Episode 387: Take The Guesswork Out Of Growth with Jim Huffman

Welcome to another— always mess that part of it up first time for some reason. Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we're talking with Jim Huffman. He is the founder and CEO of Growth Hit. He's got a book, podcast, newsletter, but we're talking all things around marketing today. If you want to grow your business, we're specifically talking about growth and scale this episode. Is for you. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Jim Huffman. Jim, welcome to the Above the Business podcast.

Yes, Bradley, excited, man. We're getting a lot of time today.

We are. So those of you— I just went on Jim's podcast, so we just did a back-to-back. So we've got to know each other, uh, pretty well. But my listening audience doesn't know you, so once you take us back a little bit and give our listeners kind of your background and origin story, how you got to where you are today.

Absolutely. I'm an accidental agency owner. There's a lot of us. I have a growth marketing agency called Growth Hit. We're about 40 people. We build websites and help people run ads and grow. But the way this all started was, you know, finance major out of school. I thought the only job you could get was like investment banking. I was so clueless at that time. I think a lot of people are. So got into finance, looked at spreadsheets. I was like, I don't think this is the life that I want to do. And so I, I went into startups and I can't code. So congrats, you're in marketing and sales. And so I was in Dallas at the time and writing email newsletters and people are like, what, what's an email newsletter? I'm like, I don't know, but it's what I'm doing. And got lucky, was a part of the startup that started to grow. I went to New York and went to another startup as kind of this growth person and it started to do well. And I was teaching marketing on the side and I was consulting. And by the way, I was horrible at pricing in the early days. And it kind of hit an inflection point. Am I going to keep being this marketing guy at a startup or start my own thing? And started the agency as I was looking to think of that next big idea and kind of 2 and a half years into it, I was like, you know what, I should, I should probably go all in on this. And that was kind of like the business origin story of leading into this. But before that, I'm, From Oklahoma, grew up obsessed with basketball and hoops. But yeah, that's a little bit of the background.

Well, man, you brought in two things. We might have to pause the podcast because we'll go off on tangents here. I'm not sure the listening audience— number one, welcome. Uh, if you're— are you an Oklahoma fan?

Um, uh, yeah, I am.

Okay, well, welcome to the SEC. So I'm an SEC guy.

Uh, I think OU's about to get smoked because you're Auburn, right? I think I saw—

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Cool. Uh, yeah, and Oklahoma actually comes, um, comes to Auburn this year. The first, first road trip in the SEC for, for Oklahoma.

It's going to be crazy seeing OU in Texas and the SEC. It's so weird.

Yeah, yeah. But it, it does feel like a good fit anyway. So, uh, second thing you mentioned that we also have in common is I, I also got my degree in finance, uh, yeah, from Auburn. And what's interesting, I've shared this openly on the podcast, is that I did get my degree from finance from Auburn but like in my first few years of business, I had literally no idea what I was doing when it comes to business financials. And I don't mean that as a— I sometimes joke about it, but I don't really mean that as an indictment towards Auburn. But like a finance degree was really about, you know, net present value of Harley-Davidson stock. It wasn't about like— it was not, you know, you know, and you're looking at these numbers on, on income statements of, of, of a big stock company and you see these billions, like it doesn't resonate with you whenever your business is doing a few hundred thousand dollars in revenue. Like, it's just, it didn't make sense. Like, I was running my books off Quicken. Uh, no, no, yeah, Quicken, right? Yeah, not QuickBooks, Quicken.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, the personal finance software. My accountant at the time was like, hey man, we need to get QuickBooks. I was like, what's the difference?

What's the difference? Yeah, the book's quick. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Um, I, I'm curious, what do you think, um, what do you think was like— I, I shared my story on your podcast, but what made you make that leap? What made you make the entrepreneurial leap? Because to do that, and obviously you've been successful since then, but there was something that you had to go— I mean, did you just go, you know, I'm doing it, and it was just that? What was your— what was that thought process for you?

