S17 E5: Your Moat Already Expired (And Most Founders Don't Know It Yet)

side of e-commerce, digital marketing, and building consumer brands. I'm your host, Nick Sharma. I've spent the last nine years building, scaling, and investing in brands, and through this show in my weekly newsletter at Nick.co/email. I'm here to share everything I've learned.

The wins, the losses, the experiments, the tactics, and the insights, also you can unlock your next $100,000 in revenue. Today's episode is a good one, but before we dive in, let me tell you about our chosen sponsor for this week's episode. If you're a D to C operator, and TV feels like a black box, that's because most platforms

give you 20% of the actual available inventory, and none of the measurement to see if it even works. On the other hand, with Tutari, you can buy linear and streaming directly, plus you can measure it like a digital channel. That's the reason over 400 brands, like Manscape, Tacobas, and Chime, run performance TV using

Tutari. See how they leverage the platform at Nick.co/totari. That's NIC.co/ta-r-i. Welcome back to another episode of Limited Supply, I'm your host Nick Sharma, and today we're talking with Ryan.

Actually, Ryan is talking with me, and we're pulling out a bunch of insights out of my head, things that I've been working on or seeing, or just diving really deep into. So we're talking about three main things today, AI, agency versus in-house, and what makes a brand defensible in 2026.

“So I think it's going to be a great episode.”

Ryan's an amazing interviewer, and this was just a really fun, crispy conversation.

So that's number one. Number two is the Q4 summit is officially announced. So we're going to be rolling out announcements of speakers, which you're going to hear about over the next few weeks. But the Q4 summit is happening again this year.

This is going to be, I believe, our third one, it's going to be the biggest one, the best one we've ever done. We already have insane speakers committed. You know, one is built, basically the Hudson strategy, but pre-tick talks, so on bloggers, YouTubers, Instagram, and really other avenues of affiliates.

So I'm super excited for that one. We have a founder of a $100 plus million company talking about sourcing, and offers, and prepping for Q4, and how that whole world comes together. Anyways, it's going to be a sick, sick event. We're doing it at Capitale in New York, which is an old bank building.

It's a beautiful building. So go to nick.co/q4 and iK.co/q4, that's where you're going to get the ticket for free. If you have any questions about the Q4 summit or want to learn more, shoot me a DM on Twitter at Mr. Sharma, or just shoot me an email, [email protected]. Remember, there's no see in that.

All right, we're going to get into today's episode. I'm curious to hear what you think. So shoot me a DM, and let me know what you think. I will see you at the end here. Around two with nick Sharma, due to have to say, last time we did the episode, it was middle

of the winter. Yes. And we looked. We looked pale as ghosts. Yep.

Looking back. We looked later. We looked way better now.

“Now today, it's like, I think it's like 98 degrees outside, Canada can't control”

their wildfires. Now that smoke's coming here, what is nice? No doubt, dude. So I had to start asking you about AI and agents because so much has changed in that world from our last conversation.

Yeah. What do we do our last conversation? It was quite a while ago. I would say it's probably about 14 months ago over a year. OK, so I probably wasn't even really doing much.

I really think it was, it was basically like basic chat GPT.

Exactly. Cloud might have been out. Yeah, I don't think I had ever used cloud at that point. Yeah. So a lot has changed.

So what kind of, what are you seeing right there? What are the use cases and fun stuff you've been messing around with? Yeah. I've gone so deep in the world of AI, I exited my agency in October. And basically after that, I was like, all right, I'm not going to get left behind in this

AI race. So I, you know, the most intimidating thing to me at that time was trying to set up a cloud bot or an open cloud on a Mac many and everybody was buying one. And I started to see on Twitter that everybody's like making these websites and apps and all this stuff and so I, you know, I was like, all right, I need to just like figure this

out.

And so I spent a Saturday night from basically like 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. on one.

Figure it out how to just like learn cloud code, the open class stuff. I started adding apps and integrating things, you know, learned what power you get when

“you get access to an API key, for example, of different apps.”

And, and, you know, since then, just been doing a ton of stuff in AI, now my setup is like, I use a Hermes agent for probably a good amount of work, which has like 20 agents on it. So so Hermes runs on my Mac many with 20 agents and then I use this app called HQ. If you've heard of that one, it's like a very good memory system basically.

So then when I pull up cloud code or codex on my laptop, everything that I'm using is fully and sink. But I've been using it a lot. I mean, you know, with brands of all different sizes, there's so many interesting use cases.

You know, yesterday for a, you know, multi-billion dollar food company, I was helping them

build out or concept to CRM. And so, you know, I was like, we should, we should use post-grip. That was my first thought, right? When you think about CRM and e-commerce. And so I went to post-grip and I was like, guys, we got this opportunity.

They're not on Shopify. And they were like, cool, that's fine. We're now opening a bar platform too. So we'll have APIs and, you know, you don't have to be on Shopify and we're going to launch email soon. And so then I was able to use my agent along with, you know, the information I got from

post-grip to basically build out what a CRM looks like, ended up building like a scoring algorithm to rank people so that we're not hitting people too often or too few times. So that was like one fun use case. You know, the other one everybody's talking about is like, you know, you're trying to build out your creative supply chain.

So you've got, you know, static ads, video ads, copywriting, you know, landing pages, adversarials, listicles, like all these things you just need to produce to generate more awareness and drive more traffic and sales. Everybody's now using agents to now build those pieces. So whether it's like, you know, I was with Cody Ploughbury yesterday, he's built an entire

engine to create emails and static ads using GPT 5/6 or Fable. And so like that's a huge use case.

