Dan Martell - Building a $100M+ Company - Matt Bertulli @ Pela Interview

00:00:00.120 Scale and paid is about speed, right?

00:00:03.600 So outsourcing creative to me doesn't work, not at scale.

00:00:08.760 So if you're a small brand,

00:00:09.960 you can outsource creative all day long

00:00:12.000 because your cycles are much longer.

00:00:14.920 My cycles are daily.

00:00:16.280 Matt Bercelli, what's up, dude?

00:00:31.440 You almost did it.

00:00:32.260 I know.

00:00:32.620 You almost said the name wrong.

00:00:33.780 So Matt and I were just joking before we started that a lot of, some people call him Matt Bercelli.

00:00:40.280 Bercelli, which if you read the phonetical spelling, it makes no sense.

00:00:43.880 Matt's the founder of Pela Case and it is Pela.

00:00:47.580 Did you guys do the voting online on how to pronounce it?

00:00:50.720 No, we just, we have fun with it.

00:00:52.480 Oh, I thought you guys actually went to the market

00:00:54.620 and then it was like official, it's not Pela, it's Pela.

00:00:57.400 Well, yeah, we've done a video like that.

00:00:59.760 We've also done like several where-

00:01:02.100 Oh, you still let the market-

00:01:03.500 Totally.

00:01:04.340 Yeah, because it's fun.

00:01:05.260 It gets engagement going on,

00:01:07.160 like especially on ads or social.

00:01:09.140 But from the CEO-

00:01:10.880 I don't care.

00:01:12.200 He's not even gonna give us an answer.

00:01:13.200 Brand people are going to be like,

00:01:14.540 oh, dude, no, you need to pick one.

00:01:16.040 You need to stick one.

00:01:16.500 No, no.

00:01:16.820 It's like Nike or Nike.

00:01:18.820 Which one is it?

00:01:20.020 Well, I would say Nike,

00:01:21.260 but unless Phil Knight tells me,

00:01:22.780 I guess I'm not sure.

00:01:23.660 Right.

00:01:24.220 And the Phil Knight of Pila doesn't want to tell us.

00:01:26.400 I'm not saying.

00:01:27.080 Then there's that.

00:01:27.820 Anyways, if you're not familiar with the brand,

00:01:30.800 started off in the phone case,

00:01:32.220 accessories made by a biopolymer.

00:01:35.900 Is that correct?

00:01:36.540 Accurate flaxseed.

00:01:37.320 Some people can see it if you're watching the video.

00:01:40.320 I am a big fan.

00:01:41.600 I'm also an investor.

00:01:42.240 where I sit on the board, which is super fun,

00:01:44.000 listening to these guys debate for the best idea,

00:01:48.460 which is awesome.

00:01:49.960 B Corp.

00:01:50.740 Yep.

00:01:51.560 Fastest growing Canadian company, top 10.

00:01:54.360 I think they're second in like in retail.

00:01:56.560 I think the only one faster than us in retail was Article.

00:01:58.820 So second in retail.

00:02:00.240 And then number nine.

00:02:01.260 What can you share about the numbers?

00:02:03.400 Oh, dude.

00:02:04.560 So right now, like mid eight figures run rate.

00:02:06.940 Yep.

00:02:08.300 It's kind of got there in the last like four years.

00:02:10.420 Yeah.

00:02:11.260 fast crazy fast like crazy crazy fast yeah and like in physical stuff that's super fast like when

00:02:18.540 you're if it's software or digital goods like the scale is kind of infinite but when you have to make 0.97

00:02:23.180 things and ship them around the world the logistics part of the business is a pain in the ass to keep

00:02:27.980 up with high growth yeah um so you kind of like want to step it up you don't want to rocket it up

00:02:33.580 yeah we had a period of about 18 months though where we were rocketing it up and it was a

00:02:37.100 giant what happens in that period that breaks uh everything so like just inventory levels i'm sure

00:02:43.860 brad yeah like it's it's uh people will break really fast um capital structure breaks really

00:02:49.860 fast yeah with physical stuff because you're buying a lot yeah like you go for us we have

00:02:53.860 to buy raw materials because we're vertical the whole stack the whole stack so you got to buy

00:02:58.200 everything ahead of time you're not drop shippers no we're not drop shipping no we do this weird

00:03:03.900 You're the opposite of that.

00:03:05.300 Yeah, we do this like weird thing

00:03:06.520 called like product development and R and D

00:03:08.540 and you know, we build things.

00:03:10.500 That's crazy.

00:03:11.340 Yeah, so it all, like capital, people,

00:03:14.720 and in your systems, like a lot of that broke.

00:03:17.540 Yeah.

00:03:18.380 And kind of like every,

00:03:19.220 so we were at one point between 2017 and 2019,

00:03:23.640 we were doubling every 30 to 60 days as we were going,

00:03:29.200 like going from like zero to eight figure run rate.

00:03:32.140 Um, it was really, really fast.

00:03:34.620 So kind of like every 90 days we were saying, okay, like, which did the team break?

00:03:39.620 Did we break capital structure or did we, did we really screw up one of our systems or processes?

00:03:45.580 Um, and it was always one of those, if not a combination of.

00:03:49.340 And do you eventually get to a point where you can kind of anticipate and get ahead of it?

00:03:53.240 Yeah, totally.

00:03:53.960 So like for a physical goods company, there are, there are these like little sweets, but like any business, right?

00:04:00.960 it's kind of similar to like team sizes,

00:04:04.180 you know, the threes and tens, you know,

00:04:06.220 there's those rules, like physical stuff,

00:04:08.500 particularly direct to consumer in our type of thing.

00:04:10.960 Just so that, cause I know somebody's listening

00:04:12.460 and going like, I wanna know about that.

00:04:13.900 Yeah, like teams break at your threes and tens.

00:04:15.640 So like three people, 30 people, or like 10 people,

00:04:18.960 a hundred people, that kind of thing.

00:04:21.140 So natural break points.

00:04:22.240 Yeah. Like 30 people is a big one for a lot of companies.

00:04:25.420 Cause at least in our network,

00:04:27.540 we know a lot of people that entrepreneurs that get to 30.

00:04:30.400 The ceiling.

00:04:31.240 They hit it.

00:04:32.060 And that's where they hit it.

00:04:32.900 And then you listen to the problems

00:04:35.840 and there's just so many of them

00:04:37.900 with that amount of people.

00:04:39.780 Like we're at about 60, 65 right now,

00:04:42.720 which is we're in the awkward zone to get to 100.

00:04:46.780 We're like, we know again, it'll break at 100,

00:04:49.160 but we're building a lot of infrastructure right now.

00:04:51.920 And people ahead knowing that it's gonna break.

00:04:54.320 Which is expensive.

00:04:55.400 So expensive, yeah, yeah.

00:04:57.660 That's the, again, that's the capital structure part, right?

00:05:00.400 And entrepreneurs, they don't realize that,

00:05:02.680 hey, you need to make these bets

00:05:03.960 with some level of confidence and certainty.

00:05:06.200 And if you mis-execute, yeah, you'll have,

00:05:09.840 your labor cost is gonna be way outpacing your revenue.

00:05:13.040 Yeah, you're trying not to get too far out over your skis,

00:05:15.420 but you wanna be a little out over your skis.

00:05:17.320 Yeah, take advantage of the opportunity.

00:05:19.060 Yeah.

00:05:19.660 So obviously that's today.

00:05:22.300 Where did Matt learn how to scale e-commerce?

00:05:26.740 Still learning, dude.

00:05:28.120 Still learning.

00:05:28.620 But I mean, obviously you're one of the top people

00:05:31.340 that I turn to, you know, whenever I get some time,

00:05:34.640 my marketing guy calls Matt,

00:05:36.480 which nobody listening will have that benefit, unfortunately.

00:05:39.480 But, and I don't know how much long it's gonna last for me.

00:05:42.260 Where did you learn this skill?

00:05:44.100 Well, so, I mean, prior to PILA,

00:05:45.660 I owned an agency called DMACC Media,

00:05:48.180 which I had sold to private equity.

00:05:49.840 They were doing a big roll-up.

00:05:51.140 So we're about a hundred people.

00:05:52.640 That company-

00:05:53.640 How long did you build DMACC for?

00:05:54.740 It was like almost 11 years start to sale.

00:05:57.140 Where did it start?

00:05:58.620 in a basement.

00:05:59.800 Is that the first company?

00:06:00.760 Yeah, first company, yeah.

00:06:02.620 I left NetSuite.

00:06:04.260 So we had just gone public at NetSuite.

00:06:06.320 This was 2007-ish, 2008,

00:06:09.140 somewhere around the financial crisis.

00:06:11.460 So I left my great job at NetSuite after we went public,

00:06:15.340 got married, bought a house,

00:06:16.860 and then started a company all in like four months 0.98

00:06:19.960 and decided I'm never doing that much shit all again, 0.97

00:06:22.380 like ever at the same time. 0.97

00:06:24.880 Started DMACC at that time was just like,

00:06:26.940 I saw what we were doing at NetSuite with in the US

00:06:30.920 and I'm like, okay, we gotta do this in Canada.

00:06:32.600 Like this e-com thing is super hot in the US

00:06:35.180 and it hasn't really gone.

00:06:36.440 What do you mean by hot in the US?

00:06:38.880 Just like retailers knowing e-commerce?

00:06:40.720 Yeah, so like they were just a,

00:06:42.000 Canada and Australia were way behind,

00:06:45.140 at that time, way behind the UK and the US,

00:06:48.240 which both had growing,

00:06:50.000 like think of it in terms of percentage of retail

00:06:53.380 that was moving online, right?

00:06:55.160 of penetration.

00:06:56.660 At that time, Canada was 1%.

00:06:58.760 The US was seven or 8%.

00:07:00.640 The UK was like eight or 9%.

00:07:03.500 It was way, way behind.

00:07:05.340 And working for an American company

00:07:07.440 that did a lot of like backend software,

00:07:09.940 which is what NetSuite is,

00:07:11.380 I was watching what these American guys were doing, 1.00

00:07:13.580 thinking, okay, Canadians are about to do this. 0.87

00:07:16.040 So I started the agency

00:07:17.820 and I went out to brick and mortar retailers in Canada.

