The Performance Creative Director Hire: Operator vs. Ideator

I believe we're in the, we're well into the hundredth year.

I mean, it's episode 120. People keep asking me, people keep asking me, "Hey, it's come up a handful of times recently, asking how long we've done it, well over two years at this point." We're going to be at episode a thousand before we know it.

I will say, we got, you know, the behind-the-scenes production team makes it very easy for us to show up out, show up every week in a court, so it's been, uh, it's been fun, man. But yeah, what do we like, 120, 130? Podcasters, they're like the new surgeons. Like, you know, like a surgeon doesn't like, you know, they've got people to prep the tools.

They just kind of show up. They get suited up. Right, it's all schedule. The tools are there waiting for them. The surgical tax got it all laid out on a platter for them. They just show up and do it the job.

That's, you know, I, I never read the connection between podcasters and surgeon,

but it makes sense. Yeah, people don't realize it. People don't realize that. Um, all right, sweet. We are in the midst right now. This will come out in a couple of weeks, but we're in the midst of primed day.

“How's it going on on the, on the, the cookware front?”

It's good. Yeah, we are having a solid start, you know, we, we try to do like the way that we think about our, our, our offers on more of a macro perspective is we really protect obviously Black Friday as our like best deals of the year. But with our consideration period and how much we, we spend on demand Gen, we'd like to roll out one more offer outside of Black Friday and holiday.

That's like not as good, but it's at least like competitive with those offers last year because we did the Super Bowl ad. We decided to do that with what we branded our big game sale, which was our February offer. We wanted to put our best foot forward this year. We did not do a Super Bowl ad and we felt like the best time to do that would be like right, smack dab halfway through the year. So that's kind of what we're doing for primed time sale this year.

As again, they're not our Black Friday deals, but they are our, I would say our most competitive offers we ran all year. So we're seeing some, some pretty awesome results because of that. So yeah,

“yeah, good day one. You know, I think just talking to some insider, getting some insider info at”

Amazon and actually the category as a whole was trending down yesterday. At least our like kitchen and home goods category. And we did not, I think we were up a little bit yesterday. So we I think we outpaced the category as a whole, but yeah, it's just interesting that that home goods and kitchen as a whole actually decreased year over year on the first day last year. So yeah, I don't really know exactly what to attribute that to, but yeah, happy that we, that we beat the

trend on that one. Yeah, no, obviously, um, I do think primed is in a weird position. Like,

then moving it up, they moved it up a lot this year. They always had kind of shifted around.

You never really know. I'm always surprised at how little notice Amazon sellers get. But this year, they moved it up basically a full three weeks out of Q3 in mid July all the way up into the very end of Q2 here. For us, it comes immediately after our Father's Day sale. I mean, which is definitely not ideal. Like, we've got no ability to like rebuild the funnel or sort of build up any additional demand, the capture on on primed day. And you know, I think one of the reasons

I do that is just like it has deteriorated in its performance over the last couple years. I remember it used to be like a thing. Like, people on Twitter would be tweeting about it. The group chats would be lighting up. Everybody would be dealing like multiples. Many multiples of what they would do on a typical day. And now that it's shifted throughout the year, it's expanded from

“one to two to four days. Like, I was I was feeling a little nostalgic yesterday. I think about how”

much more of an event it used to be totally. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, you would think that I think what the ideal, if anyone from Amazon's listening, I think the ideal time. I mean, all of these brands run Mother's Day Memorial Day, Father's Day, or some combination of those three sales like from mid April through mid June. So it would actually make a lot more sense of Amazon kicked back prime as late as they could instead of it, but they're they're pulling it up earlier

and earlier and earlier. Like, it doesn't make sense. Like, it's I don't know. It just feels like that doesn't make sense knowing that so many brands activate so hard during those those like spring and early summer months on these other 10 pull moments. Because we're in the same boat, we're like, we activate hard for Mother's Day Memorial Day. We don't activate as hard for Father's Day, just because we have those two other activations right before. We still do stuff around it. So yeah,

it's like, we're in the same boat as you guys where we just haven't had like any time to kind of build up the funnel after we just launched these like these other mega sales right before it. So it is weird timing. It's still like, don't get me wrong. We're still putting out big, big net revenue numbers. It's just

based on that data point. It does seem like the whole like aura of primed days is kind of falling

off a little bit. I don't know. I didn't buy anything yesterday. I don't know if you did. No, no. Yeah. I was looking at it like our different categories relative to a normal day. And this is obviously going to like significantly shift between different brands and different types of products. But like for us, we were seeing between three or four wrecks of a normal day. Okay, is that is that um, just on Amazon? Just on Amazon. Okay. So we're well above that. I mean,

we probably did like, God. I mean, 12, I mean, over 10 acts a normal day. So it still is, yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. So you know, I will say, um, my normal day, I was comping it to like like week over week. So we were kind of in a father's day. I could find like a better, more realistic comp for what a normal like late June day might be. Um, we still don't get up. We used to be, I mean,

“I remember the first couple primed days, like I think it would be eight or nine X. We've never seen,”

I think, X-clad. You just have the consideration period where during these big shopping moments, like there's just more, they're more potent for you all, I think. Um, but we used to see like many more multiple seven, eight X and normal day. And I do think even with a fairer comp, it's like we're probably looking at maybe five or something like that. It's just just, um, not as exciting as once was. Yeah. I mean, what, um, if you can share this, what how big, uh, like what, what percent of

the amp, like what's your Amazon share of revenue for your for a ridge? Oh, it's like, it's historically been like 20%. Okay. So we're not that far. I mean, we're in that that like, yeah, we're in that range as well. Obviously during primetime sale, it's like four to one, you know, dollars on Amazon to dollars on Shopify, because we'll activate. Well, we more or less do this, at least on individual offers. We more or less do the same offer on our, our individual products on the two channels, but

