Stop Discounting. Groove Life's Profits Tripled When They Did.

And so, Q4 Discounting makes sense. Everybody's looking for a discount. Most brands look for a discount.

“I'm not advocating that you don't discount.”

The question is, how long? - Yeah, for how long? - And then the rest of the year are you pulling demand forward by discounting? First is just playing in the big moments.

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Just go to Apple oven.com/CTC to set up your first campaign. - Welcome to the e-commerce playbook podcast live. Live sort of, maybe not in your feed live. But we're here live at commerce roundtable event in San Diego. You can see the beautiful San Diego, that's not a AI.

- That's real, that's real. - That's real. - Signs real, it's all real. - And he's real. - Yes. This is, this is an interesting character in my life. Whether he knows it or not, we've been competitors

in the arena together. We've been having drinks discussing the deepest portions of life together. And now here we are today on a podcast. I'm joined by Kyle Yeoman.

He is the president of Group Life. - Kyle's pleasure to help you, sir. - Yeah, thanks for having me, try to be here. - Yeah, so Group Life, tell us a little bit about what it is and then I'll give some context to what we're gonna talk about today.

- Yeah, so you mentioned competitors in the arena. Group started out as a silicone ring company. We started in 2016 by Peter Goodwin. He developed the ring in his garage in Alaska. That business boomed.

And then in 2020, we introduced belts the same way. And we've really gone into men's premium accessories from there. And so silicone rings are still part of our business, but that was just our start.

And so, yeah, that's what we do. - So I say, the competitors in the arena 'cause that back in those days, 'cause you said you started in 2018 at, like, end of 2018. - Yeah, that's right.

So we were very much in the throws of running Kelo at the time. So another silicone running ring. And it was really us too, that were the sort of the main leaders at the moment, maybe one other player in the space, but the silicone ring wars of the early,

but the good thing that you guys did that we failed to do

was to find that second product cap.

So tell us a little bit about belts and how you went from rings to belts and what that's done for the brand. - Yeah, so it's an huge for the brand. I mean, that's been most of our growth since 2020.

Rings are a very stable category for us. It's not as sophisticated as you might think. So our founder is innovative, very innovative, and all of our products have patents and go through a long timeline basically,

come up with a concept and then bring it to market. And so there was really not a lot of correlation between our ring and bell buyer, other than that we just made an awesome new product. - Yeah. - And it took off.

- So I think actually, the challenge is that there's not a lot of crossover.

“- Yeah, well, I think that's an under-appreciated thing”

that people don't realize is they think a lot about product expansion is like, oh, it's gonna increase by LTV. And it actually rarely does. - Right, category cross-cell and the e-commerce

happens way less than people realize, but it is mainly about unlocking that new customer acquisition. So you guys have done an awesome job of that and sustained it. And now you are back as the president. - Yeah.

- What is the president, too? - A little bit of everything that really is right. - Yeah, yeah. - Now, so I came back in 2022 to see Emma. - Okay.

- And then, kind of, go, we're more and more responsibility and moved to the president role about two years ago. It's still very much growth-focused, right? We're a marketing and sales organization at the heart of it.

So we went through this process of saying,

we're actually a product first company.

I think that was in the stake. And so we pivoted back to being where sales and marketing come from. - Interesting. - How does that change, you guys culturally?

- I think, what is the distinction? - Investment, like, how much do you invest in R&D versus marketing, right? So one of the things we did early on, is which are a reduced marketing spend

and invest in other categories because our product is good enough selling, so. - Yeah, that's not true. - Interesting. - Either way, I'm very product.

- Right, it's just not true. - Right, so I think it's, yeah, mostly focus and investment. - Interesting. - Yeah, that makes no sense.

- So you're here? - Yeah. - All this on the series that we're doing because you're speaking. - Yeah, tomorrow?

- Tomorrow? - Taking the main stage? - Yeah, I'm excited. - What are you gonna be talking about? - How discounting is not a growth strategy.

“So basically the pitch is that you should be focusing”

on quality of revenue, which we should define. - Yeah. - Connection issues. - Define quality revenue. - It's top line.

- Top line, top line, just quality of revenue. - Okay, so that's a setup because we're here to talk mainly about Q4, right? Which is primarily an attempt to capture value through discount.

- Right. - So help me square the circle here and figure out how do you then and group? How do you approach Q4 in a lot of it being discounting with doing that in a way that doesn't create

the damage you're concerned.