I've seen brands now basically, you know, launching landing pages within an hour or two,

using their agents and connecting it to Framer's API and, you know, you build out your kind of brand kit or style guide kit, put it in GitHub and then using Framer and, you know, whether it's cloud code or Hermes or whatever, you can now just launch landing pages in an hour. So like what used to take, you know, two weeks with a really good agency or maybe a week

if you had a really big, a really good internal team with resources, otherwise maybe four to six weeks for an average brand is now taking, you know, like two hours.

“But yeah, there's so many use cases, you know, everything from, like, even I think the”

easiest use case is, you know, just plugging everything in and being able to just ask it anything or tell it to go look at best practices, you know, like, what I've seen some people do is they will, the downloaded, you know, probably like your podcast transcripts, my podcast transcripts, the nine operators, podcast transcripts, like whoever's talking about stuff going on and then they'll save that to a database and then they'll plug in all their

e-commerce stuff, you know, clavio, post script, Shopify, everything and then they'll save based on all this advice, like what should I be doing better and it's legit, like something you'd pay a consultant 10, 15 grand for instance, there's just so many ways where I feel like the leverage is now in your own pocket, you know, the leverage used to be elsewhere, right?

It used to be like, oh, if somebody had a really good designer, they had that leverage. Somebody had a development team in house, they had that leverage. If somebody has, you know, the ability to just like come up with these ideas and bring them to life, they had the leverage, but now it's like it puts at all the accountability on you and, yeah, it's pretty sweet, like it really is.

“Yeah, I think now the challenge is like more on distribution and continuing to, you know,”

get those eyeballs and maintain that customer because customers also now leave easier, like they have less loyalty to a brand, because of everything that's just coming at them. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's so fascinating thinking about, I feel like a broken record and talking about this, we're like unique data, being such an important element of all

this stuff and like, you know, church B.T. is incredible, but it works on averages and

totally, the averages of all this, you know, data and if you ask you for general marketing advice, it's going to give you some, have a jazz marketing advice, totally. And when you have it trained on, you know, specific unique data from people that you know for a fact are high level marketers and are up to date, like it becomes such a competitive advantage.

It's really, really, really cool and yeah, I mean, when you start to just kind of grasp it, your mind goes in a trillion different directions of, oh, yeah, I know, I've been, you know, like that whole mindset of, I'm not getting left behind. I tell all my homies that too, I'm like, we're not getting left behind, you know, like there's, there's so much you can do and, you know, I friends who are like music producers

“and I'm like, yo, you need to get on madness, you need to get on cloud code, you need”

to get on codex, you know, and plug it into Ableton, plug it into record box, like whatever you're doing, do it and use try to do it with AI because only the only thing that's going to happen over time is it's AI is going to get more and more simplified.

interview, I probably mentioned a PRD, like a product requirement document, which, you know, I would build with chat GPT and then take that document and go to replet and then try to build the app there, right? But now we're at a point where you just tell the idea of manness and the whole thing gets done.

But because it gets more simplified, you kind of miss out on understanding the steps happening behind the scenes and the more you miss out on that, the less you're going to be able to diagnose things later. It's like the media buyers who used to buy ads and power editor, you know, in 2011, 12, 13 and then, you know, did all the manual ad buying from, you know, 14 to maybe 18,

like those guys have an intuition when they're buying media and they know the things going on behind the scenes, it's not just the algorithm, like they know actually what those

pieces are, and that's basically happening in the AI world.

So I feel like people should just get in and play with it and see what happens. And, you know, you could like, yeah, there's just so many things you could build. It's also like a lot easier to do than it sounds that totally have in your head.

“Like, I remember when I set up like my Hermes, I was like this, I was like, I got a whole”

weekend. Well, one goal, intimidating things, like, it's up. It starts in terminal. Yes, exactly. You know, that's the most intimidating thing that I ever.

The first time I set up an open claw was with this guy, G.O. and he basically, he was nice enough to just like, he was like, I'll just screen share with you and like, do it for you. You can just watch it happen and, and it was so complicated, like the first time. And then I was like, I should just do this a couple times myself.

And then once I started to feel a power of it, I was like, yo, I'll tell all my friends.

I was like, I need to get you guys on this.

So I've probably made like 20 to 30 Mac mini setups now at this point. Now I can do it in like 30 minutes. Nice. How much do you think you're spending on credits right now? Well, or tokens.

Yeah. I mean, I actually don't know the token usage, but, you know, two months ago, right after Claude cut their, yeah, that was made to have to go API. Yeah. I think the fall, the two or three months after that, it was like 4,000, 5,000, 6,000.

My manus bill at one point was like eight or 9,000. Like, I was building anything and everything you could possibly think about building games for friends. I was building like, like, I built this roast.nick.co, which takes, you know, 30,000 lines of a Markdown file of how I think about landing pages.

And then you put your side in and for five bucks.

“It'll just run it through the whole thing, give you a recommended, like, what you should”

do for your landing page. So I was just trying to build everything. And it sounds like you have Hermes Agent, too. Do you guys telegram with it? I do.

I've gone away from using it on a more consistent basis, because I've found that for most of my use cases, I could do them with in Claude code and don't really need to, you know, take on the extra token usage. Yeah. Yeah.

But yes, I do use it in telegram. Yeah. It's so much nicer that it could, like, watch YouTube videos and, like, to be honest with you. I mean, it's, yeah, there's a lot of really cool benefits to it. Totally.

The thing is, uh, if you do pay for the $200 a month, chat GPT, okay, so if you, if you plug in GPT 5/6 soul, that thing is on par with Fable, but, like, you get it for the $200 month plan. You don't pay on top. Okay.

Yeah. That to me is good. Right. Correct. It's a conversation.

It's the first time I'm using a model and feeling like, oh, this thing actually is, like, reading my brain to some degree, like, understanding a lot more than the previous ones. Super cool. Super interesting.

What's exciting in that world right now then, I mean, obviously you're building a million

things and you have a little bit of, uh, it seems like a little bit more mental space now since you have a ton of agency. Yeah. Congratulations. Right.

