The Re-Hire Nobody Saw Coming

public podcast. It's been a minute. It's been a minute, but got some excited news. So today I'm bringing back a special guest and not just as a guest. No no no no, but as a resident as a reunited part of the whole and we're going to tell you a little bit about how it happened. So you ready? Welcome. The one, the only this episode of the e-commerce playbook is brought to you by outer signal.

If a celebrity bought from your brand tomorrow, would you even notice? Probably not. Most brands have no idea who's actually in their customer list. They've got order numbers and emails, not people. So when a Fortune 500 CEO, a creator with

2 million followers or a celebrity quietly buys from you, they get the same

marketing as everyone else. That's the gap outer signal closes. It identifies the real person behind every order, flags of celebrities influencers and VIPs in your customer base and groups everyone else into clear personas. So go to outer signal.com/thread. That's outr signal.com/thread. You'll get your first thousand customers in rich for free plus 50% off your first two months when you

upgrade. One more time outer signal.com/thread to discover the VIPs buying from you. Mr. Nick. Shackle. Bob, that is a boat. Hey, you can see that coming. Did you enter that? Nope. I didn't. No. He did it. No, sir. But here we are. So this this episode. We're literally physically near each other. You can see here. Nick is back in the office hanging out and we're announcing something

really exciting. It's not that we're partners in commerce around table already. Did that park check? It's not that we're running high rocks together and I'm December third or fourth. Yeah. Come support us. Second one. We need your support. But it's that we are back in business full-time together. Nick, the prodigal son Shackleford is returning to CDC and we're here to tell you why. So

Nick, welcome back, Lynn. It's been eight years. It's been a long journey. Yeah, but I mean, you're joking on the recipe beforehand. You had to go get way more tattoos. Sell some paraphernalia and learn a lot of things. Yeah. Nick needed to travel the world. So his wild oats start a illicit pepper journey. Like you needed to go and go on a journey every young man does before they return home.

But I want to start actually because I don't think it's been a long time since people probably know the very first story of how you came. I was seeing

“with this the other day of how you first showed on the CDC. So I remember we were”

in our whole office, which is now the NELP boys office. If you look down up late at night, that's where our office was and we're interviewing for a strategist. I think Andrew was there. Was Scott there? Scott, Sarah's there? Okay. So two, Caitlin Adrian, Caitlin Adrian, a bunch of legends still in the game. And this guy came in, turned an interview. And you showed me PPE wrappers. Do you remember

this? I had no one to remember. It's always like a very proud of this. Yes. Okay.

So at the time, Facebook, we were still fairly early to Facebook because I wasn't like really why we started the agency and started more as like an organic social influencer thing. And so this media buyer guy comes in and he's like, oh, you guys run PPE wrappers. And I was like, what's a PPE wrapper? And like, I felt pretty proud of my business manager knowledge. And he's like, no,

no, this is what you need to do. Take your post ID. You run a separate engagement campaign using the post ID. And you pay for engagement to boost the post drive down CPMs and improve your performance. And you helped me set up a PPE wrapper on

“all of our ads and my mind was blown. So that's, do you remember that? It was the”

existing post ID. Yes, it was like the book that it was less the PPE which looks. So maybe you guys out there and you're like, yo, that should. That was very incredible. No, it's like, something you're going to be like, I remember that number of this. You're like, 2000. You know, this is dirty. And earlier, yeah, but what it led me was like, I got to come in. I like tell

him something he was like, all right, let's do it right away. Yeah. And I got implement right away. Yeah. So he was cool. Something new. It was like, okay, this guy knows more about this meta thing than we do. And he was, you know, like, deep in the timbered Facebook group era. He was running the Facebook buyers group. Like, so this was the early days. And Nick, we got to work together. How long were you

there? Four years at a time? Oh, checking back in. It was basically a year. And there's like almost two and a half years. That's it. Yeah, really? A little bit that's wrong. Maybe that's wrong. I don't, yeah, but it felt like three offices we moved through. But, yeah, we did a lot of cool stuff together. And we

when you left, I remember on all along the way, you cut up always had a, you

always were a side good guy, big side good guy, always a thousand things going on. And yeah, the reality was is that your skill and talent, demanded greater opportunity than