And so Q4 discounting makes sense. Everybody's looking for discount. Most brands are looking for discount. I'm not advocating that you don't discount. The question is how deep?

- Yeah, but how long? - And then the rest of the year are you pulling demand forward by discounting?

First of just playing in the big moments.

So kind of what we committed to in 26 was we're only going to discount the advantage day and for holiday. The rest of the year is full price. And by doing that, right, you end up demand

and then you can avoid it the most of the season. So that's really more of the positioning. - That's great, so okay, so twice a year. - That's it. - That's it.

- And one of this year is so hard. - And you made it? - I'm so excited for November. - Now, so yeah, so you've got some sort of demand to ready to go.

“So, do you think that part of your ability to do that?”

'Cause a lot of times discounting in my head is really about turning aged inventory back to cash when you've missed the market on product creation or inventory. So, and you guys do better if I don't know about the,

I can't speak to the belts as much, but on the rings, I'd really go across the goods. Very little, very little inventory rest. So you don't carry a lot of like, oh no, I have to liquidate this, there's large holding costs

or I'm shocked. So, how do you think about the relationship between the price at which you can sell the product, the price at which the market accepts the product? - Right, I think it's a really good question.

And so, to your point, even for belts, we do all of our own assembly and fulfillment in Tennessee. - Yeah. - And so, we can stuff right here. We very, very rarely have Jim and Tory.

- I think it makes sense to discount and move age inventory. What I have found though is that when it doesn't move at full price, it doesn't move very well. It doesn't give you any discount. And so, I think it's less that you shouldn't discount those

on the short term, but the question is, if you're doing that every year, - Right. - Like, picture forecast thing. - Yeah, there's no iteration.

- There's no iteration. - There's no problem. - Right, yeah. - So that's like, that's an outlet. It goes to, if necessary, not the strategy. - Right, yeah.

- And I think it's a bigger thing I'm hitting on is your evergreen product. - Yeah. - Because it's like sales are soft this month, and every marker I know goes, well, you know.

- What do you think? - So, 'cause, no, I have, I can see. - Beautiful. - Yeah. - So, the question I have is, in your organization,

and maybe this is you because you are a marketer, right, right? But who gets to decide the price? - Again, I have a super sophisticated process. We try to go just above competitors.

- Okay. - So, we really just benchmarked there and then cost up goods and used to ever. - And is that, you get to decide? Or like, are you a marketer?

- No. - Okay. - So, that's me and our founder and our CFO. This is down to say, this is what it wants me. And this is, so I've kind of waged an internet war

against the head of growth title.

“And in part, because I think it's related”

to decisions like this, where if you're gonna be responsible for the outcome, the question is, what's you have the authority over? - Mm-hm. - Now, hopefully you guys are really good at naming the price

and, but if I'm gonna see MO and you have control of the price and I don't, then I'm told, go sell it, and I think that there's some mismatch to the demand there. There's a lot of trust that has to be built for sure.

- Between whose responsibility that ultimately that is

in the process and I think, that's one of the things that when I think about a lot of times, what I see is that if an organization is product-led like you described, then the ops team prices based on the gross margin

desire that they have. - Right. - It's a little pricey for me. - Exactly. - So, yeah, regardless of what the market will accept,

it's like we have a gross margin expectation. Here you go, there's the price versus if a market or sets it, they'll turn it in, right? They're gonna try and price it as low as they can because they can.

- Exactly. - And so, this is one of the things I watched toggle between an organization of who's forward and let it in. So, I think that having you in that seat actually probably is really helpful to think about that.

But, how do you think about, 'cause this is true in Silicon Rings, I know one of the things that I experienced was that the market expectation of the price changed over time, right?

In a way that was kind of outside of our control in the sense that because it's a high gross margin category, when we started day one, it was like you and us

and nobody else on Amazon, you guys were first.

- And you go on there and now there's a thousand listings.

“And I remember I think it was like Rino Rings”

was probably first that was like five for five bucks cheap. - Yeah. - Right, and so all of a sudden, the consumer expectation of the price because you have limited barrier to entry and I know, like there's these elements

where all of a sudden the market expectation of price changes, right? So, how do you think about those effects in a market as it relates to discounting versus pricing over time? - It's a good question. And I think it depends on your product, right?

So, if you are in a commodity, you sell air filters and that by actually maintaining a higher price point, we've played a different space. So, we don't collect all the same volume, but we have much better margins, right?

And we maintain, so our ring business is not strong. - Right. - It's been very, very steady. - Yep. - And it, because we maintain price.

