The Brand Builder Podcast w/ Ryan Daniel Moran & Max Kerwick #TheOnePercent

Hey 1 percenters and greedy capitalists. Ryan here. And I'm really excited to bring to you this episode from a new podcast that we have launched@capitalism.com called the Brand Builder Podcast. I host it with my buddy and my partner Max Kerwick and it's all about physical products brands. It's about Amazon, it's about branding, it's about funnels, it's about case studies of businesses that are doing this well. So this is one of the episodes from the Brand Builder Podcast and we have some really cool stuff coming in 2019 here on the podcast and@Capitalism.com this is a taste of what is to come. You'll hear us talk about what is working in our businesses. You'll hear us interview students and other people that we admire who are doing some cool things. And you'll hear us feature some of the keynotes that we've had at past brand building events. You're really gonna enjoy this if you sell on Amazon, if you sell physical products, if you have an audience that you wanna monetize, or if you want to do any of those things. So you can subscribe by searching Brand Builder Podcast or you can just listen to this episode here on the show. Thanks for listening.

Welcome to the Brand Builder podcast presented by capitalism.com I'm Max Kerwick and I advise physical product brands to find their story.

I'm Ryan Daniel Moran and I invest in physical products brands. A physical products brand is arguably the most predictable path to a seven figure business and we advise them, build them, buy them and sell them.

The show goes behind them, tracks their success and hands you the keys to what's working.

Let's dive in.

Hey gang. This is Ryan Daniel Moran. I'm the founder and the CEO of capitalism.com and this is the Brand Builder Podcast. In this inaugural episode I'm joined by my counterpart Max Kerwick and together he and I work on advising and building physical products brands. In my experience, in our experience, physical products brands has been the path that has created the most success stories for new entrepreneurs as well as given a sellable asset to experienced entrepreneurs who are selling info products or who have a following. Over the last five years I have been working with and training physical product entrepreneurs over at my podcast@capitalism.com capitalism.com is a bit of a podcast media company as of right now and during our time I've documented the growth of brands that I've been a part of and brands that I have advised. And during that time there have been several hundred million Dollar businesses that were born out of the process that we talk about here on this podcast and the other podcasts@capitalism.com but the purpose of this show is to go behind the success stories to track what they're doing differently than everyone else. There are a lot of entrepreneurs who just release products or just create funnels, but it takes a special kind of focus to create a brand. A brand that sells a lot of product at high profit margins, that does not depend on Amazon.com or Facebook traffic alone and that merges the worlds of direct response advertising with high profitable products and does it in a way that adds value to the world and also is a sellable company that has scalability. And if you do it right, it's the greatest path that I have ever seen to building seven, eight, even nine figure businesses that are sellable and scalable. Over the last five years, we've worked with entrepreneurs who have built hundred million dollar portfolios, entrepreneurs who have sold companies for tens of millions of dollars, and the scrappy one or two person show that builds a seven figure business that they're just proud to run. This podcast goes behind all of them and analyzes what they do differently to stand out among all of the competition, among all of the noise, to find what's working and what's coming down the pike. In this inaugural episode, I'm joined by my counterpart, Max Kerwick, who is, well, one of the best branders that I know. He works especially well with physical product sellers who are selling a lot of product but don't have their story really dialed in. I'm a marketer. I look at this from a perspective of sales and marketing and growth. And Max looks at it in terms of story and brand. And when you combine these two together and you bring in a case study, there's a lot of magic in each one of these. I hope you find this as valuable as the thousands of other entrepreneurs who have followed our work over the last several years. And I'm very proud of what we are bringing to you here inside the Brand Builder Podcast. To kick things off, please help me welcome my counterpart, Max Kerwick.

What's up everybody? Welcome to the Brand Builder Podcast. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran and I am Max Kerwick. That was high energy. Good work, Max Kerwick. So, hey, I mean, this is the show about physical products, brands and Max, your background is in helping those brands find their story. And, and I know you have a background in helping people raise money, putting together pitch decks, people who have sales coming to you to find out how they make an impact with their customers so they can scale beyond just having a product. And I was hoping you'd give a little bit of a background on. I want to ask you a lot about what physical products, brands do wrong, but I want to hear about.