“they're, they're very incremental audiences. That's also why I think that primetime sale”

prime sale still always works for us in spite of us running these other three offers is just because

those other three offers are too offers. I should say, Mother's Day Memorial Day. Those are huge Shopify moments. And we, and they, we do activate on Amazon as well, but they just, you know, those don't perform as well as a Shopify. And then we activate on prime in it, and we have a big moment. So I do think there's something to be said about sure we don't have as much time to like build the funnel following those other two sale moments. But I also don't think we just don't

clear the funnel as much on Amazon. So like that funnel is still relatively built up, even though the dot com, funnels a little bit more depleted. So we still see those big spikes just because I think the audience is that are buying from us on Shopify and, and, and Amazon are very different. And you can see it through the, through the, through the AOV is the, like, the number one thing that you look at the two. And it's like, wow, these are, these are just like totally different

marketplaces for you guys. So yeah, it's been interesting now. I don't, I don't know, the fourth of the four day prime event. Like, I didn't know, I came into it this year with the hypothesis that we were going to see better growth because I felt like the consumer was more, even though they moved it up again. I feel like the consumers a little bit more familiar with the four day event, not the case. And maybe it's going to be more backloaded because people are building cards and they

maybe haven't fully converted yet because there's a lot to sift through over this four days, as far as like a consumer's perspective goes. But yeah, day one was, it was, again, not bad. We were happy with the results we got. But I was just shocked to hear some of the, the category trends. And it doesn't seem like the consumers getting any more familiar with this, this four day event. Yeah, we'll see, we'll see how it turns over time. You know, you mentioned one thing before we get

into, we've got some, we've got some, we've got some topics I'm excited about jumping into here. You mentioned not doing, obviously not doing a Super Bowl at this year, not doing a big time sale. Did that make Comps weird for you guys? If for that February period, like, did you feel the lack of a Super Bowl at year over year? Totally. I mean, it, it was more than, it was more than February. It's like the Comps for all of, when you do that big of a demand generation campaign,

“it makes your entire, honestly, it makes the entire 1-H Comps super weird. Because, and, you know,”

we were very confident in, like, in real time last year, how that Super Bowl ad performed for us. But I think it became even more clear how, how much that did for us. Once we got through

Q1 this year and even into the second quarter, mainly through, you know, kind of the core things

we were looking at were branded search volumes, like going into search, search console and just looking at the year on your, like, trend in impressions from our branded search terms. Google search console data and then looking at the same thing in Amazon, like branded search volume and, like, we saw pretty drastic drops in our total net branded search volume and Amazon

trends, which anyone can do this and type in Hacks Cloud, and you look over the last, like, whatever, enough time to include both last February and the February prior, you'll see that we were at, like, a 49 out of 100 last February in 2020, 45. And this year we're at, like, a 40 out of 100 in, in, in, in, 20, 26. So, like, you can clearly see across all of these different data points that we just didn't generate as much demand this year or awareness. And, like, I'm not shocked at that.

This Super Bowl campaign we did, probably drummed up 200, 300 million impressions. So, yeah, I mean,

we're, from a, luckily, from a revenue perspective, we're not, like, you know, I think our branded searchers down, like, multiple hundreds of thousands of, like, net impressions and as per Google search console this year. But revenue wise, we're not, like, trending in that direction, but we're absolutely, um, I think that speaks to how much demand a moment, like, that

“can generate when executed in the right way. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I was curious about asking you”

just one of those things where in the moment you can feel confident, you can kind of triangulate it and then what's often really helpful is, like, that following year. Yeah. Yeah. And even better understanding of, like, um, of what that total impact was. I'm hoping we could do it again soon. Right. Like, I would love to, the tricky part is, uh, you know, there's a reason you see, like, the massive, massive brands activating for a Super Bowl. The main reason is not the amount of

a spend of requires to buy a 15 or a 30 second spot that year. It's, there are, there's a lot more that goes into it. You generally have to commit to that same level of media investment with that

network. That's hosting it for the following three years. If you go spend $7 million on a Super Bowl

ad this year, well, in, in, in NBC or, or CBS, airs it, we have to go spend another $21 million of CBS over the following three years. You know, if you're a guy co or, you know, Dr. Pepper or Doritos, that doesn't matter because you're spending there already, but if you're, you know, hex clad or ridge or groans where you don't have a massive, massive linear TV, but you're relatively, like, chances are you can't go and commit $7 million per year. It's a linear,

it's like, national linear TV buys. Now, you know, we're foxes of partner of ours. So that's why we were able to go and kind of make that investment last year because we didn't have all of the requirements that we would have had with, you know, an H or a network we weren't partners with, but like, that's why we didn't buy another ad this year, because Fox was an airing it, and, you know, we're not partnered with any of these other networks. That's interesting.

Again, no, I had no backstory there. I, uh, might be in ridges future. We'll see. Once I've got, like, $30 million in budget to sort of allocate, uh, it's not the top of the list.

“I think you need, like, I think you need, like, $10 million. That is what I would say you need to”

shoot, like, ID it to create or shoot the creative by the media, and then any sort of, like, accessory activations that you're going to do around the campaign. I think that's probably, like, a good, if you feel like you can, you can spend $10 million. That's like a good, you're like, all right, we got, we got us who were all added in the tank, I think. Motion just dropped their 20, 26 creative benchmarks report, and it's been getting shared everywhere.

Slack channels, LinkedIn, Twitter, sharing it in our private group chats. And it's great because everybody's been asking the same for questions forever. What is normal? How many ads should we actually be shipping? What is a healthy hit rate in which formats really win? The report analyzes over 575,000 creatives from 6,000 advertisers in over a billion dollars an ad spend to answer these exact questions. And the report has some really interesting findings. Like, the fact that only 4 to 8

“percent of ads actually become winners in over half of ads actually lose. In promotion customers,”

this report is especially helpful. You can upload it into your motion dashboard with their run with AI chat and compare it directly against your vertical benchmarks. Hit the link in the show notes.

I promise you won't regret it. And as always, go to motionapp.com until the marketing operator sent you.

Primed is good. And I love getting into this rule. The technical first thing we've got on the agenda here, I'm hiring a new director of performance creative, which I'm super excited about. And I wanted to get your read on it. Performance creative, obviously. Like, I was talking to my brother last night actually, our director of performance creative on the team now has been around for like 5 years. And when we hired for that role, 5 years ago, nobody was hiring for that role. And this is also where

I give someone like motion, a lot of credit. Premier sponsor motion is like, you know, Resa came on the show 18 months ago. And he was extremely clear. And they've been clear for a very long time. Like, that is the person that they're building for. They're building for the performance creative or the creative strategies, what they call it. Because I just think over the last half decade, we've become like infinitely more data driven. And we've really built far more sort of

strategically, how are we iterating, et cetera? Obviously, like a core part of what we talk about on this

“podcast. So I'm super excited about hiring this new director of performance creative. And I think”

it's a good time to sort of like reflect on like what is needed from that role today. And one of my

first thoughts is, and ridges coming from a unique position, but I think a lot of brands listening,

we'll find themselves in similar circumstances. We have a good team and we have a great system. Where I think about like, I think about adding someone to that system. And I think we've got, you know, we know what we're trying to do here fundamentally. We have the processes in place. We know what we want creative exploration to look like, creative iteration to look like. We've got the notion workflows. We've got the project manager, all of these things. And I was just thinking about

how I think performance creative leaders have become more system operators than like individual creative ideators. So I'm curious like just your take on that and how it looks at hex cloud now. Like what is that balance? Where does, where does, you know, that that more traditional creative exploration stop and like the system building begin? I fully agree with your take. You know, this actually doesn't, I listen to your hot takes with Austin. And I actually think your hot take on like

how, how weird the CMO role is actually applies really well here. Like I think on on hot takes, you were saying, you know, today's CMO at Fernie Combrand needs to be like basically a data analyst. Like you really need to deeply understand your numbers and where they're turning and why. And like what you also need to be able to sit with the team and like come up with like a funny campaign idea. Like like a very pure creative. And it's like no different here. I think about what a good

creative strategist can do today. And it's like, of course, they can come up with the ideas, but they can also produce the ideas like with an editing team. They can have a system around making the flywheel run like you just talked about. They also have to like have some level of

