a lot of the the breakthroughs or takeaways that I get. or things that cause a business inflection happen at events. I think I think differently when I'm at an event, kind of away from the office a little bit. And so yeah, it's it's valuable. And I go to I go to fewer events than I used to. Now I go to maybe s six or so a year. Something like that.
Kurt Elster
Yeah. Yeah. So in of the talks you've heard, was there any like takeaway tip? It's gotta be hard to impress you doing these all the time.
Speaker 3
I heard it all. I know it all. No, there's been so many Good talks. Uh one of the interesting things is both Ezra and Molly, uh, they do a really good job of blending like architect your life in a way that matters so that so that your business supports your life. And so you're doing things like family and personal growth and other things that that bring joy and and they have a really good balance. It's not just grinding so that you can make money and so you can enjoy your life in three decades. Like that's uh silly is silly advice. So that's always great. But at this conference, I really loved the AI and creative session yesterday from Alex with AdCrate. And I like the way you talked about it because Uh you know, we all see like AI content or people saying like AI is gonna AI is gonna replace your creative team and it's gonna replace your creative strategist and pretty soon it's just gonna be AI agents running all companies. And I think that there may be like some elements of truth to that. AI is certainly disrupting But I like the way he framed it where they're using AI heavily in the research stage. So we're doing something that we do a lot of at OMG and that's using uh Claude projects. So like filling in lots of data, giving giving Claude or or any you know ChatGPT as well. giving it context to your brand or to your your problem and then and then asking it to come up with copy and solutions and things like that. Yep. Uh so using AI for research, then using AI for concepting, and then they are using AI to to create finished ads, but those ads there's a catch. Yeah, only like twenty percent of their ad accounts are AI ads. Well, AI ads only make about 20% of their ad accounts. So 80% are still ads generated by by humans. And generally the winning ads, the ads that are really crushing it, are not the AI ads. AI is getting better, and so it's not this is not a this is not a uh a dig at AI But it's like see where it fits now and also where it's going.
Kurt Elster
I just if you when people are new to it, they tend to think like But Oh, it finishes the end creative output? Yeah. And it's like, no, actually it's everything leading up to that point. Right. And then it that's where it goes off the rails.
Speaker 3
Yes. Yeah. And it's also you did a great job of talking about Really, AI is only going to help you be good as a copywriter or marketer if you're already good as a copywriter or a marketer, right? And then it's going to help you be more productive. more output, but if you like know nothing and you're just using AI, you're probably not gonna come up with yeah very good stuff.
Kurt Elster
No absolutely. Yeah, I think that's been my experience with it. Uh anything any have you heard any interesting Gossip. You know, when you're talking between halls, you you hear a lot. Ooh, what's the one of the things that surprised me? The the number of people who are like, yeah, I you know, hit my breakthrough in my business and it's it's it's successful and we're running profitably and we're scaling. Yeah. And the problem is the time it took to get there. And the loans has to be serviced. Right. And so it's like now you're you're essentially like y running the race with weights on.
Speaker 3
Yes.
Kurt Elster
And it surprised me, you know, I heard that story once, like yeah, for sure. But then I heard that story multiple times in one night.
Speaker 3
Interesting.
Kurt Elster
I was like, huh.
Speaker 3
Specifically that took too long to scale and the brand had a lot of debt on their on their business.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, ended up like figuring it out but carrying the debt. Yeah. And then like, all right, now you you gotta race ahead of that. And I think that's often why people end up with y private equity partners. Right. That's when they start thinking about oh outside investment starts sounding pretty good.
Speaker 3
cash intensive and so it's not just new customer acquisition it's not just profits it's cash flow and like how are we predictably know um um forecasting our cash flow, managing our cash flow because you could be profitable and still go out of business if you don't manage your cash flow. So th like all of those things go all those things go together. Um and so yeah, super important. It's been really interesting for us, you know, working with with bigger brands, you know, mostly eight and nine figure brands and some some high seven figure. But the last couple years in e-commerce have been really interesting, you know. peak COVID, everything was like go go go. We'll figure out profits later. Let's just get customers to people like being like, oh crap I'm not sure we're making any money to like all kinds of changes with supply chain issues and then tariffs and like now more than ever there's this understanding of I need to have my financial house in order and really have all these things kind of buttoned up and so That's a huge topic. The other uh kind of things in the hallways we're talking about is meta and some of the meta updates with Andromeda. Yeah, Andromeda, the last diversity and things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that's been really great. You know, there's great meta rep here who gave us some good insights. But it's one of those things and I've and I I heard uh Kobe Plofker from Jones River Beauty tweet this uh just yesterday actually, uh where really now it's not just like creative iteration. And I'm a YouTube guy, creative iterations actually works on on YouTube, but with meta, it's probably more like you need creative diversity and and based on avatars or personas. And so you can't just take this winning ad and make subtle tweaks and like have 20 different versions of it, Meta's not gonna reward you for that. It's more about how are we creating unique creatives for different avatars and personas. That's how your out of counters were gonna be able to reach a new a new level at scale.