To just, like, think about your next move, like, for somebody right now, who's, you know, seeing everything going on right now and, like, maybe they have an agency, maybe they wanted to start an agency, but then they got cool feet because they're like, what's going on in this world? Yeah.

I don't really know if media buying or, you know, uh, these sort of marketing stuff is going to be something worthy of an agency in two to five years, whatever. Yeah. I mean, I think about it.

“I think that agency world is, is, is a lot more niche down now than it used to be.”

Like, um, you know, I don't know how much room there is for, like, an agency that's good at everything anymore. Um, most agencies, most agencies generally are, like, really good at one thing, um, or nothing. Or nothing.

Yeah. But it's rare that, like, an agency is actually good at multiple things. But I do, you know, I, I, I exited because I felt like I didn't want to do the, what

management and ops management and, like, me personally, I wanted to just, I want to build

things. Like, I was, itching to, like, spend more time in the world of AI because I couldn't do it because I was so busy dealing with other stuff. Um, but yeah, I mean, for me, like, what's interesting now is, um, I'm just building things.

Uh, so like, I've started a couple things, um, you know, there's a, there's a brand I'm working on, bringing to market. Um, there's a, uh, there's a phone charging, key-ask business that I launched for the couple friends, and we brought that to market and started putting that at venues. Um, and, you know, there's a couple, one or two other things that are kind of just in

the works.

But the common theme is basically, like, okay, from everything that I learned at the agency,

all the patterns, understanding unit economics, you know, what makes a good business, what breaks a good business, um, what do I know about brand, and what do I know about consumer psychology and community marketing and all these things, like, out of that, how can I filter down to a couple of really good ideas? And then can I use everything that I know, all the knowledge that I have, and AI to basically

bring this to market efficiently. And I think the plan is basically, you know, how can we bring this to market efficiently, test it very rigorously for, like, six months, understand if there's an opportunity here, and then from there decide, do we like, try to scale this thing or do we say, okay, we

“try this. It didn't work onto the next one. Yeah. Um, the only thing, like, when I say it”

out loud, I sound stupid. I feel like I sound stupid because so many people have tried

this in the past, but, um, it's funny, like me, and two or three other growth marketers, I know that I respect a lot are also doing the same thing, and they also say the same thing, like it sounds stupid when you say it out loud, because it's failed so much in the past. But I think with the, like, the growth marketing knowledge plus being cracked out on AI, and then, of course, any other advantages when it comes to, like, having done this before,

or, you know, having economic advantages as it comes to a 3PL or, you know, having like a partner who can help source ridiculously good stuff in China. Um, you know, like I think those are all advantages too, but yeah, that's kind of what I'm working on now. And it's honestly just been a lot of fun. It's like, every day I'm just building things, you know, it's just like, okay, what am I going to build today? Or what am I going to go create or like,

you know, Saturday night, I was at the office and I was like, how come, like, like, I should be creating AI influencers. Let me try doing that and see, look at look, you know, go through that process. Yeah. And, um, so yeah, it's just been a lot of fun, really, but it's been, like I'd say efficiency is like the number one thing that I'm trying to value across everything, you know, yeah, it is awesome. And, uh, it kind of reminds me of, have you ever read the book,

“the Lean startup? I, I've, like, heard of it. Um, pretty much the only thing the, the only thing you”

need to take away from that book is it's just the one line of, uh, test, test before investing heavy in total. Yeah. And it sounds like that's kind of just like the main is like, let's use AI and just build build build build. Yeah. And then see what sticks. Totally. You know, totally. And it brings up an interesting conversation of moats because in that whole world, like you were saying with the competitive advantages of having a good supplier, or having this, you know, unique knowledge,

I've been thinking a lot about moats just in the fact that I think a lot of people thought they had a moat before AI. And we're seeing like a lot of these things are kind of getting destroyed. What do you see as, like, if we're trying to think about creating a product or a business, just in general, that, because you obviously want a moat, um, that has this unique competitive advantage. How can we kind of create that? Like, what do you think, you know, in this world that, um,

is changing so fast, you know, there is? I mean, it's like moats are definitely tougher now. I would

“say, do you think you need a moat? Uh, yeah. Well, I think you need like a reason to exist, you know?”

Yeah. Like, I was just talking to this guy yesterday. He, he's a super successful guy. He co-founded this, uh, like a fertility product. And, you know, there's no moat. Like, there's, there's really no moat. It's just like another supplement brand that exists. And I told him that and I was like, dude, you need a reason to exist. Like you need to scream that, here's, this is a problem. Yeah. And because of this problem, you're not going to lead, you know, a fulfilling life, as, you know,

as fulfilling of a life as you can. And this is our solution. And this is why it works. And here's why everybody else sucks at doing this. You know, I don't know if you need a moat, but you definitely need at least that. Yeah. And I think, I think like, like, groans is probably a good example of

market fit, um, which was basically like a reason to exist, right? You're, you're, you're missing

out on the fiber and all the greens. We're going to make it super easy and in a way that like, Americans are going to love to consume. Yeah. And that was pretty much it. Then they just started running ads and within the first 60 days it started to take off. Um, but I do think there is a lot of

“value to moats. There's basically like a few main ones I think you can rely on, um, or, or try to”

get involved in one is like on the product side. So what, or basically in the supply chain side. So, you know, pre-sale stuff. So anything from like, you've got a, you know, like the black wolf nation, uh, that was like a men's skin care brand that used to exist. You know, they owned their own three PL. And that was like one of their side businesses. So like that was a moat for them. They paid

basically at cost for shipping. Nothing for pickpacks storage. And, you know, that might be,

that's a few dollars an order that they're saving right there. Um, another one might be that like, you know, like the, like the Buffy. Buffy is like a long time bedding brand. Um, you know, that guy's family owns the factory where they produce all the bedding and material. So like that's his moat. Like no one else can get that, you know what I mean? Um, and then so basically like, you know, if you've got friend family or a homie who owns something that gets you crazy advantage,

three PL or product or shipping stuff, whatever, then I think there's a moat you can build around your product. So like, do you have actual innovation in your product? Is there something that's patented? Um, you know, is it a formula or an ingredient that other people can't get? You know, is it like, like, there's that energy drink update? They have an exclusive on the ingredient for Paris,

“Anthony, do you remember when I told you about Paris, Anthony, and our last conversation? Did you?”