“data analytics capabilities. So it is one of, it is becoming like, and I think that's why the”

creative strategist role is like harder and harder to find really good talent. And it's also demanding like, we can good CS to man's a pretty high salary. Now it is for a new combat and it's in it's for good reason. So I agree. I think it is like our CS lead is like, her name's Alyssa. She's awesome. She's very creative. She has great ideas. And she is able to bring those ideas to life.

I think her absolute superpower is like operations. Like she has built an amazing system and

an amazing flywheel with how we use click up to like manage everything from all right. We've decided we're going to go execute this idea all the way through. Now we're reporting on the data with this idea. Like she is unbelievable at that. And then, and again, she's still good at at like the ideation stuff. Like she still comes up with great ideas. She's very creative as well. And but but we have like, I think that's her strong suit. And then we have a we have other

people in the team. Like for example, we have this this woman on our team page. And like she is awesome at like the blue sky thinking big swings, net new ideas. And again, not that she's bad at the

“other stuff. But like just as Alyssa's very good at the operational bit. And I think that's her”

strongest quality. Paige's strongest quality is certainly the like me when I come to her with some like wacky fun idea. I go to her and say, hey, like, can you work? Can you like beat this idea up with me? I want to talk. I think there's something here. So like we've kind of I think it's all about building a team that like you can't have every like if you have five creative strategies on your team, you can't have every single one be have their strong suit be like the system's building

in like the flywheel operating. You also can't have have all of their strong suit be the ideation because then you're going to end up with a bunch of people pitching great ideas, but none of it's going to get done in the system of ties away. So I think it's like, no, I mean, brands of our size,

like if you're a hundred million dollar brand, you probably have two three four five creative

strategies on your team. I think it's like building the team in a way where you have multiple people where all of their different strengths, like you can't have everyone be only good at at the one thing. So yeah, it's it's I think it's less about like every single person having all those attributes and more about. Compact like having different people have different attributes and then you have this team where it's like super complimentary to want to

another and then you can kind of figure out as you go like who handles which concepts and which parts of the flywheel and all that. Absolutely agree. The one thing I guess I would include outside of like team like searching for attributes and team members to build like a functional well-rounded system because that's like it's good and that's like extremely applicable like almost across the organization where you want the same thing with like your retention team or anything

else. One thing that I think that's interesting about performance creative, particularly the last couple

has really moved from the strategist to the creator where like if like four years ago we were like like we had like we were like really like briefing out. We want you to say I remember seeing like really and look there's like a thousand ways it's gonna cat and this is a perfect example of that.

But I remember seeing really robust briefs sent to creators. We never got this far but like

there's some sort of like due to seed plant company. Remember getting one of their briefs. It was extremely well done and they were like they'd tend this out to creators and they were like this is what we want you to say. These are the shots we want you to include. Here's the A-roll. Here's the B-roll. Here's like direction on lighting things like that like really robust briefs that they would send out to the point where they knew exactly what kind of content that they were getting back

and it feels to me like we've reached this point in performance creative or at least a lot of people have decided to prioritize volume and a lot of volume is you know out sourcing some of those details some of that briefing to the creator. People have been creating ad creative and UGC for a

long time now so instead of me having to tell you exactly what to create I can just say hey I want

you to talk about this product in a way that's authentic that you think people on TikTok will you know resonate with. Now I'm gonna do that a hundred times and that's actually how I produce creative and that's that's probably one of the big step changes in how performance creative is gone from creative ideation to systems building is because the actual ideating has also been sort of outsourced to a degree. Yeah yeah it's like the age of the apper is what is what really works well.

It's like if in in the in the less brief the more yappies type of creator let adds you get yeah I

“agree with that I think especially on the creator side I still think I'm a workflow producing”

stuff internally especially with as we've shifted to be of more of like you know we have this

philosophy like like make it for YouTube and just include safe sounds for four by five and vertical

videos because we find that when we shoot stuff for YouTube then we cut it and paid social specs and in length and like pacing it it works really well and we get you know multiple assets from multiple channels like you know we have this ad that we're working on right now that we're calling like sensational durability that we'll launch probably in the next month and it's all about kind of being ridiculous with the pan in order to demonstrate how durable it is because that

is our leading value proposition it's I think it's gonna crush I really hope so we've been working on it for a long ass time but that's a great example where that has been like a highly briefed highly planned highly produced I mean this is like a pure YouTube ad you can even argue it might

“even be like a CTV level ad that's where like I think a real creative strategist does shine still”

because it's it's again it's there's like very highly believed and thoughtful and planned and like again that's an example where I went to the team was like hey I have this idea for how we can like produce an ad that's all about this value property but I want to do it kind of like a tongue and cheek funny way so you know we're like running it over with a fire truck and like doing weird stuff like that and then we transition into giving them more practical use cases so

it's not all about like flamethrowers and fire trucks and dropping off a building and stuff like that but that's a good example I went to page and was like hey here's this idea she took it in ran with it and has done like that's pure that's like pure creative work right there and that was highly briefed highly produced a lot of steps along the way a lot of back and forth with editors to get it right it's just like very different into the spectrum then oh hey creator here's

our value props go talk about it in a super authentic way and like send me your video and you

“when you have it back and like you have to be able to do both and I think I think we're some”

people even struggle with the the latter now is they feel like they need to have a lot of input to be doing their job when in reality sometimes the lesson put you give a creator now is better because it comes back more authentic and I think you almost have to resist that a little bit if you're someone that you know is like oh I barely put anything in the brief like should I put more in here it's like no you you probably shouldn't so it's an interesting because I agree I

remember when I was writing briefed to creators back in the day it was like a lot more scripted a lot more prescriptive and now it's like it's more about just at briefing them and educating them on the brand right so they're authentic ad comes back accurate and not like you know hey you had to lead with these value props we don't want you to lead with our like tertiary value props stuff like that so yeah it's a very interesting dynamic now it's changed a lot

quick gut check for the operators listening if you're spending on TV or CTV today can you actually say what it's driving incrementally this is exactly why we work and have worked with neon pixel and hexclad for the last three years we've grown with them a lot over time in CTV has become one of our top growth channels they help us treat premium living room TV like a

know us it has a very robust analytics back end so we feel really good about the measurement

and ultimately and most importantly it is a strategy that is built around incremental growth

not just claimed attribution we look at incrementality is the true north star on measuring channels and they're a really measurement that agnostic they don't force us into their own black box dashboard they work inside the measurement systems we already trust and help us understand what TV is