So, we raise prices on rings, our silicon ring is $55. My name is on. - Interesting. - And so, yeah, I think it's more about just like owning your place. And this goes back to the discounting,

everybody goes what we need to compete on price. And so, we've just said, what if you remove that up? - Yeah. - So, in constraint, yeah. - Well, I agree.

I think one of the biggest things

that organizations struggle with is that they'll, whatever they want to be, they'll, they'll capitulate to the problem for all the time. Versus when you draw those boundaries and clear constraints, it forces innovation

in different ways. So, I love that.

“I think that the IP thing is really interesting.”

Like, I think that one of the things that you could probably plot into some cool data visualization is the relationship between the barriers to entry and pricing power over time. And this is just general macroeconomics.

But I think Ecommerce suffers terribly from locked up barriers to entry. That is forces people into these pricing battles because they have no product. - Right, sure.

- Realistically. - Truly is a commodity at the end of the day. - Yeah. - And in some ways, this is like a gripe I have with like, the Shopify stuff that we're all,

is that the whole idea of like, arming the rebels and lowering the barrier to entry to do everything isn't actually good for us. It doesn't actually serve you as a brand that everybody else can very easily replicate what you do.

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give me the month of November, offer design, win a relive, how long are we running for, how does that show up for you guys this Q4? - It's short. We're not starting till the week of Black Friday.

- I love it. - I love it. - Can I win this day before? - Great. - I love it. - We're gonna run it for a week. - I love it. - Then we're done.

- I think this is the way. - Actually, do you actually, I thought you were gonna say, - No, I think that's it. - There is this obsession with starting earlier, that I don't believe does anything

to drive incremental rep, I don't think it does. - It drives none. In fact, like the most efficient media dollar, everyone gets obsessed with CPMs, but the idea is that it's all relative to the conversion rate,

that's available to you. And so repeatedly, I see that the most efficient time period is when culture actually shops, that like, you know, your sales starting earlier, doesn't do anything to change your job.

- No, no. - So you can start it whenever the hell you want. Nobody cares, right? And the only people that do are the people that we're gonna for sure buy anyways,

and you just get in the discount. - That's right. - Just get back.

“- And so I think that I have actually been a proponent”

that I do, I think I still think Wednesday, because people can go to Monday, but I think that the peak value creation period is when they've done Monday, it's that window. - We've always seen it.

- It's just like... - Totally. - For some reason, we're traveling. And then all of a sudden, they're ready to stop. We're focusing more on, we're keeping consistency of offer,

but we're just changing messaging. - So, it is just a black Friday, folks. - I agree. And the labor, the amount of work here, like there's so many things that actually

form almost no incremental value that you're stretching this out so much further. And what I prefer is, is there actually a...

So, for brands, first we get into November's Veterans Day,

is there actually something not black Friday related? It's some way in which you can drive some incremental moment of value that is dissociated from that. Now, allow that to still be there,

but don't drag it forward into the period. Is there something else we can do or say? And I think a lot of ways, this is how Amazon ended up with what's there, what am I thinking? - These are there.

- No, it's a big sale, I'm trying to complete, but prime day, thank you. Prime day in October, right, is because they recognize, oh, if I can drive this peak of demand ahead of bird already exists, then I can create incremental value

that way. Okay, so, give me the example of the discounting thing that you think represents the most damaging example that you see.

“- I think brand starting black Friday sales, October one.”

- Yep. - And running it through the end of the year. - Yep. - And then Q1 is just a nightmare. Because all you've done is you pulled forward,

all the people that we're gonna buy later. - Yep. - Extend it and now you've reset your perceived price at your rate, because it's been that way for three months. - I think that's the.

- There are so, so many brands, and they're just, they've gotten themselves into a habit where the funnel that's working best on meta is a discount funnel. And so it's now become 30 to 50% of the spend.

And you're stuck, there's no way out. - You can't turn it off. The top line drop will be too impactful. And the ability to subsidize it quickly doesn't exist. - Right.

- If you can think a long time to reconstruct that, and you are now in prison, you are in discount prison. - And now you die. - Yes. And I see this on the media front.

And then to the point that they end up in lawsuits over, this is not really your price.

- This has never actually been off of discount.

- Right. - For any period of time. - So what do I do? - I'm stuck, I'm in a prison. - This is exactly what I'm talking about.

- How do I get out? - Give us a teaser. - Just counting. - Discount to drive top line growth. - Yep.