Yeah, I mean, I always kind of wanted to do it. I love the idea of the freedom. I love the idea of kind of controlling your destiny. I did read The 4-Hour Workweek, which definitely accelerated my hunger for doing something different because as I was doing finance and even at these startups, like, I enjoyed parts of it, but I was never like, oh, this is my thing. And I, and like, when you're not just super energized, you start kind of getting these wandering eyes of, I think there's something else out there. And it's funny, I'm actually extremely risk averse. And so when I broke out, it wasn't like I quit, I walk out, let me go start this thing. I basically had 4 clients guarantee they'd pay me for 6 months enough to kind of offset my salary. And then I didn't make the leap. I tiptoed into entrepreneurship, right? And so, um, but it was, it was something that was marinating for a very long time. It took me a while to get the guts and the, the kind of guarantee to, to make the, the tiptoe, not even the jump.

Hopefully I can phrase this question, um, the right way. How have you balanced focusing on growing or helping your clients grow And balancing that with focusing on your own growth?

That is such a good question. No one's asked on this because for the first 4 to 5 years of the business, I sacrificed all of my growth as a CEO, my growth as a personal leader for the growth of clients. And maybe that's what I had to do to make them happy, keep the retention. Or maybe it was a crutch because it's a little bit of my comfort zone, right? And so, but there was something where, as I started to get people that were better at me at the core job, or that was a forcing function. And then two, I'm a huge fan of either getting the right coach or the right peer group around you to either get advice or just to open your eyes at how you do things and seeing people implement things like EOS or even probably like what you're doing with BlueprintOS, it showed me like, hey, you need to invest in this and be thoughtful with it. But I, yeah, I think I was really bad in the early days. Even now, like, I'm not on any clients and it was tough because I had good relationships with people and then I'd step away like, where'd Jim go? What's up with that? But I had to if I want to grow as a CEO and as a business leader.

Yeah, well, you know, when I, when I first started, um, coaching, uh, late 2017, I mean, the only thing— I mean, I was a reluctant coach. I wasn't trying to— it wasn't like I saw coaching consulting as like, oh, that's a good industry to go into, let me go get into that. Yeah, it just kind of happened, and before I knew it, I was like, oh my gosh, wait a minute, I woke up and I have 22, 22 private clients, and my weeks are just shot. So then I was like, oh my gosh, you know, this is not going to work. But it kind of, you know, it kind of builds to that way, and then you realize, like, okay, I've got to have to kind of begin to, to change some things. So, um, let's talk, let's talk about actual, uh, growth. And I want to ask a question I've asked this before, and I think it— I, I think it's a difficult question. I think it's kind of like asking somebody— I did yesterday on the podcast— what is the difference between management and leadership? And it's like there's kind of a gray area, you know, it's not this perfect definition. But where do you see the different definition, or the difference I should say, between growth and scale?

Oh man, what an interesting question. Um, I, I think of those a few different ways of like growth. I would put it this way, and I'm, I'm a little, um, inspired from some books that I'm reading is Growth is something you're doing like day to day, getting a little bit more tactical to, to hit quarterly growth goals or annual growth goals. As I think of scale, I'm going a little bit more strategic in structure and architecture. And do I have a company that cannot make a 10% gain but a 10x gain? Because I could do some quick hits for growth. But if I'm thinking through scale, I'm thinking through a nonlinear leap and a step change that has to have a bigger picture in view. It's like, oh, if we're going to go from 1 million to 10 million, our sales team is going to look completely, completely different. Our fulfillment and operations team is going to look completely, completely different. Our cost structure is going to change. And are we prepared for scale? And so it's, it's kind of different conversations and honestly, different skill sets are needed for, for those two different things is, is how I'm approaching it. And honestly, I think as I've grown, hopefully as a business leader, it's trying to think through the bigger picture of scale rather than growth. Hmm.

All right. So that leads me to kind of my, my next question, which is, so I know you're familiar with, uh, the Inc. 5000. Fastest growing companies. So one of the things that I did some research on, and since you're a growth guy, okay, since you're a growth guy, this, this is, this is going to be interesting. So the Kauffman Foundation has done some research and they found that 67% of the companies that have appeared on the Inc. 5000 list within 5 years are either out of business or significantly reduced in size or disadvantageously sold, meaning exited, sold, but not like at a great multiple, maybe at like just a fire sale. Basically, that is 17% higher than all startups at 5 years, which is 50%.

Wow.

So my question is, is that we as entrepreneurs, like, it kind of speaks to this, will grow at all costs. Growth will fix all of my problems. If we just grow, we get more sales, we increase our sales velocity, it'll solve everything. That was a lie that I was telling myself before. Hey, look, if we can just— if I can just get past 500,000 in revenue, we're gonna be good, right?