00:07:21.080 So think of like your average shopping mall here.

00:07:23.680 I went to those guys.

00:07:24.960 I said, you don't have an online store right now.

00:07:27.580 How about I build it, right?

00:07:29.520 I'll do it for very little money upfront,

00:07:31.900 but I want a piece of your sales for the next five years.

00:07:36.000 How do you do that starting in a basement?

00:07:37.880 Cause these are not, these are not like SMBs.

00:07:40.460 Yeah, like how do you fake it?

00:07:41.740 How do you get that first deal, who was it?

00:07:43.380 So I grew up in a retail family.

00:07:44.840 So I knew how to talk retail.

00:07:46.500 Okay.

00:07:47.340 Like my grandparents owned retail stores.

00:07:48.980 My mom is a retailer.

00:07:50.740 So like I knew their language.

00:07:53.120 So when I went in, I was speaking like one of them, right?

00:07:57.120 I kind of knew what their pain points were.

00:07:59.220 I knew where the risks were. 1.00

00:08:01.220 I knew like all of the stupid terminology. 0.99

00:08:04.520 So Ben Burmaster from Snuggle Bugs. 0.99

00:08:06.720 No way, Ben was your first.

00:08:07.880 Yeah, man.

00:08:08.720 Oh, that's amazing.

00:08:09.560 And he's like still a great friend.

00:08:11.460 And then another guy named Neil Madden from like ECS Coffee.

00:08:14.980 And then I got a big one.

00:08:16.080 I think it was Bentley bags.

00:08:17.520 Remember luggage, Bentley luggage?

00:08:19.220 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:08:20.620 And then a whole bunch of them in Montreal.

00:08:22.380 So like we did bench.

00:08:23.560 Montreal's got a lot of apparel.

00:08:24.660 Tons of apparel.

00:08:25.500 So like we did a bunch of apparel in Quebec.

00:08:29.000 And then we wound up like by the time we sold,

00:08:31.460 we had sleep country.

00:08:33.120 We just finished moving staples over to Shopify in Canada.

00:08:38.940 Government of Alberta, like we had massive stuff.

00:08:41.320 So it kind of went from like SMB all the way up

00:08:44.280 the enterprise.

00:08:45.120 So you started on the SMB, work your way mid market.

00:08:47.840 Yeah.

00:08:48.880 But the business model I've always found fascinating.

00:08:51.620 I mean, was that happenstance and luck

00:08:54.580 that you decided to do it that way?

00:08:56.660 Because in hindsight, performance base

00:08:58.560 is an advanced thing agencies would do.

00:09:02.140 Yeah, and I started in, I would,

00:09:04.800 yeah, it's tough to switch to if you're used to like billing.

00:09:07.860 Yeah, retainers.

00:09:08.780 Totally, because it's like, that's better.

00:09:10.100 And we ultimately did get rid of the performance thing

00:09:12.220 because as e-commerce grew, people don't want to-

00:09:15.400 They just didn't want to get up those markets.

00:09:16.240 No, man, it's like, it started to feel like a tax at scale.

00:09:19.180 Up front, it was like, this is a great deal.

00:09:20.720 we should do this.

00:09:21.560 No risk.

00:09:22.380 At scale, it's tax.

00:09:24.120 So there was a flaw in the model there.

00:09:25.840 But then at scale, we could switch

00:09:27.320 to another billing model, retainer, or project hourly,

00:09:30.400 whatever we were doing, and a whole mix of stuff.

00:09:33.940 Was there certain companies that inspired your decisions

00:09:36.540 back then that you looked to, or?

00:09:39.080 No, I mean, at that time, all of us in that space,

00:09:42.600 even the Americans, we were all kind of coming up

00:09:45.020 at the same time.

00:09:46.480 So even though the American market was ahead,

00:09:49.820 At that time, you still only had the IBMs, the Accentures,

00:09:53.440 like the really big consultancies and tech companies

00:09:56.880 were playing in e-commerce tech, like software.

00:10:01.060 This was pre-Shopify.

00:10:02.620 I remember back, most people wouldn't even know this,

00:10:04.880 but Amazon had a platform.

00:10:06.200 Amazon had a storefront platform for small business

00:10:08.780 that they just recently got rid of.

00:10:10.000 They did one of Staples.

00:10:10.840 Wasn't that one of their big deals?

00:10:11.720 There was like one big, well, they had a few.

00:10:14.060 Like an office, there was like an office company

00:10:15.660 that they were powering.

00:10:16.500 They had somebody that there was like a big one.

00:10:18.120 It was like a big deal.

00:10:18.960 It's like a multi-million dollar deal.

00:10:20.320 Oh yeah.

00:10:21.160 And this is pre-Shopify?

00:10:22.860 Way pre-Shopify, yeah.

00:10:23.620 So like I started, yeah.

00:10:25.120 So Shopify, I think was actually starting at that time.

00:10:28.260 But if you remember Shopify's history,

00:10:29.640 it was like, let's go to Etsy store owners

00:10:32.540 and give them a way to sell their like five bars

00:10:34.860 of show up on Shopify.

00:10:36.700 I remember I was on a panel with Harley.

00:10:39.500 There's another good dude.

00:10:41.380 This is like 2010.

00:10:42.880 Yeah, we've had Toby on the show.

00:10:44.240 I get it, Harley.

00:10:45.280 Harley brings another level of energy.

00:10:46.980 Oh, Toby's a genius.

00:10:47.820 Toby's another level of genius.

00:10:48.960 Harley's another level of energy. 0.94

00:10:50.300 I was sitting there talking to him

00:10:51.260 and it was like, I was talking to Einstein.

00:10:53.180 Dude, yeah, it's frustrating at how smart he is.

00:10:55.660 I was like, wow, this guy's on another frequency.

00:10:57.660 Something's burning in his head.

00:10:59.460 Harley is another level of energy,

00:11:00.840 but Harley and I at the time were chatting,

00:11:02.340 like we were only, I was running at about 30 sites

00:11:06.540 in my agency and Shopify had about 15,000 stores

00:11:10.680 and our 30 sites had more skews collectively

00:11:14.040 than their 15,000 stores.

00:11:15.560 because it was just the merchant profile

00:11:18.700 of Shopify at the time.

00:11:19.540 Now, obviously their vision was fricking massive

00:11:21.540 and they've done some insane things.

00:11:24.060 But at that time in Canada, it was just immature.

00:11:28.000 So like to go back to your question,

00:11:29.800 I've learned simply by being in the game a long time

00:11:33.140 and then having a lot of friends in the game.

00:11:35.840 At the agency, we did about 200 or so

00:11:39.180 kind of clients and projects over a decade.

00:11:42.080 So I got to see a ton of business models,

00:11:44.500 like tons of different product categories.

00:11:46.020 Like, dude, we've sold, we sold everything

00:11:47.880 and or we're pitched everything.

00:11:49.320 Like everything from like sex toys to firearms,

00:11:51.760 to baby stuff.

00:11:53.280 We used to call it the circle of life.

00:11:54.540 I'm like, we did everything, you know,

00:11:56.320 from the point where you had your kid, right?

00:11:58.500 To like raising the kid to the bed you were asleep,

00:12:01.680 like everything.

00:12:03.700 So we kind of just breadth of knowledge, right?

00:12:06.860 And then with Pila, it was just like, let's take it.

00:12:10.060 Let's take all that and then just focus it in one thing.

00:12:12.440 But I mean, building this agency,

00:12:15.440 you know, learning as you went,

00:12:17.120 I'm sure there was like moments

00:12:18.980 where you almost blew the whole thing up.

00:12:20.780 Oh dude, like every, oh yeah, all the time.

00:12:22.520 What, tell me about some of those.

00:12:24.440 And service business is cash flow. 0.98

00:12:26.480 Cash flow is a royal pain in the ass in a service. 0.60

00:12:29.520 So if you're a service business and you're project based, 0.94

00:12:33.080 which we were for like the middle part of our life,

00:12:36.600 we hadn't figured out that there were these things

00:12:38.060 called retainers yet.

00:12:39.880 So I had like either projects or performance.

00:12:42.300 Trying to fill pipeline utilization.

00:12:43.600 So you're just trying to fill pipeline.

00:12:44.880 Now in the boom days of Magento and Shopify,

00:12:49.220 and we did like a, basically a VAR partnership

00:12:52.780 is what they would've been called at the time.

00:12:54.320 So value added reseller of those two things,

00:12:57.240 while those were rocketing up,

00:12:58.800 the pipeline mostly stayed full.

00:13:01.720 Like it was just, it was always there

00:13:03.340 because the demand was so high.

00:13:05.520 But there were definitely moments where like,

00:13:07.100 depending on the cycles of the retail year,

00:13:10.200 where things would dry up.

00:13:11.520 Like, you know, it's entering holiday season.

00:13:14.260 Retailers and brands aren't exactly in the,

00:13:17.280 hey, let's build something new.

00:13:18.620 Migrate platforms, they're not doing that.

00:13:19.720 No, we did that in January.

00:13:21.800 Like right now it's holiday season.

00:13:23.200 So until we learned some of those cycles,

00:13:26.420 there was a bit of this like, oh wow, this is,

00:13:28.720 we have more work than we could ever handle.

00:13:30.520 And then when you'd have three months in the year,

00:13:31.780 we'd be like, okay, everything just disappeared.

00:13:33.280 What the hell happened?

00:13:34.660 What's the worst it ever got?

00:13:37.280 Like we got within 60 days of like no money in the bank.

00:13:41.520 which to me is insane, but then I realized

00:13:45.920 that's pretty normal.

00:13:47.800 What would you have done to solve it or what did you do?

00:13:51.900 Okay, so after that we decided, I went out

00:13:54.640 and I started talking to American businesses like mine.

00:13:58.440 Like I knew some of the entrepreneurs

00:13:59.940 that ran those companies that were a little ahead of me.