Kurt Elster
So a lot of people talk about that. That changed my perception.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Kurt Elster
And made it clear how difficult It is just because the level of creative output that's required to Right, right.
Speaker 3
And and now it can't just be I'm spinning up thirty different variations. It's like I need 30 new concepts. Yep. 30 new concepts to 30 different personas. Maybe not 30 different personas, but but yeah, it's gotta be it's gotta be different for sure. Yeah.
Kurt Elster
Brett Curry, Own G Commerce.
Speaker 3
Thank you so much. Thanks, man. Thanks for having me. Yeah.
Kurt Elster
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Paul Reda
Is there you you know when you're you're growing, you kind of hit a plateau, you hit a seal or trying to break through that seal into sort of the next level. Yeah. Uh is there Have you seen in the past foundational or fundamental things that be a pickup on that are uh the reason that you hit a ceiling? Is it Uh do you need to change your mindset? Is it uh additional sales channels? Is it just spending more money? Is it new product?
Speaker 4
So yeah, let's let's let's let's talk for a second about the trajectory of business in general. I talked about this on my strategy table, but it's like Doesn't matter the business you're in. This is look for I would say 99. 7% of businesses fitness description. There's the occasional you know, outlier that does not have this experience, but even they have it within a microca of what I'm about to explain. This is what happens in business, okay? If you're lucky, you have an ascent Right? The business works. The business goes under immediately. You don't have this. You have some form of an ascent. That's a great period. And you can do things to maintain that ascent eventually. No matter what. You have a plateau. And you can do some things. We'll talk about these in just a minute. To maintain that plateau for as long as you can, maybe even ascend again. And then eventually you have a decline. And you can be declining, declining, declining. And we call that the melting ice cube. And you want to slow the melt of that ice cube. There's some conversations to have with that. Like for example. Zimify I can tell you about how I did this with Zipnify pages, right? High ascent, plateau, decline, melting ice cube. Who the hell wants a landing page builder in 2025? I launched this in 2013. So TBD, but yeah. Then You can also you could be codec and then come all the way back with a new product altogether, new brand, whatever. But you're gonna go through that cycle and you may go through it many times Uh and where you found yourself, because we were chatting and I know a little bit about your story and we've common experiences with our daughters and that kind of thing. So You kind of went on the ascent and you kind of got some things during that ascent that worked against you that were uh macroeconomic Right in nature and and macro things outside of the business operations, right? That was the economy, there was COVID, there was your personal family life, there's all kinds of stuff that kind of like Slowed your ascent, but you still had it in a one really wonderful way. And then somehow, even with all that chaos and intensity from the economy, from your personal life, from all these people getting into the space you were able to kind of plateau and not decline. Just kind of set a plateau, which speaks to your operating abilities. And here you're kind of stuck. And now you want to grow again. So The the reasons for plateau also tend to be the uh levers to turn to get out of a plateau. Okay There's a couple of them. One often commonest thing that you will that people report after they've been through this cycle is they plateaued because they were stuck in their own container of thinking. Right? It's like you I know what I know, I have the blind spots I have, I think the way I think, and I'm in charge of this. And I don't have anybody who's a sounding board who could bring additional ideas, strategies I'm a solo founder. I don't have a board. I don't have an investor. I don't have a partner. Whatever. It's like you just kind of have the systems and processes you have, and you're sort of stuck in that. And ways to solve that is to bring in outside thinking. But the interesting thing about outside thinking is it's not enough to have it one time. It requires consistent iterative brain melding to get like a second person's consistent input into the business. So you can bring in additional thinking. What does additional thinking bring to the table? Well what unlocks growth are a couple of things. Right? Sometimes, as in Boom, for example, right? So Boom Boom has this issue, and we're solving it, but it has this similar issue. We have one thing we sell. Which is multi-purpose blush sticks. Well guess what? Some women don't wear blush. They might wear mascara. They might wear lip gloss. They might be interested in uh rejuvenating under eye cream. But we have one front-end sales funnel that all of our marketing goes to. So in order to unlock scale, this is a play that I use often in business. I launch a new Hero Scube that I can get a different avatar to buy. Right? I can you sell to dads. Maybe there's something you could sell to moms. Maybe there's something you could sell to uncles. I don't know. Maybe there's something or maybe there's a Whole good category of propags to that some So there's there's two way two ways this works. One is new hero skew to the same avatar, the other