I've got a lot of answers.

I want to hear what you have done and how you help brand brands.

Yeah. So first off, really psyched to be here. Really psyched to be doing this podcast with you. You know, really psyched to kind of go through and explore more about these brands. I like to say that I transform businesses into brands. Kind of my sweet spot is working with people who have cash flow, who, you know, have. Have a business, have products, have customers, all that kind of stuff, but haven't really cracked that nut of what is the story? What is the thing that's going to elevate me, you know, past all of these other people who are doing the same things that I'm doing. Right. And that's something that's especially true in physical products because there's so many me too brands out there, right? So many people selling the same thing, just slapping their label on it and thinking because they have a logo, that they have a brand.

How do I sell more spatulas?

Exactly, exactly. To steal your example, right? There's lots of people out there selling spatulas. And so, yeah, so my background, I've worked with a lot of different types of companies. I've worked with technology companies when that got of boom was first happening, especially when those companies were raising Money, you know, 2012, 2013, Facebook had just gone public and everyone was just dumping money into that kind of stuff. I worked with a lot of businesses that were raising angel capital and venture capital and working with private equity. I work with a lot of businesses post acquisition.

And you did what for them?

So a couple things. One actually helped them with the fundraising process. So putting together, telling that story to an investor audience on, like, why is my brand, you know, interesting? Why is it a good financial asset? Why is it a good place to park your money? But more than that, you know, I help those companies build their actual brands. And so I think one of the hardest things in business, especially when you are kind of an entrepreneur and you are focused on your. Your baby, right? That your business is your baby and you're putting all your money, all your effort, all your time into building this thing up, a lot of times you kind of lose sight of who you're serving, right? Because you've developed this great product or you've built this great business, you've done all these different things. And at the end of the day, your customer doesn't really give a shit about any of that. What they care about is what you do for them, right? They're out there trying to tell a story about themselves as a human being, and they're using the brands that they buy the signal for. Like, here's the story that I'm telling about myself, right? If I'm walking around and I get in a BMW, right? You know something about me as a human being. I'm telling a story about myself that is, you know, I'm successful, I care about performance, I'm kind of an asshole, probably, right? It's like I'm telling this story about myself and I'm using the car that I drive as the brand, right? If I use an Android versus an iPhone, you know something about me, right? If I, you know, have a hundred dollar supplement versus a $20 supplement or something like that, like, again, I'm signaling, I'm telling you something about myself. And they don't care that you spent a bunch of time in creating that product. They don't really care about that hours, sleepless nights that you spent building that company and everything. They care about what you're doing for them and what you're doing for that story.

And so many companies are walking around running BMW commercials, talking about how great their car is.

Exactly. Like, hey, think about all the time that we spent engineering this car and like, hey, look, it's so great and we've done so much work on it, you should buy it or we're cheaper.

We're cheaper than Maserati.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so what I help, like, and really what I enjoy doing in this type of work is helping those businesses go out and figure out, like, who do you serve and why do they give a shit? Why do they care? Why? What is the story that they're trying to tell about their life? And what is the role that you can play in that? Right. Cause that's where the power is. And so we talk about storytelling a lot and we talk about brands need stories and you need a brand story and all that kind of stuff. But it's kind of the ends to get the means, Right? Because if you have a story that resonates with your audience, building that audience is going to be way easier.

It's really about the customer story.

Exactly.

And where your product fits them in that customer story.

Exactly. You can't see what I'm doing with my hands right now. But if I'm drawing a Venn diagram in the air, right. It's like where you want to be is the intersection between, like, what your customer wants and what you are credible in providing.

Right.

And, like, it's as simple as that. If you can figure out, like, really what they're trying to do, really the story that they're trying to tell and, you know, all of that kind of stuff and then what you can actually deliver on and you can just keep nailing that. Right. With the products that you roll out, with the messaging that you roll out, with the ad campaigns that you run, with the email sequences that you run, with the customer service experience that you deliver, all of those things, like, that's how you build the brand, that's how you build the audience, and that's how you get an asset that anybody is interested in buying, right?

