What Does It Actually Take to Win BFCM? (Live from Q4 Summit, with Cody Plofker)

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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 nip.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.

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That's TRIP LEWHALE.com/limitedSupply. Welcome back to the first episode of the new Limited Supply season. We're on season 18 now, which is crazy to say it's been 17 full seasons already. But we're starting season 18, and we're starting it with the bang. Okay, one of my best friends in this industry, his name is Cody Ploughger, you know the

name you've heard it before, he's been on the pot a couple times, but he's one person that I probably talk to on a daily basis and just really enjoying nerding out with, catching up, talking about what he's up to, sharing what I'm up to, and just really trading out for him. So, you know, I've talked about the Q4 summit multiple times on this podcast,

and some of actually a lot of you guys have come to it, which is awesome. It's always fun

meeting you guys in person. But I got Cody to come and share basically everything he's thinking about with Q4. So, you know, he's just started Winks, which is a new sleep supplement brand. He was just the CEO of Jones Road Beauty, where, you know, he led it from basically nothing to multi-hundred million in revenue per year. And so, I basically extracted everything on both sides. What is he doing as a new brand? What is he thinking about? How is he

structure and creative and email and all these other things? But then also with a whole team at Jones Road Beauty, and, you know, with much larger scale, also, what are you doing for Q4? What didn't work last year? What did work? And what are you doing this year that's going to be different? So, take a listen to this episode. It's a really fun one. And if you've got any questions, feel free to hit myself or Cody on Twitter, we're both pretty

responsive and love just chatting with you. Enjoy the episode. And yeah, I can't wait to hear what you think. Welcome back to Limited Supply. Welcome to the Q4 Summit, guys. I'm excited to bring Cody here. Cody's one of my long time good friends in the industry. We've traded notes over the years and excited to have you here. So, thanks for being here, Cody.

Always. Happy to. So, before we get started, Cody, can you give just a quick background on yourself? Obviously,

“everybody knows about Jones Road. The success you've had there, but I think you recently”

left. You want to give everybody a quick update before we get started? Yeah. So, until recently, until probably like three months ago, with CEO of Jones Road, family company have been there for the beginning. Just done kind of various roles, all, leading marketing, leading growth, leading marketing. And then with CEO for the last few years, I'm on the board now. So, still involved, but, you know, not in the day to day, you know,

doing a bunch of just other things. Now, a lot of consulting and podcasting and launching a new brand and wanted to kind of just get back in the weeds again, but, uh, had a really good run and excited to share some of the, you know, some of the, uh, and we said, I've seen a lot of mistakes. I've made a lot of mistakes as well. So, hopefully I can share some of those and whatnot to do. Yeah. Cody went from running a nine figure brand to

trying to figure out how to get his first $500 a day and spend with the new company. So, very true. Very humbling, uh, Cody, can you walk us through a little bit about just before we talk tactics like mentality going into Black Friday, you know, is your goal that this is,

I always call Black Friday, like you're flushing the toilet at the end of the year. You're

getting everybody who's been built up with the man and getting them through the funnel.

“But what's your mindset going into Black Friday and how do you think about approaching it?”

For sure. Yeah. Like, I don't know what the reasons stats are, but you guys have probably seen it. Like, very few people that are going to buy from you on Black Friday, or, you know, that period are seeing you for the first time. And so, you're really trying to do everything to extract all of the value that you've created, but haven't really captured yet. And so, hopefully, you've done a lot of things throughout the year. And, you know, all

this stuff is cliche, but it's very true that, like, success on Black Friday really comes from everything you've done prior to that. And all of the, you know, the demand that you've created, all of the different things that you've done throughout the year. And so, definitely thinking about that and not just thinking about what is our offer. Obviously, that's a extremely important part of it though. And when you're thinking about Black Friday, I'm curious how you think about the offers.