So I after our conversation, I, so I'm like into weird biohacking stuff. Yeah. And after our last conversation, I brought up Paris, Anthony, and I was like, I think that this little, like, coffee alternative, caffeine thing is, is going to blow up. I think it's a, it's a, it's a great product. Wow. Um, super random side of it. Yeah. There's just funny continue. But like for them, their moat was like, no one else can get that ingredient, right? Which is, it's a great ingredient.

Yeah. I'll be recommend people check it out. And then on the distribution or marketing side, you know, like, if you've got Courtney Kardashian, if you got David Beckett, that's a huge moat, right? Not only because you get a ridiculous level of awareness and, you know, instant eyeballs, but you can walk into any retailer in the country and just walk right in and they're very happy to have the meeting and they're, you're, you know, your, your test rollout is national instead of

“an a tiny little region. Um, so I think those are like, I mean, those are the main moats that I think”

about. Um, there's obviously also like, you know, if you're, if you're doing things around licensing, you know, you might be able to be the exclusive beverage licensee of like, you know, some big franchise or whatever. But yeah, I think those, those are at least like moats that I think about moats. It's basically like, okay, is it around the supply chain or is it around the brand? Yeah, we're distribution. Yeah. Have the, uh, the creator stuff is interesting because I think for a

lot of people, like, you know, it's going to be hard to have a moat and supply chain when you're not familiar with that well. But, you know, I think a lot of people would be even on a smaller scale, like a more of a niche micro creator. There's a lot of, uh, kind of competitive advantage you can get. Totally partnering with those people. 100% especially if you can do like what Hudson did, which is you get exclusivity on the creator. So it's not like one creator is working with even

two or three companies. It's literally just one forever, you know, um, and there's a huge mode in that because now you've basically got an army that only does work with you and, um, and it's also way more authentic to a customer, you know, if they go and look up the profile and they see that Sally only has 5,000 followers. She only talks about one brand as she's obsessed, you know, yeah, no, no doubt. So I really wanted to ask you this question because, um, you know,

I come from more of an econ background, uh, so many of friends of mine come from the agency background. And man, oh, man, do I get jealous sometimes just in terms of the fact of like high recurring revenue? Now, obviously it's high ticket. Sure. Um, it seems like it's a lot easier to sell a service, which has an ROI to it. You know, um, and then kind of on top of that when I just think about the fact that like, you know, for me to make $100,000, I need to sell a lot of customers. Yeah, for them,

it's like 50 customers, you know, and, uh, you know, I think grass is obviously greener always on the other side,

but I think you have a super unique perspective kind of being on, you know, both ends of that

the right business or, well, like, what's your kind of two cents when comes to that agency

“commerce or just business model in general? Yeah, for me, uh, for me, I think it depends like it depends”

on, you know, you as an individual, but my take is basically, um, you know, I worked at a brand first,

um, for about two years. And because of my experiences there, I was able to, you know, start consulting and then that kind of snowballed into an agency. Um, and then as the agency started to grow, then I was like, oh, wait, this is now just people management and operations management. But until a certain point, like, until probably the 200K a month mark 250K, I think agencies are great. You also, like, past a certain point, it's, you know, the quality of the

output starts to go down unless you really are sacrificing profits and investing in the best possible talent. So like, you know, basically, you're also competing with brands for that same talent.

Like, all of all of the senior creative people that I had are basically now at like,

groans, array, more as men, it's, you know, that, that was the talent pull I was competing with basically. So for me, like, I had decided early on that I didn't want to sacrifice, uh, I didn't

“want to just gain margin for exchange of, like, producing a shitty or product. And I think that's why”

so much of our websites or our stuff was really sick. But at the same time, you know, the thing that you build, like, agency, you get cash upfront essentially, right? You're, um, basically doing work for exchange of cash, um, but then as soon as that works done, your cash stops. Yep. So that's the thing that sucks about the agencies. You're not really building, like, much longevity there. With the brand, you know, if you turn your ads off, you still got subscriptions, you still got

organic, you got all these other channels. Uh, when you're ready to sell the business, you're selling the brand. You're not just selling like the product or the revenue that you were able to get,

whereas on the agency, it is kind of that. You're basically focused on, like, okay, um, you know,

how much, uh, how much margin are you able to squeeze out and then, you know, where you at in terms of,

“like, uh, EBITDA or revenue. So all that said, I think agencies are phenomenal businesses, uh,”

to learn because, like, a lot of the people, a lot of the great marketers today have come from the world of agencies where you're basically, like, you know, thrown into a pool, uh, who does, when you don't know how to swim and you got to figure out how to swim and then by the end of it, you're doing laps. Um, so agencies teach you a lot. You kind of get into this boiler room environment out the go. So you learn how to communicate quickly, communicate up down left right to clients internally,

across other vendors or partners. So there's a lot of, like, benefits. It's almost like I would say the equivalent of, like, going to college before you go to a brand. Um, on the other hand, there's a lot of people who are just wicked smart out the gate and they start, you know, the brand thing right away or they maybe get to a brand. But, um, they, yeah, I don't know. I think you could go either way. My personal recommendation for people is go from agency to brand. I think you're a lot more of a

weapon when you get to a brand and you've been at an agency because you've seen multiple brands at the same time, you can, you under, you have a better, like, collection of patterns that an agency versus a brand. Um, and, yeah, and also, again, I think culture-wise, like, you, you know, you just get, like, thick skin and all that at the agency side. But if I were to, like, decide which one do I run or run and operate today? I would say brand. Yeah. What type of brand do you think that would be? I mean, you know,

the typical, for me, is, uh, you know, high consumption or high, uh, high reorder. Okay. Not too, not too heavy to ship. Um, you know, cater toward vanity or vice. Um, easy to share, easy to be a prop when it comes to content. And, you know, ideally something where you're not, you're not competing against people who've got exclusivities on retailers or celebrities or things like that. So, so yeah, anything from, you know, I love the whole just health and wellness world.