is unlocking a new avatar to the current hero skew. So it's like That works really well, reliably, right? Like with boom right now, one product that we're able to bring in sales on this year that we didn't have last year is something to do with under-eye circles. We've known forever that women report feeling. In our demographic, these ladies report to us feeling um unhappy with their uh with the changes to their hormones and skin that result in the Appearance in their minds of of dark circles under their eyes. Now sometimes it's not even dark circles under their eyes, it's shadows and whatever. Anyhow. And we've had content on this and we've done stuff for this, but we we don't believe in Hey, you've got something wrong with you and we'll fix it. Like that's not we're not the people who are gonna try to fix a problem that you have. We're the people who are gonna celebrate you as you are with this brand. He But we did we actually end up developing a product that is more of a skincare than a cosmetic and it's really wonderful for rejuvenating the skin under your eyes. Long story short, it's a new front-end offer to a different app to the same group, but that solves a different pain point. So they'll buy it from us on the front end, but you get new people and who wouldn't buy the blush taste. So that's one way, new avatar, new product. Like you mentioned, another way is you have an avatar, you have a product that you're selling, you have a sales process for it, you can unlock a new channel. And then D2C e-commerce, there's not a lot of channels. There's organic, there's paid, there's paid on a bunch of different platforms. So you could unlock a element within a vertical, right? You can unlock it like, hey you got paid on TikTok but not on Google, you'd add Google and you get some extra scale there, right? So you can unlock a paid channel, but it's like paid organic There's authoritative influencer where you've got like people who have actual followings promoting you, which usually means you're a brand over 30 to 40 million in sales already because you can afford to pay for that. You're not going to pay for that at your size, probably. Um You have like cold direct mail. You have affiliate. Affiliate could be really interesting for you because you have a high average order value. And affiliate is one that most people in this room don't do. Affiliate marketing, right? Then there's like Within the paid category TV rate like so Navaj $100 million your brand $20 some odd million in spend 85% of it on TV and radio. Most brands in here aren't on TV and radio. So there's other channels you can you could do. So those are some ideas and then not to I don't want to take all the time, but have some other ideas for how you overcome plateaus. And sometimes it's replacing the leadership team. Not that I'm telling you that you should do this and your brother was sitting on the table, it's not going to fire your brother. There he is next to you there. What's up dude? Um he's your little brother too. How rude if you fire your little brother for your needs to do report. But yeah, I mean like adding in somebody who's got some skills that they don't already have.
Kurt Elster
Okay, so I wrapped up day one of Smart Marketer Live. It's a two-day conference. And, you know, my initial takeaway Having done this last year, is this year it is a lot of very practical advice focused specifically on internet marketing. And so like there was a a talk on TikTok shop, a talk on uh Email marketing, but then I believe the entirety of the rest of the discussions that day were on meta Because if you are in a in year one of an online store, your ad spend is probably or should be. uh something like 80% meta, 20% Google Shopping, and then that's it. You really don't have the budget, time, or experience to be focusing on everything else. And like a really experienced brand with big budgets, there's still gonna be fifty percent ad spend on Meta, you know, for an online brand. Yeah, it's really quite impactful for a room full of people responsible for internet businesses to hear a bunch of advice on meta. And it's helpful for me because I don't run meta-ads for clients anymore. I haven't done it in years. And we stopped doing it because I said, you know, I really want to specialize on Shopify itself. but also because it was really hard. And that was like 2014 when compared to now it, you know, it was like shooting fish in a barrel and a lot simpler. What I learned today and you know what I've heard the last two days talking to attendees here is it seems that if you're wondering why your Facebook ads got very difficult. Or, you know, things got harder and you started to struggle or not seeing the same results. And it seemed to happen over the summer, you know, like two months ago. It's the Andromeda update with Facebook. And they even had a meta rep there, you know, who's talking about it. And so it she seemed to confirm it, you know, that yeah, if you're you're struggling, it's because you've got to adapt to these changes, this uh new algorithm. And you know, one of the ways to do that is restructuring the ad account. You know, that's too technical for me. Like I don't have the experience there. But it seemed like really what it wanted was put a ton of ad creative, like radically different and creative. Not just like, you know, same ad, but we tweak the text that's over the video. Right? Like completely different concepts and like Creator behind the scenes UGC just totally different ads in one ad set. And you know, I could be