“we were set up to provide at that time. And I think even where CGC was, we are very”

missional helping out for those of you their dreams. Like, we worked financially focused and creating enough upside for someone with your market demand. And so it

your own thing. And so, you know, very early. I still remember you weeping. You left you cried when you got rough. Yes, I'm not, I don't feel like I'm an entrepreneur, but I feel like it was given the skills really good skill media buying had an idea branding. But I was like, all right, I have a skill so I should go. Yeah, I was kind of like, you know, you had a lot of cool close friends. Like, we were all close. That

“was like, so I think it was emotional. You were appreciative. Like, I think it was the”

right time in a way that was positive. And again, they like, I was in my head, like, oh,

maybe that'll next could go on and do his own thing. We'll always be supportive of

each other. But it was, it felt like, yeah, like it felt like that was that was going to be it. And probably for however long it's been five, six years. We stayed in touch intermittently, but not too much, right? Well, no, not until actually really like, when when I had my son, yeah, like, when when Kingsley came in about two and a half years ago now, I was like, I just need a good men with like care about

family. It was at the core. Oh, yeah, that was. This is when the young men are pretty. Again, when they have their children, they come back around. They're like, Oh, that guy, that old guy. No, but kids, but also, I'll say that you guys, you guys were not as built out as you were now. Yeah, you did not have the tech that you did not. You, you were, we were good enough at media buying, but they were still like indoctrinating a

system. That was the change. Yeah. Well, I think even like, Jordan, my business

“part that I founded with, even you two, and I'm like, I think that we were so”

relationally driven in that era. It was like trading on your network, Jordan's network in a way that like, who we were as an agency was very different back then. It was all in person. It was so human, like, centric in a way that the technology and innovation and was really, a lot of the remote work drove demand for those kinds of systems and processes that pre-COVID. I don't know that we had to get there. I also

don't know that we were trying to build. We're still doing the four hundred thing to record. We had the 3 p.m. We had so many other irons in the fire at the time. So I think it was just different. So what have you been doing? So we went and built an agency called structure. Yep. And we spent a lot of time like being really good in media buying. And then we actually acquired Chase Chase diamonds. Yeah. So about this, the team called

boundless laps away back when years ago at this point. And we kind of became pretty much e-mail. Like we were retention and e-mail. And then in 2023, step-to-way, Jake was running the day, started to build out the team. Because my vision was like, okay, if I'm not needed, I don't want to be in a place that is not contributing. Like, I'm not contributing

one of my getting paid for. It was like, you always had the sense of, like, my skill set

is this specific thing. And so you wanted to put yourself in the position to be affected at that. And if that wasn't needed in the moment, then you would go to a place where it was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get a lot of self-worths out of like output and creation. And so if I'm not able to do it, I'm like, why am I here? Kind of thing. And all of a sudden, I get a call from another part. So it was like, structured. Okay. Not needed. Pretty self-extaining.

Like, let it go. Let it do a thing. And then I get a call from Aaron. Aaron's like, yeah,

“I think I'm going to start this beverage. And I go, yeah. Yeah. Like, that's definitely”

something that I want to go do because I have no idea how to go to beverage company. And even today, uh, it's still don't know how to build a beverage company. But he told me, like, I need, I need, I need someone to make connections, which obviously is like a skill set that I'm really, really good at. And so we came in and what ended up being this last three and a half years of growth was no out of do media buying, learn out of your retention, learn subscription,

which is a whole beast of itself. Totally. And then actually know how to run a company in the business. And then this is kind of like entering back where you kind of came back and all right. So I'm watching you. And we connected when you were working really heavy and breathing like, dude, I'm back in the day to day. I'm learning grinding retention, subscription, learning this world to intimately. In a way that it had been a long time since you were into that