So, you know, Jones Road for the last, I think maybe two or three years had one of the top selling Shopify products, y'all on Black Friday, full stop. You know, how are you testing something like that? Because you came out with a unique skew going into Black Friday. I don't believe it's sold normally on the site. So, how do you think about that before you get to that? Yeah, there are a few moments

“throughout the year where I think you can test and they're kind of, like, a warm-up games for it.”

So, yeah, my, my claim to fame, my probably, like, top, top moment of Jones Road. We had, like,

on all these different, like, TV networks. We were the top selling skew on Shopify. And not anything I think I'll be able to top in my career ever. So, that was really cool. But we, we didn't want to discount for years. And so, we had, you know, our best-selling product was just been called Miracle Bomb was full size. And there was a lot of demand for minis. And so, we only did them twice a year. So, it was a little bit of like a drop model. We did it on Memorial Day. And we did it on Black Friday.

And so, for us Memorial Day was really our tune-up words. Maybe it was, you know, 40% lower than Black Friday, but it at least allowed us to iron out a lot of the kinks. You know, we would build a specific lander, bundle builder for it. We would test offers messaging, obviously tons of creative. And so,

“we never had to start scratch. So, so that's what I would say. Unless this is like your first”

promo that you've done as a brand or your first Black Friday, like, nothing you should be doing

should be from scratch. You should be obviously taking all of your learnings throughout the year, as well as, you know, from your evergreen periods, as well as any promos that you've done, what worked, what didn't, you know, um, really literally just every this one. Hopefully you have just like a document that you just have rolling during these promos. Hey, I think we produced this much creative, you know, look at our motion reports. This was our best angle during this period, um,

you know, this was our toplander, like all of that stuff. So, you don't have to just start from the beginning. And is, is there anything you do in the primed day right before Black Friday to test or prep or do any final checks, um, just like what you're checking and getting ready? Yeah, just like, you know, I think primed days coming up here in a couple weeks. I know some brands use it as like a final, you know, let's check one more thing before Black Friday traffic hits. We weren't on Amazon,

so we didn't. So we had different periods throughout it. And I do think it's good to have a few offers leading up to it because a lot of people will wait. And so your efficiency is going to look really poor if you have nothing until like end of November. Obviously, most brands are starting

their Black Friday, like, beginning of November now. And it's, you know, that period, um, but we always

have like holiday kits in different anniversary kits earlier. And so those were kind of our tune ups. And, and then allowed us that we actually pushed spend more aggressively during those and accepted a little worse efficiency because we knew we would capture that. And I can talk through like some of the data and how to see that. But for us, it was that it was, you know, Labor Day is like a smaller one. So, Memorial Day is like big one. Labor Day is a smaller one. And then we really start that like ramp up

called like playoffs going into like October. So yeah, if you have a period, highly recommended, but save your best offer for November. And the way you're talking about it, seems like this is really treated like a season, right? Like, you got the playoffs going into basically Black Friday. And then do you try to extend this up until New Year's or how do you think about the promo calendar? Yeah, I remember and I guess probably on it, but I remember in like high school going to the mall

on, you know, probably Thanksgiving night or whatever to like get a pair of shoes and stuff like I don't think people do that anymore, right? It's, it's way less. So there's no like cyber Monday.

“There's no like one day Black Friday. And so you have to think about, it's, it's your Q4. And just,”

you know, for most brands, you're doing, you know, 40% of your revenue Q4. And so you just have to figure out how you're going to do that. And for, you know, really it's like starting in September, like in beauty, at least like summers are very slow. So, you know, that's Q3. September, slow, average month, you start ramping up. We would do an anniversary kit in October. That was like our big moment for there. We'd put like some exclusive in there. So that was a pretty big offer.

In late October, we'd have like holiday collection. So that's like another big one as well. Again, those are all discounted as part of it. But for us, we wanted to have a premium offer, where we had like, it was more of like a drop model. And we would have kits with like stuff we haven't launched yet. And then, you know, getting into November. Again, it just depends on the brand. And do you want to run one offer throughout the whole period? Do you want to have a few different ones?