Yeah. Ultimately, that's what an investor who wants to buy one of these businesses buying. Because, like, anybody can buy a supply chain for a product.

Exactly.

Anybody can buy an idea. But if you haven't carved out an area in which you're serving a specific person and helping them on that customer journey, what are they buying? They're buying maybe a cash flow stream that could be stopped up by another competitor who finds the exact same keywords or Facebook placements or sales copy and can just sell better than you.

Exactly. You know, and I have nothing but respect for people who are out there, you know, building a cash flow business. Right. But if you take that approach of I'm just going to hustle, you know, a lot of people who saw on Amazon do this, where you're just kind of like working within the confines of Amazon and playing their game and pulling these levers and you're not really worried about anything else. And that's great. In the short term, that's going to get you that mailbox money that you're looking for. But if you really want a financial asset, something that an investor is going to buy and is going to pay a multiple on, not just your cost of inventory or, you know, pay a multiple of profit or maybe even a multiple revenue if you're in the right category. Right. Like, you need to have the things that make it a brand and not just a cash flow business. Right. You need to have an audience, you need to have a story, you need to have, you know, a presence beyond just like, hey, I sell this much.

A month, so I want to back up to when you're working with somebody with the questions you ask that Entrepreneur in order to get them to start thinking like this, because it's so easy for us to go down the path of, I've got this thing. Tell me how to sell this thing. And I think the best way you sell this thing is dialing in who it's for and how you communicate that to the ideal. Like, what your product does to that ideal person. And that's a lot meatier of a question than how do I sell this thing? What Facebook ad should I run? Should I put it on Shopify? Should I put it on Amazon? Should I do a kick? Like, it's like, those tactical pieces are what we want because we see them as the hack to the end result. But you ask a lot of questions to go into those foundational pieces that I think have to be asked if you're going to build a company out of this. Would you walk us through some of those questions?

Yeah, absolutely. So. And you know, Ryan, you're getting me to reveal some of my tricks here, because this works very well in the sales process as well. But the first thing that I like to do is sit down with, you know, the founder, whoever's running the company, and just ask them who their customer is, because a lot of times, especially with physical products, I get an answer that sounds something like, I sell to busy moms. Okay, cool. Tell me more about busy moms. Tell me what, who that person is and what they look like. It's like, okay, well, you know, she's probably, like, 35 to 50, has two and a half kids, probably lives in the Midwest. And then this is my favorite. It's like, she has enough expendable income to buy my product. Okay, cool. Thanks for coming out.

That was really cool.

Yes. So, A, it sounds like you've never met a mom before, right? B, there are so many different types of busy moms, right? You could have someone who has, you know, three kids under five and is a homemaker. You could have the career woman who has a kid in college and a kid in high school. Right? The things that those women need are very different, Right? And the story that, more importantly, the story that they're trying to tell about their life is very different. Right? And so kind of digging into that and honestly just poking holes in it and showing like, hey, like, you have not really thought about this is usually the starting place for getting that kind of like, aha, I don't really know who I'm serving. Because that's the first realization that you need to start this process, is realizing that what you don't know.

So I want to poke a hole in this one. One of my favorite companies is Quest Nutrition. And they started with the Quest. The Quest. They started with the.

The.

The mission. And the mission was to end metabolic disease. Okay. And on their path to end metabolic disease, their first product was a protein bar.

Yep.

That had perfect macro balance and tastes delicious.

Yep.

I couldn't tell you who that's for. I know that I'm that person. I don't know that ever heard Quest Market to that person, but I'm that person because I buy all their stuff. So I also know that, like, if you look at a lot of their videos, it's women, sometimes really hot women, and sometimes it's like people starting a new journey, you know, So I know it's not me in the videos that they're.

You think that a video with hot women is not trying to sell to you?

You know, you have a point.

I don't know. If you ask some of my YouTube commenters, they would, they would argue otherwise. But, but I'm. And I don't. Not even sales videos, like content videos that they're. They're putting out. And yeah, sure, you can make the argument that they're putting hot girls in there to attract more people like me.

Yeah.