“actually doing if you want to check it out go to neonpixel.co and ask them to design a controlled”

CTV test on your numbers yeah what so the the sensational durability concept how is that produced was it done by creators or did you guys like I'm curious the level of investment behind that idea it was produced by our internal team no creators actually the woman who stars in the ad pay so though the woman who briefed the ad page she's also like the main talent in the ad as well and she's like playing this like the angle is like she's a scientist in explaining why and how

our product so durable and it's like we we tested it through all these methods and then our internal team produced it and planned it so they want to all these different locations some of it's in studio but a lot of it's out there in the real world and yeah there's no I mean there is external talent like we had to hire people like you know but not not uh it's not creators or like we hired you know actors through some sort of website where you

can act like find people so yeah kind of like a more like a pure ad I would say 100 percent

like relatively traditional form of production albeit with the internal team it's actually I'm super glad you bring it up as an example because then I was so so that's kind of been my frame of thinking where I'm like all right I get to hire this new director let me reflect on like where the teams at currently and what I would say is like we started from a place of like you know four or five years ago like hey we're gonna be pretty prescriptive with briefing

we're gonna get dozens of creators sort of like in our network and like that's gonna be our system

“and that has worked really well for a really long time I think we've moved into the direction of”

let's do lighter briefing with more creators but we haven't fully embraced it so I think that's

that's one path that we could further go down we're focused on TikTok shop right now and building

out the affiliate network and it's like that feels like a path for uh performance creative strategies now where you say hey your job is not really to do briefing anymore it's to build the system to you know onboard creators and maybe you're doing the coaching calls and the general brand education and the review of what ads are performing and what orange so that when you give a very loose brief of hey I need you to talk about you know this wallet for this sale it's just gonna come

back slightly higher quality so I think that's one path to go where it is just it is just more of a focus on volume and then the other way that I had was like more of what you just laid out the the bigger shoot the pre-production work the like let's actually think about a very high level concept and like let's execute on a really fantastic 32nd YouTube ad or CTV ad and those feel like um more likely than not will require different people like though I have to make that decision in terms of how

do I want to further build out the performance creative team and like those feel like two

“pretty distinct paths to make I agree I think because we're doing the same thing with the the”

TikTok shop affiliate content I think the only caveat I would add and even in this example I would still argue you want to keep it light on the briefing if you go and activate with a certain creator that's like speaking to a certain persona you still you might want to give that person a little bit more prescription on on kind of the why behind the reason you're activating with them just because the last thing you like if we go and activate with a mom or a dad style creator and the value

props that that person is gonna hit on are gonna be very different than the value props that you know some kind of 33 year old buff guy that's cooking a lot of steak are gonna hit on right the the parents gonna be all about I love how quick and quick and quick and heat up and how quick it cleans up because it's fast I love that I can throw it in the dishwasher because it's efficient like they're gonna be all about efficiency I got a family of six I'm cooking for and I'm cooking for

them six times a day or three times a day like you might just want to hit on that in the brief but other than that like you're still gonna let them cook you know you don't want to go too much deeper than that so I think that's the only caveat I would add is it's not like a full throw on the same brief and see what they they come like they're still there still can be varying levels of like pointing them in the right direction so I'm curious what I have a question for you

because you know presumably I know you have like this person left and now you're hiring until like backfill them but what's your current kind of creative strategy

team at this point yeah yeah we have two two USB strategies still we've got two offshore

“editors we've got three designers that's what we would consider the performance creative team right now”

yeah and one of those strategies is like a is like a hybrid strategist and editor okay what are there what are their skill sets would you say are they more like great at the operations create at the ideation some combination of each time curious based on their skill sets if you're thinking that the lead needs to fill a certain skill set more than others because you need them to like fit the puzzle piece the right way yeah I think and that's kind of what I was

what I was hitting at earlier what we currently do well is like slightly more involved the briefing and doing that at decent scale and we're we have been like sort of airing on the side of

scale recently where we've begun activating with more creators and like continuing to produce more

and more content and then also we've been you know building out this affiliate program and performance creative has sort of bled into that as well like let's make sure that the the briefing and direction that our affiliate community gets is also informed by our creative strategy so that's like that's a side of the spectrum that we've been exploring that we're good at and we have a project manager

“on the team and I think the system itself is like very well maintained and will continue to be so”

so when I think about hiring this new director it's really just we want to go further down the path of volume and do I look for someone who comes from like a TikTok shop oriented you know supplement brand like has activated thousands of creators in the past it's extremely reasonable

path for us to continue down or do we actually try to round out the platform more and say hey you know

we're we're looking for someone who has more experience with the the bigger shoots the higher productions the pre-production work we can take maybe fewer swings but they're more meaningful or potentially more impactful right some more like a true like creative director style background like that sort of deal yeah but but but again with the idea of it being you know performance oriented um i've been shocked at it's just like the amount of spend we've been able to get behind some of these

bigger creators or smaller creators that we just barely braved and then they send us back and

“add and it just like it's it's I think it's the secrets out now that we did a pretty big”

activation not not major but like we activate it with Bethany Frankle and she's the perfect example we're like you do not want to over breathe Bethany because the reason the reason she works in ads is for two reasons one because she walks products and her audience is there I don't know Bethany Frankle is oh Bethany Frankle is she's kind of like she's very a very successful entrepreneur I think she has this brand called like skinny tequila it's like some sort of I don't know if it's a

and a like mix brand like type product that you mix with tequila or if it's like alcohol and fuse but it's like skinny girl tequila or something like that she's super successful I think her she's like one of those kind of like HGTV not HGTV um like bravo sorry she's like a bravo personality so she's really like my mom watches stuff with Bethany Frankle and it and like um I would have to look up where she it she was on those like bravo TV shows for a long time so

but if you go look at her page I'm curious what her like initial like kind of path the fame was I forget but if you go look at her page she walks products like her audience she's a track she's inherently attracting people that sells products and I think you see this time in time again where a brand will activate with some large influencer and then they're like shocked that it didn't perform that well organically at least because they don't talk products and their audience isn't

there because they want to get sold products they're there because they like the content the lifestyle the whatever of that creator that influencer Bethany's not that she is talking about in reviewing products all the time her audience is there for that that's one reason she works the other reason is because we don't you know she's very authentic in the ad she makes like we didn't send her an overly prescribed brief we got something back though super authentic and on the surface level you're

like wait wait we paid we paid what for this because it's just like again it's like single shot barely edited stuff but then you you know we get to the end of the term we spent like seven eight x on those ads what we paid or we got a huge ROI on it and it's like yeah we didn't we'd let her do her thing and it felt very authentic to her and now our competitors realized that all of a sudden three four months into our deal all of a sudden you know she's popping up on an app with Karo I

were like all right maybe we should have had some exclusivity in the deal I don't necessarily think that took away from the performance of our activation with her but I think those are the things

be able to like come and and sell a product in a DR way I don't think that you have to necessarily

like they don't have to be doing this organically for them to make a good ad and for it to work in