00:14:02.700 I asked questions around business models.

00:14:04.920 So we didn't compete in their market at that time.

00:14:07.140 So it was pretty easy to like build those relationships.

00:14:09.980 And then they would tell us about like, well, every time you do this, you need to build in

00:14:13.980 some kind of retainer or some kind of ongoing service or like add in this new service. And

00:14:18.540 that's actually a bit more sticky and you can actually keep clients longer. And it's like,

00:14:22.560 it'll open up conversations for more stuff in the future. I had no concept of like account

00:14:27.820 management and, you know, manage the customer and build like long-term partnerships. We did

00:14:33.760 that on the performance side. Like those were just embedded relationships, but I never bridged

00:14:38.900 like performance over to non-performance deals.

00:14:42.860 To grow an account.

00:14:44.140 To grow an account.

00:14:44.960 For multi-year contracts.

00:14:45.980 Yeah, never did that.

00:14:47.620 Also never thought, like I was too focused on the tech

00:14:50.560 because my background is like I'm a software developer.

00:14:52.660 I like the tech.

00:14:53.960 I never thought, what about the actual strategy

00:14:56.700 of how these companies are gonna grow?

00:14:58.820 So like, how do they fit

00:14:59.980 into the broader commerce ecosystem?

00:15:02.240 And, you know, what are they thinking about?

00:15:04.140 And like, what are their competitors doing?

00:15:05.640 and can I actually bring outside thought

00:15:09.620 and creative to them from that angle?

00:15:12.980 So like I went from being a great,

00:15:16.080 like a decent developer to a great marketer

00:15:19.660 by trying to like find the common ground between like,

00:15:22.660 okay, this is all the data and tech out there.

00:15:25.320 Here's how the creatives work.

00:15:27.100 Like there's this overlap area

00:15:29.400 and that's where I thrive.

00:15:30.240 The insights.

00:15:31.000 Totally.

00:15:32.000 So you started DMACC, the tech side of migrating

00:15:35.440 their backend systems to the internet.

00:15:37.940 And then over time, seeing this data,

00:15:41.020 building the insights, you became a marketer.

00:15:44.520 Like a lot of agencies typically have moments of,

00:15:47.680 you know, creativity where they want to start a side hustle

00:15:50.400 or like, did you have any of those?

00:15:52.120 That was Pila, dude.

00:15:53.280 But was there anything before Pila?

00:15:54.840 No.

00:15:55.480 Really, you waited that long to finally-

00:15:57.100 Yeah, because I had these performance deals.

00:15:58.820 Like, so we had about seven or eight sites

00:16:00.980 that were all performance-based,

00:16:02.360 so they felt a lot more ingrained, right?

00:16:06.320 Yeah, because you were aligned to invest time there.

00:16:08.140 But then I met Jeremy at one of the Napa MMT.

00:16:13.320 Okay, no way.

00:16:13.920 Remember that, was that six years ago, seven years ago?

00:16:16.540 Jason introduced me to Jeremy,

00:16:18.020 and Jason introduced me to Brad at the same event,

00:16:20.520 but not all three of us.

00:16:23.060 And about a year after that, I was talking to Jeremy.

00:16:25.780 I'm like, dude, I like the material, man.

00:16:27.720 Can I start investing in this and help you figure out

00:16:30.300 how do we build a business?

00:16:31.860 Because at that point, there was just a product.

00:16:34.900 Jeremy had a cool product, cool idea, but no business.

00:16:38.140 It was the phone case, like the first one.

00:16:40.280 And I thought the material was bad-ass.

00:16:43.120 So like, okay, I've got this agency.

00:16:45.920 We know how to do this.

00:16:47.420 Like, let's try to stand you up a business.

00:16:50.420 So like we'll invest.

00:16:51.880 And that became the side hustle.

00:16:55.260 So like the original thought was,

00:16:57.160 I'm gonna do 10 of these.

00:16:58.420 Yep.

00:16:59.260 Like a venture resources.

00:17:00.460 Totally.

00:17:01.300 Yeah.

00:17:02.140 Like early venture studio model.

00:17:03.220 Yeah, venture studio, yeah.

00:17:05.220 It just so happened that the first one

00:17:07.240 was a potential rocket ship.

00:17:09.760 So kiboshed, like the idea of doing 10 of them, 0.96

00:17:13.700 sold the agency and just focused on PILA.

00:17:16.380 Now would you have exited the agency

00:17:18.640 if you didn't have PILA?

00:17:20.360 I don't know.

00:17:21.200 I've been asked that before.

00:17:22.040 That's interesting.

00:17:23.120 I don't know because it all hit at the same time.

00:17:26.080 I didn't realize you met Jeremy at MMT.

00:17:27.740 the Brad connection.

00:17:29.180 At the same event and not at the same time.

00:17:31.340 And Jason invested, I'm hoping,

00:17:33.740 did he get in on PILA?

00:17:34.700 Oh yeah.

00:17:35.540 Okay, thank goodness.

00:17:36.380 Because if he didn't, I'd feel bad.

00:17:37.340 I know, he's the guy that connected the whole thing.

00:17:39.300 Wow, okay, good.

00:17:40.240 That would be weird if he didn't.

00:17:42.000 So Jason's a founder of MMT, Mastermind Talks.

00:17:45.080 And he's the only person in my life

00:17:46.460 I defer my friend network curation to.

00:17:48.860 You can outsource your friends to Jason.

00:17:50.180 A hundred percent.

00:17:51.200 Jason introduces you to somebody that's like,

00:17:53.300 hey, we're now bros and you didn't even know it.

00:17:55.820 Quality high, you know.

00:17:57.620 Douchebag low.

00:17:58.460 How, I mean, obviously a lot of founders

00:18:01.020 see those opportunities with customers

00:18:03.880 and partners to do that.

00:18:05.020 What do you think worked with your relationship with Jeremy

00:18:07.740 or the way you structured it to now, you know,

00:18:10.620 you're the CEO of this thing, right?

00:18:12.080 Yeah, I mean, so that, I mean, that was a whole thing.

00:18:14.460 Like the story of how we got to that point.

00:18:17.160 The nice thing with Brad, Jeremy and I

00:18:19.000 is there's a very, very defined complimentary skillset, right?

00:18:24.940 Like what Brad is great at,

00:18:26.660 Like Brad's a big scale, big team, you know,

00:18:30.540 systems and process.

00:18:31.760 Like Brad, as entrepreneurs go, we've talked about this.

00:18:34.560 He's a weirdly good operator.

00:18:37.120 Like weird good.

00:18:37.960 It's weird because he's such an extreme sports guy,

00:18:40.420 which tends to skew towards CEO visionary.

00:18:43.740 Which is his background, right?

00:18:45.480 But he's an incredible operator.

00:18:46.660 He's an insanely good operator.

00:18:48.320 So like his brain works really well there.

00:18:51.220 Yeah.

00:18:52.060 You know, so Jeremy is a, he's your classic inventor.

00:18:55.100 Material is a mentor.

00:18:56.060 Yeah, he's your garage inventor.

00:18:57.860 Like the guy will, although it is funny now I know this,

00:19:01.800 like people in the prairies are all like this.

00:19:04.580 They're just insanely resourceful.

00:19:07.100 Mostly because they don't have access 0.99

00:19:08.820 to all the shit that we do in the cities. 0.99

00:19:10.500 So they have to figure it out themselves. 0.99

00:19:11.880 Make it themselves.

00:19:12.600 Yeah.

00:19:12.960 So Jeremy's just one of those guys that like you tell him,

00:19:15.200 hey, Jeremy, can you make a, I don't know,

00:19:17.120 make a vinyl record out of our material.

00:19:18.780 And he's like, okay, you know, I'll try and figure it out.

00:19:22.020 Did you guys build him a lab or what's he?

00:19:23.780 We have a lab here in town.

00:19:24.980 Okay.

00:19:25.240 Yeah, there's a whole, like you're in our HQ right now,

00:19:28.300 but our lab, like we have a small lab slash,

00:19:31.760 you know, manufacturing studio.

00:19:33.280 It's about 8,000 square feet just up the road from here.

00:19:35.800 And that's where Jeremy and then the guy, Bernie,

00:19:38.620 who they made the first one,

00:19:40.220 they kind of like hack on stuff, you know?

00:19:42.760 And that's a lot of innovation

00:19:44.580 just comes out of us trying weird stuff.

00:19:46.420 How many product lines are you in today?

00:19:48.940 Oh, so we have case, so mobile case,

00:19:51.340 it's mobile accessories,

00:19:52.260 which is like a bunch of products there.

00:19:53.680 We have eyewear, we have personal care,

00:19:57.860 and we have now pet.

00:20:00.000 So think like compostable dog toys, stuff.

00:20:04.040 So the way we look at things is,

00:20:06.400 what are the things that you use regularly,

00:20:09.420 but are not single use?

00:20:11.300 And the reason for that is like a plastic water bottle,

00:20:13.900 people are like,

00:20:14.740 why don't you use your material

00:20:15.580 to make a plastic water bottle?

00:20:16.420 Well, because you can't make any money at it.

00:20:18.040 The economies of scale and the materials aren't there yet,

00:20:20.180 yada, yada, yada.

00:20:22.120 So we go after temporary use stuff.

00:20:24.380 So like a phone case is like high gross margin.

00:20:27.560 So it's the Tesla, like go build a roadster first,

00:20:30.720 then a Model S, then a Model Y, and work your way down.

00:20:33.680 That's kind of what's happening

00:20:35.080 as we work our way down.

00:20:36.300 It's kind of the scale.

00:20:37.140 Yeah, so it's like,

00:20:37.980 it's all a focus on everyday products

00:20:40.300 without everyday waste.

00:20:41.640 That's the thesis.

00:20:43.740 So it's one category, and then it's just a new category.

00:20:47.980 And in the whole-

00:20:48.820 to do products with the language around graceful end of life.

00:20:51.760 Yeah.

00:20:52.600 That would be the through line narrative for.

00:20:55.780 For everything, everything we do,

00:20:57.540 every product has to have a graceful end of life.