That's where a lot of our work has been and that's where I started my commerce journey. And I love the idea that, like, if you do your job right, you could get people healthier as a by-product of whatever you're doing. Um, that would make a great mission. Yeah. I'm not a huge fan of the apparel world. I think it's insanely hard. I don't know how people like Hudson do it, man.

super interesting. Yeah. So, okay. I told you about the benefits. Now, here's Sopla on what

“change when their brand moved to TV advertising using Tatari. TV has been the perfect way to drive”

a professional awareness and overall brand awareness and capability that also supplements our

lower funnel performance channels where we've always been pretty successful and now we're seeing

even additional scale. The beauty of working with Tatari is we can leverage their platform to look at both our linear buys, streaming buys, on their one roof and be able to compare performance between the two media channels to optimize them as one sort of holistic TV approach. Want the same head to nick.co/tatari to learn more? That's nik.co/tatauri. I mean, I love kind of you breaking things down in that way because it, um,

trinks the search a lot more than, yeah, then probably you would think about totally. Um, I mean, kind of running through the land. Like, I wish I knew that when when I got started because, like, my product, we sell lab tests, like blood testing, okay, direct to consumer. And,

“you know, I think that there's a lot of challenges that come up with something like that, that, like,”

you know, you initially, there's pros and cons and you initially kind of just have this idea I want to try it and you're totally green and don't have any of these things. But, you know, I think for for myself, now I find myself in a position where three years later we've had success. But it's like, I know for fact, I'm far away from a lot of the unit economics and things that I need to have this be something, you know, bigger. Like, for

example, um, like I had the the perfect unit economics here, which is like 80% gross margins, huge tan, you know, high discretionary money to spend, um, those sorts of things and it's like,

lab testing is a commodity, first of all, it's there is a lot of venture capital that has

entered into space and it's like kind of like a race to the bottom in the sense because there is no real, like if you're getting your blood worked on, you know, at any of these different companies, there's not really a major difference. Like your results are going to be your results. Yeah. Um, and in terms of margins, like, you know, when I when I first started, I was running at like probably 45, 50% gross margins and now that's down to like 30 and I'm still way overpriced and

compared to some of the other competitors in the market. Yeah. Um, and that because they're selling

“stuff on the back of that, it's it's interesting. I think it's twofold. I think one, you know,”

you take like a function health, for example, they've raised over 300 million in VC and I think that

they're kind of, they're, they're running, you know, subscription based. Um, so I think they're operating at a loss, um, to acquire customer at the current moment. Yeah. Um, at a price point that is just, you know, I don't even get the wholesale price at that and that we use the same wholesaler. So that's like, um, they're just saying there and I think they're starting to add things into the back end. I think they're starting to do, you know, more supplements and I think like peptides in that whole

world. Um, but I think they're still very much in like beta with some of that stuff. Um, so I think it's kind of TBD, uh, but it's interesting because I found myself in this position where it's like, yeah, I'm making money. It's, but I know that it feels either one temporary because I feel like the only reason I'm making money is because it's like an inefficient market in the sense of like, people are probably buying from me because they're unaware that these other, uh,

better price options exist. And I find myself in this weird kind of predicament of being like, you know, where do I go here? Um, what would be your advice in a situation like that? Well, um, you know, like, one of the problems with competing in a commodity market is you're competing against convenience or price. Yeah. So like if you're selling like toothpaste, you're competing again, somebody going to CVS around the corner when they're out. And if you're selling, uh, this,

you're competing against everybody else who's selling it for cheaper, right? Yeah. Um, in your case, I would say like either, you know, basically you got to figure out like, what is your mode? Like, why should people come by from you? It might be that your brand is a lot more relatable than these VC backed, you know, gradient, loving, um, start-ups, gradient of getting there. Or, uh, you know, it might be that, you know, when people sign up with you, they get X, Y, Z after, you know,

you know, mindfulness app and this and that and everything. Um, you know, if I were you too,

I would basically, I mean, if you know, like, like, what happens after the blood test? Like, I would

use that and catapult that into affiliate offers or build your own storefront or process orders and collect the cash and then place orders separately and get those shipped, you know, like, I would, I would basically try to figure out like the post acquisition world. I know like, um, superpower for example, like whatever and I imagine same for function, like whatever they say is the membership price by the time people check out, it's like double or triple because they just

add shit as they go. So I feel like you could use that as like a loss leader and, um, yeah, catapult that in or if you're like, hey, I'm tired of this. Like, I tried this. I don't want to be competing in a market like this where all I'm doing is swimming upstream. Then, um, you know, there's probably a company out there that's looking to add this into their stack. Um, yeah, yeah,

“I think, um, how I kind of see it is I think there's three different options. I think number one”

would be to kind of parlay it into a high ticket health coaching offer of sorts. Um, you know, I don't want to be a health coach. I'd probably bring on like a physician or somebody, um, to be to be to be that role. My kind of, I guess beef with that would just be high to get health coaching. I think it's a pretty hard offer to sell in the sense that like, you know, it's, it's hard to get businesses to spend money. Yeah. I feel like it, you know, be the sea and kind of

a little higher ticket health related. Um, what about if you became the white label provider for other health coaches or concierge doctors? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, all these concierge doctors in the city that get paid five, 10 grand a year from their people. If, uh, if you're their back end, um, I think the issue is that it's a bit of a arbitrage. Um, yeah. You know, that it's, it's not really like pretty damn easy to sell to, to, you just pretty much need a doctor's license in order to

get these tests. Got it. Um, so it's not like it's a super difficult thing from that sense. Yeah.