misinterpreting. But for that, you know, that Andromeda update to work, it really wants these like radically different ads and it wants a lot of creative, just an unreal amount of creative. to to test and once it had that like 30 pieces of creative to test then you know you start to be see more success with it um The other thing it was interesting that the rep said was, well, you know, you have like one successful ad, you keep cloning it, you're trying things. That Add diversity in the creative can help. And so there's one person who's you know talking about they want radically different ads, meaning like different creatives, different formats, like video sales letter versus UGC versus behind the scenes. The other, you know, the meta-rep talking about different ads, you know, very different ads and and diversifying the net creative. She literally meant diversity. You know, generally the you know the the store owner ends up being the type of person by cultural background that you attract to the store. But it's only, you know, just because you are unintentionally holding up the mirror in that way. And so if you have like a successful headset that's not scaling, often the trick could be Hey, you know, alright, you've got like this one white guy with a podcast keeps doing these ads and they're successful, but that's it. Alright, do the same thing, but now it's a mom. Yeah, and just like try entirely different people with different looks, like literally just different looks, um, can be can be helpful with scaling ad creative on meta. The you know, that at the end they're wrapping up with AI. It's like you we hear AI mentioned throughout the day, but no real like heavy focus or talks on AI until the ed and it was still through the lens of a you know an ad agency owner. And he's talking about AI for creating these ads. And I really enjoyed his approach. You know, it felt similar to my own use for these tools. And what he was saying was, you know, where people, when they think about, hey, generating ads with AI, they go straight to it's gonna make the ad. And it's really, you know, probably not the way to go. You can generate great videos now, especially with that SOR update that happened in the last several weeks. Um you could create really great video ads with AI, but They you know, in in this gentleman's experience and others, they're not gonna perform well. I think there's a reason you don't see a ton of these AI ads. You know, you want the stuff that looks genuinely real, the stuff that is harder for AI to create. um especially like ugly ads, you know, ugly converts. Um but with AI generation, unless the intent is to make an ad that is very clearly AI generated That it yeah that works, but otherwise uh probably not not gonna perform great. And that's for like video and images But where they did excel with AI was using it for the idea generation, for ideation. And I've had luck with that too, but garbage in, garbage out with AI. Like you the way I've had success doing it is create a a project or custom GPT, depending on which tool you're using, where you've preloaded it with a system prompt. That's like, hey, you know, gives it the context and then, you know, and really establishes like your thinking, what you like, your approach. Because if you think about how an LLM is trained. It's trained on, you know, garbage it ate off the internet, just like whatever is out there. And you, as a marketer who knows your business, just have a better sense then that garbage is going to. And so, you know, adding in that layer, that additional context is what makes all the difference. And then including, you know, some files. Where you're saying like this is examples of successful ads that we've created, this is examples of ad formats we like, uh, this is example of successful competitors ads, and this is just domain knowledge about the brand. And then you know let it run through ideation that way. Uh then once you've got those ads, if you've even given it like a framework about what you think a successful ad is, that's it, and you've got those ideas, you can ask it, hey, you know, rank these. And it give me the reasoning. And so ah that like you really move very quickly through that phase. Because otherwise when you're trying to generate like 30 ad creatives for it this new meta algorithm to be successful. I mean Creating 30 ads is hard enough. Coming up with the idea for 30 ads, and they're all supposed to be radically different. You know, an entirely different look. an entirely different hook, an entirely different format. That's tough. And so you need the assistance with AI generating this stuff, you know, with that ideation. Um man, even if you do it once, it's a tough trick to repeat, that kind of creativity. So that's my that was eight hours that was all day. That's my brain dump on on day one and after day two. I'll share more on that, and then we're gonna go do uh a party at Lucky Strike tonight. Day two, Smart Market Alive, heading into the Denver Art Museum, and this time I'm gonna get the doors correct. Oh I didn't. So we're outside, uh enjoying we had a food truck lunch here in Denver outside the art museum. And I'm with Attila from and you're with Smart Marketer. Yes, yes I am. And I saw you speak yesterday, right?
Speaker 5
I did, I did. I was on stage uh talking about meta advertising and uh to have a slightly different view perhaps to others how they scale their ads.
Kurt Elster
Okay, tell me what you think a lot of what the wrong advice is. Where are people going wrong with scaling meta-ads?