“pay that's not what I'm saying but still I mean I think we've all had experiences where we've tried to”

get someone that's not used to selling products on paid social and then you go and say hey can you make an ad about this product and like it just doesn't come back that good because it's not a native format to them they're not used to doing that so I think I'm not saying they have to be doing it organically and have to have attracted an audience organically that's interested in that but often times these people don't know how to like sell a product in a DR way Bethany does like she

really does and there's a reason you're seeing a lot of brands activate with her there's a reason you're seeing a lot of brands activate with Eric I think is his name you know he's that fitness influencer that he does tons of brand deals he's good at making ads he knows how to sell products he knows how to like do it in a way that's fresh for each brand if you were to go and activate with I don't know Aaron judge or or some other athlete chances are they're not going to be

“able to like make a DR product oriented out the same way that Eric can so it's it's really important”

to like think about those things before just just thinking about the surface level like oh yeah this person I'm going to slap slap their name on our product in brand it's just going to work it's like well not really um I was actually actually saw an ad my friend cam sent me an ad from Janice Janice onto Kupo or however you say his last name and dude it was a gopuff ad and I was shocked

to how good he was I never thought Janice would would be like good in an ad and it was amazing it

was like more of a high-produced like scripted like kind of what we were talking about earlier but I was like amazed at how good Janice was I was like damn this is going to open up so many doors for Janice because brands are going to see how good he was in this ad and going and it was really funny it was like really tongue and cheek funny and it was one of the I just what I didn't expect him to be like that good in front of the camera making an ad yeah there's a bit of a spectrum

there between like the the Bethany Frank holes like being more social native to like Janice being in the TV commercial um quick quick aside here a Janice related and then we could jump into the AI agent point you wanted to hit but did you see there's a Kevin Durant and Drake ad out now for Kevin Durant's new shoes and Drake is fantastic in it um that doesn't shock me I mean Drake's an actor I was watching a grassy I was watching a grassy when I was like 11 years old you know totally

no and he's like I mean he is he's just a raw entertainer for sure like has the has the the true acting background um so of course like I guess it shouldn't be too much of a surprise but I just saw it like discussed on on Instagram and people were like people had for they were just acknowledging that they'd forgotten how good of an actor he was and that he just like absolutely crushes it in this Kevin Durant commercial um really I got to check it out I'm gonna fold up and it's abs so I don't

forget oh it's a Nike commercial okay yeah it's a Nike commercial it's Kevin Durant very famous basketball player has the Nike deal has some new shoes out and it's a very funny rich panel CEO just predicted his own SaaS products will lose 90% of its revenue and he's the one building what will kill it they are betting that AI agents will replace traditional support tools entirely no dashboards no seats no work flows so what did they ship an autonomous AI agent that

handles customer support from end to end reading order data issuing refunds updating shipments without a human ever touching it it means you can run a faster leaner support team at a fraction of the cost while resolving tickets instantly 24/7 rich panel is cannibalizing their own business to build the future of CX and support for brands because if they don't someone else will go check out what they're building at richpanel.com and learn how you can automate your entire

“support operation today look I think that's a good I think that's a good sort of touch base I”

appreciate one of those segments where um I'm just looking for help in my job I'm like let me just kind of talk this over with kind of rolling um sorry for that whole 100% uh you want to hit AI agent as a CRO plate what you have so what are you guys working on um T it up for me I am just so I'm so bullish on this use case for for AI like you know I think our initial our initial um in spell for this our muse for this was rufus on amazon and i'm actually looking at it it's like

Alexa for shopping so i don't know if they like sun-setted rufus and now they have Alexa for shopping

but for anyone that doesn't know rufus is basically this on amazon so you've got to amazon you

could say hey I'm having I work a desk job I said at a desk for eight hours a day I'm having

and it'll basically come back you and say all right thank thanks for the info counter here are five

products that could help your back issues because of your desk job and it's actually really really helpful tool especially when you're looking at a marketplace like amazon where there's you know hundreds of thousands of products but I also think it applies well to a D to C brand when you have multiple categories and a lot of spread in your products as well you know if you're a one product brand probably not but you know at hex cloud like where we have more and more and more categories every

single year every single month we also have a very high price point so I'm actually I'm very bullish on this like AI agent embedded into a Shopify brand that's trained on all the context of the brand

“and putting that in you know basically testing into it like you would with any zero clay I think”

this could be a massive improvement in conversion rate maybe even AOV because theoretically if you give it the right context like the same way that you know navigation wins or like product category testing or like when I say product category testing I mean like product category discoverability testing it generally drives up AOV so I'm very bullish on these like embedded AI agents on brands websites and and those being able to really improve conversion rate and AOV because more

questions they're getting answered you're able to break down friction in a more custom way you're able to make your product more discoverable so that's something we've been working on in the background now for like a while actually we've been doing a lot of RFPs for different options out there they're becoming more and more common but our vendor that we're already working with is actually rolling out a solution here so we're about to we're about to get going with we're not ready to launch

it but like we've decided who we're gonna work with and we're about to like give it all the training

and build it out and then the first place we're gonna test it is right at the point of conversion

on the product page and just super bullish on on this for our brand because of our price point in our category breath and in a bunch of other things and I'm thinking we're gonna see this become like this is not it's not we're gonna not be the first one to do it um who's the who's the big pizza of in brand that everyone knows um not solo stove um um um uni uni uni is another

“muse for us on this one they have uh if you go to their product page I think you'll see it right”

on there in their shop section um where you can just go and ask it I think they had it on here um yeah you can go and see it on here they have a little like person icon now I think this is where we where we first saw it and we are really inspired by these guys so yeah I'm just super excited about it I think it's gonna become I think a year from now like tons of brands are gonna have this in various spots on their website in order to like be a zero pie so you guys are starting it

on the PDP will it live as like a little widget in the corner that someone can like it help icon then someone can click into and ask a question I think our first place we're gonna test it is actually like below the cart not not as a flyout like I think we're gonna have like a default open um like open chat box and like have some sort of like default copy that invite someone to ask a question we're gonna test into a bunch of different UX on it over the course of three months so we'll see

which one we end up testing in two but yeah point right at the point in conversion is where we're gonna initially launch it but I could see this I mean some people I've seen brands have like an open question chat bar as they're like hero section before which is really interesting now that's usually