How long do you want to run your promo for? But you have to look at the whole thing. And then, you know, extending that into December. Obviously, December is like peak gift giving. And so you have to be thinking about that. Are you extending the same offer? Are you going into a different offer? Some people will have the same offer and just call it something different just for some, you know, freshness. But yeah, really through, I mean, shipping cutoffs are usually mid December.

And then, you know, especially if you have any retail component, you're pushing to those. And then there's even a little blip of like, uh, didn't get what you want. Like, we would see a a little bit of like a spike after Christmas a little bit. Our messaging and our hypothesis was

always like, all right, like the women were then mad. They didn't get what they wanted.

“So then they buy it for themselves. So yeah, I think you just need the whole calendar and know like,”

how what's your offer going to be? And then what's your messaging going to be relative to like, that moment and where people are in their journeys? Now, what's the Q4 mistake you've made in the past that you'd advise people not to make in the future? I've over bought and I've under bought and both of them of them suck as a marketer under buying inventory sucks. You feel like, you know, you're like a cage line. And you feel like you have stuff left in the tank. But obviously that's

a much better scenario. And you know, you're not going to go out of business under buying inventory. Over buying can suck, especially if you're doing something seasonal, you know, if you are going to be more aggressive with buying inventory and want to set up for a great Q4, I made sure you have the cash

and you could just sell that in Q1 or whatever. But, you know, we've we've finished the periods with like 100,000 extra holiday kits. We just kind of didn't have the demand that we expected behind some of them. And, you know, that sucks. So, that's definitely something to be really really cautious about, obviously, under buying, you know, it's nothing you, you can do about it. But you just got to

be careful that. And then on the marketing side, you know, you never really get the spend quite

right. Sometimes you over spend, sometimes you under spend. I would say the biggest mistake is like

“not, it's like, you can't expect to win early on. You have to be okay with being a little bit”

more aggressive. I think when I've made mistakes, it's looking for efficiency earlier and kind of getting spooked, like early Q4, that things aren't looking good. It's not very efficient. And then that efficiency comes later. There's this big, like, surge of demand. And a lot of the, the spend that you've had in October, early November, you can actually capture a lot of the value at, you know, during the period. And so you have to put your foot on the gas a little bit harder, be prepared

for lower efficiency. But hopefully in your forecast and in your model, you have that, especially if you have prior years and periods, like you should be able to look at your daily efficiencies. And hopefully you can forecast that a little bit. And like, I know you do kind of a boot camp like day of or week of during Black Friday and holidays. But, you know, you do these daily checkins with your team. I'm curious, like, as you said, you know, early on these numbers look like

they're too high or acquisition costs are climbing. What are you doing in those days to adjust? Are you changing a bunch of stuff? Do you just rely on what you have in the account and trust that it's going to work out? Are you coming up with new offers on the fly? Which period is this like week of? Yeah. Yeah. So we'll look at forecast. I mean, we do it daily, like normally where we'll have literally a daily forecast for like every main metric, like revenue, spend efficiency,

MER, AMER, KAC, all of those things. And, and so we'll have a target for where it should be. And if we're not on target, yeah, like we have to understand why, you know, is there less demand? We'll look at, like, try to look at the whole funnel, like, sometimes what we'll do is look for signs to kind of like allow ourselves to spend into some of the inefficiency. And so if we're looking in maybe our CPA is higher than we want, our ROS is lower than we want. But we're finding a lot of

add-to-carts. It's like, okay, people are starting to build their basket. And that's like a conversation that I feel like we have every year. It's like, we should probably learn, but at a certain point, it's like, you know, every year we see it where like things are just not efficient or able to spend. But there's just like, people aren't buying. But if we can find signs that it's high quality traffic and high intent traffic, we'll look at like time on site bounce

right? Like, as long as those things look good and people are building the cards, like, I've kind of

always try to give, you know, the team, the permission to keep spending into that. If it's really bad

and there's just like a complete mismatch, then it's like, I crap what it, what can we do? This is not landing. We need to change this offer. And if you have time to be able to pivot, like, it can