level of day to day and in the kitchen. Yes. Yes. And I think that was really cool because I think like

one of the things for CTC was we've always been so acquisition subject. We've worked to try and

develop a retention offering. We've looked at various ways to do it. We've never really cracked it, ideally. And then in addition to that, there's this other thing happening. I think where subscription business is, Cpg is also on the rise. And so it's very obvious to me that there's this thing happening right now where more and more the connection between the scale of acquisition is related to the quality of the retention, subscription businesses, developing customized offerings, building

art tooling, yes, to better support those things. You would show me some of the reports and tooling and things that you were doing to look at and evaluate that. And so it became like, oh, Nick's got a new skill set. Like he went on sharpened his sword in this novel an interesting way. And so I think that was the first thing that I was like, oh, that's brought us back together in business. We kind of just jammed on those things. He would stop by the office every day. I want to get it. We would say to touch.

That was like, okay, there's a touch point for us to be connected again. Yeah. You have Kingsley and that's the second thing. And then I think golf was another thing. This episode of the Ecommerce Playbook is brought to you by Outer Signal. Outer Signal identifies the real person behind every order flags the celebrities influencers and VIPs in your customer base and groups everyone else into clear personas. All of that then pipe straight into the tools you already live in,

entirely. Here's two quick examples. Jolie ran an Outer Signal look like against their best meta audiences and got four times the sales at a 32% lower CPA. Magic Mind discovered Kim Kardashian had been a customer for two years. Center of Care package and got an Instagram shoutout worth millions. There's certainly a VIP buying from you right now. You just don't know yet. If that sounds useful, head to Outer Signal.com/thread that's outrsignal.com/thread. You'll get your first thousand

customers in rich for free plus 50% off your first two months when you upgrade. Once more, Outer Signal.com/thread to discover the VIPs buying from you. This did not know. Like it's weird because like when you look at Taylor you're like, that he's probably like yes he was a professional athlete but then like you look at him before and he's not as lean as fizzy it was now. Like there's no way this guy can go and there's no way this guy can care he cared the entire pyrocks. Like I was

“I was dead the entire time but we played golf and I remember I thought really was the weekend.”

Do you remember the tournament that you threw? No one out there is owner. So this was George. Yes. Yes. So I pressed it. Pressed it. Yeah. Mike and the squad and I grabbed a group because I was like I'm going to grab as many dudes as possible to to golf and we got a mansion and we played two incredible courses in Scottsdale and that was kind of out of nowhere and it was like you think you will right usually those things are kind of hard because I'm like kids like for whatever reason it

worked out and you drove me to Arizona so we sat in the car together for six hours. We did a live video. We did that and that like that was a lot we just had a lot of fun that weekend was awesome. Good group of people hanging out playing golf and so that was just another connection point and then we came back with played golf a few times you got super into a you carry your like four clubs around and you're really back but you would have some in their back show something boys it was

mainly about the outfits for Nick it always it always was it was just he liked the golf attack got to look

the point yeah but that was like okay another connection point and then the hierarchs thing happened where it was like and I I forget Dane got hurt okay so I had a partner we we the CDC guys we had all agreed to do it because my wife dragged me into a hierarchs that we got a bunch of people in the office to do it and I had this partner he's a super old man in our office his name's Dave he's like yeah he's like who I go to if I'm having children issues you go and then he got here

it is back like a few weeks out and so I was like okay I need a late son so in fairness to you you said I carry you I gave you like two weeks no it was three weeks he was you want to do it go yes I don't even ask I mean it was in Vegas right so and if you know Nick next to yes like which is like you need friends that are yes guys where part of the reason he ends up doing so many things is because he's like that he's like he's just down on for it and so there aren't

many people that would be like three weeks out this crazy fitness thing I'm not been trained you had been like you said you were a trainee for a half marathon or something yeah like wrong yeah like run so he jumped in and did it but then he got the bug and so now we've been training together for her so building blocks right yes all these things start connecting in a way um and then you know for me where I'm at in the CDC journey is on the forever for this place like I'm 100 years old and

that one of the things that we're building and has been a big part of our stories we're basically a media company inside of CDC from podcast newsletters original content series and so Nick carries a level of gravitas and network for himself and has been in the content game in a ways you know the best selling founder series ever and you know he's got a great bot that writes for a