“brands with like I'm I'm talking like car parts brands right where you have to like what card do you”

have it's like I have a 25 25 25 Jeep Cherokee like that's more the use case there I don't think we'll be that level of like front and center but I think there's tons of spots that this could

this could work it also turns into an amazing first party data source because you can go and

then look and aggregate and look at all the things people are typing in and see oh wow you know 50% of these inquiries are about topic acts we're not addressing that in our ads or in our emails or anywhere else like we should go build funnels around that so I think it'll also inform our marketing stack over time as well which is gonna be a fun yeah I'm super interested to see the different UX patterns of people experiment with over you know the coming years

what I've seen most commonly is like that little flyout thing at the bottom which I'm not a good news yeah this one he has and I get it um it doesn't feel all that intuitive to me it's still very like proactive I don't think people are used to like that form of interaction you brought up the I really liked the search being an entry point into AI assisted shopping you know Google so good at this at this point I'd like don't Google stuff all that much anymore

somebody's age and like Google their age got an answer with their little knowledge box thing and then I needed additional information so I was immediately able to turn that into an AI chat interface and I'm like that's almost like the I-beal interaction we're like give me the clear the clear information that I'm looking for it's likely just indexed or whatever else and then

“as I need to explore that further then it becomes AI assisted and I think that could work really”

well within a Shopify store and we just see so I mean we're we're like we don't even have a very big catalog and we see so much engagement with the search part as we've expanded categories and products over the last couple of years it was spent more time getting the right search interaction in place like making sure that it's available on mobile in the nav that once you do search that that surp page is actually like a pretty decent and strong and it's like you have so much intent

and and understanding of what that person's looking for it that feels like a very high leverage touch point to maybe be more AI sort of augmented I think I actually think most people are like oh AI is going to take everyone's job I think you probably agree with this I just I've really

really generally disagree with that I think AI makes you have more powerful it makes you more

productive I don't think it's I think there's a lot more enhancement of your job than it is taking jobs I think this is one of the use cases where I think it should in theory reduce head count on C.S because if you set this up in the right way and you give a tool like this all

“of the right context and theory you should it should drive down the C.S tickets that your team's”

getting so I would hope that because of that you're able to actually reduce head count on like the amount of customer service agents that you have this is one of those use cases where I'm very curious to to see hey we've been live with this for three months and then go into our C.S team and and seeing if they're noticing any trends on volume of customer service tickets coming through I would hope that they're seeing less because we're able to answer a lot more of those questions

in real time and get those conversions sooner and not have to get people to reach out to a customer service line talk to a real a real agent not a not an AI agent that'll be very interesting to see but like if you go to simple tire again like their their hero section is a search bar you know it search by vehicle search by tire search by rebate search by yada yada you know this could even be like a quiz replacement at some point if you have some pre-templated search queries 100% yeah yeah

quiz replacement is a good one because quizzes in many ways like forms are like because code wasn't good at you know inferring what someone was looking for it was like you had to collect the information in a very structured way in order to act upon it and now it's like static logic yeah exactly now you can just like type in whatever you want you can miss spell it and like and we're pretty good it actually kind of closing the loop there you mentioned it being a good source of

first party data have you guys been using the post script AI shopper tools it's like very similar

they've positioned it very similar to what you're describing where instead of being on site and on the PDP and having a question and you know asking this AI shopping assistant and getting the answer that I need that can be happening off- website via SMS naturally a conversational platform and that they're also collecting that first party data and that can help you you know segment

“and identifying tent and things like that I think we are honest I would need to check in with”

our retention lead I don't know I mean I'm sure we are because he's like all on top of all these like newest tech options to optimize and find those incremental wins in those channels are you guys using it yeah we and like because it's one of those things it just feels I actually had this thought like a couple months ago in like my team's acting on it now there's just a handful of things in SMS right now that feel inevitable and the two to me are RCS so the rich content sending just

making it more dynamic better lengths you get carousels you get better um insights into like delivery metrics and things like that you actually begin getting like open rates on SMS which is super cool

um and then the second one is AI and it's just a matter of like how do we want to implement it

and I'll give you an example I said uh with the website example take you've got the pdp we surface an AI chat on our help pages and that's one way we just try to like deflect tickets that would otherwise have to be answered manually by a team member um search I think is an interesting touch point one of the ones that I'm most excited about within SMS right now because the exact same idea is someone signs up for SMS they receive the welcome series they get two messages they haven't

converted we have a prompt and it's just an open-ended ask of like what else what else do you need here like how can we help you and it becomes just conversational at that point and the AI manages that

value we're able to deliver most of the information that they need and typically it's like a promo code

or like a little bit of the like you know that's standard welcome series sort of messaging but it's after that point where it's like they could need any number of things and now we're going to let the AI sort of like figure out what that is and push them down the path that we think is best um so I just think we'll find more and more examples of that like augmentation throughout the shopping experience yeah because what I'm what we're talking about on like the onsite

“agent is the same thing just different channel a little bit further up funnel um I agree I think”

this is yeah I mean I want to be surprised if customer success teams are able to be cut in half or a fourth of the size because brands are implementing this onsite in SMS anything that's just

like easier to have a back and forth interaction with with a real person when I say a real person

I mean like a real prospect of customer on on one end and then obviously AI on the other and yeah I I fully agree I think this is this is absolutely the direction we're heading before Q4 hits the smartest e-commerce operators aren't just asking how do we spend more they're asking how do we make every visitor more profitable that is where after self comes in after sell helps e-commerce brands increase revenue per visitor contribution margin and incremental profit by

optimizing the highest intent moments cart checkout post purchase and even the thank you page brands like hexclad rich and pillar increasing their AOV across every cohort using these zero risk upsells we've tested and they have no negative impact on conversion it's just more free money in your pocket and with rocked thanks you can offset your after sell subscription no redesigns no risky funnels just better economics want to see how much money you can make with after sell go to

after sell dot com slash rocket revenue forecast put in your numbers and see how much more profit your funnel will make before BFCM starts we don't have all that much more time I've got to list of things that I want of it I want to do to we're going to over we're going to over underrated exercise

here I want to jump into we're talking about SFS a little bit in the first the first one I want