But I'm. But I'm curious. I don't. I couldn't tell you who Quest's ideal customer is. So is it necessary for every company to really have it dialed in of who it is that they're serving?

I think it is. Even if, I mean, you don't need to know exactly down to the actual human level, who it is that you're serving, especially when you start out. But you do need to have an idea of, like, what are the common threads that bind my audience together that, like, what are the things that they care about and things like that. So I don't know Quest story nearly as well as you do. Right. But the people who are interested in a perfectly, you know, macro balanced or whatever the, the terminology that you use there. Right. There are people who are, you know, they're highly educated about, you know, diet and their current trends. They have very specific things that they're trying to achieve. Right. And they need a snack that kind of fits in with the rest of this lifestyle that they're building.

Yes.

Right. And I would be like, that is already a lot more detailed than a busy mom. Right. And I'm sure that Quest had an idea. I. I don't know if it was the founder kind of starting out and Building something that scratched his own niche kind of thing. That's a very common story with stuff like that.

So that was the case. The founder was obese and then you developed products that allowed him to basically eat what he wanted. It was just the right macros and the right amounts and that. He started a company around that. And so their mission is to, you know, replace snacks with your protein based macro balanced foods. Now I'm nerding out on, on everybody a little bit, but like there's, I, I can't tell you who the person is behind that. But you're saying that that's at least more defined than a busy mom. And why, why is that? Because to me, I just, there's like a difference between there's the pain point and then there's the person and they're different. What, which one really needs to be dialed in in order to take something from a product into a brand.

That's, that's exactly the point that I was gonna make to sell a product. The pain point is the best starting point, right? Because you have this like, kind of problem solution. You know, it been used in sales tactics forever. Infomercials. Yes, infomercials. B2B sales. That's, that's your go to, right? You go in and you just push on the pain point until the person cries, fine, where do I sign? Kind of thing, you know, and so at the product level, that's absolutely. But when you are graduating from a product to a brand, right, that's when you need to build out that, that profile. Like, what else, what other problems is this person trying to solve? And why is this person trying to solve this problem, right? Like what is the end goal? Right? It's not just like, I have this pain point and I need to solve it, right? It's like they're trying to get somewhere by solving.

Man, that is so true because so, so many brands or so many businesses come out with a product and the product could be a winner and they start to build the company around that winner. But, but they release another product that's like a complimentary product or completely different product hoping to have the same result. And now it becomes about what's selling without any sort of cohesion around how the product. Products work together to help a specific person. And that's where you hit bottlenecks and that's where you really start to crumble. And you can never really scale that because you're, you're not building something cohesive together. What do you do about that?

When you ask that are you asking like, what do you do about that when it's already happened or what do you do about that to make sure that it doesn't happen?

Let's address the pain point, Max. What do you do when it has already happened? I released product X, now I got product Y and now I've got two products, but I have no brand.

So again, I think the a. I think you have to acknowledge that that's a pretty difficult situation, especially if those products don't necessarily serve the same person.

Right.

If you're out here selling product X and that person A buys product X and you're selling product Y and person B buys product. Yeah. You know, I hate this word, but you know, there's no synergy between there. Right. Like, you're never going to like be able to build that and you know, cross sell between those because they're just not interested in the same things. So in truly extreme cases, it's, you kind of have to pick a winner. You have to kind of address that differently. They, in an ideal situation where they're, they're maybe not a super clean fit to start, it's again, you start looking for those common threads, like, what are the things that both of these audiences are trying to solve? Or both of these products, like, is there a way to kind of link them together, to fit them together conceptually? But again, that's really tough. It's, you know, you can't, you can't force things in just because you want them to work. They have to fit together in the minds of your customers.

So I'll tell you how I've addressed this and you can tell me if I'm on the right path or not. But I have looked at, okay, we have a couple products that are selling well. And so I'm going to look at who is showing up and buying these products and I'm going to try and weave together what story it is that they're trying to accomplish by buying these products. So when I started my physic products brands, I started them because I was wanting to make money.

Yep.