“do it, but you have to decide because you can't get spooked. Sometimes it's, you probably shouldn't”

make any changes and you should just keep going with a plan and knowing how the seasonality will change because maybe it's just, people aren't ready yet. That's usually what it is as long as you've planned your offer properly. Amazing. Now, I know this year. Well, first of all, we've been Facebook boys for years, right? Facebook buyers and always relying on Facebook to get that next feedback loop or understand that next learning. But you've been spending a lot on TV and I'm curious, like,

one, one, do you think a brand is ready to spend on TV and two? Like, what's your philosophy going into TV knowing that, you know, Facebook has got very direct reporting and attribution and all that kind of stuff? Yeah, I mean, huge TV fan. And when we originally launched TV, we were, we were

probably like, they were like $100 million run rate. I forget, maybe maybe I think it was like the

year we did $100 million. So we were actually like, to it, like, one of my regrets and mistakes is I, I thought you had to be like a huge brand to do TV. I didn't realize how like simple it was.

“You do have to invest. You have to have the right creative. And so, you know, we probably did like a”

$50,000 shoot. We like, owner on studio and, you know, don't need, like, her and make up. So we're able to do it for less. But, you know, I thought you had to spend like $200 in a shoot. And then I thought, like, I thought you had to be a much bigger brand. I just like, didn't know about it. I didn't realize how easy it was. Obviously, we launched with Titari and, you know, they've been in great partnerships. But, you could, there's done many things that you can do on creative. And

there's a lot of, you know, resources now, like, like, there's like screen bridge or other ones like that where you can take like more of a social asset and kind of like re-cut that for TV. And you, you have to make sure you're doing enough where it is like a minimum viable product and you're not like throwing something that's not going to be relevant on on TV. Like a creative was. But you can definitely adapt some stuff and test a lot cheaper than having to do a giant

month. I think we were probably spending 150k first month because also our total budgets were pretty

“high. We were spending a lot on that on other channels. I think one benefit to launching earlier is,”

you know, we could launch with a little less budget and still see an impact. I think the the biggest challenge is just understanding the measurement and that was the biggest, you know, learning because you're not going to get any in platform attribution. To Atari has a really great attribution model that can be like very, directionally helpful. But it's very different than looking in a, you know, meta account or something like that. But we saw it in total business performance.

So we kind of just took off and had some insane growth because we just worked cap by, you know, reaching the same people over and over on digital channels. And today, how does your media mix look as a percentage between some of the main platforms? We, so meta is probably 50, 60%. Again, I don't change throughout the year and we'll talk about that for Q4. You know, YouTube, Google are probably like make up 10% total, Apple ovens, you know, small amount, TikTok, small amount,

especially with shop. And then TV is probably 10% on average. We've had it at times, you know, 20%. And it's usually split between linear and streaming. We'll kind of fluctuate them back and forth.

“But I think 10% is where we normally are. I so I think 5% to 10% for us this is sweet spot.”

We run it evergreen, but some brands will run it very, you know, seasonally. I think it's also a channel. It's like, I don't like to say it's like a brand versus performance channel. I'll call it like a top of funnel channel, which means that even when performance doesn't look great, like,

it's more of like a farming approach where to me, I just wanted to be always on. I think there's

some level and, you know, wear it. Yes, we always track performance, but I'm able to weather those storms through like the summer and stuff like that because I know our consideration cycle is often several months. And it is a great channel that has like great impacts with it with other places. But, you know, leading into Q4, we'll ramp budget. So we'll go, you know, up to 20, 25%. And just to have it be kind of our top of funnel that feeds all of our other channels.