“one X and whatever so I be but I think he's going to be incredibly out of two so you look at the”

skill set of the retention subscription knowledge that maybe we didn't possess you look at

that media empire that he can help add to and then we both have always been people that love

partners ship we love being in person we're extraverts and our lives just intersected it away that all of a sudden it was like hey this this might make sense well and and to be too you completely fair is like I I didn't know how fast and how deep you were going to build yeah statless into like this operating system that a lot of people don't know how to use and then I also didn't know it would serve eight figure nine figure brands is it's easy to build

like an oh like you could build an OS for five six starting out seven but then when you started going like oh no we have these specific offering like the way my brain works on this is if you have the correct offering the correct people to service it offering and then the actual demand is there and every single time you guys up down a launch where every single time you guys have done so many in the market it's been received a from professional other marketers who

have been like yo kudos yeah and the demand from the actual brands yeah yeah so I wanted to do exactly so I think we we became a vehicle that had a unit could have value promise and she was a marketer go I want to use those tools and then also the organization became big enough and financially motivated enough in the phase of the journey that we're into support and opportunity

“that's worth it for you and so you put all these things together and life is like this right”

it creates these rare moments where it makes sense again and I think one thing that ever left is

we always respect at each other we always have an appreciation for each other and so that never

changed but our life just ended in different directions and so it was cool for this moment to show back

that mean for somebody who's listening like if you're out there and you to go I've always followed

Nick I love Nick oh sorry about that but I'm not taking my chair what do you think how will they experience that benefit I know we're still dreaming this up as we go but where are you gonna help us be better look there's two reasons that I love most about this and so it's not just Taylor in the community

“but it's also I think Grant and Luke and some of the OGs that have been here there's a lot more”

people that can speak and talk about it and it's not just so we depend on you and it shouldn't be right but the longest time you've carried a lot of boys a long time you've carried a lot of new creation yeah so I think having opportunities to use an incredible state of the arm that we're building in have the ability to do events which I love I love I love and so the more education I think is necessary for the people that are willing to get in person I want to do more what you guys do

too so that's a great start so yeah we just got done this last week with a seven figure workshop had 35 brands here in office including some dudes flew from Egypt like it was really cool that's the next bread and butter he's gonna be super awesome we're in commerce roundtable together we're dreaming of ways to expand beyond their two pillar events and you know awesome in San Diego which they do an incredible job of so like okay how do we fill in in between how do we bring

that relationship further so there's cool stuff there so the event and marketing thing is a place where you're gonna see seat or Nick continue to shine and do what he does while waving the CDC flag in partnership plus retention and then on the surface I think you're gonna help us improve this product totally generally like when I look at how you guys are already doing it yeah unfair advantage I think most people don't get it here and not about to there's hundreds of brands yeah

hundreds of brands buy industry buy niche right that can truly imagine I know you guys the D to see index yeah well there's just another layer and level of like hey this is what's working for all retention flows for this and just right there's just there's this a lot of examples there's a lot of stuff that has to be shared and unfortunately with the but the team that's big