Speaker 5
I think the main problem they listen to people to an extent Where they think there is only one way to succeed when it comes to meta-ads. And I do believe that every business is different. And because the businesses are different, I think you need different strategy and also different campaign structure and scaling method. to be able to succeed.
Kurt Elster
Alright, I'm a meta ads lay person, but I heard a lot of discussion the campaign structure. In loose terms, give me the high level here. How important is this? You know what what are we really changing?
Speaker 5
I mean some people are saying that you do not need to touch anything when it comes to campaign setup because the algorithm is going to figure out everything for you. All you need to have is good creative. And you give the machine the good creative, your credit card details, and you will become a millionaire next day But that's not how it works? Unfortunately it isn't because then I would do this exact same thing So unfortunately or fortunately because you know I can keep my job. I think there is still a lot of manual setup uh which should be and could be done. Having said that I do have ad accounts which are working amazingly well on this current recommendations but at the same time you still cannot just let it run. You still need to optimize it, you still need to launch new assets. So it's definitely not for those people who want to Set it up, let it run and forget about it. Okay.
Kurt Elster
And then the other thing I want to ask you about, because I heard a lot of discussion yesterday about creative. Yes. That all seemed to be the theme of the day was Hey, for meta-ads to work today in this environment, you need a lot of creative and not just like, oh, we made a video and then we changed the headline. Like, just Different formats, different people, you know, different avatars, demographics, like really change things up. Talk to me about that creative approach a little bit
Speaker 5
I I I do agree with that that it's definitely the creative is the most important part of your advertising effort. What surprises me is that people are just talking about this now because this has had been the case or has been a case in the last five to ten years since I'm paying since I'm doing meta advertising. So I do remember a scenario which happened five years ago where a specific ad image was working very well for the client. And not because of the product what was in the uh what was in the image but what was in the background. So I knew that there's a lot much going on when it comes to to create it. Having said that I'm very confident to say this. Let's say you have a winning creative. Your campaign structure, it still could determine. the success of that creative. And on different accounts different campaigns are working. So I can have business A running on a very consolidating account structure and this let's call it a winning creative and it's winning. I can have another account with a different campaign structure with the same winning creative and it is not meeting the benchmarks.
Kurt Elster
So there's that's the advantage to like the excessive amount of creative, you know very different things, is just testing it and trying like tested tune until you get the right thing. And then eventually you'll exhaust that audience and you gotta do it all over again.
Speaker 5
Yeah, absolutely. But also at the at the same time, a lot of people get it wrong and my colleague uh Ben Bennett was talking about uh this on stage today. It's not necessarily the amount of creative what you need to to have. Yes you need to feed the machine with quantity but what's more important its quality. Okay. So you you if you throw a thousand creatives at the algorithm and all was done rushed and never thought through the process of the creative and what you try to say and who you're targeting. And then on the other example you have ten creative and you really put your research into those. You might have two winning creatives out of ten. You might have none out of a thousand. So it's not necessarily just quantity, it's the quality as well what matters
Kurt Elster
Alright, give me your your number one tip. Give me the the key takeaway folks should have. I would say
Speaker 5
Try to test in a way where you change one variable at a time because then you know How that change made your performance better or worse. If it made it better, keep doing it and keep working on it. If it didn't work out, then tend something gas. Have an open mind about new things, but do not rush and change everything because somebody said it's working for that. Good advice.
Kurt Elster
Attila, smart market. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Ever had a customer cancel an order because they were shopping, well high, or because they broke up with their significant other. Those are real reasons customers could cancel, and they're a real headache for both you and your customers. Why should they have to email support to change, cancel, or update an order? Enter Cleverific. With Cleverific, your customers can edit their orders themselves through a self-service portal. That means fewer support tickets, faster shipping, and fewer returns. Everybody wins. Peter Manning, New York cut their order support by 99% with Cleverific. Now it's your turn. Listeners of the unofficial Shopify podcast. Get 50% off the pro plan. Just $49 a month. Go to Cleverific. com/slash unofficial and use promo code Kurt50 at checkout. It's less hassle, happier customers with Cleverific. You help get chickens jacked is what I'm telling. I help get chickens so buff. Buff clucks is your business. Incredible business name, because the moment I heard it, understood it, it has stuck with me. for you know forty eight hours now, uh which is remarkable for me. Tell me about what you sell.
Speaker 6
Um well first you want to hear up on origin story thing of the name? Yes. So I think that when you're coming up with a name for a business, you should ask a child. Okay. Because simplicity, like adults, we like to get so cerebral about things. And children are just like they say it as it is and they keep it simple and um our s so our son actually we had our kids like come up with names and this is one of the names I think he was thirteen. So this was a a name that a child chose and it m works really well because I don't know.