It's why a lot of people start businesses. And so I wasn't like super gung ho passion about this. I did become passionate about it, but I saw an opportunity in the marketplace, release some products. And then it was. And then Bo, before we release like product number four, it's like, okay, what's the consistency among. Let's ask our customers who's showing up and what is it that you want? You just pointed at me, Emphatically max.

Because you said, let's ask our customers. And that's the step that so many people skip. Everyone sits there and says, I have no idea who I'm selling to. And they never fucking ask. Pardon my French. That's right.

You can say, yeah, you can say, I'm trying to think of funny curse words, and I couldn't come up with that. You can say poop, say whatever you want.

But yeah, I mean, the key is really as simple as just talking to your customers, right. And figuring out what is it that they want. What is like, you know, you can sit there all day and guess at how those products fit together and how they, you know, help this person that's buying all three or four of those achieve their goal. Right. But you can also just ask them.

Yeah, I ask the people have already voted with their dollars exactly how they could be served further.

Yep.

And then you develop that.

Exactly. And if you want to take it a step further, when you have enough customers, talk to a bunch of your customers and then talk to a bunch of the people in the market that aren't your customers and look at the differences, Right? Like, I want to know what makes my customers stand out. I want to know what makes them different from the other people in the market so I can go find more people that look like them. Hey, podcast listeners. So, as you may or may not know, January 20th through the 23rd is the capitalism Conference in Dallas, Texas. It is going to be a really, really cool event and it always sells out. So have you been before? So great. If you have, then you already know how good of an event it is, and you should have already bought your ticket. And if you haven't been, well, let me tell you, I've been to a lot of conferences and this is hands down one of the best. It has a really killer lineup of speakers. Ryan always does a good job of bringing in people who have built nine figure brands and the wealth strategists to the world's richest people and all that kind of stuff. But if possible, the networking is honestly even better than the content. The content is going to help you move forward, but those connections can really, really be transformative to your business, and you will not find a better group of entrepreneurs, investors, and specialists congregating anywhere else. So I'm being 100% honest from my own experience. It's really likely that your biggest business changing connections are going to come out of this conference. So if you haven't bought your ticket yet, it's not too late. But just make sure to pick it up as soon as possible because like I said, this event does sell out and it's coming up soon, January 20th to 23rd in Dallas, Texas. So hopefully I will see you there.

So. Well, I know one of the questions that you asked me when we first met that really made my brain hurt and made me see, oh, we're building up, like, how to build a brand was, do you know the question I'm about to repeat back to you?

Well, there's three that you're probably.

Okay, well, there's. You asked me, how does this brand help the customer become a hero in their own journey?

Exactly. Yep.

Tell me about that.

So, and this goes back to, you know, founder syndrome of like, I've got this baby. I've built this business, and it's so amazing and da, da, da, da. It's so tempting when you've done that to make you the hero in the story. And again, your customer doesn't give a shit. Your customer is not going along as the sidekick in your story. Right. They are the hero in their own story. Right? And so your product, your brand, whatever you are selling has to play into that. Right? You're not trying to go into their story and be Luke Skywalker. You're trying to be Obi Wan or Han. You're like, you know, pardon Star wars analogy here. It's just an easy reference point, but you are trying to come in and serve a role that makes them feel more heroic. Right? I used to work for a woman when I first started out who used to say, you know, how does this get your customer laid? Right? It's the same idea, right? You want them to feel heroic, you want them to feel confident. You want to make them feel like they are at their absolute peak as a human.

And so many brands talking about their features, their price point, what the product is.

Yeah.

But if you look at any big company, let's go with that. How does this, how does this product help your customer get laid?

Yep.

That. That's a brain gasm right there. Because, like, watch a TV commercial. It is. It is not about the product. It's telling a story about the customer. And oftentimes how they're getting laid as a result of driving the BMW, wearing Nike, wearing Lululemon.

You know, whatever it is, it's, you know, drinking Grey Goose. You know, whatever it is, it's. It's. You're signaling like, huh? Like, this is how I look when I am at my peak. Right. This is the best version of myself that I'm putting out there.

So let me ask you this.

Wow, that was a really good reframe. How does this product help my customer get laid?

I'm just.