Yeah.

And then we can just get here, we're gonna be good. And that's just— it doesn't work. So as a growth guy, number one, do you believe that? Okay, how do you think about it for your clients? Because they're coming to you saying, I want to grow, man, I want to grow.

Yeah.

But yet there's these, these bigger macro things that are at play.

Oh, what a fun question. Uh, the first thing I think to those companies that fall out is the idea of like the innovator's dilemma, right? Where you something to get you to this point, things are going well. Technology's changed, industries change. If you don't disrupt yourself, guess what? Someone that doesn't have as tough of a burn rate, someone that's more agile, someone that's AI-backed, they're gonna come for you. And if you aren't disrupting yourself, you'll get disrupted. And candidly, at our agency, AI is coming for us. And if we aren't aligned with that, we, we have to be on top of it. But, but to answer your question around, is the answer growth at all costs? It's such a fun one because we have a couple different types of clients where we have to play this game. You have the VC-backed company that call it 4 to 3 years ago, it was just grow, grow, grow. We don't care about profitability. And what happened is when you don't grow on a foundation of good unit economics, a good P&L or balance sheet, you're going to have to like the day of reckoning is coming and it won't be pretty. Like some examples of that are I think it was Wink, the wine subscription company. Amazing at customer acquisition. Get wine, free shipping, get on the subscription model. They were acquiring people like crazy. But guess what? Shipping wine is really expensive. And when you do that for free and you have a churn problem, it's not going to work out. They've since gone bankrupt and it didn't play. Whereas you have other companies like somebody like Vioree, where they were really good at having good unit economics, a good LTV, They grew maybe not as fast as some of the VC-backed companies, but it's sustainable. So when we're working with companies, we have to really have a candid conversation. We can grow, but what game are you in? Are we profitable in the first purchase, the second purchase, or year 2? And the ones that want to delay that profitability, I get real nervous. It can be hard to flip the switch on that. And so it's, it's, it's being very well aware of like growth, but at what cost? When, and that cost could be now or could be later. And we're seeing definitely a shift. And I feel like there's more of an almost like renaissance of like the bootstrap founder and profit first and how we grow because we've acquired a company where we're playing that game right now where we have— it's an e-commerce brand where we have to be profitable in that first purchase because we want to grow, but not at the cost of things going under.

I love it. You know, like on your website, one thing I want to really give you credit for, number one, I love the tagline, growth isn't a guessing game. First of all, I love that, right? Because that, that Bradley years ago was like, I want to grow. What's your strategy? Hell, I don't know. I just want to grow, man. I just want to grow. Um, secondly, you put as a bullet point right at the very top, the very first bullet point, is increased profits. So I think that for the people that we work with, like, I don't work— so one of my best friends from Auburn actually, um, is, uh, with a company called Bridge Bank, and they were the second largest, uh, competitor to SVB Bank, Silicon Valley Bank. Um, so, so they— he was competing a lot with SVB for years. And so when that happened, when SVB went down, I called him, was like, dude, are you okay? Like, you know, he's like, no, we're fine. They're their balance sheet was out of whack anyway. We're good. But reason I say that is because I only work with bootstrapped entrepreneurs. That's the world I know. He only works with VC-backed pre-revenue companies.

Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Okay. Pre-revenue. Like these, these are companies that haven't even like generated a dollar yet and they're burning cash at, you know, crazy amounts. But he has said, Bradley, these— we don't care in the VC-backed companies. They don't care about profitability. Bradley, I've had loans on the books. Like, he had the loan actually for Angie's List for a long time, like, as an example. And he said, but Bradley, they're going to get their payday when they get— when they go public. That's what they're going to do. And so that was really interesting to me to see such a sharp contrast because In our world, we have to grow and be profitable. Like you have to hold both of those. And he doesn't, they don't care about that. And so it's just like so fascinating, you know, both of those. Anyway, I didn't know if you had any, that's not a great question, but I didn't know if you had any.