Kurt Elster
You know, I think you got lucky if I I asked we asked our kids, hey, what should we name our cat and they their talk choice was Megatron I feel this deeply because we let our kids name our chickens.
Speaker 6
They're all girls. We've had Hank, Hank 2, Shrew, Gormond, like they jacket. Okay. Crispy? I mean they're bad. They're bad at naming things like animals. So yes, we did get lucky that the name that they picked for this one was good.
Kurt Elster
But what is buff click Sil?
Speaker 6
Okay, so we sell a natural herb supplement for backyard chickens. It's loose-leaf herbs, botanicals, every single one of them has medicinal properties that helps chickens um repel pests. repel or uh mitigate parasite load, improves feather health, skin health, better eggs, um, all around help, like a multivitamin for chickens.
Kurt Elster
Okay. No, I I believe it That uh it we keep small animals, I have rabbits, and you know their lifespan is very dependent on the quality of their food source. Yes. And so I I get it. Uh okay With an event like Smart Marketer, you know, you being a business owner, what brought you here? Like what did you want to get out of this?
Speaker 6
You know, uh there's a lot of things that we look for when we come to events. I would actually say that the networking and the people, that is the best part for me. Um e-commerce. is a very solitary, uh kind of lonely thing for you. And most people have no idea what you're talking about. They can't understand like what do you mean you just sit on your computer and like sell stuff? They're picturing like old school eBay.
Kurt Elster
On a computer and money comes out?
Speaker 6
Yeah. And they they like literally picture that at something like that. They don't understand the complexity and all the little intricacies and details and issues. But the people here, everybody understands. So the conversations are way deeper, way more powerful, and the leadership has way more um context of helping and advising and it's beautiful.
Kurt Elster
It's the camaraderie.
Speaker 6
It is camaraderie.
Kurt Elster
It is fun and it's fun to I love hearing people complain because they're just like so thrilled that they finally get to talk to someone who understands. It's like I could, you know, you could complain to like your best friend, your spouse, and they're not gonna get it. They're like, yeah, oh man. Really? But like they don't actually get it. They're humoring you.
Speaker 6
But do you know what they actually say too? is like, well at least you get a stay at your house and your pajamas to deal with that.
Kurt Elster
Okay, it's like look I traded one set of problems for another. Yeah. But yeah, no, there's that absolutely there's the the community that camaraderie. Uh from the talks, was there like a theme to the event that you noticed? We're at the end of day two.
Speaker 6
Yeah. So I think that every person is going to capture things out of every single speaker, talk, piece of networking, round table that they're ready to receive at that time. So if I came to this event, this exact thing, but it was the version of me last year, the things I would have taken away would have been completely different than the things that I took away this time. So what I took away from myself this time was that like I need to stop being a baby and like make my business world class in every area that I can make it world class. But we're past like MVP time. And do it nice or do it twice is yes, that. We're ready for doing it nice. Okay.
Kurt Elster
The and all right of all the pieces where do you think the bottleneck is where you're like you're like this is the thing we really gotta focus on fixing first Um
Speaker 6
So I think the bottleneck is my ego.
Kurt Elster
Oh.
Speaker 6
Yeah. Because um we I I really, really want to build this as lean as possible with If we're just this funny talking about how solitary and like, oh it's lonely, but I don't want any people. Right?
Kurt Elster
Well the irony.
Speaker 6
I just don't like to deal with the drama of people.
Kurt Elster
Okay?
Speaker 6
Like I I'm like a lone wolf and I don't want to have to be managing everybody's stuff. So I try to have as much software that can just be running 24-7 that doesn't get sick and it doesn't have, you know Time off and all back.
Kurt Elster
The idea of like a hundred person team is my nightmare.
Speaker 6
I know.
Kurt Elster
I know. When people tell me that I'm like, oh please, they don't want to hear anymore
Speaker 6
Yeah, yeah. But I can tell that like a lot of what's holding us back is that because I want software to be covering everything and there are these things that you still need humans to do and like if I put humans in place to do them, then we can make things roll class, we can get bigger And um hopefully it'll actually alleviate some pressure and stress on me rather than So you have no no employees in this business. officially no appoint employees, we do have some contractors. Okay. Five contractors.
Kurt Elster
If you had to invent um if you had to invent a single role that you hire for next week, what is it?