- That you think will increase fusion margin. And therefore profit. - This was one profit. - Yep. - And what ends up happening is you now

pop that over year. - That's right. - Because you've built up, rating expense layer. - Yeah.

- That needs more top line.

“But then you have to go deeper on your discount.”

You need to run it for longer. So now you have revenue climbing, it grows margin, decline. - Yep. - And you have to contribute to margin of climbing

and profit. - And it's growing. - And it's growing. - Yep. - Then did it long enough.

You mentioned that you just added a million. - Yep. So now you're revenue dips, horses stalls. - Right. - Because even on that discount

funnel is not working, keeps rising. - Yep. - So you have to go deeper over more offers. - Yep. - And so now you get the compounding effect

of all those other three grants, margin, population. - That's right. - So this is what we did in 2026 is where we reset.

And it started by Scopex. - Yeah. - That takes that. - That's right. - That's right.

- For the long haul. - So this year's in pretty real. - I like it. - We're at all mentally, right? - Right.

- That has a growth. - And it is the hardest thing to do, because the optics, it's easy to say, optics, but it generally represents peanuts people software.

- Got it. - And those are like-- - In many, sometimes it's an office is another thing. I see, and like where people have these things that they have identity connected to.

We have this one of those toys. We have this cool build, like whatever it is, and it's letting go of that is literally like it's a death that you're dying to become a new thing. - There you go.

- It is. - It really is. And but the freedom that it creates to that actually go get healthy is it's the only way.

So like, okay, so I'm going to see you're standing and I have to fire everyone. - I think they should-- - What do I have to do? - Understand where you are first.

And if there's actually opportunity. So what we realized is that you were discounting a lot. - Yeah. - And so we kind of slowly moved into. From 20% of our revenue coming through discounts,

just to even for a time, to 40. - Yeah. - Oh, we are a criminal business. - Whether or not we want to hack like it, we are. And this is not good in well.

So we could say in business for a while, 'cause we have Amazon and retail. We're healthy, but in five to ten years we're done. We don't. - Yeah.

- And so I think it's really important to understand where they're at before they make decisions. I wouldn't make big swings right before you four. Play out the year like you planned. - Yeah.

- But be thinking next year, what does my business need to look like? - Long term. - How do you know how did you know that there was profitable acquisition of Amazon?

Because one of the things I see is that people will get the nerve to go, okay, I recognize we're discount,

but they've actually never had to go out

and acquire customers at home price. And so the actual possibility of what is out there that is viable is unknown. - Right. - And they go out and they find out that no matter what we do,

we can't get to a place where it works. So like, how did you know that there was available to you profitable, new customer acquisition that wasn't in this game? - We didn't.

“- I think it's like, but you're gonna die anyway.”

But this is gonna die anyway, so you probably have a lot of options. - Yeah. - So we didn't. But I personally got a lot more involved in that process.

So what we used to do was we do design by committee, so it's like, redo this page, but you have 10 hand in it. And this became a lot more personal. Like, no, this is what needs to be there.

And we just kinda went. - When? - Because one of the things I see happen to is that it's really hard. And this is harder, I think, for CEOs

and leaders that aren't marketers, because they'll get prospect from their team to saying like, this isn't possible. I can't, more efficiency isn't available. Like, how did you know when you had made it to a place

for like, this level is good enough or it's good? - I don't think there's,

I'm taking the approach that it's never good enough.

The reason I know it's good this year is because probably the money tripled. - Yeah. - I would say it's not good enough. So this is an iterative process.

I think the thing that I'm gonna be continually hitting on is that this doesn't stop. - Yeah. - So like, yeah, but what we saw, I mean, the reason we got into this,

the first place is that you saw conversion or extra from your page channels, right? That was like the main issue. And that always happens over time, because it's gonna be great.

So you have to be iterating. I think that's the main core to go back to. Don't pull points,

“'cause it gives you the artificial conversion right?”

- Yeah. - I'll focus on the core, right, to convert more. And so the biggest thing this year was we got our BNCPA in half by doing that. - Really?

- Seven-day click. - Trace apples in. - I have to show you that. - Yeah, kind of insane. - That's really cool.

- But, and so one was all site. So it was the site wide, the site changes? - Yeah. - It wasn't ads. - It was like the same, same, outbound.

- And all the stuff. - And all the stuff. - No, yeah, that's like that. - And what kind of things? Like personal specific landers, categories like,

this is another CRO changes. - One product page. - So it took our highest volume page. - And just said, if I didn't work here, I didn't have any personal attachment to it.