No, but you, and business owners, you have to know what game you're in. If you're doing the VC model, you're trying to get a 10-bagger, 10x on what you're doing. You're going for the exit. You're going for the IPO. If you're bootstrapped, it's got to be sustainable because guess what? You got a burn rate. You need to pay that and you probably want to pay yourself and invest in growth. And so it's a tough dance and that could mean it's slower because we tell clients that want to go big, growth is not easy, it is not cheap, and it is not something that's for everybody. So it's like, what, you know, choose your own adventure here on how aggressive you want to go. But one call out, bootstrap founders, I think whether you want to go big or not, VC-backed or private equity-backed, Take like a bootstrap sabbatical, do something bootstrap for 6 months, 12 months, a couple of years. Those are the scrappiest, best business owners, in my opinion, as far as withstanding the highs and lows. I think it's a good exercise to go down.

Yeah, you're so right about that. It reminds me of the story of Jawbone. You know, they raised like $1 billion and they still went bankrupt, you know?

Oh my gosh. Yeah.

They had so much money they just didn't know what to spend it on, so they just blew it basically, right? So, um, tell me, um, in, in looking at this, actually was brought up a question I wasn't going to plan on asking you, but, um, marketing metrics specifically I want to call out two that you have, uh, right at the top of the website, but CAC and LTV. For a small business owner, first of all walk us through what those are, you know, and how to calculate them. But maybe more importantly, why in the heck should I care? Right? I got a business, does a million bucks, you know, it's throwing off 25% profitability and, you know, you're throwing around these marketing fancy language things of LTV, CAC, etc. Why should I even give a dang about those?

Totally. If you're thinking of growth, it's like, okay, I need to get more customers, more clients, whatever that is. How do we get them? How much is it going to cost? That's all customer acquisition costs means how much to get a client to sign or someone to do a transaction on your website. And then LTV, lifetime value, is how much are they going to pay you over the lifetime? But if you're a bootstrap business owner, I'm thinking of what's— how much money do I make from them in 90 days or in 6 months? Because once I know the guardrails there, then I can start to model and think through, okay, I want to invest in growth. Let's think about this. And so to give a tangible example, our agency Growth Hits, service-based business, maybe that's more applicable to the listeners. You know, let's say our LTV is roughly $50K that we make from a client in a year. But let's say within, you know, 90 days, say it's like $20K. So it's like, okay, that's like how much money I can make from them. What's my ceiling for a cost per acquisition? Usually it's like maybe 30% of that. So I could spend We'll just say like between $5,000 to $15,000 on acquiring them. Okay, I have like a floor and a ceiling. And then what I'm thinking through is what are the things I'm willing to test to acquire people at that range? And how long am I willing to test that? Because what I see people go wrong, they'll play the game, get the unit economics, cost per acquisition, LTV, and then they'll throw something out there. And if it doesn't work immediately, like, oh, Cold email didn't reach for us, or Google Ads didn't work for us. I say to people, give yourself a timeline. If you're trying to drive pipeline and you're going to test cold outreach, paid ads, give yourself the window of, you know, a quarter, two quarters, put a dollar amount to it that you're willing to test that to see if this works. And so for us, we were for a while the cobbler with no shoes. That was a growth agency that was like, hey, we got a referral today. Awesome. We got a lead today. Cool. And we're like, no, it's time to kind of be black belt at this and, you know, eat our own dog food. So we've been very aggressive about driving leads. We've gotten the cost down from like $500 a lead to basically like $125 on certain channels. Our cost per acquisition, we're getting it even under $1,000 to $500. We're seeing some plateau issues there. And we're looking to diversify, but it's all playing within the guardrails of the business model because again, I'm a bootstrap service-based business. We have to do that.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, for sure. I mean, even with, with Blueprint OS, that's been something that's like, hey, you know what? This is no longer Bradley just, just doing one-to-one coaching. This is a, this is a legitimate business now at this point. And so we got to start looking at some of these unit economics. All right, there's a lot of different— in marketing in general, this is kind of a really hot, uh, 30,000-foot view, uh, question, but there's a lot of different messages out there. There's a lot of different channels. Um, how do you recommend someone who says, I want to grow, how do they begin to look at it from, you know, strategy, um, and, and choosing where to go? And so in other words, there, somebody may have heard from a friend, right? They go play golf with a friend and they're like, man, we're killing it with Google Ads or we're killing it with Meta ads or we're, you know, doing this. And then all of a sudden that person goes, well, I'm going to go try that. And they go try it for a month and they're like, yeah, it didn't work for me. All right. And then they go try another one and then they go try another one. They go try another one. What's the right way to do it?