I'm just playing with this.

So.

So how. When you've got that question answered, how does that impact marketing? How does that impact communication? Because even if we get that right, a lot of times there's a breakdown afterward. Like, you could. You could be in agreement with what the brand is supposed to represent, but then it might not carry over in your marketing. So how does that impact how you communicate the brand outward?

So I. This is kind of like a clunky way to say this, but this is always how I do it. It's like when you have the answer to that question, right? And when you have that nailed and you are just absolutely sure that you're. That that's the answer and that's what you're doing for your customer, right? Every single decision that you make as a company needs to pass through the lens of does it deliver on that. So if I'm rolling out a new product, right? It's like, hey, I look at the market, it looks open. Like, there's an opportunity here. Dah, dah, dah. If I'm truly looking at this from, like, I need to build a cohesive brand that makes sense conceptually, that does all this stuff, right? It needs to pass the test of does it get my customer laid in the way that we get our customers laid, right?

So how you communicate. Your Facebook ads.

Exactly. Your Facebook videos, your customer service. Like, you know, the other thing I say all the time, right? Is like, every single touch point that your customer has is an opportunity for you to, like, strengthen or weaken that relationship, right? So if it's consistent, if you're just nailing it every time, think about Nike, right? Like, I love to use them as an example. Classic big brand, right? Every ad that you've ever seen from them, every article of clothing, every storefront that you've passed, every, you know, bus wrap that they have, whatever it is, you know, the sponsorships that they have with athletes, all that kind of stuff, like, tells the same story over and over and over and over again. And it's so consistent that they just have this huge kind of presence and you know exactly what they're about as soon as you see them, right? Versus think about some brand that you bought where you're like, okay, you know, like, I saw a commercial from that that was really cool. Or, you know, I got an email ad and, hey, this is actually really Interesting. Saw something on Facebook, like bought a product on Amazon and it's like. And then you have a shitty customer service experience or you get the product and the box is all fucked up. And it's like, you know, you know, it doesn't look good, doesn't look like what you bought. Right. Those kind of inconsistencies, the things that make you kind of cock your head and like, you know, that's the things that are going to prevent you from building that like a true relationship with your customer.

So let me flip this. I mean, if, if your entire marketing shtick, your entire brand, was that you were organic, natural, and then the box showed up and it's made of organic material that's kind of falling apart and fraying.

It's.

It can be consistent with the brand.

Exactly. Yes. The box being fucked up is not necessarily a thing.

Yeah. You know, you know what I'm saying.

Yes. If you can tie it back into that story and you can say, hey, you know, like, our packaging might show up a little weird. You know why? Because we are so committed to organic and so committed to natural that we've even done the box that way. Right. Like all of a sudden, that's an interesting twist. That's something that I'm like, oh, I don't really care that the box is fucked up. Like, I'm glad that you are so committed to that.

That's what happens when you make an edible box. It falls apart.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah. So that, that, that totally makes sense to me. And, and on the other side, like, I think I'm thinking about Nike products. I couldn't tell you a single feature about a Nike product.

Yeah. Because they don't sell on features.

I have no idea how a Nike shoe is different than a Reebok shoe. Except for style, maybe price points. But I have, I have no idea.

Yeah. You know how far down on Nike's website you have to dig before you can actually get into like the guts of the shoe and stuff like that? Like, you've got to like scroll past like four or five panels worth of kind of more emotional oriented things that are designed to kind of like, you know, by the time you get to the that stuff, all the features and everything, you're just checking boxes. You're saying that, Yep, this looks like it's in order. I'm gonna go ahead and buy this.

Yeah, it's like the few lines right above the add to cart button.

Exactly. That.

Just make sure you have the sizing right, the price right, the color right.

Because you're already sold by the time you get there. Right. You were probably sold before you even went to the website. You knew, you knew exactly what you were buying.

Right. So where in the brand development process do people screw this up?

There are so many places. The first one is that they never get to know the customer.

Right.

And if you don't know your customer, you can't answer any of these questions. Right. You can't decide how you're gonna get your customer laid, how you're gonna make them a hero in the story, even figure out what that story is that they're trying to tell.