“to hate here I've got email deliverability vendors so I hear this come up more and more I think”

you and I've talked about it there's there's people there's software vendors today who are helping you get better email deliverability better open rates landing in the inbox more frequently people might be in the the the the the point of the game is like you also have to assess how what is properly rated today right and then it's like and then and then you can decide whether it's over underrated so so let's start with this one email deliverability as of you know as a software

the vendors have we wanted to find that over over under or properly rated so underrated so underrated we've I think email I think I said this like a few months ago I think email is one of those channels where these call it tech partners or like technology overlay is on your kind of existing levers which is just like creative and email you know the levers in email are no different than the levers in paid this is one area where I think there's huge upside when you activate with these

technology partners whereas I don't feel that way with paid social you know generally these like audience targeting tech tools at least in my experience having driven much of a lift we've tested these email deliver email deliverability vendors which is more or less just helping you land in more it's it's like technical updates that help you land in the primary inbox more we've we've done hold out today driven significant lift so I think they're they're wildly underrated

okay okay so I love this yeah yeah so I also think they're underrated I also think they're underrated there is going to be a question very quickly over time as to how much brands should be willing to pay for them like like we're gonna all have to be conscious of that I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of those things well maybe I was it's a little I think we're early to the trend right now I think a lot of people aren't using anything I agree with you we've seen

fantastic results of onboarding some of these people and just getting better deliverability driving revenue because of that it probably becomes commoditized over time and therefore not ideally not a

“big software cost so like that's the only thing that I would break out quickly for brands extremely”

underrated currently for it being the crux of your business model I think might be a little overrated right now I was gonna like if I was gonna give give give give my sort of my outlook on it over the next 18 months yeah and and like also once everyone or once it's the status quo to use it okay well now all brands or 85% of brands are showing up in your primary inbox and now you're back right where you started because now there's the same level of noise it's just in your

kind of go back towards the meme the meme rather so of hour if hour one of the leading brands in

this space right now I'd be scaling fast and selling fast probably because over time more brands are gonna be showing up in the same space and then the incrementality of it starts to search to fall probably totally yeah I totally agree one I like your point a lot and I hadn't made this connection of it being valuable on the you know in this case email sending side of things and this sort of technology not being valuable for paid social I talked to someone else recently

and they were like look we're gonna look at your email list we're going to build these like likelyhood to purchase scores and then we're gonna like push these people back to Meta so you could target them there and I was like I couldn't have less of an interest in that I'm like that just feels so like like an artifact of like 2018 that I would have thought was like really cool and interesting and I'm like now I'm like look we like might have exclusions on some campaigns

like that's as that is as like targeted as we're gonna get so a lot of these people trying to build

like meta audience tooling I would call overrated like I just never I never see them actually work

I never saw them work even like four years ago I feel like they didn't work now what I will say is I do think event matching tools are properly rated like you know the you know because

“that makes your that's I mean that's a signal engineering play at the end of the day like I think if you”

have a five out of ten event match rate in meta like if you go to your events manager like that's a problem like your your data qualities not as good as it should be that's one of those ones where it's hard to fully quantify how valuable it is to take that from a five or four out of ten to a seven or nine out of ten but I I believe and I that also should help you with exclusions if you're event match rate is better well then your exclusions should be stronger as well so I'd actually think

those those tools are like the elevars of the world and the blood out to the world and the I don't know there's a bunch of those tools now I think those are I think most brands at scale should

maybe even brands not at scale like even if you're like a ten million per year brand I think most

brands should have a tool like that to make your just data quality in meta and elsewhere good because it's not just meta right it also like like if you have an elevator in your and that also helps for example if you have someone that signed up for your email list then two months later they come back and add to carpet don't convert that also helps you match them in that channel as well and you're

“now you're getting more people into like your abandonment flow so I think that does help the whole”

funnel a lot but absolutely agree yeah elevars elevars fantastic I think that's like I think it's reason we press it been a long time since I was a small brand paying for elevar but like we used to every time we set up an international story elevars like a part of the launch it's like yeah let's just get all all the pixels and all the events and GA set up in a way that's like it's just all strong up the way that you want I think that's a good one I got one more on this point

so actually just to say for those listening if people are interested we use tie for the email deliverability stuff I've heard good things about Maverick um totally uh we okay we talked about elevars but as soon as it's tool called shopped in that we started using and this is such a funny part of the stack it is uh it works in your checkout and it's like a more dynamic form of email capture and what it does is if the if the shopper is in a state where it's compliant to have the email

“opt-in auto checked it auto checks it that's what it does and it's a no brainer what does that mean”

because like so if they're in a state it auto what is it what do you all right so what are like that what's the logic where auto check it um you know like compliance like auto like opting people into marketing at different touchpoints whether it's like your your email like your email capture and like cookies are a part of this conversation like different states CCPA is different than GDPR um yeah so you just get all the in all these different regions uh you have different

compliance laws oh I see in a lot of people just default to like hey let me just do the safest option everywhere and all shopped in does is like it just localizes marketing opt-in by where that person is I see what's it called and it's just it's it's is shopped in with a T in the middle S.H.O.P. T.I.M. and yeah it's just one of those things also I feel the same way that I do about email deliverability where this probably gets commodized over time as well but it is just one of those it's a little

part of the technology and whether you want to call it e-commerce retention it like will improve opt-in rate some amount in capturing those emails and being able to send a few more can really compound over time so I think um we started with email deliverability over underrated we both said

where where is software and technology still impactful and I think we explored that pretty well I'd describe all of that as relatively underrated right now we talk about incrementality a lot but how do you actually operationalize it to make your business better that is one thing that I've been really leaning in with my team recently and house has played a tremendous role we use it for all of our experiments all of our geolift testing but we now use it for

MMM as well I've been a design partner I've been one of the early design partners on how to see MMM see stands for causal so it's one of the only MMM's if not the only MMM that I've seen that's actually using your causal experiments to build the model and set allows me to just trust the data so much more so it's not a black box but actually informs our roadmap and has been so

crucial for allowing us to operationalize around ink for mortality the house team is world class I can't

speak highly enough about them they've also built a really amazing community with some of the

“best D to see growth operators out there if you want to check it out learn a little bit more about”

CMM go to house.io/operators to start making better data driven decisions today all right can we go I have one that I want to head on we're not going to get close to the list what do you want to hit next I G a 4 G a 4 over underrated okay I'm going to go so again people hate G a 4 this one's actually super I think this is super easy answer people hate G a 4 Google analytics or Google ruined Google analytics like it's really it's really not good

it is underrated yes it's got to the point where it's so hard to use and people have written it off so much that they forget that there's really still a lot of really valuable information in there the reason I put this one on the list is we're in the middle of our theme test we talked about it last week G a 4 and building segments based off of intelligence testing cells is still extremely valuable and we got like a extremely granular like page level information between the two segments and