Yeah. So first, we have this idea of what's blocking your growth, right? So it's like, okay, You're, you're doing well at some point, but maybe you're not growing like you want, or maybe you're declining. And so the first question is, okay, where are the issues and where are the growth opportunities? And usually it's like 3 core things. Do you have a traffic problem? No one knows you exist. Do you have a conversion problem? They know you exist, but guess what? They're not gonna convert. Or, and it's usually this one, do you have a positioning problem? Because if you are doing those 3 things at a black belt level, usually you're going to have a fulfillment problem, which is actually a good problem to have to some extent. So let's start with positioning. Before I even get into tactics and channels, I go to the core. Do you have something that's truly unique or are you a commodity? Because if you're a commodity, we're competing on price and that gets dangerous. So instead, I really push people to go a level further to a true point of differentiation. Choose what hill you want to die on. So if you're like, oh, we're an agency to everybody, instead, can you be like, we are a paid media agency just for SaaS companies that have been VC-backed or something? And notice how as you get specific, you hone in. Where you take that over the top is creating your irresistible activation offer. Like, so some obvious examples would be like a performance-based model. You could have like Domino's Pizza, the pizza is free if we don't get it to you in under 30 minutes, like whatever that offer is. So that's where I start. And then the second thing is, okay, where are the next issues? If it's traffic, we, we, I want to hear all the tactics that people are doing, but I'm also thinking through where do your customers actually live and are you there? I'm also thinking through what does your business model allow you to do? Is it the paid channels Or is it the free channels and being scrappy? And then I'm thinking through different ways I want to test and deploy that, right? And so we can kind of get into all of that. But the thing that I would push kind of goes back to my last point. Yes, please identify all those channels. And then if you want to test them, put a budget, more importantly, a timeline with how long you're going to let it cook to see if it actually comes out nice or not. And then usually at the bottom of the funnel, conversion issues. That's where we kind of specialize. We see so many people overspend on tactics and ads and they underspend on their website where the rubber meets the road to get someone to fill out a form, to get someone to do a transaction. Because when you do that well, it is transformative. So example, the reason why we got our cost per lead down from like basically $1,000 to $100, we dialed in our website. We test exposing a Calendly, doing a quiz funnel, we played with the language and we've found a couple like killer keyword categories for specific industries and services with custom pages that speak to that persona that, that's allowed us to, to do that. So that, that was kind of a, a, a little bit of answering the question, but, um, that, that's how I'm approaching growth is like, what's blocking it? Where do we stop the bleeding? And then where are the opportunities? Hmm.

It's like the theory of constraints. How do you—

bottlenecks too? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. How do you know that what it is they think though is that's holding them back is actually what's holding them back?

This is the, the business owner as far as getting their buy-in on what's holding them back.

Yeah. Yeah, so, so hypothetically, somebody, um, somebody hops on the phone with somebody on your team and you start going through and you're like, what do you think's holding you guys back? You know, we're at $3 million, we're trying to get to $10 million, and we just can't, we can't, we can't bust through. And you say, what do you think's holding you back? Uh, I think, I think it's leads, leads, leads holding us back. Yeah, we just need more leads. And, and, but the reality is it may be positioning or something else to actually get down to like, I actually don't think that that's actually the, the problem. And they're working on this one thing when the reality is this is actually the problem that they need, need to solve. I mean, to me, I think this— the obstacle that's in the way is like the heart of trying to figure out how to make a business go forward.

Yeah, no, totally. We, um, we usually try and lead with data to drive this. And this isn't just like the quantitative analysis, it's also the qualitative and the voice customer. Like, we literally had a call this morning. Someone's like, yeah, we just need you to help with some tweaks at bottom of the funnel with the cart to work on the checkout. And I think we're good. I was like, okay. And their conversion rate was like a 1.2%. But what got me going was like, your add to cart is a 2%. And you like— I didn't like the drop-off from an add to cart to a conversion. There's usually like a 4:1 drop-off. You're like 2 to 1. But what tells me is there's no intent. People are super confused at top of the funnel. Your, your add to cart should be up at like an 8 or a 7. And your issue isn't bottom of the funnel. Your issue is confusion. People don't know what you sell and what you do. There's a positioning problem here. And so if I can lead with data to get an insight to drive the strategy, that's usually how I can get their attention. It's funny. I even have a marketing coach. He's the CMO of a publicly traded company, and he was looking at our stuff and I was like, showing him like, look at this killer landing page. Look how good the conversion rate is. He's like, yeah, he's like, that's great. But he's like, you have the narrowest funnel in the history of funnels. People can only like go through this funnel to like tell them, tell you their marketing budget. He's like, you got to widen your funnel, man. He's like, where are the lead magnets? Where's the white papers? Where's like the content to let people know you exist? And I was like, oh my gosh, I do this for a living. And I had to have someone come in and kind of teach me what I thought I already knew. So it's really tough when you're in the weeds as a business owner.