00:20:59.700 So like the end of life is designed

00:21:02.600 into the product from day one.

00:21:03.640 So you, you bury this into the ground.

00:21:06.000 That can go on a compost.

00:21:07.360 That can actually go to a landfill. 0.99

00:21:08.700 That'll degrade in a landfill.

00:21:09.840 How long does it take to turn into dirt?

00:21:11.780 Depends on the compost environment.

00:21:14.200 So like a good, healthy backyard compost,

00:21:16.200 maybe three to six months, you know, in.

00:21:18.800 This is plastic, which is never.

00:21:20.240 Which is never, or we just don't know yet.

00:21:21.960 We don't know, we haven't been around that long.

00:21:23.680 Yeah, humans still, humans with plastic

00:21:26.660 haven't been around that long.

00:21:28.060 What's it like building a company

00:21:29.700 that feels a little bit more impact driven versus,

00:21:33.380 and I'm not sure if you did anything at DMACC, but like.

00:21:35.880 No, like frankly, no, like this is totally,

00:21:38.620 this is the first time, DMACC was like, this was, it was fun.

00:21:42.940 It was intellectually challenging.

00:21:45.560 It was like, it satisfied curiosity.

00:21:47.520 The company's data.

00:21:48.360 It was super fun.

00:21:49.180 Yeah, the data sets were massive.

00:21:50.880 Like that stuff was all fun.

00:21:54.240 And then it got old.

00:21:55.660 So like, that's going back to what I have sold probably

00:21:58.280 cause it was getting old.

00:21:59.520 Like there wasn't a lot of new or creative anymore

00:22:02.200 with the big guys.

00:22:03.060 The big guys are all very like risk adverse stable.

00:22:07.520 You know, Pila is a total opposite. 1.00

00:22:09.760 It's basically, it's the opposite of risk averse. 0.98

00:22:11.840 It's what kind of weird crap can we try? 0.96

00:22:14.740 And how will the market respond? 0.95

00:22:16.300 and let's just like keep trying stuff

00:22:17.840 until we figure out what works, and then we scale that.

00:22:21.240 The impact and the purpose, like having a just cause,

00:22:25.700 you know, like everybody's read Simon Sinek's crap, 0.95

00:22:27.480 and like, it's real. 0.98

00:22:29.500 Yeah.

00:22:30.340 It actually is real.

00:22:31.180 Like I get up in the morning and I like what I do.

00:22:33.640 I don't have any desire to stop doing what I do.

00:22:35.920 And the mission, based on what I hear at the board level,

00:22:38.820 is to remove plastic from the oceans.

00:22:40.480 Yeah, we wanna stop a billion pounds of waste every year,

00:22:44.460 is what we're working towards.

00:22:45.760 So waste being, it could be plastic, it could be food waste,

00:22:49.460 it could be any kind of waste, right?

00:22:51.700 Humans are excellent at creating waste.

00:22:54.420 We're actually the only living creature on the planet

00:22:57.600 that produces waste, like legit waste,

00:23:00.100 as in the waste has no purpose.

00:23:01.780 Every other animal or creature

00:23:03.720 is part of some kind of circular system.

00:23:06.260 We're the only ones that create waste.

00:23:07.700 So what we haven't done yet though as a society

00:23:10.920 is make waste sexy enough to be useful.

00:23:14.000 And that's kind of what we're trying to do,

00:23:16.400 is not just, people don't want to be educated,

00:23:19.880 so they want to be entertained and inspired.

00:23:22.100 But at the same time, can you do that

00:23:23.700 and also teach them a little bit?

00:23:26.100 And then not just change their behavior,

00:23:28.400 but slide in a new option to their behavior.

00:23:32.660 So it's all about swaps and you can't do it.

00:23:34.880 You can't do it.

00:23:35.720 You just can't do it.

00:23:36.560 So we don't try.

00:23:37.620 I just try to create a product at a price point

00:23:40.240 that's in line with what they're currently used to buying

00:23:42.880 and a quality that they're currently used to buying.

00:23:45.000 And I just try to gently slide it in there

00:23:47.860 so that they don't even know that they've done something.

00:23:49.860 Good.

00:23:50.700 Yeah.

00:23:51.540 And so it's, that's, it feels good.

00:23:54.180 Like it's actually the way I've explained it to like marketers

00:23:58.800 is I get to use all of the dirty, nasty tricks. 0.76

00:24:03.160 Internet marketers.

00:24:04.240 All of it, but I feel good about it.

00:24:06.500 Yeah, you sleep well at night.

00:24:07.360 I sleep well at night.

00:24:08.840 And that's kind of fun.

00:24:10.120 Cause like all that stuff is fun.

00:24:11.740 I want to get into that.

00:24:12.820 Cause you know, I think, are you guys seven figures

00:24:15.220 a month in ad spend or high?

00:24:17.200 Yeah.

00:24:18.040 So I want to talk about how you do that at scale.

00:24:20.920 But before I do that, I want to ask you a question.

00:24:24.040 How did you get Jay-Z to invest in your company?

00:24:27.700 I mean, that was like, boom, boom.

00:24:30.400 There's that guy.

00:24:31.240 There's that guy.

00:24:32.080 I mean, I remember when, I think you could,

00:24:33.640 cause you were like, okay.

00:24:34.500 Cause I've been bugging you guys for two years.

00:24:36.080 Oh yeah.

00:24:36.920 We could do a ski trip every year.

00:24:37.760 You were the most persistent investor we've ever had.

00:24:39.260 I like to invest in people that do not need my money.

00:24:42.460 Call it a crazy idea, but that's a good way

00:24:44.080 to get good returns.

00:24:44.920 It's a good idea.

00:24:45.760 And two years of persistence, and then finally,

00:24:47.900 you're like, hey, man, I think we're gonna raise.

00:24:49.760 And I'm like, cool.

00:24:50.880 I didn't even ask the terms.

00:24:52.020 I'll wire you the money before you change your mind.

00:24:53.800 And then you're like, oh yeah, by the way, Jay-Z's involved.

00:24:55.940 And I was just like, well, that's probably the coolest

00:24:59.080 partner I've ever had on a table.

00:25:01.040 How did that come to be?

00:25:03.040 Oh, man.

00:25:03.780 So Tom Kennedy, who's also on our board,

00:25:08.140 we reached out to tom because we were getting a like quite a bit of inquiries out like inbound

00:25:14.060 inquiries from venture capital and at the time pila was like i think our revenue was about seven

00:25:20.300 million so early early yeah um and this was sort of one of those things tom's kensington capital

00:25:26.380 partners in toronto um she's a big private equity vc fund they've been around forever they've they

00:25:31.980 own everything um tom's brilliant though so brad had known tom for man i want to say like five

00:25:37.900 six years and had become kind of a mentor so we reached out to tom to get his opinion on like just

00:25:45.260 give us your experience and your opinion like should we entertain raising outside money brad

00:25:49.820 and i and both of our last companies had never done that yeah so you guys are we both had exits

00:25:55.900 so like we didn't need it um and then tom we went through the whole thing like this is pila this is

00:26:02.060 who we are this is what we're doing here's the traction we have and tom said look i don't know

00:26:07.340 I don't know anything about consumer,

00:26:08.780 but I'm gonna introduce you to my friend Jay and Larry. 0.99

00:26:11.960 And if they like it, I'll write you the damn check. 0.96

00:26:15.580 So he introduced us to Larry Marcus first, 0.99

00:26:19.760 who is Jay Brown and Jay Z's third partner

00:26:22.900 in Marcy Venture Partners.

00:26:25.720 Got a touch with Larry.

00:26:27.060 Larry's like, yeah, why don't you just come down to LA

00:26:29.540 and meet with Jay and I, Jay Brown and I,

00:26:32.660 and we'll like, we'll chat.

00:26:34.140 So Brad and I flew to LA, went to Roc Nation,

00:26:37.960 which is the like J and J's record label

00:26:41.320 slash management company, whatever the, they do so much.

00:26:45.160 And was like sitting in the, you know,

00:26:47.720 I call it the throne room.

00:26:48.920 It's like the weirdest room.

00:26:50.080 It's just like nothing but gold records.

00:26:51.820 And like, it feels like a major cultural-

00:26:54.580 Royalty thing.

00:26:55.420 Yeah, man, like it's weird.

00:26:57.420 And Jay Brown is just like the coolest,

00:27:00.040 chillest, smartest dude.

00:27:03.100 kind of met him, sat down,

00:27:04.680 and within nine minutes of me explaining what Pila was,

00:27:07.780 Jay's just like, yeah, dude, I'm in.

00:27:10.180 He's like, we're so in.

00:27:11.320 What does Jay do?

00:27:12.220 So Jay Brown is like,

00:27:13.860 he's like one of the business halves of Jay-Z.

00:27:16.540 Okay.

00:27:17.380 So Jay Brown runs Roc Nation.

00:27:20.240 You know, he manages talent, like Jay's just,

00:27:23.060 Jay's the other Jay, is how I describe it.

00:27:25.040 Yeah.

00:27:26.180 So while we were in the meeting,

00:27:28.180 Jay was texting other Jay, Jay-Z.

00:27:30.920 And he's like, yeah, man,

00:27:32.260 like we were talking about this last night, we love it.

00:27:34.740 This is, and their whole thesis, MVP's thesis

00:27:37.580 is they invest in cultural relevancy.

00:27:40.720 So like, where do we think culture is going?

00:27:42.660 That's where we put our money.

00:27:45.060 Nine minutes in, he was like, we're in.

00:27:46.500 And then there's Larry and you've met Larry.

00:27:49.120 Larry was like-

00:27:49.960 Larry's your quintessential investment type.

00:27:52.480 He's brilliant in his own right.

00:27:53.960 Larry was like, I have more questions, Jay.

00:27:57.100 Right?

00:27:57.940 Larry was the, you know, Larry asked smart questions.

00:28:01.740 Jay and Jay were just like, this is, we like this.

00:28:05.040 Yeah.

00:28:06.400 So the whole thing happened super fast.