And you mentioned streaming in linear, is there an advantage to both versus just one or the other? Yeah, I definitely like being on both. We launched on linear because it can be like very cheap. You can get kind of like really good inventory, very cheap with those CPMs, but there's a lot of

“advantages of streaming. And I think just having, you know, what usually platos of business is just lack of”

reach, right? And having more places, more inventory where you can kind of put the same creative in the

same offer is super beneficial. And then being able to fluctuate between both of them, you know, you really want people seeing you everywhere. And so, you know, you want to be as many places as you can. So yeah, I think there's a lot of benefits of like working with one partner that can put you on both linear and streaming. Now, I know you're also cheap. And you also took the bait of the free offer to test another TV platform guilty yet. You mentioned 10% of media is kind of where you started in terms of

meta to, or sorry, total budget to TV. What do you think of those free credit offers from other vendors? Like it seems like it derailed your testing plan for a bit versus kind of help to you figure out what you're trying to do. They can definitely be enticing, you know, people will talk about credits. I think last Q4, we got a lot of credits from different partners and providers. Listen, the channels that we're doing really well for us and knew they were doing well. They were an

offering credits because they didn't have to. So there's some level of like, you know, networks and channels are offering credits because they know they kind of need to take in your business. You know, I saw recently like Snapchat was offering some huge credits. Like, yeah, they have to we're like X has to as well, right? Like meta and Google are, you know, they're not doing a ton of that. So yeah, we definitely did. There were definitely some some convincing value

prowess, but you know, what I've told my team as well is like, even they've looked at fees and things like that is like, it's really the net performance at the end of the day that matters. And, you know, if unless you think like the credits are only going to make like 1% of the actual cost of that channel, right? Were any fees? And like, unless you think that the performance between those channels or networks is like that little, then then great take it. But like,

you can't tolerate worse performance just because you're getting free credits. Like, I think that's like a little bit short-sighted and I definitely made that mistake. So it's just evaluating all the factors and making sure you're with the right channel and the right network. That's kind of like have everything that you need for your business. And when you buy last question on this, when you buy or you buy more programmatically or saying, I'm going after this audience for a saying, I want

to align Jones Road with these networks and these sports games and these, you know, kind of 10 pull moments depends on if you're, you know, streaming or linear. So linear is obviously you're going to buy network. You can go like network and, you know, sometimes shows as well. But you're like, hey, I want to be on NBC. I want to be on, you know, this, this, this one, I want to be on ESPN. And then streaming is a little bit more, it's a little bit more programmatic where you're, you know,

able to do it by like demo because people are logged in to, you know, whatever it is. Like a Netflix or a Hulu or anything like that, you're able to kind of target that a little bit more. So that's

You can spend an hour working through your ad budget with AI and still have to make every change

“yourself. Triple Wells Moby uses your business data to recommend exactly what changes you should make”

and then can go and make those changes for you with your approval. You can plan before any money moves. Book a demo at triplewail.com/limitedsupply. That's TRIPLE WHALE.com/limitedsupply. I want to talk a little bit about your creative supply chain and thinking around creative. The way I think about creative nowadays is like the back of a Costco warehouse where you got trucks loading into the loading dock. And each truck is a different creative partner, vendor or provider.

How have you guys set up yourselves at Jones Road? Because I know, I know how efficient you are

with vendors, with spend, with, you know, budgets. And you guys have a ton of creative that's always

coming out. Different styles of creative, whether it's graphic, whether it's a video, a UGC lifestyle, you know, behind the scenes. How do you have you built out the creative team? What does that look like? And how do you make sure that going into Q4, you know, you're never running out of assets? Yeah, it's rare question. And it's, I've definitely changed my stance about Shana, even on the investment side. And I will, I've under invested in the past. And that's obviously one of the most

important things now. So I'm willing to spend a lot more in it now and like all makes sacrifices, other areas and places in the business. Because it's just that important. It's just impossible to scale and have good efficiency, especially if you're planning like millions of spend a month. But even at any level, obviously you need diversity, you need different, you know, styles, different angles, things like that. So it's not possible to do it all in house for production.