“Um, I think it's one. It's the health coaching. The second option is I think the”

mo lies in the interpretation of the labs. Mm-hmm. Um, and, you know, reading through all the reviews and complaints from, you know, superpower and function, the number one complaint is like, I just want to talk to some, uh, I just want to talk to somebody about my results. And I want actual insight to not like AI still up answers. Mm-hmm. Um, and so I think that, you know, you could do something cool with like, almost creating a, how I was thinking about it was like, take a content

creator in the health niche and gather all their posts, kind of, all the things like you were saying with, with how you're doing things, um, currently with like the landing pages and the roast Nick, yeah, where I gather all their data and then I have like, you know, a lab test plus an interpretation from this like creator AI, yeah, um, of this person, certain person, and then I could kind of co-brand that with a bunch of different creators. Yep. Um, and so that's one option,

um, but I still, it doesn't solve the margin issue because I get margins, you know, it's, um, even need to like you said kind of have something on the back end. Yeah. And, uh, all the

thing and then I think the third option is kind of what you said of just, throw it out and sell it to,

you know, somebody who wants, you know, this offer in there. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I think, uh, yeah, I would probably go with the adding on to the back, yeah, or kill it if you're not

“excited by it. Honestly, the thing too is like, e-comers to work well, especially today, you have to”

do 15 out of 10 things right. Yeah. You have to. If you don't, you can't even like step into compete with the guys that are like, you know, just on it. And so I think a big part of that is like, you know, making sure you're passionate to about what, what you're creating and selling. Yeah, it's great perspective. It's a great point. Yeah. I mean, so right now for you, um, you just have to take it so now you're in this position where you have a little free time on your hand. So let's say,

let's say a Elon Musk, you know, started and started listening to limited supply. I was like, yeah, man, this guy, this guy knows this shit. Yeah. Uh, I want to invest in this guy. Um, and he was

like, dude, I'm gonna give you $5 million. Start whatever you want. Yeah. Um, I just want to be an

investor in it. Yeah. What are you, what are you doing? Um, well, honestly, I probably wouldn't deviate much from like my current plan. You know, like, you basically need, at least in my eyes,

order, your first order of branded boxes, tape, packaging material, the actual product, you know,

“getting it in the hands of your 3PO, um, like, and then initial capital for ads, you know,”

maybe like 25 to 50k, um, you could do all that for 150 in my opinion. Yeah. And, and the problem with raising money, um, which, you know, I've had VCs who were basically just said that. They're like, you know, whatever, like, whatever you want to do, we're just going to put this, this money into a bank account, and you can use it however you want, and then whatever, you know, you start creating, like, we got first dibs on that. Yeah. And the only downside in my opinion is like one, I did this

to like get free, and I feel like I'm not going to be free there. But two is, you know, let's say you

take 5 million bucks or 2 million bucks or whatever, you know, you're basically starting this game

where you're already behind non-valuation, um, and, you know, I invested in this drink company barcode, um, a few years ago, and they did this thing where they raised like 2 million on a 10, right? So

“they started basically six months before launch, if they don't hit like 20, 30 million valuation”

in, by the time they burn 2 million or in 24 months, whichever comes first, they're already cooked. And so like, you know, I saw so many businesses go through that, and like that's probably why wouldn't take 5 million because then you're starting at like a 50 million dollars. What if it was just your exit? If it was no strings attached, you could have 5 million dollars, then I'd put it all on your distribution. Like make a crazy innovative product that's very defensible, maybe it's patented,

maybe there's a new ingredient that you got exclusivity to or something like that, and then put everything else into distribution, you know, put it into, put it into, put it into, into tribe and run the whole Hudson method and parallel that with trying to crack the code on like performance media. And for those that don't know about tribe and what's going on there, because that tribe is a tribe of sick. It's basically, you know, everybody now talks about the Hudson method from comfort,

basically building a, your own internal community, discord community of creators. You know, we're talking like 20 to 100,000. And then eventually, these people, the people who are really good, you bring them on as like full-time creators. And these people are pretty much just making money off commission. It's not like they're making a retainer. But, you know, some people

will make a million bucks a year doing that. And so tribe basically is the software that

facilitates all that. So everything from finding and sourcing and messaging them, bringing them in, you know, managing their payouts, making sure they're up to date on products, specifications, or angles, or things like that. And so yeah, so I'd put it into that, I'd put it, you know, that's kind of like the TV or guerrilla marketing of 2026. And then I'd go hard on performance media, you know, Facebook, Google, landing pages, offers, and, and then make sure you have a killer product.