00:28:08.700 And then to get that kind of investor

00:28:10.820 with that kind of access,

00:28:12.460 we were just like, this probably makes sense.

00:28:14.160 Let's just do it.

00:28:15.400 And we weren't raising a ton of money.

00:28:18.020 So it was like, it was a minority investment in the company,

00:28:21.460 but it just seemed like they were the right people.

00:28:23.440 And then Tom came in and then you and Jay and yeah.

00:28:26.220 Talk about the first time, I'm assuming you met Jay-Z.

00:28:29.360 I know the story, but I wanna, yeah, I wanna,

00:28:31.340 like, it's just one of those things.

00:28:35.660 I was known as the Canadian guy.

00:28:37.160 Yeah.

00:28:38.000 Like he knew who I was.

00:28:40.020 So walk us through that.

00:28:41.240 Well, so we had a, like I went down for the-

00:28:43.840 How long ago was this?

00:28:45.080 Man, a year and a half ago, I think.

00:28:49.060 Went down for Marcy's,

00:28:51.340 like Marcy held an event for their LPs.

00:28:53.440 And they asked, there was only-

00:28:54.900 Down in LA?

00:28:55.660 In LA, yeah.

00:28:56.820 They asked, they had about, I think,

00:28:58.320 seven or eight investments at the time,

00:28:59.920 asked the CEOs to come and just talk to the LPs, right?

00:29:03.580 It was like a four or five hour, like, lunch.

00:29:06.380 CEO summit campaign.

00:29:07.220 Yeah, it's kind of like a small summit.

00:29:08.640 It wasn't, it was maybe 30, 40 people.

00:29:10.400 Yeah.

00:29:12.120 So I flew down, I'm like, yeah, sure.

00:29:13.620 And I didn't realize Jay-Z was gonna be there.

00:29:17.060 And when I was walking into the event,

00:29:19.580 I was following in, and Nick, you know who he is.

00:29:21.820 So, like, he's also a tall dude.

00:29:24.400 So like, I was following in Jay-Z and Jay Brown,

00:29:27.060 and when I got, it was a cold day in LA,

00:29:29.620 so I'm gonna sound like I was here, it was cold.

00:29:31.480 So like, I was walking in, I got up,

00:29:33.400 and I looked at Jay Brown, who I had known,

00:29:36.360 and I'm like, I thought LA was supposed to be warm, man.

00:29:38.460 And Jay-Z looks at me, he's like,

00:29:39.700 aren't you supposed to be the Canadian guy?

00:29:41.080 He's like, what do you mean it's cold?

00:29:43.100 And I'm like, how do you know who I am?

00:29:45.400 So that was the impressive part,

00:29:46.700 was like, he had done clearly, he had looked,

00:29:49.460 he knows his portfolio,

00:29:51.560 He knew who the founders and the entrepreneurs were,

00:29:54.800 enough to take a shot at me as I was standing there.

00:29:58.740 So I'm like, I'm gonna like this guy, this is great.

00:30:01.840 Yeah, he's whip smart, like whip smart.

00:30:04.600 What did you take away from that day,

00:30:07.100 watching him interact with investors, LPs?

00:30:10.740 Oh man, you wanna talk about humble?

00:30:13.180 It's weird.

00:30:14.600 Like it was definitely the weirdest, like not at all.

00:30:18.680 You know, Todd talks about alter egos.

00:30:20.520 There's clearly, there's the Jay-Z on stage

00:30:26.300 and then there's Jay in real life.

00:30:28.340 And it was weird at how attentive

00:30:32.220 and how like humble he came across.

00:30:35.100 Like not at all, like he was interested

00:30:38.240 in what people were talking.

00:30:39.140 Like when he was talking to you, he was in it.

00:30:42.300 You know, it's weird.

00:30:44.100 It's not what I would have expected.

00:30:45.700 Like you expect the big personality.

00:30:47.760 Like he's one of the most famous people on the planet.

00:30:50.280 on the whole planet.

00:30:51.340 Yeah, and I found him one of the nicest,

00:30:54.420 softest spoken, smart, like just great to be around.

00:30:59.480 That was impressive.

00:31:00.880 I just love the fact that I think people underestimate

00:31:04.840 how dramatically different your life can look like

00:31:08.040 in a few years.

00:31:09.000 I mean, if you go back to the moment

00:31:10.620 where you haven't even made the decision to sell DMACC to,

00:31:15.020 I'm assuming it's like a four or five year period later

00:31:18.400 and you're in LA.

00:31:19.640 Well, it's been two and a half years since I've sold.

00:31:21.360 I mean, and now you're hanging in LA with Jay-Z

00:31:25.180 and he's an investor in your company.

00:31:26.860 And it's one of the fastest growing companies in Canada.

00:31:29.300 I mean, people underestimate just the sequence of events

00:31:35.360 that are available to all of us

00:31:37.880 and how that could materialize.

00:31:39.980 I also think there's like a serendipity element to it.

00:31:42.480 For sure.

00:31:43.320 Like once, I give my wife credit

00:31:46.460 Cause like when Pila was taking off,

00:31:49.020 rewind like three, three and a half years ago,

00:31:52.160 when Pila was really starting to get traction,

00:31:54.520 she kinda, she looked at me and she's like, dude,

00:31:56.860 we need to talk.

00:31:57.780 She's like, you are not Elon Musk.

00:31:59.540 You cannot run two companies.

00:32:01.460 She's like, you need to pick one.

00:32:03.100 Jen's smart. 1.00

00:32:03.940 This isn't gonna be, this is not gonna be good for us.

00:32:06.960 Right?

00:32:07.800 Cause like she could see me.

00:32:08.640 I was like, there was just so much happening with both

00:32:11.220 that it was breaking, like, or I was breaking.

00:32:14.400 So, you know, she called me on it

00:32:17.200 and ultimately decided like,

00:32:19.480 and then by just deciding, it was funny,

00:32:22.180 like within a month or two,

00:32:23.500 we had met the buyer for Pila just like by happenstance.

00:32:27.340 So they met the buyer for DMACC purely by happenstance.

00:32:30.380 Like this guy, Mike Brown got introduced to him

00:32:34.680 and he was talking about, you know,

00:32:36.740 I'm part of this group, private equity backed,

00:32:40.080 we're rolling up a bunch of agencies

00:32:41.680 and e-commerce and digital experience.

00:32:43.720 would you guys be interested?

00:32:45.100 That was like within a month or two of Janet.

00:32:47.480 And then it was, you know, Brad and I started talking,

00:32:49.860 where do we put PILA?

00:32:50.740 And we started looking across Canada and we came out here

00:32:53.340 and there was just this series of events

00:32:56.240 that happened very rapidly.

00:32:59.660 You know, and it was, I still think it's weird.

00:33:01.680 Like it almost like something was just lining crap up.

00:33:05.520 It's like every time we needed a new stepping stone,

00:33:08.760 it was just available to us.

00:33:10.680 But I mean, it sounds in hindsight,

00:33:12.520 it's easy to connect those dots,

00:33:13.700 but at the time it's like there's a lot of uncertainty.

00:33:16.000 It just feels like chaos at the time.

00:33:17.140 Yeah, and I've always said

00:33:18.980 that the world rewards courageous decisions.

00:33:21.340 Oh yeah, and courage is one of our four core values.

00:33:24.060 It's like, if you don't have courage to do things

00:33:27.360 that look hard or look crazy,

00:33:30.080 then these types of serendipitous events and sequences,

00:33:34.180 they just don't happen, they don't present themselves, no.

00:33:36.640 So, credible story.

00:33:39.160 When it comes to scaling paid acquisition,

00:33:42.000 which is your wizardry, what do you think most people miss?

00:33:49.220 Like what are they not getting about paid

00:33:51.940 that's causing them to just give up after a month?

00:33:54.680 So my answer now is different

00:33:56.300 than it would have been like a year or two ago.

00:33:58.360 So there's a few things at play like right now.

00:34:02.860 So attribution is probably the biggest one

00:34:06.040 that people get stuck on where when you spend,

00:34:10.000 So the fallacy with digital marketing

00:34:12.320 is that it's super trackable

00:34:13.720 and that every dollar you spend is,

00:34:15.420 you can see where it comes back.

00:34:17.360 There is a degree of truth to that,

00:34:18.900 but it's also largely false, right?

00:34:21.800 So the way I look at paid marketing

00:34:24.000 is the way I would look at

00:34:24.840 any traditional advertising form.

00:34:26.240 So I've studied like the greats in advertising,

00:34:30.820 all of it, you know, like go back

00:34:32.320 and like read breakthrough advertising

00:34:33.960 and like read about how marketing works.

00:34:36.760 Um, digital is just a different medium, but the principles are all still the same.

00:34:42.980 Attribution is where most companies I think get stuck, which is if they don't see if the,

00:34:48.360 if like a platform like Facebook doesn't immediately tell you this was your return on ad spend,

00:34:52.880 they think it's not working and it's not worth the spend. I run all of our machines,

00:34:58.220 like all of our businesses. Um, all the ad machines are run off of a P and L basis, 0.77

00:35:03.980 which is like, I am going to invest $1

00:35:06.620 for every $3 of revenue.

00:35:08.400 And I'm going to continue to invest

00:35:09.800 as long as it's scaling.

00:35:11.180 So you don't care if the actual campaigns themselves are,

00:35:14.060 like we're trying to outspend positive.

00:35:15.740 You're looking for gross investment.

00:35:18.420 Yeah, I'm looking for KPIs.

00:35:20.640 Like I want to see certain things

00:35:22.700 at a very big data set level.

00:35:25.500 Yeah, but you're not afraid to invest.

00:35:27.140 No, not at all.

00:35:28.220 And I think that's the second part,

00:35:29.480 which is if you're going to try to do this at scale.

00:35:32.400 So like Facebook's great at rewarding small business

00:35:35.260 and small spend.

00:35:36.360 The minute you cross into this six figures of spend

00:35:38.800 on a monthly basis,

00:35:40.100 it starts to become a lot more murky

00:35:42.220 and that's where people get nervous

00:35:43.860 and this is where they fall down.