Is this a good page? - Yeah. - Answers know. - Okay. - And then we sat down and just rebuilt it from scratch.

Look, did other categories. So we did look at competitors. We looked people were selling to the same customer. We felt we were doing a great job. - It's very soft.

It's like Rick Ruben, what's this thing? - Yeah. - Like this skill but tastes. - Yeah. - But it really is that.

This feels right.

- And then we just did it and rolled it out. - Yeah, it worked. - So it's, I mean, it's so interesting.

- So there's always this tension between breath and depth

as it relates to these testing opportunities where the idea of your PDP. And I've even thought of it. But like people like your home page has the lander, whatever page, the vast majority of your travel goes to.

- Yeah. - You spend a lot of time trying to make that core thing better or do you launch a thousand pages?

“- The thousand page thing, I think it's intoxicating”

because people really love the idea of like there's this very specific message for this person that we think we know who they are and so the problem is like when you develop that many iterations of a thing it becomes really hard to actually understand

the variable that's making it different. It's like really challenging. So right now you guys drop all your ad traffic to a PDP. That's crazy one. - And that made the biggest difference.

- Why don't? - So conversion rate is up 61% year over year, Apple Stapples on those pages. - On just the PDP, just the PDP. - And what visually, if you were to hold them both side

by side, what would I see is the biggest thing. - All of it. - I mean we literally built it. I can show you the tonic photos, different product photos, different copy,

different sections, different, right? We just basically would relate. - So one of the things too was every day I've heard his AB test, AB test. - Yeah, yeah.

- The basic AB test and then nothing. - Yeah. - So our old PDP was just a photo. - An overpriced, well, right? It's like why would it be?

- It's like my battery for this belt. - Yeah. - And so what we did is we just said, let's try to edge customer.

And so the pushback I've always gotten is

that only 25% of people go past the fold. - Yeah, yeah. - So don't worry about it. - And we can't check the opposite, which is like, no, those are your highest intent.

- Yeah. - And so we built them very long, too. - Yeah. - Yeah, I mean, if you can improve that 25% of PDP, so that's 12 and up.

- Done increase your page. - Yeah, like there's little real wins, yeah. - And we rewrote the copy, like humans rewrote it. - Yeah. - Like is this compelling?

And then AB tested the copy. - But we don't test layouts to that, we don't test. We just go like, what we want to buy this. - Yeah. - So it's been interesting.

- Yeah, let's say. - We'll see how Q4 does, I mean, it may, you know, I hope we'll see. - How about this another one when we talk to someone asked everybody this?

- Yeah. - Black Friday, spend day on incremental. Not incremental. Most spend at least spend on the day of meta. - Not incremental.

- Not incremental. - So you spend less on Black Friday than you do on, no, we still spend more on that. - Okay, I'm not convinced that's that increment. - How do you define the amount to spend?

- I mean, this is non-scientific. - Yeah, I'm gonna show how little I know. - It's based off of traffic projections. - Okay. - Right, and it's like basically what is my cost of traffic

and my simple version right, NeoV. - Okay. - But we found in years where we ran linear TV, that gave us way more live, like some of those. - So you run linear TV, like the two weeks preceding it

or the month? - Yeah, for the year preceding it, but then you ramp much it's there. - Oh, and you basically take all. - So you're saying, day off, spend on linear TV,

being more incremental. - Okay, and spend on that. - We can. - Yeah, 'cause linear, like the remnants, that's really the shit. - Thank you, you can't spend.

- Yeah. - So it's important you line up the week, the clearance, right, like a clear week to pick. - Yep. - And that's like YouTube TV, all those of them,

in my opinion, more and more. - So whatever number you write down, you have a revenue goal, you back out with the covers right of you, to get your expected CPC and that becomes the budget pretty much.

- How do you know if you don't, if you were to write down 10% more money, it wouldn't be more money. - And you said that a different way. - So let's just make up some made up numbers.

- Yeah, you do that for me, they come out, you say, our met as soon as $100,000 today. - Well, what if it was 110? - Then you might. - 'Cause if it's a formula, yeah.

- Then the CPC times it, the money just goes up. - Yes, except for you have it's,

“it is incremental, but it's not at the rate in which, right?”

So if you run at 20%, that's been a revenue. - Right. - Even if that is incremental at a $1.5. - Right. - That's still 50% right?