Are you seeing a lot of stuff going on right now with AI and media buying in terms of, well, to be honest, like, I've, I've actually personally not bought media seriously for a minute. So I'm not super deep in that world. But from my friends who are, there is a authentic media buying happening. Yeah. Um, you know, drinking a band. It's, it's not getting banned. Okay. So the things that we're getting banned were like when people would try to hook up things

that were not kosher with Facebook. Okay. But if you do it through the, yeah, if you do it, well, Manus just got blocked, you know, that acquisition got blocked by China. Oh, yeah, Manus is so good. Yeah. China was like, you guys are not getting this. Wow. Manus is insane. Correct. But no, if you, like, for example, converge is another app that, um, a lot of people use for, custom conversion events. So, you know, people buy like two blood tests versus three or four,

like it sends a different conversion event back to meta. But they also have like, a gigantic media buying now starting to be built in there and people are using it. Triple

well has a gigantic media buying and they have multi-hundred million dollar brands doing it fully,

really. And basically now has become a game of like, how fast and how, you know, proficiently, can you make and add creative into the creative pipeline, basically? And make sure, too, that the creative is like, you know, intentional with its angles and its messaging and trying to reach a different consumer. Super cool. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. The whole agent, like, connect

“cloud code to anything or code X to anything is about to get wild. I know. Like, I think that”

that's going to be for, you know, I think that that could be a saving grace for a lot of SaaS companies.

Hermes, open claw, manus, cloud code, code X, um, in that world kind of Wendy, you use what for

yourself. I use, um, I, you, so I, I actually used to use manus for a lot of stuff. And if, if people are not using cloud code or they don't have their own Mac mini setup, just use manus, you know, go to like whatever you normally use, chat, GPT or regular cloud and tell it to make you a full document of everything it knows about you, what your preferences are, what you like, what you don't like, what your goals are, your visions, et cetera. And then give that to manus and just

use manus, because manus is like the best, you know, everyday use type of app. And then the main setup I use is pretty much Hermes for everything. But when I'm at my laptop, I might pull out cloud code and

“just do it in cloud code versus, you know, Hermes, you have to use telegram for everything.”

Mm-hmm. But I use Hermes within cloud code, like, as the harness, not for all use, um, I'll use Hermes and communicate with that through telegram. But then separately, I'll use cloud code. But the thing is, because I use HQ, the memories and sink. Yeah. So every minute or 15 seconds, it's sending updates and downloading the updates. So like on the way here, I was using Hermes as I was walking to, um, like, ride a couple emails. And I guess that's a bad example.

But like, you know, whatever I had done there, it's next time I open code X, it's already sink. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Super fast thing. I mean, I think, well, in terms of jobs in that whole world, it's super interesting to just see, like, the macro perspective where we're going and

things are heading, it's super odd. Like, you have an incredible VA, um, who I spoke with,

Hermes. Hermes, uh, quite a bit, and I'm like, Dan, this is, you know, I need one more, like, a cheapest iPhone. I need one of these. Yeah. Like, how do you think that that role, like, you know, being so deep in AI, but also leveraging VA's and employees, like, do you think that we're going to go meaner it in terms of teams and there's, there's, we're going to have this kind of a job crisis. You think that that's a direction we're heading? Yeah. I don't know like what the job crisis will

look like, you know, I, I hope that like, it's just jobs get displaced and, you know, move towards different things. Yeah. Um, but like, Remes is cracked out on AI just as much as I am, and, uh, my whole team is like, I have four people. We're all cracked out on AI, and it's something I'm

“like, guys, you, you need to be cracked out on AI, or like, I don't know what the fuck you're doing”

here. Um, so, you know, like, they've all gotten 10 times more efficient, and our speed of like doing things is just insane, though. Yeah. Super cool man. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, a simple example was like, you know, that, um, the, the battery charging kiosks station for venues, right? Like, we, we yesterday had the idea that, oh, um, you know, we know all these people who can actually refer venues to us, because they have a better relationship with them. Um, but we need to build

a good one sheet, or a one-pager that, um, they can pull up to read the benefits or show the venue owner or whatever it is. You know, that would have taken like a two-week thing, even if it was, maybe longer, if it was just, it was not me and just Remes doing it. Um, and you know, now that's like a two-minute whisper flow into my phone, and then it gets built by the time, you know, I finish lunch.

“Yeah. Uh, I mean, man. It's insane. Super cool. Have you been DJing a lot?”

Yeah. Yeah. And then the main focus or yeah, not the main focus. Oh, about a good side. A good side course. Since, uh, yeah, like, probably mid to late last year. What's the Instagram on that cold again? After hours. After hours. So no age. After hours came up on my suggested on Instagram. Oh, make a click on it. And I was so cool. Like, what? Like is this Nick? Yeah. I was like, this is awesome. Dude. Yeah. Troy and I started making music like last year.

And we were just like, let's, let's try to see if they're, if we can just like, let's just put music out and see what happens. And first we just thought it would be a fun thing to do. And then a fun thing like, you know, with our friends. And then then it was like, oh, wait, there's a lot of like fun things that come as a result of this. You know, you go to, you have cool experiences you go to cool places, you meet cool people, you get into cool rooms. Um, you know, if you can, if you can

DJ a good set, you, you have some leverage, you know, you always get first choice on ox. So yeah,

it's been fun. Super cool, really. Yeah. Um, so I, I want to ask you, because I'm going to

Yeah. Are you going to the fair? Um, can't in fair. Yeah. I don't think my, my timing is going to work. I

“want to, I really want to go. I really want to go. I do want to go. I think it's in, um, I know there's”

one in April. And then I think it might be in November. The other one got it. Um, I might work things around because I definitely want to check that out. But yeah. Um, in terms of, I just kind of want to go as a little side quest to figure out how that whole world works and suppliers and kind of just see what innovations are going on over there experience that world. You know, touch it for

first hand. Um, from your perspective, like, if you were going to do a trip like that, what products

or things are you kind of circling and like, I want to go kind of touch that and check that out in person. Yeah. What are you looking at? I mean, robotics would probably be one. You know, the world robotics. Um, you know, the thing with like, well, one also get like, do you have somebody there? I'm trying to figure that out. Okay. I'm going to need one on there. Don't go so low. You're going to get scammed. You're going to get ripped off. Yeah. Um, go to be tough. And,

uh, yeah, try to find like somebody who can be like, you're on, you know, on the ground concierge, walk you in, like they know the factories. They love this person. Um, yeah, I would probably go get a flavor of everything to be honest because like the way my brain works is like, I just think, okay, what can I sell? You know, like, what, what, what, what could I see that would make somebody's life so great that like they'd want to buy this and then go from there? I probably wouldn't restrict it

to certain categories, but definitely I'd want to, you know, like, today without going to China,