Speaker 6
I already have this one ready because I've already been like, I need this person. It is I need a really solid AI prompt engineer that's specific for Um creating good meta video content for our ads. We already have a pretty solid process that we follow ourselves. but it is time consuming even as AI. And so I need there to be somebody else that is running that.
Kurt Elster
Something you could hire off upwork pretty easily. And I rarely tell people to go hit up work.
Speaker 6
You would think I have got a we've got a job posting on there and the it's not look it's not great. Interesting. It's still being a struggle to find a person. So we'll see if we can Find somebody. But that's if I was gonna hire one person right now, it would be that person. Another person that I would hire right now that I've it just dawned on me that I need this person, I'm gonna go poach. an herb and botanical special person that like works right now for like an herb and spice company and I'm gonna go get them. Okay. Because I It's being a huge bottle that can have enough herbs from all over the world.
Kurt Elster
Mostly people aren't so excited about being like, I'm gonna go poach some employees. But just like wow, she's excited about this.
Speaker 6
Well I met a guy that he he runs an importing and exporting herbs company and like he goes like so deep into this like very granular stuff about herbs and spices that nobody should actually know because it's like so kind of boring, you know? And I was like, okay, actually I think I need that guy. I need him to like go meet with all the farmers and like get me all of the flowers, all of the herbs.
Kurt Elster
Mine. The I like that like there's a whole Interpretive dance that went with this poaching thing. This is this is me manifesting all the herbs, all the supplies I need. So all right, BuffPlux, is this on Shopify? Yes. Don ShopFi, do you have any favorite apps or an app you wish existed but doesn't?
Speaker 6
I love loop subscriptions.
Kurt Elster
Loop subscriptions.
Speaker 6
Loop subscribe subscriptions, yeah. Increase my subscriptions Substantially with very little effort on my part as far like no running traffic to it, just literally the widget and how it looks has increased inscriptions.
Kurt Elster
I'm skeptical. I don't think any you're not gonna widget your way to success. What's the magic here? Do we we do that? I did nothing.
Speaker 6
I literally did nothing but change the widget and it immediately the next day was like boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. I wanna know what's wrong with the old widget. That's probably what the column was.
Kurt Elster
I don't know. Or what were you using to run the subscriptions before Propel. Alright, I'm not familiar. I'm the Google, but that's the issue.
Speaker 6
Okay. And it could be because once again that MVP situation. It was like the freebie when we very first built out the Shopify store was like uh maybe this will be a business kind of energy. We're like, we'll put this free one in here.
Kurt Elster
Alright, if there's an app that you could find today, like what's the one that's missing?
Speaker 6
Oh my gosh. I think about this stuff all the time. Oh, I know exactly what it is. And we're trying to build it and it is really hard. I need an AI agent that takes incoming calls and knows everything about all of our products and offers and can take payment and Totally capture it all, set up subscriptions, all of that. And it's being a problem because of the encryption stuff with taking payment.
Kurt Elster
Yes. Yeah, as soon as like payments are involved. And tokenizing payments, uh, things get sketchy, no one wants to mess with it.
Speaker 6
I know, I know, but can you imagine running a sales funnel and it somebody answers the phone and takes the payment and you can do it all night long without anybody doing it?
Kurt Elster
That would be fantastic. So you're taking phone orders?
Speaker 6
We need to.
Kurt Elster
Oh boy. Phone orders scare me.
Speaker 6
Yeah. Well, I get a few. My demographic, they're obsessed with wanting to talk to somebody on the phone. And so don't do it. Yes. Yes, but mm-hmm. They want a lot of chicken talk. We don't do phone orders. They want us to, and I do have a uh customer service person that if somebody gets super insistent I will be like call this person and like take their order. Please take their money.
Kurt Elster
What uh I'm so sorry, what is your name? Celia. Celia. Celia Buff Clucks. Thank you so much. Fantastic. Yeah. Wow. Alright, we're post-conference, you know, off that vibe, tired, flying home, obviously, in an airport. Alright, I want to know Babe, you get back home, what's one thing you're changing? What's one thing you're doing different, your business that's like a direct takeaway from this conference?
Paul Reda
I mean in general, I think it's, you know, if you're hitting metrics that work for your business, spend more money on on ads. For me in particular, that's going to be YouTube ads. We've got some pretty awesome video content. Um that like talking with Brett Curry, who's you know, that's the space he was like, spend more money on that video. So that's a big takeaway for me. Um but it was a great, great conference, you know. I think Uh the interesting thing about it was there were I don't think there was any one takeaway. There was sort of diverse, you know, information that could be a applicable to you know, different people in a different season that their business might be in. So I think I think that was good.