- Yeah, you're inching up. So that's usually our barrier is, what is our, our M.E.R. goal or whatever it is for the CPC? - So that's more the capital S, and drive more. And I think that goes back to point, drive more revenue

through discount too. - Yeah. - Should, yeah. - Today, I mean, again, obviously long-term you wanna grow up, but I think that's a question.

- Do you like sense?

- Yeah. I mean, I think the tension always,

and I think this is, there's, just actually a thing I criticized for in my organization. There's two ways to think about opportunities. There's to create a plan, to create an outcome. And to decide that that outcome has been enough

and we're going to produce that. And we're actually gonna let go of the question of whether or not we maximize the opportunity. That's actually my preferred method because-- - Which is your preferred.

- To build a plan and execute to the plan of not deviating from it, including leave upside on the table. Versus, I think our e-commerce is way more like scale it if it's working. That creates all sorts of problems.

- Tons. - But Black Friday is one of those days where you, it's almost impossible to leave without feeling that in one way or another, I over did it or under did it. - Sure.

- All the time.

“And so I think that what you're describing,”

sounds like you guys have developed a certain amount of discipline around like,

of whether or not we milked every dollar out of it as possible.

It's like we had a plan. We do the thing. - That's good enough for us. - Yeah, that's how I feel. - That's how I feel.

“And I think your team is reflective you as a person, right?”

You feel that way, your team will start to reflect that. You need to have to criticize you now. And yeah, so that's how I tend to be more disciplined in organizing and going to like, I would rap. Which would I rather leave the feeling like,

I didn't get as much as I could or a way. - I'd burn it. - Yeah. - And it's like, I've got less of the table than I over-stretched house problems.

- So I think the point you made earlier to the other trap is that people substantially underestimate the damage to the year over your comp and neck year's opportunity when you torture it. Like it's gonna take you actually two years

to recover from this problem. And it is such a long journey to get back to.

Once you've faced that top line at a level that's inefficient,

you're gonna have to go so far backwards to go back forwards. - Right. - And it becomes really, really hard to accept that. There's people just keep on the throttle.

- I think that's the biggest issue with our industry of knowledge is lack of patience. - Yeah. - Yeah. - That's the one with Andrew Ferris podcast. - Yeah. I think the idea, I think people underestimate, especially in this thing, even for us learning

as you go sell is that if I'm gonna pay you a discount on future earnings, which is what all sales are, right? There's somebody bringing forward your future earnings and giving you, I'm gonna take a multiple arbitrage

on that value at some rate of return for myself. The predictability of that future revenue is just a model extrapolation of how predictable your historical is. So if you're 20%, then 180% and then negative 7%, and then 40, it's like, what, what future earning

am I gonna model off of that? versus if it's 30%, 30%, 30%, 30%, 30%, thanks love that. They want to write that against it. Somebody who's gonna underwrite it

and isn't sophisticated, we're some private equities, gonna love that. And so that ability to withstand the chasing the 100%, 200%, yeah, for the 50, 50, 50, 50 or 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30,

“I think is a real value, especially if your end ambition”

is to sell the business to somebody who's gonna have to look out into the future and go, am I gonna make money on giving you a bunch of cash for this though? Right, so that's really iterated. We learn that it makes sense either way.

So if you do, I route way better like you said, they're fine and they're not markers, they don't really care about you. And then, but if you do keep it, it kicks off way more cash if you're consistent. - Well, so I think the counter, the question there is this more

of the, like, getting while the getting is good. So like, if I look, if I go back, yeah, let's say it's 2018 again. You and us are there. Did we understand or overspend?

- Underspend, massive, right. - Like, we had no idea. - Maybe. - So that's a one set, right? - Well, I just think that the market got so competed

away so fast. - Yeah. - And like, I'll speak for myself 'cause I don't know where you guys are up. We should have been more aware of how limited

the barrier to entry was and how there were gonna be a thousand alternatives so far. But like, I look back, you know, we could pull up the early meta accounts from that era and it was just printing, what?

- Right. - And we just didn't know any better and the inventory risk was like zero, sure. - So like, there wasn't actually that much risk to spend a much, money.

There was so much gross margin. It was just like, it was so, we could have accelerated so quickly. Now, what would have been the end of all of those actions? What we would have had to come way down, a bigger drop.

- Bigger drop. - The question is when we made more careful on the way? I don't know, but you know, like, and I think about that a lot that's like, you know, it's the old Malibu Beach from property,

like, wins the best time to buy and the old binge from property.

Well, it was yesterday and the second best time is right now.