I'm gonna back up even one more and say, even know who you want your customer to be. Exactly who is it that you are targeting in the first place? Because even if you, if you've got a product that, that's selling well and you're like, I have no idea who my customer is, but I'm gonna target this group.

Yep.

We can, we can save it and go in the right direction. Whereas, whereas some people just never ask that question. They say, how do I sell more? How do I sell more spatulas?

Yep.

And, and it just becomes about selling more stuff rather than serving any specific pain point person.

Market.

And so they never have anything that they can scale.

Exactly. And I think that again, I see this way more in physical products and specifically in Amazon businesses than I've ever seen in any other industry. Because you can sell without ever knowing who's buying. Right. And so it's like a lot of companies start out being all about you. Right. Because you have this idea in the first place. This is true in tech, this is true in media. This is true in, in every category. Right. But in most of those other categories, very quickly you have to orient around your customer. Because if you have like a business to business, software as a service product. Right. Like you need to know who you're selling to or no one's going to buy it. Right. You need to be solving a pain point. You need to know what your, your person that you're selling to is going to respond to or you're not going to be able to go through that sales process. Yeah. Right. On Amazon, it's like you throw stuff up and people buy it and you feel like you're successful because, because of.

That, as long as you have great reviews, you're cheaper than everybody else. You can sell lots of things.

Exactly.

Or one person can win that game.

Exactly.

And sell a lot of widgets. But it's really hard to go run A Facebook ad or a converting video that goes and converts those people into cheap buyers at low margin?

Yes, exactly.

Is there a way for people who do well on Amazon to make the pivot into being a brand?

Yeah, absolutely. How so? I think the first off or the first piece again is like. And I'm just gonna sound like a broken record. It's like figuring out a way to go talk to your customers. Right.

How many times do you have to say that to a client in order to get them to finally get it?

Like, at least 10. And the people who get it, my best clients, the people who are most successful coming out of these engagements.

Right.

Are the people who do understand that, who do sense that there's a gap, that they don't know who that they're serving, and they want to bridge that gap. That's where it starts from.

But yeah, I mean, I think.

It'S figuring out who your customers are. Right. And it can't just be like, oh, the thing that ties them together is like, you know, where.

My product was ranked on the day that they search for this. Right. You really have to dig in and figure out what type of people are these, like, what kind of problems are they looking to solve? What story are they trying to tell? Where are they trying to get right? And then I think it's taking a good hard look at your product mix and saying, am I selling these at, you know, at high enough margins? Do I have kind of a value ladder that I can take people up? Like, I'm stunned at the number of people who don't look at the kind of basic equation of like, how much does it cost for me to acquire a customer versus what is that customer worth over the lifetime of their relationship with. With. With my business?

Would you say that one more time?

I'm stunned at the number of people who don't kind of think about the basic equation of like, how much does it cost for me to acquire a customer and how much is that customer worth over the lifetime of their relationship with my business.

Yeah.

So many people just chase the sale, right? They're gonna. The one sale, one single point in time sale. I conned you into buying my $20 product. I will take that money. Thank you. Please enjoy what I made.

Now, can I do this a thousand. How do I do this a thousand more times?

How do I find a thousand more suckers like you to come in and buy this? Right? And that's dramatic. That is the worst case scenario that someone feels like that. Right. But a lot of people act like that. Even if they don't feel like that, even if they do feel like, hey, I made a good product and people are buying it and they're enjoying it. I see that in the review, all that kind of stuff. They act like, I don't really give a shit if this person ever comes back to me. Right. I won, I got the sale, I got their money. And you know, I'm gonna keep doing that until I can't do it anymore. Right. And that's the thing that big companies know better than anyone else.

Right.