Kurt Elster
Okay. And what do you think that what kind of person is this conference right for?
Paul Reda
I think it's right for a lot of people, you know, like kind of to that point where it's like you you got people who are starting out that are, you know, doing couple hundred thousand or half a million that are trying to just get to that first million and you've got businesses that are eight figures, nine figures. So I mean it was a pretty broad spectrum and I think everyone in there could was taking something away from it
Kurt Elster
The now I would go so broad as like are you interested in internet marketing? A lot of it applies like yeah it really leads heavily toward e-commerce, toward Shopify and online stores. But there there were like a few outliers, you know, somebody who had like resorts. They were just trying to get bookings. It was kind of interesting.
Paul Reda
Well and tra you know retail stuff, right? Retail stuff. Tracking retail sales and um in-store stuff. But yeah.
Kurt Elster
Alright, who who's it wrong for
Paul Reda
I think it's probably not good for someone who thinks they know it all already.
Kurt Elster
Okay. Yeah, if you should no, I mean that's just the wrong attitude. Yeah. Yeah that or I think if you're looking for like a silver bullet.
Paul Reda
True.
Kurt Elster
Because it was always clear like hey, there's a bunch of work that's gonna go into this. At no point was anyone promising like get rich quick overnight, which I appreciate
Paul Reda
Yes, and you have to be willing to test and learn and try because that's the other components. Like this worked for this business, it may not work for you, but it's worth trying. because you could have similar results.
Kurt Elster
Alright, give me one one connection you made out of this trip. That's the that's the value, the hallway track.
Paul Reda
It is. I mean that's There's gonna be these one or two nuances you take away like spend more money on YouTube ads or whatever, but like the real ROIs, the people you meet, the networking. that become, you know, some of these lifelong connections and friends. Uh this is kinda how you and I met many years ago was through this world. Yeah. So yeah, it's cool.
Kurt Elster
And it was neat to hear like Nick Shacleford presented. And you know, they're hyper-aggressive and growing Breeze, their their THC C B D brand. But yeah, he was talking about like how he got connected and it's through these online parasocial relationships. Where like once you start creating content, once you start working in public, you just naturally will start to get connected with other people who are doing the same. And so like, you know, la at this event last year I had lunch with Nick Shackelford and like that's how he w knew me. Um that's how he met Ezra. That's kinda how we all got connected.
Paul Reda
That's how I met Ezra. That's how I ended up on stage, you know, like
Kurt Elster
So ultimate my takeaway is like, man, if you keep posting online and like building networking online, that eventually translates into cool in-person, offline relationships. Also man, I had a ton of fun hanging out with you.
Paul Reda
Thank you. Totally unexpected and unplanned, but yeah, it was awesome. We had a great week.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, and everything lined up, like even our gates were leaving at the same time for the airport. Uh so I get a better ending to this this vlog uh by talking to you. Uh Man, anything else? I spent four days in Denver. We all did. I we didn't hit one dispensary. And there were like two within lost many. Two within like a hundred feet of that hotel. They're too sketchy for me. Like look if you have to buzz me in, I don't know.
Paul Reda
The next door to the bales bondsman.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, next to the bale bondsman.
Paul Reda
Classic.
Kurt Elster
The alright if I wanted to get a a baby carrier or otherwise outfit my baby for Afghanistan, where are we going?
Paul Reda
You can uh you can do that at tacticalbabygear. com.
Kurt Elster
Beautiful.
Paul Reda
And if you need to clean your ass, you can do that at fight soap.
Kurt Elster
Fightsoap. us. I do love fight soap. Bee Brody, thank you so much. Hey man, thank you. Crowdfunding campaigns are great. You can add social proof and urgency to your product pre-orders while reducing risk of failure. But with traditional crowdfunding platforms, you're paying high fees and giving away control, all while your campaign is lost in a sea of similar offers. It can be frustrating. That's why we built Crowdfunder. The Shopify app that turns your Shopify product pages into your own independent crowdfunding campaigns. We originally created Crowdfunder for our private clients. And it was so successful, we turned it into an app that anyone can use. Today, merchants using Crowdfunders have raised millions collectively. And With Crowdfunder, you'll enjoy real-time tracking, full campaign control, and direct customer engagement. And it's part of the Built for Shopify program, so you know it's easy to use. So say goodbye to high fees and hello to successful store-based crowdfunding. Start your free trial and transform your Shopify store into a pre-order powerhouse today. Search Crowdfunder in the Shopify App Store to get started.