It is. But that's, that's actually a great lesson in learning for everyone. Two things I will say this: never trust a coach who doesn't have a coach. I have a coach. Okay. Secondly, And in all seriousness, you cannot read the label inside the jar.

Yeah.

And so one of my coaches, Mike, this was about a month ago on your podcast, I was talking about the starter kit, right? Well, that idea came from a session we were on and he said it was, it was real short because I had to hop off onto something. And he goes, you know, Bradley, You know what I do? I just— I would put together— I'd put all your— all the stuff together and put it in a starter kit. As soon as it came out of his mouth, I was like, done, done. See, I appreciate it. That's what— that's exactly what I needed to know. And I got off that call and I thought, God, Bradley, Bradley, how could you be so stupid? Like, of course, that's exactly what you need to do. But to the point, for people listening, is you cannot see your own swing, whatever analogy you want to use. I let Jim and myself be an example. Like, if you don't have somebody objectively looking at your stuff where you can get feedback in some way, whether it's a business coach or just a friend even that is a trusted, uh, uh, you know, confidant or mentor to you to be able to pour into you and give you some objective advice, um, like, man, this business stuff is really, really hard. And so to your point, like, it— hey, you needed somebody that's a little bit ahead of you to look at it and go, ah, You're right. Yes. The other thing I'd say about that is, is that somebody else, like, say, you're a buddy of yours that doesn't know marketing, could have said the exact same thing and you might have dismissed it. But it's also coming from an authority figure. Is that fair?

Yeah, absolutely. And someone you trust where you've kind of created that, that permission and safe space to, to be candid and give feedback from, from a good place. And I would also say, like, peer groups are great too. And to be friendly with other business owners, just because I think it's so valuable because it's people that will shoot you straight from a good place. Hold on to those people at whatever cost. They are so valuable as you're going down this journey.

Yeah, you're right. Well, you mentioned something earlier that I want to come back to. I'm curious about how you're doing this with your clients, but then also just how you've thought about it for your business too. Um, I think we're all trying to figure out how to navigate through and best use AI, um, and, and kind of what that looks like. I think we're all past the, oh my gosh, the robots are going to take over the world, you know, and we're going to be extinct, that sort of craziness. But like, no, okay, this is now a tool, so how do I actually utilize that tool? What are some things— I guess first, how are you thinking about it? What are some things that you guys have been able to do?

Yeah, I'll talk about it from a philosophy and then I'll get like tactical, like from a philosophy perspective back to the innovator's dilemma. Like we're seeing it as we're quoting deals where like even some of the stuff we've done in the past is devalued because like, oh, why would I have you do creative? AI can do that. Why would I hire you to do copywriting? AI can do that. And it's only going to compound. So with that in mind, like we have, um, not an unlimited budget, but if anyone wants to like test some new AI tool, I'm like, done, go for it. So it's just one, building the habit and the ritual and the discipline to absorb all the stuff that's coming out and to tinker. That means it's gonna take some time that maybe isn't productive. It's gonna take some money that is maybe wasted, but over the long haul, I think it's a good investment to be doing that. So that, that's kind of like one call out and how I'm approaching it is one, how can I use it to deliver value to my clients? To save them time, money, or to be more impactful, right? And so some, like, quick wins we're seeing is obviously copywriting. We've been doing that for a while. And the other thing that we're playing around with is creative for landing pages and for ads. There's, like, ad creative AI. There's copy AI that we're doing for that. One thing we're getting really excited about is some of the stuff that Zapier and Segment is doing to take your data and have it talk to each other to, to give insights. So that, that's one callout. But the other thing is, if we're such a good growth team, why can't we grow our own stuff? So we recently acquired a company, and one of the things we're trying to do is grow it using basically all AI to help with some of the execution. And so that way it can be our sandbox to play with AI and what we do. But, but those are some things that we're, we're thinking through as we're, we're tinkering with stuff. And I will, one last comment on it. I think AI is really good right now at the execution. It's not as good at the strategy, which will save my job for a little bit longer, which is good. But we're using it more for execution tasks rather than strategy.