So what should you do in light of that? And I think that's the only tension that I feel with the like step, step, step is that

“you have to be really confident that the market”

will yield that opportunity and possibility for you in the future. - I think that's fair. - I think my only, like, immediate response to that is that if you believe that the only time we get it now is now.

- Yeah. - It almost kind of shows that you have a lot of belief in your business, in the future, and maybe you're not. The other thing is like, can you sustain it?

- Totally. - I think being able to sustain something is really important. - Do you think, so, as you look at your business? - Yeah. - It's 2030.

- Yeah. - What is the revenue mix between rings, belts, and unknown? - Percentage. - It's probably 20 rings, 30 belts. - 50, I know.

- Okay. - Because I think this is that you can't everything either grows or it dies. - Yeah. - It doesn't have to grow at a 200%.

- Right. - It'd be moving towards growth. - So I think that's the, I think that's where when I think about what brands are then. I think, I don't know if you saw Sean's tweet about this

the other day. - I'm not sure. - Just yesterday, how are you now? - Are you an alien from another planet? What does that mean?

- No, the idea is just that like, what is a brand? If it's true that your future growth won't come from anything you curb the hype, like, what are you? Like, and the idea, you're really a platform for something to exist, but the problem with those products

and what the hard thing about e-commerce like,

such that they expand over time, then like,

you're all of your future growth is like, to be solved. - Right.

“- Like, you have to, you have to, in your head,”

come up with some new way in which 50% of your revenue is gonna exist four years from now. - Yeah. - To big tasks. - So I think that, like, that's the only tension

between, like, no, what happens is that I think you develop the confidence in the mechanism of what you can discover those things. - Sure. - And so like, you become more sure

that you'll be able to solve the problem, even though today is more un-solving. - Awesome, we're what else? Any other Q4 tips so you're gonna spend, you're gonna keep the sound late.

This is gonna be, you have all this pence up to man. You're gonna not spend as much on meta. You're gonna pump another channel. - Remnant TV. Any other channels you like a lot?

- Two. - Really long for a day. - We've got. - All year. - Really?

- I mean, less responsive than meta.

- Yeah. - You're not gonna ramp to the same way as a percentage, but just in general, like, that's what we're betting on. - What are you using for measurement for YouTube? - We don't use any measurement tools.

- This guy's a vibe sperm. - Except everywhere for post-purchase survey. - Yeah.

“- So the only thing, you make all your media decisions”

on post-purchase survey, then you got, yeah. - And got, what does your gut tell you? - My gut tells me better attention is better than short-term attention. - And you talked about this a little bit,

the long-term halo effect we see from things like YouTube. - For sure. - Are far and way better than for sure. - For sure. - So what if, like, fundamentals?

- What if your gut's disagree, like people internally, who's got, gets the win? - That was a countable for the outcome. - Okay, is that you, at the end of the day? - Yeah.

- So it's just a year ago. - Oh, we get buying, like, I'm not bad. - What happens if you die? Well, then maybe we get a measurement. - Yeah.

- Right. - I mean, I'm open to being wrong in these things. - No, I just think sometimes we like to overcompute it. - For sure. - But she's like, if you have about it,

and you're spending 100% on direct response, is that better or worse long-term than taking 30% in a towards longer term, than shin, brand recognition, like,

- Yeah, I think the answer is probably what it's been,

is, and this is why Bar Free of Apprentice and Asia is that, I think that there are Rick Rubens, and there are Kyle Yomens that actually been used in the same sense as him. - Well, you brought it up earlier,

so I think it's a fair example. That, like, you're intuition based on your ability to synthesize information and your experience in the industry actually leads you to really good decision making. And you are gifted in that way,

but what happens or what is very hard is for that to be replicable for anybody else. - Yeah. - And the second that you, the decision-maker move to somebody with worse intuition,

then the idea that we're gonna use intuition becomes risk of really bad. - Yeah. - I actually really grew, figure out how to solve it though. - No, I think you don't have to,

“that's the good thing is because you're a Rick Rubens, right?”

So he doesn't need to go build a system for deciding what good music is, because he can into it, and he has a long history of proving that that's true. So you're in a series being built, and you're doing it well, and so you get to use that system.

- Exactly. Like, do I feel like it's good enough, so I just like I'm open to being challenged on that. - Well, I think good enough, again, is also up to you to decide what that means.

And then how we're gonna teeter into the philosophical here, which last time we were together, we had some drinks and did that. - What's exactly, but really, and I think this is, this is, I think that most businesses live in the chaos

and ambiguity of the owners desires. And so the fact that you're satisfied actually can build an organization that it's a self-science. And so the external opinion of whether that could or not doesn't matter, right?