“it's just hard to get that data elsewhere so I'm calling it underrated I agree I think so here's”

where I think it's it's not underrated I think like we use edge mask for site speed and they also have built on that server site technology they have an analytics suite and like server side analytics

is a lot like it's always less leaky than client side where you know pixels don't load or

UTMs don't load so like I think if you're a brand that has a tool like server side analytics it's you don't need GA4 anymore however what if you're a brand that doesn't have that I think J4 is wildly underrated like I was I was talking to this apparel brand and they're trying to do some non-purchased conversion event stuff and I was trying to convince them that like but what they were doing wasn't working that well and they should try some other stuff

the first place I went was GA4 and I did like a campaign UTM and it was like we'll look at the time on site look up the amount of like actions these people are taking relative to some of the

“other campaigns that you're that you're doing I still think there's really good data in GA4 I was”

also looking at like they had really high frequency because they're running like 1% I was just like doing a quick audit for them and trying to give them some quick advice and like they're like running 1% look alike I was like well your frequency here's 4 but if you go into GA4 because they don't have some of these other tech or analytics tools you can see that it's still driving a lot of new user growth here website so it's like not great that it's a 4 or 5 frequency and like prospecting

but it is still driving first time website visitors you can still extract a lot of that

information and like it helps you trying to get what's going on in your various marketing channels I don't think people spend enough time in GA4 assuming they don't have some of these other like they don't have more than they don't have an edge mask they don't have you know some of these other tools and house is maybe going to give GA4 a resurgence because house is you know building that integration with GA4 so you know GA4 could have a Renaissance coming on the back of

you know one of the best measurement tools out there house so I agree underrated especially for brands that don't have as robust of an analytics suite yeah that's a good one it's a really funny point around house making GA4 more relevant or even I brought it up really the only reason I used GA4 was because it was a complement to intelligence so like there is the other thing about it being underrated from from an industry perspective is it's free and basically everybody has it

it's not like it's not there like if I'm if I'm house or if I'm in intelligence like it does make sense for me to have integrations and documentation because like everybody's got it you brought up so I don't I'm unfamiliar with edge meshes product you brought up North Beam and like I would love for North Beam to make GA4 less relevant but like a lot of their stuff is still GA4 is like page oriented right it's like really about like the website I think North Beam has

basically like page visits like you can't really get out of North Beam I would love for them to build

time on site stuff like that like average like events per yeah there's all sorts of web analytics that you get out of but even edge meshes you don't get like you don't get time on site data you know so even there are certain things where GA4 is still kind of the the only option for that for that data which is interesting I'm shocked that you can't get everything in some other tool now so yeah maybe that's the next the next opportunity if someone can build a better time on site tool

then then GA4 then GA4 will officially be done for I think I've got one last one for you okay it's a joke one it came up recently with a friend over underrated waving at the end of zoom calls the physical wave I think it is I think it's underrated I think it's underrated I don't I don't

“think you should treat like if I'm having a conversation with someone I don't think I should treat it”

any differently on a zoom call that is I don't think I should treat it any differently than if I

am having a conversation with someone in person like I think the the social the social norm should still like cut through digitally like it's not like you just like hit and don't say goodbye that's not really that be weird I'm like I'm usually throwing up a piece sign or a or a wave or a salute there's some sort of like there's a physical acknowledgement that that we are wrapping this conversation underrated dude I absolutely agree I also think this

one's easy just because waving at the end of zoom calls like get online like people act like it's really this one I came up with I was talking with the friend and they thought it was really cringe and I'm like dude not at all I'm like one there's there's multiple reasons for it I like the one that you said hey we're talking face to face we're ending the call some sort of physical acknowledgement is just common courtesy that we should extend from the physical world into

the digital one I personally am so supportive of that the other big one is when you're on a big call 15 people everybody's muted for the most part there there should be some there should be like it's just common courtesy for there to be some sort of acknowledgement you're not and not

everybody's gonna come off me and say bye I'm like not a fan of that I always think that's kind of

like a weird like sort of online thing that people do so just the subtle way of the subtle acknowledgement I think is good I think we gotta I think we gotta embrace it or another good

“example if you have to leave early you know I usually drop a little hey gotta jump appreciated the”

chat we'll talk later you hit enter on that hit him with a wave leave I think that's good it's actually that's so weird I feel weird when it's too abrupt like at the end of a call it's like oh oh we're done okay it just feels it's like there's no closure to the conversation it's like oh we just hit hit leave and yeah it's weird it's it's just like it doesn't feel right I absolutely agree you know all right there's a little bit of in the side I there's a book that I really love

called culture code it's about building high performing teams it's a great book they go through way different types of teams also like they they they talk with the people or they they talk about the people who watch the nuclear bombs the nuclear warheads they talk about they probably talk about like maybe seals or something and then the one that I'm gonna say is Greg Popovich the coach of the San Antonio spurs in the culture that he builds and one of the things that they

talked quite a bit about with Greg Popovich is just like the way he carries himself between players physically like they said he'd show up to practice and he would like acknowledge everybody one to one and he'd like you know a light like touch on the shoulder like these very like physical interactions very subtle we're like a great way for him to be building rapport and connection between him and his players and like I read this book years ago

but what stood out to me immediately is like you lose all of that immediately when you have a remote team and I don't think the way that the end of the zoom call is like the difference between

“building a high performing team or not but I think I think caring about those small interactions”

is good and I what reminded me of it is when you say yeah the abruptly ending calls and like everybody just hangs up nobody says goodbye nobody waves like there's no sort of proper ending I do think ends up having like long-term impacts on on team trust and team dynamics and things like that yeah well one I'm excited to read that book it sounds like you know I do I do think like great leaders have like a super high enhanced level of I think that's like an emotional intelligence thing

I also you know I'm gonna lay right now I come out here once a month once every six weeks whenever I'm out here I feel like I just don't get much work done because it's just like

I think over time I've learned that you know that's okay and that like the value of me

“going and having a chat with someone on the team on like unplanned for 15 minutes in the kitchen”

is is probably more valuable than me taking that 15 to 30 minutes and like getting some work done

and it's like unless it's like something that has to get done two day for like something too

“maro so you know what I can I can get to that next week or tonight when I'm not in office with the team”

I'm like it's it's okay I used to like feel anxious about that it's I know this is why I'm here like to get to get this face time with the team and to be able to like go and grab a beer with them

“at at 530 when we're done for the day so I agree I think and I think it's hard to”

it's really hard to replicate that digitally it's just so those these small things I agree to make a big a big difference even if they they don't seem like it you can feel it right like you can it's like intuitive it's and it's like oh that felt weird that we just like all abrupt it abruptly ended that and yeah say goodbye yeah it's a bad vibe you can feel that that's

stop yeah all right well you you heard it here first waving at the end of zoom both dramatically

underrated um already do let's call it an episode super fun