What are you thinking long term? Like, how are you seeing it today? But then, which is— that's super helpful. What about— what about down the road?

Yeah, I'm thinking the people that I hire, it's Like over time, it's all about getting people that are good at tools, like using the Facebook Ad Manager, good at doing website development within Shopify. I want to get people that are really good at, call it prompt engineering, or just using these tools. I think that's where, like, for our business, where it's going to go. People that are good at creating these agents and using these agents to deploy and do a lot of different things. Because I do think there's a mini white-collar recession happening right now. And AI is a part of that, that it's going to, I think, only get bigger.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you for sure. Well, man, Jim, this has been great. People want to learn more about what you guys do, connect with you. Where would you point them to?

Yeah, so I mean, obviously we're growthhead.com. I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, just Jim Huffman. And then we have a podcast, If I Was Starting Today, where Bradley came on and crushed it. That was a fun one. And then we're, we're putting out this book called The Growth Marketing Operating System and this e-product that just kind of talks about the system for growth. You and I have talked about, I'm obsessed with systems and frameworks. So it's kind of stuff that we do that we've deployed with companies and one that we acquired. But, but yeah, that's where you can find us.

I love it. Well, the name of the podcast is Above the Business. What do you think getting above the business means to you?

I think it's when you can like step away and it's almost like this feeling where you get really fired up thinking about the vision and what you can do, where you want to call your business partner or your team and, and think big picture, think proactive. So it's almost like this feeling that I think is the best part of business. And a lot of times it happens when I'm not sitting right here at my desk. I'm like on a jog, I'm walking. And for me, that's the fun stuff, is getting excited about the future state of the business. So for me, that's kind of what it's all about.

Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's actually one of some of the most fun times is actually whenever you're in that state because you're thinking about what's possible. You're just kind of leaning out, thinking about what's possible. I totally agree. Jim, you know, some of my key takeaways from today is is almost a doubling down on some of the just unit economics in business is kind of going back and saying, you know, do we have that? And, uh, looking at our LTV and our CAC numbers and really looking at that. Um, secondly, I think that at the very end you shared some things around your utilization of AI. I think that obviously is— the more I bring that up, the more I'm trying to actually, I think, embed it in myself because it's just not— it's like brushing your teeth with your right hand and then you're trying to learn to brush it with your left hand, right? I mean, it's like, that's not my— for years, not been my first go-to place of like, hey, I wonder how AI could support me in this. So I asked some of those questions at times just to get like, okay, yeah, I need to get this more in my routine to think about how to, how to leverage some of that. And then also, I think the discussion that we had around growth and scale. The first part of it I thought was really, really good, um, and really having— making sure that our marketing strategy aligns with what it is that we're trying to do to, to grow the company. So I appreciate the insight you gave, your wealth of, wealth of knowledge, and I enjoyed, uh, spending the— this amount of time with you.

No, it's awesome. And one last thing I'd like to give people is I, I get really— I think I make things harder than they should be. I've been doing this thing recently where it's like this exercise, like how can you 2x your business in 10 minutes? And what that means is what are the, the easy levers to pull that can have a big impact? Like for example, with our e-commerce brand, the average order value was $40. I was like, what if we stopped selling individual products and sold bundles? And we doubled our average order value. And like with our agency, our close rate or our close time, it'd take like 30 to 60 days to close a deal. Like, what would it look like if we close an intro pack on the phone, call one, and like we close 5 things in a week? And I'm not saying that's happening all the time. We have issues with that, but it's something that I like to go through that exercise sometimes because I feel like we overcomplicate things, especially when it comes to growth and scale. And so that's something I've been putting out to people, like, what are those huge levers and even embody like your constraints you could turn into opportunities if we want to play business jiu-jitsu here on where you can have like a big impact. But hopefully that can be helpful so people don't get intimidated around this idea of growth and scale.

Oh, super good, super good insight there, Jim. Appreciate you coming on, man.

Awesome. Thanks, Bradley.

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