- If you guys are, if you're satisfied with the outcome and the system that you're getting, then the system is good. 'Cause I'd like to say that your system is perfectly desired if they outcome it's getting.

And so, if it's producing what you want, then I don't think there's any responsibility. - It's just profit and the ability to deny it. - That's right. - That's a true thing.

- Then great. - We'll wanna grow faster, as soon as those two things are true for a long period of time. - Yeah. - But that's the tension that kind of lives

in every founder business to think. - I think the only risk is if you are in a position enough to be committed long term, because in the absence of the human, what happened in the absence of the Ruben,

how does that system persists? And I think that would be the only risk, but if you're-- - Well, what would you say to the answers? - Well, for me, I'd like to think of the idea

that the organization, all decision-making framework is devoid of any individual, and that the individuals also met to some externality that we're using to define it. Now, I say that as somebody who would love

to just say 'cause I said so. - Yeah. - It's way easier, it's way easier. - It's way easier. But part of it is, I have actually become very

a purely aware of how often I'm wrong. - And I get a scary level. - I'm wrong all the time. - Yeah, at times when I was really, really convinced that my gut was right.

And so I think probably it's my own insecurity about that that's developed over time to say, like, how do I, what is it like to build, I've got check for myself, because I'm actually interested in trying

to move closer to reality as much as I can. And so what are the best ways to do that?

Or no.

“- I think it's really hard to know if you have it.”

I think if it exists, it's like to prove that

to yourself would be really hard. And I think that more and more I find that as organizations as people leave them, they just evolve in ways that can render them for a placeable very fast.

- And I think of super places, right? 'Cause you could replace a lot of, I mean, MMM or a measurement tool, you could be the same out, Haitian. - Right.

“I think the thing I've wrestled with a lot,”

though, actually, this is philosophical.

- Yep. - Is you have two brands that do the same thing, that's the same product. It made a lot of the same actual internal decisions. Why does one succeed over time the other one doesn't?

- Well, I mean, I think there's lots of dimensions that could be the answer. - And I think like it theory, right, if you. - I think the actual, that the execution is the underrated asset there,

it's not that information.

“I think that most people could have information”

and not act on it at all. Like if you go, I'll tell you this is running incrementality studies for those all the time, is that I could show you that your thing is bad and watch nothing over and over.

- That's a very good point. - So I think that what I find is that the best organizations, they have this deep intimate connection between belief and behavior, such that as belief changes, their behavior does too.

And the worst organizations, those things are dissociated, where whatever they say they believe, they don't like it. So I have, I think, I would call it organizational integrity is that there's high alignment between the things we say we believe in the things we do.

And that the beliefs actually can become secondary to that being true, because there is no, I'm not a big, big, a capital T-truth guy where there's a singular idea that could be right. There's lots of ideas that are right.

And it's more important, can you actually move shin connection? - It's like alignment to those, yeah. - And so I think you, it sounds like you also have that to with the things you, where you don't sit around

wondering all day if what we believe is true, or we believe it, we do it.

I think that's really powerful.

- That's an interesting take. - Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Well, there you go guys. Welcome to the e-commerce roundtable live. Come join us for we'll get to have a cocktail and who knows where we'll end up later. But if you're not on hacks, where how do we follow you? How do we gain our wisdom from you? Can we can we can we you have a I don't like to. Okay, you're posting thoughts on there. Right. And article a week. Okay, so being in this year. I started writing what what okay. That's cool. Just what I'm saying. You got a sub-stacks on the West start on sub-stack on my own site. So we're going like 3,000 words 30 words. What do we do? Just bands like read six minute reads.

Okay, they're basically a weekly pondering. Sometimes it's what we're seeing in the business or the other times it's just like I wonder what the future of work will be. Oh, okay I take over great. So and that's on LinkedIn. Yeah, and then it's kind of young and dark. I just made a site with a little opt-in for news letter. Hey there. You go. He said you couldn't follow him, but he's got the newsletter get there get engaged in the thoughts Do really cool things agree with congrats man congrats on a in during the market and crushing me and surviving as a competitor in the silicon ring

at the time. And you'd like to run on your speech. Thank you. And you've ever been interested today. Thanks, dude. Wherever, we'll be you can in the speech we'll be there on YouTube all the coverage of our table follow-up docs. So make sure you check it out and go crush Q4. Thanks for coming in. Thanks for sharing.