00:35:45.780 You need to be willing to take a risk.

00:35:47.940 Like just before this call,

00:35:49.060 I was on with my media buying team

00:35:50.400 and we were having a really good 48 hours

00:35:53.720 because we're running a pay what you want event

00:35:55.300 where we let the customer choose the price.

00:35:57.940 So these ads just lit up like 24 hours ago.

00:36:01.860 like really lit up and I'm on with my media buyers

00:36:04.320 and they're really good technical media buyers.

00:36:07.000 And on the call, I'm like, you know what, screw it.

00:36:09.860 And I just, I dumped an extra 30 grand a day into Facebook.

00:36:13.300 And I'm like, here, I'm just gonna jack the budget

00:36:14.920 to 30 grand.

00:36:15.760 Let's see what happens over the next three hours.

00:36:17.860 And I could see in there, it was fear.

00:36:20.140 Like, what do you-

00:36:20.980 We don't have enough data.

00:36:21.900 How, like, why are you doing that?

00:36:23.440 And I'm like, well, like part of this,

00:36:25.400 you have to go off of some kind of intuition.

00:36:27.760 It's like anything else.

00:36:28.820 Like I'm looking at what I'm getting back.

00:36:31.480 There's really good KPIs here and there's an art to this.

00:36:35.160 And technical media buyers,

00:36:37.420 which is there's a lot of them out there,

00:36:39.360 they are not good at the art part.

00:36:41.480 So there's really great creatives.

00:36:42.680 There's really great technical media buyers.

00:36:45.300 Where I sit is somewhere in the middle,

00:36:47.760 which I'm pretty good at both.

00:36:50.380 I'm not great at either,

00:36:51.800 but I'm good enough at both that that intersection

00:36:55.300 is like what allows me to say like, you know what?

00:36:57.140 No, this is working.

00:36:58.860 The platform's just not telling us enough yet

00:37:00.800 that it's working, but I can see enough

00:37:03.320 and I can look at other things like Google Analytics,

00:37:05.860 I can look at the order velocity, all that stuff.

00:37:07.420 So even if the attribution for the campaigns

00:37:09.240 are not showing up in that specific campaign,

00:37:11.320 if you look at the overall lift, maybe through organic,

00:37:14.220 but it's not really organic,

00:37:15.220 it was influenced through the ad.

00:37:16.300 Oh, totally, especially if I see a campaign that's like, 0.95

00:37:18.940 so the return on ad spend might be crap,

00:37:21.280 but the cost per click is low, CPM is low,

00:37:25.460 socially engagements are great,

00:37:27.580 people are commenting, it's being shared.

00:37:30.300 but this is the 10,000 hours.

00:37:32.280 To, oh, yeah, way more than 10,000 hours.

00:37:34.460 Yeah.

00:37:35.300 Like, you know.

00:37:37.040 Like a lot of time in the matrix.

00:37:38.560 Yeah.

00:37:39.400 Because like, I get it.

00:37:40.240 If you actually have experience saying,

00:37:41.820 hey, we ran a campaign, we shut down all ads.

00:37:43.760 We looked at a three week period and go like,

00:37:45.780 oh, by the way, we had extra residual from that

00:37:49.260 that's carried through.

00:37:50.720 So that needs to be in consideration

00:37:52.400 in regards to overall spend.

00:37:53.840 Yes.

00:37:54.620 That there's this.

00:37:55.460 And it's also like, there's this,

00:37:57.300 it's spending at scale is also,

00:38:00.440 it's particularly once you get up to our run rate,

00:38:03.460 like revenue and media spend,

00:38:05.020 when you start spending like seven figures

00:38:07.060 or more a month, right?

00:38:09.060 You're probably not doing it

00:38:10.300 on a very consistent daily basis.

00:38:13.160 Like you batch it in and you layer it in.

00:38:14.260 Well, the fact that you said 30 grand for three hours,

00:38:16.780 like you run hourly campaigns.

00:38:19.400 Oh yeah, yeah, for sure.

00:38:22.440 You have to, like, if you're gonna spend a lot of money.

00:38:24.380 I don't.

00:38:25.220 Well, no, most people don't.

00:38:26.460 It's also like, because there's an obsessiveness

00:38:28.740 that you would need to scale paid me.

00:38:31.420 So there are companies that do this

00:38:33.260 at a level that I don't even get.

00:38:34.680 Like, you know, if you look at a Golden Hippo,

00:38:37.520 Craig Clemens, you'll see him all over Clemens.

00:38:38.960 I know Craig, yeah.

00:38:40.080 Copywriter extraordinaire.

00:38:41.280 Oh my God.

00:38:42.120 And like media spend, I mean,

00:38:43.500 Golden Hippo is a billion dollar a year company

00:38:45.440 with, you know, however many brands they have.

00:38:47.640 They are one of the bigger Facebook buyers out there,

00:38:49.620 particularly from January until February,

00:38:51.780 which is peak health season.

00:38:53.700 There are guys like that, that make me look like an amateur.

00:38:59.060 And that's just, you know, again,

00:39:00.560 great copywriter meets really good media buyer.

00:39:03.860 And that's a pretty decent combination.

00:39:07.580 You know, for us, I focus more on,

00:39:10.160 I'm a good copywriter, not great.

00:39:12.980 You know it when you see it.

00:39:14.080 Know it when I see it.

00:39:15.680 What I am is a weird creative.

00:39:17.520 So like, I like to try really wacky stuff.

00:39:19.740 Well, talk to me about the campaigns

00:39:21.100 and then I wanna talk about the team structure.

00:39:22.660 Cause you know, the one thing that, you know,

00:39:25.160 even Jason at Minga and I joke,

00:39:27.100 like you inspire all of us on these crazy,

00:39:30.200 where do you come up with the pay what you want,

00:39:33.600 BOGOs, like just.

00:39:35.360 Yeah, like the wear one, wash one.

00:39:36.580 Yeah, yeah, wear one, wash one.

00:39:37.560 And like, how, like, is this kind of in a rhythm

00:39:41.180 and a cadence where you say on a monthly basis,

00:39:43.020 we need this or on a court, like what is.

00:39:44.600 So I do it daily.

00:39:45.560 Okay.

00:39:48.420 Customers.

00:39:49.840 So I spend a weird amount of time reading customer reviews,

00:39:55.500 Instagram comments, Facebook comments.

00:39:57.980 I look at, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot.

00:40:01.420 And then, so like wear one, wash one,

00:40:03.960 which for people listening,

00:40:05.500 last year when COVID hit, our sales plummeted.

00:40:08.160 Like we sell phone cases,

00:40:09.800 nobody really cared about phone cases.

00:40:11.840 But then I had a customer tag us on Instagram

00:40:15.200 and the image was her washing her phone case.

00:40:18.920 and she was a nurse. 0.66

00:40:20.700 And she was posting to tell people,

00:40:22.860 hey, I just wanna tell you that it's important

00:40:24.680 that you wash your phone

00:40:26.500 because this is where a lot of germs live, right?

00:40:28.800 Most people don't think about that. 0.95

00:40:31.060 I looked at that, I'm like, holy crap, that's brilliant.

00:40:35.480 So I turned around and within an hour, I'm like,

00:40:37.860 we should do a buy one, get one free

00:40:39.920 and call it wear one, wash one.

00:40:42.420 So we launched that thing.

00:40:44.240 It just went completely bonkers.

00:40:47.480 And we started giving away free cases to frontline workers.

00:40:50.880 Like we told people like,

00:40:52.020 if you work in a hospital right now

00:40:53.460 and you're dealing with COVID,

00:40:54.620 because one of my best friends,

00:40:55.820 she's an ICU nurse in Ontario

00:40:58.660 that was like front lines in an ICU dealing with COVID.

00:41:01.520 And she would tell me,

00:41:02.520 she would keep one Pila case on her phone for home.

00:41:05.360 And then she'd have another one at work 0.87

00:41:06.900 that she keeps in a plastic bag.

00:41:09.140 And she swapped them when she gets to work. 0.71

00:41:11.400 So we started giving those out to frontline workers.

00:41:13.440 So like that idea was simply me looking and watching

00:41:17.480 and listening, and then we've got 55,000,

00:41:22.160 like five-star reviews now.

00:41:23.780 I read them all.

00:41:25.820 I do like word density analysis on them.

00:41:27.720 Yeah, I like those word clouds.

00:41:29.540 Totally.

00:41:31.660 Yeah, and then I look at what other brands are doing.

00:41:35.100 I spend a lot of time on like ideation.

00:41:37.940 Yeah, I've heard that.

00:41:38.780 I look for space for that.

00:41:39.780 I think it was actually,

00:41:40.700 maybe Cameron or Chrissy Harold posted recently said,

00:41:43.840 the best copy is from your customer.

00:41:46.000 Yeah, that was Clay and I.

00:41:47.060 We were doing like Clay Bear and I were doing this.

00:41:49.820 I'm in this like branding.

00:41:51.640 No, this is like brand workshop that Clay's doing.

00:41:53.620 And I decided to do it

00:41:54.560 because I don't know how to build a personal brand

00:41:56.960 like what you do.

00:41:58.000 I know how to build consumer brands.

00:41:59.740 So I wanted to see what is the difference between them.

00:42:03.820 So it's been a lot of fun, but Christie's in there.

00:42:06.300 And this was something we were telling Christie,

00:42:07.820 like, look, you've got all these testimonials

00:42:09.920 and yet you're saying,

00:42:11.220 I don't know what to do from a advertising

00:42:13.360 and marketing perspective.

00:42:14.360 I just copy that and paste it and run the ad.

00:42:17.360 Like some of my best ads are literally

00:42:18.940 just like copying what somebody wrote

00:42:21.020 and running it as the ad, as a review.

00:42:23.920 Or like taking their, and just promote that.

00:42:26.860 It works.

00:42:28.060 Now there's not a ton of scale there,

00:42:29.840 but you can at least get it going.

00:42:32.120 You know, and then I, part of the process

00:42:34.520 is I take an idea and I try to go

00:42:37.580 to the most absurd extreme of that idea.