But I do think that majority of the strategy should be internal. I haven't had as much success outsourcing that to agencies or external partners. And so I think your creative strategy team should be internal. You should have editors, designers. You know, you can get, you know, really great editors and designers overseas just because your budget can go so much further there. Obviously AI is doing a lot of crazy stuff. Like even for me with wings is new brand. Like I'm using codex to edit videos. And it's like

it's like pretty awesome. And then a lot like AI static stuff. And then outside of there, like you you have to figure out what core styles work for you. Obviously you should test them. The biggest thing is you diversity of messages and personas. But then you also want different formats. And, you know, you want some more produced branded production stuff. You obviously want UGC in that can come in a lot of other forms. Huge fan. Like we probably had 40% of our account on partnership ads. And

those are more like traditional, you know, white listing with influencers. And then something that has been huge and I would say for almost any brand that's scaling now is some type of creator supply chain. And so either like for Jones Road, that's like TikTok shop. And, you know, working with any of those creators. And, you know, getting rights to be able to run them as ads. You can just get a ton of volume. You can kind of, it's a little bit more of like a crap shoot. You don't have to force

spend to it. You just throw a ton in the ad account and see what performs. And then for brands that aren't on TikTok shop. Or, you know, just want ads like something like tribe is obviously becoming really

“important. And you can just get a ton of footage. You have to do it correctly. Like you can't just”

ship shop. But if you're thoughtful and coaching creators and briefing them properly, it's probably the best way for most brands to do it. And, you know, percentage of spend deals are becoming or percentage of sales are becoming much more common. So you can get a lot of creative without like big upfront costs. And when you think about your budget for creative, what are you spending as a percent of the media on actual just creative production? Yeah, to keep the accounts applied

in second question on that for every half a million dollars and monthly spend. How many creatives

do you think need to be in the ad account? I'll answer that one first. I don't know. I've never

determined a sickly like gotten the right numbers. It's kind of always been more of a feel thing. And I think every brand is different probably. Based on your hit rate and based on how quickly things are fatiguing. So I don't know the answer, but you know, if you look at it's very, I've tried to scale spend without, you know, enough creative and that doesn't work. And then I've probably gone too far in the volume direction and with like hit rate being too low. So the one of

the important things is you can't you can't create more creative without like growing your team behind it, right? Because if you ask the team to increase their output too much, like the quality does

“suffer. And so I think that's why things like tribe or grade or whatever, because you can you can”

kind of scale much faster without, you know, needing to like scale your team as much because you're

using creators and you're just paying a percentage of spend. And so that's what I think the first

part of the question, right, me what it was. One was ad account creatives, the one was percent of the end total. So I would, I like to look at them total. And in our like digital media bucket, hey, advertising bucket, we'll have sub-accounts and one of them is creative. Because like I don't necessarily care, right? Like to me, it's also it's a variable cost. Creative is a variable cost.

total efficiency. But generally you're going to find that your total efficiency is better if you're

“investing more on creative. But usually it's like a 15% target. That's what I would say. And that's”

that's gone up. Like usually it used to be 10% it used to be, you know, 5% years ago. So that's definitely gone up. But I like to at least budget 15%. And then you mentioned you've got the strategy for creative all done internally. What's the name of that role for the person or people doing that? Create a strategist. So like that role is ever evolving and changing. A like, even the growth for all those changing, like when you and I were actually running out of accounts and stuff, like,

you know, creative was not as important. And there was obviously a lot more media buying. Like, I do expect my growth team to be involved strategically with creative. They might not have to necessarily be making it. But like they are analyzing it, you know, they're giving insights back. So they're involved. I think with AI, they can definitely be making some stuff. And then yeah, you should have a creative strategy team. And so often they're on the growth team. Sometimes

they're on the creative team. It kind of just depends on the team in the org chart. But they are the people who are analyzing the account, doing, you know, the consumer research, analyzing competitors, all stuff, deciding what to make. And then, you know, they're not often making it. They'll brief editors, designers. And then they're, you know, but they're at least strategizing it. And then sometimes they're also the people that are working directly with creators or they'll kind of

ship that off to another team. But yeah, that's like one of the most important roles, definitely.