“and how much brands are gonna work with you need to dedicate a person to highlight it and talk”

about that and that's the thing is yeah our voice has always been so strong in one direction

that building reputation I think people would be shocked how big our email business is like relative to most of the people in the space they're like jadette and Brandon the team they do they do an amazing job and now it's like I think you're gonna be able to both help us think about how to tailor the product to some of these CPG specific businesses and other ones that I think you have this this specific experience on and that also for us to be able to tell the story

of what's happening there more often and even some of the tooling like the way that we can use the ad player or the email planner integrated into the forecast into the like there's a lot of stuff that exists that is really really cool that we just don't get to it's not natural it doesn't come first to my head when we think about it totally does awesome on the paid side look on the

grocery like the voices that we've developed had just never been strong in that way and I think

you see things first through that lens in a way that's really well which is which is also important because the when you're on email it powers all the pay it's right and if you have the the

“profit engineer that's thinking about how am I gonna hit the at the goal you have to have email has to”

be a part of that really up the team so if you don't focus on it especially with you guys are producing as much on acquisition do you know how do you even go like one layer deeper on this and this is some of that we're still learning how to like get off the ground in a very meaningful way is like offer add and page align me like like there's just like this continuity of out and you're gonna talk a little bit about this on stage of commerce roundtable where it's like

we're in this a very weird state of there's a lot more content than we all ever wanted and then that content now we're not focused on making as much content at volume then we have to start focusing on the next touch point after that content like how much customization do we do there so it's like add to targeting to offer to landing page and that's what brands don't do like the biggest brands you guys have I'm talking like the Nike's of the world yeah they're not doing congruency around

court assault things right I think that's so we've gotten so shallow in our attempt to like exploit the top of the funnel from a customer standpoint that we're just like faceless influencer saying anything they can to create a thing that once the customer has the actual experience with the product it may or may not be connected to that at all never right and I think back to the kilo days where we would go so deep with a story where it's like Jason clip a moving story

into image ads about him into landers to where you would call the customer service and it'd be his voice on the recording like down level of like depth of continuity is so hard because the brands are so rapid at the top of the funnel try to tell me if they're everything try to 1000 ads which were big proponents of but at the same time figuring out to okay now how do we think about the experience as we give that customer a transaction to now okay what is that flow that gives them an

experience what does it look like the other thing is retention and email these words get get inflated a lot in terms of they people think they're the same just one thing like retention is even but there's so much more than that that goes into it to where how do we think about our media

treat a sale moment versus not how do we think about the relationship between paid and email are

those things I heard you know Kodi and color having this conversation the other day about like is it incremental to run your paid with an email sale at the same time to just in customer base how do we think about inventory within the context of these things and so I think I'm excited that we have a lot of innovation to come on the product side as it relates to how we interact with the customers that are brand-out because it's going to help the engineers like it's going to help the core group

that's going to be building for the brands and if you can give them more like in the issue like hey you know how anyone one is but we have these unique offers pages and playbooks I can just be plug and play yep that says that's really what I wanted to get and like Ali and I we're having this conversation so Ali runs she's our director of cross strategy it was on the few years you know was there when she was she was the buyer for you for your first team correct

and now she's the director of our process and so a profit engineer the planning process for me so importantly starts with the marketing calendar you cannot build your financial forecasts without the marketing calendar and even to me what a marketing calendar entails is every email send plan for the entirety of the month so that I can flow the daily revenue expectation to map get that but a profit engineer is they so often skip that and go straight to the media

correct and and so even still today I was this past week I was hammering on and I was like I wanted to export I want to see we're getting ready to plan for September I want to see who has their marketing calendar done who has the full email plan even when we're not responsible for it

it's such a critical input and if we're going to get better at forecasting we have to get

better at you know like if that's actually such an intimate part of being able to tie those things together and like it people neglect how much like we have a brand spiral ball right now shout out to Ali she's doing an amazing job with that but like this is a brand with very little LTD right they sell a book and email is and then again this is often on a tune is actually a huge driver of new customer acquisition because you get so many email signups right along the way

as you're driving all this traffic that their email volume is actually more tightly correlated to their new customer revenue than the returning customer up and so that becomes an opportunity they're like I can't as the meta buyer work and think about acquisition without thinking about