I'd never touch the world of electronics or hardware or anything that requires like a customer

service line where people got a call or, you know, you got all that. But, um, when I go to China, like, I'm definitely going into that world. Do you think you will go for sure. I'm going back to your, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm going to hit that. Yeah. Yeah. In April, awesome brother. Yeah. Um, we'll nick do so for the person listening right now who, let's say, they're either in an entrepreneurship vehicle, feel like it's kind of not the right one for them or they're on the sidelines. Yeah. I kind of

want to get into this world, man. Um, what would your, any offers or things right now that kind of

“excite you, you know, we mentioned agency getting more and more niche. I think there's, I think if you”

can get cracked out of AI, there's a ton of really cool opportunities there, but like, from your perspective, anything you're seeing right now that you would like, you know, business ideas or things you kind of throw out to the audience. I mean, on the service side of things, like, you know, you're not launching a brand, but, you know, you want to get hired by somebody to do something. Like,

I think that world of niche agency is cool. Um, basically you get really good at one thing. Yeah.

And you just do that for everybody. So, you know, it could be something as simple as, like, setting up custom pixel events across your site. So you have better, you know, data pass back into ad platforms and Klaveo. And like a brand will pay you five grand to come set that up. And then, and, you know, you just do that one at a time. Um, you could do, you know, like this, this whole idea of helping brands figure out AI ad creative. So there's a constant supply of new ads coming in.

Like, somebody would get paid 10 grand a month to go in and consult on that for three months and then bounce. Yeah. Um, now the actual, like, starting a business, right? Because that's like almost like freelancing or contracting. Yeah. And I think adjacent to that is maybe, like, building things, like, building an app and trying to get some users or, you know, trying to create something. But the other side of it where you're like building a business, you know, you've basically, you know,

you may have to put money down for a PO, money down for this, money down for that. Um, you know, just make sure you know what you're signing up for to some degree, because like entrepreneurship is hard to shit. And, um, it's, you know, you want to, yeah, you want to make sure that, like, from wherever you're at in life, like you're at the right place to do that. Because you're basically competing against 99% chance of failure in two years. Um, and, uh, and, you know, entrepreneurs,

like, if you're the CEO of the business, you're basically dealing with whatever everybody else couldn't do. Yeah. Um, you know, problems wise or whatever. So it's, uh, it's totally a grind, but, um, you know, it's not, yeah, it's not impossible. And if you've got the itch or the bug,

“you should definitely like try it out. As you say that, I just kind of sparked something in my mind that”

I've, I've thought about for a while now in the sense of like, you know, we think about the world of entrepreneurship. So often is like younger people through the lens of like online businesses. Yeah. And then there's obviously this whole world of like blue collar work or like real, um, I think they call them like main street businesses or each back past control of all this whole world. Um, do you think that there's a super cool opportunity there? Like, you know, you know,

acquire that have been around for much longer than that. Um, and kind of already have cash flow

“in a proven track record, totally. Um, and it's so interesting to me in the sense of like, I think”

direct, uh, direct, I think the direct to consumer world and agency world, you gain a marketing chops that's probably a lot more advanced than a lot of these companies are working with for sure. And there's kind of this maybe an arbitrage opportunity there. I don't know because I haven't experienced it yet. Yeah. Um, have you thought about that at all? Not for you personally, but just like injurious. For sure. I mean, like, um, one of my closest friends runs a fencing business and, um,

um, you know, decent size business. But like, they have no idea what they're doing when it comes to marketing. You know, anything from their website, being on like an old WordPress theme to their Facebook page, looking like shit, their Instagram looking like shit, the ads they run, go to a dead link,

um, you know, there's no level of like identity resolution happening on the site that are all basically

cold leads. They haven't figured out how to use AI to respond to people quickly or call people back.

“Um, so there's definitely an opportunity there. The only thing is that those guys also don't value”

like an agency for a total of 15, 20 grand a month. And they see it there. Yeah, very nice. And they also don't know anything about it. Yeah. So like whatever you tell them, they're just like, I don't know when I like my friend Bob has a similar business and he doesn't do that. Yeah. You know, so I think that's but like if you can, there's definitely an opportunity there, um, even partnering with one in terms of yeah, or even like if you could, you know, like if you raised capital and bought up all the

fencing businesses within three states or something, you know, and now you have like a opportunity. Exactly. Yeah. But I don't know that world as well. I know that also like management of people is completely different in blue color world and white color world. So, um,

so yeah, and I actually had this not the other night, which was basically like the best

hospitality experiences are actually by places who have the best understanding of how to manage blue color workers. Like it's a different type of worker than somebody sitting in an office after four years of college and writing essays and all that stuff, you know. But like if you look at the best restaurants, the best, you know, venues, the best hotels, it's like the ones who really understand training and education like that. Super fascinating. Yeah. How do you like being in

York, do you think you'll be in your love term? I'll be here for a while for sure. Yeah, no plants to leave right now. I love New York. This summer is especially as summer has been phenomenal. We got that we have the next. The world cup is happening now, FIFA, and we got that game to come out here. Yeah, we got this game shortly. Yeah, New York's been on fire. It's been on fire. Yeah. Nick Sharma, I appreciate you brother. Thank you for coming on. Absolutely.

Thanks for listening. We'll be back next time to cut through the noise on CPG, retail,

“and e-commerce. If you enjoyed this episode, why not share it with a friend?”

And be sure to subscribe wherever you listen so you don't miss the next one.