00:42:41.760 Like I think of like, what is the worst ad?

00:42:44.360 I could write.

00:42:45.440 Like, how do I make it offensive?

00:42:47.040 How do I make it so like, I wouldn't be proud of this? 0.66

00:42:49.640 How do I get it like dirty and disgusting?

00:42:54.300 And then I work, I basically just work backwards from that.

00:42:59.200 It's just my process.

00:43:00.320 Yeah, why, where's the thinking behind that?

00:43:03.200 Because like great advertising,

00:43:06.300 so like you need to get attention.

00:43:08.480 If you're gonna do paid media,

00:43:10.220 part of the problem with paid media is like,

00:43:12.120 You stop the scroll, how do you interrupt?

00:43:15.700 Well, getting attention is hard, particularly with an ad.

00:43:20.260 So instead of thinking too much about like the visual of it,

00:43:24.220 I work on the copy and what I want it to say. 0.94

00:43:27.020 And the reason I go stupid is because that's probably, 0.95

00:43:32.200 like if you look at what's popular on social media, 0.99

00:43:34.080 like when I go to TikTok, it's ridiculous, right?

00:43:37.120 So I fit into, okay, well, this is what people are looking 0.94

00:43:40.200 for, they're looking for ridiculous. 0.77

00:43:42.000 So like customer, I'll give you an example. 0.81

00:43:44.840 We've doing a word density analysis

00:43:47.360 of all of our customer reviews.

00:43:49.180 We realized that like in the top 10 words and topics,

00:43:53.060 people talk about the feel of the material.

00:43:55.360 Oh, it's soft.

00:43:56.440 I love the texture.

00:43:58.160 So I latched onto this soft thing

00:44:00.940 and I was sitting at home and we have a cat

00:44:03.580 and the cat took a crap on the floor and I was pissed. 0.99

00:44:07.560 And I'm like, okay, I gotta go clean up cat shit. 1.00

00:44:09.660 Great. 0.99

00:44:10.660 I went back to my computer and I was looking at,

00:44:12.520 I'm looking at this soft thing.

00:44:14.360 And the first thing I wrote down was like,

00:44:15.760 soft like a cat, except it doesn't crap on the floor.

00:44:18.760 That's a terrible ad.

00:44:20.240 There's nothing at all that connects those two things,

00:44:23.480 except that's just, it's soft like a cat.

00:44:25.960 And I'm like, soft like a puppy.

00:44:27.120 But I'm like, can you see the dog fur in the case?

00:44:29.220 No, cause there's not. 0.70

00:44:30.060 And I would just go through as many ridiculous things 0.67

00:44:33.520 as I could around soft.

00:44:35.300 And I thought like the get him to the Greek.

00:44:37.560 Do you ever watch that?

00:44:38.420 where Puff Daddy's petting the furry wall, right?

00:44:41.780 I'm like, well, I pulled up that GIF, that little thing.

00:44:44.520 And I'm like, that's an ad.

00:44:46.460 So all of that has nothing to do with the phone case.

00:44:50.500 But starting there definitely gets me to,

00:44:53.960 you know, wonderfully soft the touch,

00:44:56.240 but how it makes you feel is even better.

00:44:59.100 Now that's the winning copy.

00:45:00.660 So go down, pull back until it feels good.

00:45:03.420 Yeah.

00:45:04.680 Or sometimes just go down there 0.99

00:45:06.380 and try the weird crap too. 0.99

00:45:08.420 See, that's the thing I don't think enough people do 0.99

00:45:10.760 is just test, right?

00:45:12.300 Like, I mean.

00:45:13.480 And we're so protective over brand.

00:45:15.340 Yeah.

00:45:16.180 You know, I tell my creative team all the time,

00:45:17.740 like you're running advertising, throw the brand book away.

00:45:20.840 Really?

00:45:21.680 Think in terms of what, meet the customer where they are.

00:45:24.980 They're on TikTok, they're on Instagram. 0.98

00:45:26.780 They don't give a shit about your brand right now. 0.95

00:45:29.180 They want entertainment and they want engagement 0.98

00:45:31.600 and they want something funny.

00:45:34.040 Especially during the pandemic, they want something funny.

00:45:36.920 So give them what they're looking for,

00:45:39.700 meet them where they are,

00:45:41.020 and then if they like you, invite them home.

00:45:45.120 It's like just a social thing, it's how it works.

00:45:49.420 So too many people get too protective over like,

00:45:52.680 oh, it needs to be this font

00:45:54.040 and I have to use this color palette

00:45:55.660 because that's my brand book.

00:45:57.360 And I'm like, yeah, well,

00:45:58.440 that makes for really crappy advertising.

00:46:00.800 Yeah, I saw a TikTok ad recently says,

00:46:03.320 your TikTok is the ad.

00:46:05.280 like yes content yes make content if you want ideas for ads just go to tick tock right now

00:46:09.920 because they're the best and most creative creators is all on tick tock like i literally

00:46:14.560 ran an ad over christmas that had the words this is an ad and it's very ugly that was the ad but

00:46:22.000 people thought it was hilarious because it's like it's showing up in your feed it's interrupting

00:46:26.240 you and then we ran another one that said it was like uh this is an ad and in brackets we put we're

00:46:31.600 we're sorry, we're Canadian.

00:46:34.920 And we would use, like we would play off of that.

00:46:37.280 So like none of that would ever be in a brand guideline,

00:46:43.000 but you have to be willing to test it.

00:46:44.800 Meet the customer where they're at in that moment,

00:46:46.720 on that platform, they're scrolling, stop the scroll.

00:46:50.880 How big does the, like, how do you do this?

00:46:53.520 Like, what does the team look like?

00:46:54.680 I think when people hear a media buyer,

00:46:55.960 they're like, what is a media buyer?

00:46:57.460 Yeah, most people don't even know what that is.

00:46:58.720 I have a Facebook person.

00:47:00.280 You've got a Facebook person, that's a media buyer.

00:47:02.100 Okay, but like at scale, what should it look like?

00:47:05.840 How do you structure your team?

00:47:07.140 What's the communication rhythm?

00:47:09.460 How do you do production?

00:47:10.980 Yeah, okay, so there's a bunch there.

00:47:14.800 I have one head of paid on staff, Nicholas.

00:47:20.100 I work with him a lot.

00:47:21.500 And then we have freelance media buyers

00:47:24.340 that also work with us.

00:47:25.700 Okay, and they're channel specific buyers?

00:47:28.240 A channel or a brand.

00:47:29.560 Okay.

00:47:30.880 So what usually happens is on a weekly basis,

00:47:34.420 so every week, Nick, myself, and those media buyers,

00:47:37.800 we get together and we talk about what we're seeing

00:47:40.040 in the accounts, any crazy ideas we wanna try.

00:47:42.720 And when you say per brand, you mean per product line?

00:47:46.060 Yeah, so like Case will have a different media buyer

00:47:48.000 than like eyewear or personal care.

00:47:50.240 Yeah.

00:47:51.080 And then sometimes there's like one guy

00:47:52.260 he'll do two or three, right?

00:47:54.120 I like to do that too,

00:47:56.360 because the reason I structure it that way,

00:47:59.200 and even though I'm a good media buyer,

00:48:01.000 I like using outside.

00:48:03.380 And it's just because of vision and experience, right?

00:48:06.660 So I'm stuck in my own forest all the time.

00:48:10.140 I don't have the luxury of having an agency

00:48:12.580 where I see hundreds of accounts anymore.

00:48:14.360 So you want them to bring a perspective.

00:48:15.360 I want their breadth and perspective.

00:48:18.200 And that's what I use, right?

00:48:19.820 And then I have my own playbooks.

00:48:21.160 And like what I also like,

00:48:22.400 at least with the freelancers we have,

00:48:25.700 is we've got a relationship where we will beat problems up

00:48:29.180 and they're not afraid to throw stuff at me

00:48:32.160 and I'm not afraid to throw stuff back at them

00:48:34.360 and we'll beat the problem up.

00:48:35.660 And it's never, there's no ego at play.

00:48:37.360 It's just like, let's just beat the problem up.

00:48:38.840 Candy conversations.

00:48:39.680 Yeah, so that's the buying side,

00:48:43.600 buying and copy and ideation.

00:48:45.400 But who drives the creative?

00:48:46.780 Is that like, does a media buyer actually say,

00:48:49.620 here's the time.

00:48:50.460 He's part of it.

00:48:51.300 The media buyers are all part of creative ideation.

00:48:54.060 We then have a actual creative team.

00:48:56.000 So like Tess, Nick, Milo, Kristen,

00:49:00.400 in Pila full time.

00:49:02.160 That's like photography, videography,

00:49:04.580 and they're super creative.

00:49:06.360 Yeah.

00:49:07.200 Like really like-

00:49:08.040 So if you say we need a 30 second video that does X,

00:49:11.040 they'll go in the streets and shoot it.

00:49:11.880 Like guys make me an ad that like shows 0.51

00:49:13.780 a really cute puppy and a phone case

00:49:16.320 and that can communicate around like texture and soft

00:49:19.320 and they'll figure it out.

00:49:20.560 and they'll go do it.

00:49:21.400 And they're full time.

00:49:22.220 Are these like, I mean, this is fun.

00:49:24.560 Cause I'm like, I wanna, is it a theaters person?

00:49:26.640 Like, are they got background?

00:49:27.560 No, these are like photo and video people.

00:49:29.160 Like they, they go to school for like videography.

00:49:31.560 But they have friends that can be actors

00:49:32.980 and they'll just like create the.

00:49:34.020 Yeah. And then that's a great thing too,

00:49:35.100 is like, they know all the talent in town.

00:49:37.000 So like when you have to hire actors, they can get talent.

00:49:39.560 Like just budget type stuff.

00:49:40.840 Yeah, man.

00:49:41.680 Like we can do like really inexpensive video production.

00:49:44.700 That's super high quality.

00:49:45.700 Now they're a really talented team.

00:49:48.040 So that helps.