And I'm curious, the creative strategists, like, how much are they now using things like Codex or are they building out a Gentic friendly brand books and style guides? Like, how is that process shifted with the introduction of AI? They're definitely using AI. They are definitely able to AI allows people who don't have some of the technical skill set to actually do stuff. Like, I said, like, I'm obviously for Wings and New Brown. Like, I'm the only person. So I'm playing

the role of creative strategists. Like, I can actually, if I have an idea, I can create an ad.

“And I think that's one of the most important things is, like, how can you go from, like,”

insight to actual ad as fast as possible? And so they can definitely do that with, like, a static or whatever. Like, they don't have to be a designer to do that. So they can take their ideas and kind of have more leverage behind them. But also, I think a really great way for creative strategists is, like, using AI for all the manual stuff. Because, like, you know, there's add-ups and naming conventions and stuff like that or uploading ads or writing braves, like, in research, which takes

a ton of time. How can you, I don't want to say automate, but leverage AI and all of that stuff. So they can have more time to think. Because that's one of the important ones. And there's just creative strategists who really wide scope, and they have a lot of responsibilities. And I think, like, AI can be great for research. You can, like, have it crawl reddit and Instagram and, like, get you inside super fast. But you also can't, I've gone too much in ad direction. And so I,

I think, also having some time set aside to, like, do manual research and, like, actually go through reddit yourself and go through forums, like, you can't replace that. Yeah, I found that the, like, the gathering of research has become a lot easier, but the actual selection of what to then take from that and implement, you know, customer facing has gotten more challenging. Definitely, that's a whole, like, taste thing. And you, you can't, you can't, you know, delegate that.

Yeah. So we've got a few minutes left here. I want to talk about going now into Q1. So we've got Q4 coming up Black Friday holiday sale boxing new years. A lot of supplement brands might not see a huge kind of Q4 or Black Friday type of a sale, but they're definitely preparing for their Super Bowl, which is starting January 1st. Now that you've got links, how are you thinking about that? Yeah, definitely. Don't forget about Q5 as well. Obviously, it's not like a real thing,

but performance can definitely be pretty good, especially depending on what, you know, vertical you that you're in. You know, some people like to start it early and are kind of feeling like they want to get on their, you know, their resolutions a little bit early. Some people are still in holiday shopping mode. And so, you know, conversion rates intent can be very high still, but CPMs get lower, right? Most people are kind of dumping their budget and spending most of their

budget, you know, prior to holidays. And so I would say, don't forget about that. Like, that's definitely a mistake that we made and, and, you know, positive change that we've had. But yeah, if you're in wellness or anything like that, Q1 is really your Q4. And so, you know, you shouldn't overspend during Q4 if you demand for your businesses in there. But you want to be as aggressive as possible. Obviously, it gets hyper competitive, right? Because everyone is going to

be trying to spend. But it's, it's probably, you know, not, not to scare anyone. It's probably

like the most important customer acquisition time, you know, throughout the year. And for being a

“subscription brand, like you really, really have to be. And so, you know, you have to be doing”

everything you can. And obviously have very specific messaging and offers as well. But are going to be competitive and speak to people in that, like Q1 mindset, which is obviously the, you know, New Year and to me, totally. Yep. Let's jump into some Q&A. So we got five minutes to do some Q&A.

bring a mic over to you and get your question answered right over there. Yeah. Well, I've got a

lot of questions actually. But I'll try and keep it to one. I'm always having a debate with my

co-founder about whether we buy more stock or less stock going into Q4. And you touched on that just now. Your statement was, you don't go out of business if you buy too little. And my co-founder saying, we need to buy more and more. We don't want to run out in Q1 or Q2 next year. Our manufacturing time is very slow. So I just want to hit you double click on that. How do you think about inventory and forecasting stock? It's a good question. I always try to do it. I hate saying this,

but from first principles. And actually trying to analyze what are the pros and cons that can happen in either scenario. And what happened? And you can obviously forecast this. But what happens to your business if you buy extra stock? And I think be conservative worst case scenario. And you don't sell it. Are there cash? Do you run out of cash? Are there serious considerations there?