“how email support right and you have to work really hard at that to know okay the offers here”

what is the pop-up say what's the welcome flow how do those things have some connection because if I'm like hammering it out at the top of the photo for a prayer journal then you get down here and it's like a completely unrelated product and the email pop-up that's a problem well and and it's like when do you get on your business the like secondary tertiary products like that all email like exactly you really don't want to spend again on product B for them to come back on and I think that

is do you have the media behind you're just like you just don't default into like what's my email flow that's right so being from paid all the way to offer and understand like I think there's just so much more education around who's doing what at what scale because a lot of the times I actually believe this more than anything out of being in like the trenches lately is if you can rotate and change the offer or the entry point of the top of the funnel usually you

could influence LTV or usually you can influence the repeat purchase yeah totally but you got it if you're not thinking about it not playing there it's just the last thing you're going to well it often it's true that you can't alter the LTV if you don't change the thing at the top of all right so like so sometimes these things you just in isolation where you're hammering an email marketer to improve LTV but they have no control of the top of the funnel or vice versa and it's like

hey hang on these things always need to work and in congruence to a lot of it so I think you're

at how much to play with you yeah yeah and it's funny because you were like the prototypical

“meta by like that that's how you began as the meta guru of gurus again running the for those of you”

been around enough the Facebook media buyers group on Facebook was home to all of the grimeous rats on the internet all of us were there we were in and you want us to say if you think the like Twitter battles were bad go look at some of those old comment wars that's where really it went person pick up person that's where you hold your craft of debate you want to know how I'm good at Twitter activate it was holding your craft you fired off an opinion in that group oh boy that was

neck but now like seeing you go deep deep in the retention game with breeze which is like you want to talk about a business where you can't possibly make money selling cans on the internet if you can and the only reason you guys made it possible is because you could drive some ship on on a web too which is abnormal we were acquiring a backpack at eighty five dollars yeah you don't you you literally do not do that everyone knows you to not do that that's right

I don't I don't even argue with Eric about telling you what a terrible idea so I was like

“hey this is never been what yeah right now you never you should never underestimate the power of”

a listen a listen toxins but or loopholes or loopholes but but the point was that you you it was like I like to say that brands evolve the skills that they need to survive and if you're in a business like ridge which has no LCD you're not going to evolve retention as a deep skill you're going to

skill of attention and so you put up any of the out of it it would always that's right it was

only offered a lot for a picture so so now you get to walk in having like it's like a mutant like you develop you know you're a Pokemon that mutated to the next love yeah you didn't stop

a meta you kept go no this is a jitter mutation high rocks mutation little vener right and now the

“retention scale mutation into pretty soon your final form I think well we don't know what the final”

forms of me because it's well probably discovered here well and robot also mutated into robot I've well bought a tap robot when I left that no tattoos no you didn't have a three yeah three and then now we have all so a lot of mutation but that's for the benefit of all of you so

“I'm sure we're going to post some posts on LinkedIn and X and get everyone excited about this”

we're going to talk about it from stage here in a few weeks hope to see all of you at commerce roundtable if you haven't signed up you what are you doing it'll be big one it'll be in there coasting you've got Jimmy just the kindest most giving soul on earth running point

“you know they're going to do everything may freaking pan to ensure you get valuable we're given away”

a trip to F1 we're given away a white trip we're given away see all of high rocks the seal which which which is big time a big time especially which just happened yeah big time nowhere in that the story is not anywhere but there right so really cool stuff um it's tuned senior is just the best so come hang um and drop in the comments what do you want to see from Nick and CDC what are we what can we do and if you're a business is interested in subscription retention chatting

with the man the legend he's here to help make it happen um and we're going to build some new tools and keep it evolving but dude I'm stoked I'm you're you're giving me youthful energy

in my journey here I'm excited to have you back in the house it's always you like in the space

when you walk it it's always you like let's get it