00:49:48.880 Like got lucky there and at the, when we hired,

00:49:53.220 we did a great job hiring, but yeah, they can,

00:49:56.820 they crush creative.

00:49:58.520 So between the media buying and the creative team,

00:50:01.540 we have a weekly sort of like,

00:50:03.980 we have actually two different syncs weekly

00:50:06.380 where we're talking about what's working.

00:50:08.320 Do we wanna iterate on something that's working

00:50:10.120 or do we wanna try something totally new?

00:50:13.040 And that's the rhythm and it's just super fast.

00:50:15.060 That's so cool.

00:50:16.100 I never even thought of having the creative team

00:50:19.880 because then you can just literally say,

00:50:21.520 I need a video on this, run the test, feedback,

00:50:25.260 go deeper, iterate, let's hit it with a different hook. 0.99

00:50:27.680 Yeah, scale and paid is about speed, right?

00:50:31.780 So outsourcing creative to me doesn't work, not at scale.

00:50:36.940 So if you're a small brand,

00:50:38.140 you can outsource creative all day long

00:50:40.140 because your cycles are much longer.

00:50:43.080 My cycles are daily, like at our spend,

00:50:46.040 It's like, it's a 24 hour cycle.

00:50:47.840 Sometimes it's a three hour cycle.

00:50:49.260 Or a creative or campaign will just burn itself through.

00:50:52.140 Yeah, we can, at our spend,

00:50:53.320 we can burn creative in less than 24 hours.

00:50:55.820 But that's also the advantage

00:50:57.060 because your feedback loop is so much faster.

00:50:58.800 Yeah, so like I can send a Slack message over to Nick

00:51:01.260 and say, hey, this image is working,

00:51:03.180 but I think it could be better

00:51:04.660 if we like made the font uglier

00:51:07.640 or like made it brighter

00:51:09.340 or like jack the contrast on it.

00:51:11.580 Let's see what that does.

00:51:12.700 Like, we'll just try stuff.

00:51:15.220 Video is a little harder

00:51:16.280 cause it takes time to produce it.

00:51:18.680 But like once you have all the video,

00:51:20.660 you know, you can build story blocks

00:51:22.440 and like just have different openings and intros

00:51:25.180 and always use those.

00:51:26.220 And yeah, you're assembling creative

00:51:29.080 in the way that you would software.

00:51:31.380 Now is that something strategically

00:51:33.520 the creative team goes and builds the story blocks

00:51:36.220 and knowing that you guys might want these things?

00:51:39.040 Yeah, different intros.

00:51:40.620 Like, yeah, so this quarter they have rocks

00:51:43.740 around different intros.

00:51:46.060 Like make me a whole bunch of different

00:51:47.680 three to five second intros

00:51:49.360 that you guys can throw onto any video.

00:51:51.440 So like when a video starts to work,

00:51:54.020 you have 12 other intros in the bank

00:51:57.180 that you can iterate on that video to see if that thing-

00:51:59.340 So it doesn't get stale.

00:52:00.180 Yeah.

00:52:01.420 Cause really you're just trying to fight against the- 0.88

00:52:03.520 Yeah, you're just trying to fight

00:52:04.680 whatever the fatigue looks like, yeah.

00:52:06.660 And then, you know, there's like a seasonality thing.

00:52:08.980 So like right now our spend will be lower

00:52:10.720 cause it's February and it's just a slow time for us.

00:52:13.640 but man, come April, Earth Day's rolling around.

00:52:15.960 And by that point, we're hitting the gas pedal.

00:52:18.080 And you map to those dates,

00:52:20.260 like you have a 12 month,

00:52:21.400 like here are the kind of like Valentine's and yeah.

00:52:24.880 Yeah, so you try to map out like a calendar

00:52:28.280 in any kind of marketing calendar, most brands have them.

00:52:32.760 I look at step up events.

00:52:34.620 So like they could be, Black Friday is a step up.

00:52:38.480 So like it'll be a big step up

00:52:39.900 or a new product drop could be a step up.

00:52:42.280 And it's a step up is,

00:52:44.040 can you grow the audience off of this event

00:52:47.460 so that this is your new baseline revenue or spend?

00:52:50.900 And audience means lookalike audiences or?

00:52:53.600 Any audience, audience audience.

00:52:54.840 So like brand awareness to like, yeah.

00:52:57.600 So like problem and solution where acts as a trampoline.

00:53:01.720 And you're trying to step up off of whatever that event is.

00:53:04.380 So we do this year, which is new for us,

00:53:07.160 we're gonna do monthly design drops every month.

00:53:10.560 Okay, so your design drops, is this a step up

00:53:13.060 or you're trying to find something in that month

00:53:14.440 to pair it against?

00:53:15.280 Well, we're looking, every design drop could be a step,

00:53:17.120 but we don't know yet.

00:53:17.960 Oh, you're trying to find the thing

00:53:18.800 that's gonna happen that month.

00:53:19.640 Looking for a hot something that's just gonna,

00:53:21.320 that's gonna rock it.

00:53:22.940 So like we just did one and it became like

00:53:24.680 one of our top five best sellers

00:53:26.180 within the first three or four days.

00:53:27.940 So it's like, okay, that just got us new reach,

00:53:30.500 new audience, that's a small step.

00:53:34.000 Earth Day as an event, if we do everything right,

00:53:37.120 marketing, like paid influencer, PR, all of it,

00:53:41.040 that's a massive step for us every year, right?

00:53:43.380 It just levels the business up

00:53:45.580 because it's, you know, the media is talking

00:53:48.000 about the planet, like last year or less so

00:53:51.260 because of COVID, but like this year,

00:53:53.860 it's gonna be a thing again.

00:53:55.540 You know, Earth Day rolls around,

00:53:56.760 every news outlet talks about the climate,

00:53:59.160 which that's a step for me.

00:54:02.260 That's huge, man.

00:54:04.040 Every market has it too.

00:54:05.400 Like every market is just, what it is,

00:54:07.980 you have to be listening.

00:54:08.820 You have things going on in your industry,

00:54:10.040 listen to your customers.

00:54:12.360 Obviously I'd keep you here all day selfishly

00:54:14.220 to learn all this stuff.

00:54:15.640 But as we wrap up Matt, you know,

00:54:18.460 one question I love to ask everybody is going back

00:54:21.660 to the, you know, the early days of DMACC

00:54:23.920 to the entrepreneur you are today,

00:54:25.580 who did, who do you think you needed to become

00:54:28.700 to deal with the level of opportunity ahead of you?

00:54:32.020 Oh, that's good.

00:54:33.080 Okay, I'll frame that the way I think about it.

00:54:37.740 So I'm not a, I mean, you know this,

00:54:40.900 I'm not a, I'm a high drive person for sure, right?

00:54:45.820 But I'm not overly disciplined.

00:54:48.620 So for me, it's not like, I don't look forward and say,

00:54:52.020 these are the, I need to be better.

00:54:54.000 Like, you know, I think you do like 1% per day better,

00:54:56.480 whatever, I remember you talking about that.

00:54:59.200 For me, it's always about beating my past self.

00:55:02.160 So like, I look, I don't look forward and say like,

00:55:04.620 this is who I need to become.

00:55:05.940 All I know is I gotta be better

00:55:07.260 than whoever I was yesterday.

00:55:09.660 And as long as I, like I have a sense

00:55:11.980 that I'm getting better at my craft,

00:55:14.620 that's how I look at development, right?

00:55:17.660 So, and that dictates where I spend my time.

00:55:20.980 You know, like I spend a weird amount of time on creative

00:55:24.740 and like free think.

00:55:26.380 Like I'll try and carve out hours in a day

00:55:28.440 just to like think, you know, not do, just think.

00:55:31.960 write and think and like just brain vomit into a note

00:55:36.520 because that gets me better at my craft.

00:55:38.300 That's the 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 hours thing.

00:55:41.280 Is that a new thing you developed over the years?

00:55:44.080 I would say in the last like three, four.

00:55:46.540 Yeah, that's huge.

00:55:47.380 Once I figured out, I'm like,

00:55:48.220 hey, I'm pretty good at this.

00:55:49.780 I'm just gonna, I'm gonna go super deep into it

00:55:52.920 because it's often the thing that's missing in,

00:55:55.840 like if you've got a business and you've got,

00:55:57.980 like I call it mission market fit, right, for PILA.

00:56:00.780 So like we've got not product market fit,

00:56:02.880 it's mission market fit.

00:56:03.900 So we've got lots of brands, lots of categories,

00:56:06.580 but it's all around mission market fit.

00:56:08.540 So once you have that, it's what's the thing that built,

00:56:12.220 what turns a business from, you know,

00:56:14.320 a $10 million company into a hundred or 300.

00:56:17.180 And oftentimes it's that vision, it's the creative.

00:56:21.440 So, you know, it's, you need great systems,

00:56:24.540 you need great opera, but I've got an awesome COO

00:56:27.120 and I have Brad as a partner.

00:56:29.020 I don't think about our hiring process, he does.

00:56:32.340 He's better at it than I'll ever be.

00:56:34.180 What I'm great at, like I sit in there,

00:56:36.200 I'm like, that's my zone, that's my genius.

00:56:39.180 And as long as I'm getting better there,

00:56:40.880 the rest of it will probably work out.

00:56:44.320 Everybody, where do they follow you online?

00:56:46.940 I know you're not.

00:56:47.780 I only have Twitter.

00:56:48.620 Yeah, so is Twitter the best place?

00:56:49.700 Yeah, Ember Tooley. 1.00

00:56:51.240 Ember Tooley.

00:56:52.380 Find them on Twitter, reach out, buy the product,

00:56:55.520 it's an awesome product.

00:56:56.520 I'm not saying that because I'm incredibly biased,

00:56:58.760 It's actually a great product.

00:56:59.960 It is a great product.

00:57:01.780 Appreciate you, Matt.

00:57:02.620 Yeah, man, thanks.

00:57:03.220 This was fun.

00:57:03.680 Awesome.

Dan Martell - January 24, 2022

Building a $100M+ Company - Matt Bertulli @ Pela Interview

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