“Do you even, what do you have the cash to support? Like you should you should be able to run”

a forecast where it's like, what if we buy the most that we think we can buy and like significantly underperform? What does that look like for our business? And all the downsides, war, it's case scenario. We run out of cash. We go out of business. Often what will happen is we buy a lot of inventory that we can't move. And we need to cash. We need cash. And we have to market down and liquidate it to improve our cash position. And I think that's a challenging thing, right? It hurts your gross

margin, right? It hurts your profitability. And then you do that consistently and it hurts your ability to actually sell up full price. So I think that can be really challenging. And then if you go on the other side, or it's like, all right, I buy too little. Well, I, you know, I didn't hit my growth targets, right? Or I didn't get to spend as much as I wanted, or I was more efficient, like, you know, or maybe I upset some customers. Like, that's probably the better scenario. And this

is with like, you know, speaking from experience and stuff. It's frustrating, but it's a lot less stressful to do that. But again, it depends a position you're in. Like, we had times at Jones Road, where fortune and cash position. So we, you know, we could buy extra and we knew that even we didn't sell it right away. It doesn't expire for two years. So there's really no downside. But if it, I would say cash is king, cash above all else. And that has to guide your decision the most.

Thank you. All right. We'll get two more questions in right over there. What was your ideal M.E.R. at Jones Road annually in Q4? Good question. When things were extremely efficient, and I would say this was pretty and drama to post iOS and stuff. Like, we were able to be at a five, you know, and we were able to have, you know, a 20% of marketing spend on marketing. And, you know,

that was like digital. And like, a little bit more, most mature businesses are going to be higher.

I think it's going to depend on the business. But, you know, the reality is for a depends what your

distribution is. Right. If you're a Sephora business or target business, like, you get a lot of distribution from wholesale. And so you can be more efficient with your marketing. If you're a purely D to C business at, you know, nine figures plus, you know, I think the model with how

“challenging cash art is like, you have to have the opx pretty low and you have to have engineer your”

business to support a high M.E.R. So I wouldn't just look at, like, how do I get M.E.R. better? But often, like, how do I change my business to actually continue to grow on a low M.E.R. that's like a more like anti-fragile business? I would say most brands, I mean, there's brands that I know that are doing well, that are a two M.E.R. And, and are literally spending 50 percent. I mean,

if you look at IMA, obviously, they're public company, like, they're spending 80 percent of revenue

on marketing. You know, that's not sustainable. So I think it depends, but I think, like, healthy business, 30 percent, you know, of revenue going to marketing is usually fine, but depends on your margins and your opx as well. All right. Last question. We got one over there. And that big fan of the brand just had a question around you are made by strategy for this keyfall, whether you're sort of pacing your budgets, if you're using cost caps and bid caps,

given all the new bidding settings that are out. Are you exploring anything that's a little bit different for this year? That's a good question. I'm definitely a big fan. I try not to be dogmatic about, like, media buying approaches and, like, do whatever works. But definitely if it works for your business, I would say, don't implement anything for the first time during Black Friday,

“like, test everything. And that's why these moments where it's, you know, Memorial Day”

earlier Q4 offers. If you can test some of them, like, a really good tune-ups. I am a big fan of cost caps or usually bid caps for that, because, you know, sometimes you're

it quite a bit instead of, like, trying to put a million bucks into a lowest cost campaign.

“So if it works and you've had success with it, like, definitely really, really like it,”

there's some, like, downsides to them as well, where you can kind of still overspend and whatever. But yeah, if you found it, you know, to work, it's hard to, like, measure this. I am a fan of running

“some, like, early access, but essentially, like, lead gen campaigns, running them to, like, a”

sign-up page. Like, those always seem to kind of do pretty well. But yeah, that definitely fan of

those as well. Awesome. Amazing, guys. That's all the time we have. Thank you so much. Thank you, Cody.

First, 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?”

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