They know exactly how much money they can spend to acquire someone and they know exactly how much money that person is worth when they come in the door. Right. And that's what allows them to sell scale. That's what allows them to spend a shitload of money on marketing. Right. Nike spends millions, billions of dollars a year. Right. On, on TV ads. You don't think they know exactly what they're doing. Right. The Colin Kaepernick endorsement, you don't think they ran the numbers on that exhaustingly and knew exactly who was buying more shoes. Right. And you know who was gonna like all of that kind of stuff is like, they know that inside and out. And yes, it's really hard if you sell on Amazon to get those numbers and to run them and everything. But if you're selling commodities at commodity prices. Right. It is going to be really tough for you to scale as a brand and to, you know, increase that lifetime value to the point where you can really spend the money that's required to establish a relationship.

Well, let's think about this for a second. You said, you said when Nike runs the Colin Kaepernick endorsement, you don't think they know exactly who bought shoes or who spent the most. It was always about who.

Yeah.

The customer was exactly.

They knew exactly who their customer was they wanted. Yeah.

And so it once again comes back to who is it.

Yep.

That you are serving and how you help them on their journey. Whereas most people are getting into this game or have even seven figure businesses, they have a sales mechanism.

Exactly.

With no understanding of who, who is behind those purchases. So there's nothing that they can scale. I've always said it's really hard to go identify and sell to more spatula buyers, but it is really easy to go target people who buy and use spatulas. And so the difference is identifying the person who's using it and why they're using it and what journey they are on. That's how you sell product.

Exactly. And you Know, and I know you've given this example a lot of times in a lot of different places. Right. But let's use that special buyer. Right. If you know where they're going, you know, if they're an aspiring master chef. Right. And they have those kind of dreams, and the spatula is one tool among many to help them get there.

Yeah, Right.

Like, that's so much easier to tell and to tell a story about and to help, like, you become part of that person's journey. Journey to that destination. Right. And. And you. That's what you want, right. The. The brands that we love that you think about, the things that the. The brands that.

I'm sorry, I'm imagining a commercial right now of. Of the chef create, like, enjoying this creative process has nothing to do with the product, but the products being used in this. In this demonstration, this expression of art. And the spatula is, you know, a 300 spatial spatula. And then there's other tools that give the same feeling about your work that are marked up 10 times versus the competition as well.

Well, so a spatula is probably one of the most boring products, like, on its own that you could ever think about. Most of us own multiple spatulas. We never think about them. We use them, we discard them. We pay limited amounts of money for.

Them, and we got them all at Spatula City.

Yeah.

If anyone knows that reference, D. DM me on Instagram. Go on, Max.

But cooking and food and eating and all of that, that is such a joyful experience. That is creation. That is emotion. Emotion. That is community. So much of our lives are built around the time that we spend eating in the people that we spend that time with. Right. And there is a story there. There's a really powerful story of the journey of the time and technique put into.

Creating these masterpieces in the kitchen and the failures along the way, and then who you eat those meals with. And all of those things, like, that story is badass. I want to hear all about that. Right. Gordon Ramsay sells the shit out of that story in his restaurants and on TV and all that kind of stuff. There's no reason that the tools involved with that can't play in a similar realm.

Would you agree that at the end of the day, products are actually very similar to one another, and it is mostly the marketing and the messaging and the person that is different?

Absolutely, 1,000%.

You know, I'm trying to think of an example where that's not the case, but I think about even a car, like one gets you to, from point A to point B for any given.

Category, there's like a, like a checklist of just like functional shit that you have to provide just to even be in the category. Right. If you're a car, you got to get people from point A to point B. Right. Gotta have wheels, gotta have chassis, you gotta have windshield. Got it. Like, and you know, you probably gotta have power door locks. Now if you're buying a new car, probably gotta have Bluetooth, all that kind of stuff. Right. And like, yeah, there are things that stand out and cars are the best example because you actually call them options packages. Right. You add the sunroof, you add the, you know, the articulating headlights and the self parallel parking feature and all that kind of stuff. But by and large, they're all the same. Right. The self parallel parking thing was like as Lexus came out that in 2007, it was a Super bowl commercial that they spent $3 million on. It was like a really badass thing that no one had ever seen before. Now you can buy a Chrysler Town and Country Mini, like minivan that does the same thing. Right.

And if you were to watch that compression commercial, you're. I would. I still look at it. A lens now of how does that feature help the person get laid?

Yeah.

And, and it's because you're gonna show that off.

Yeah.

All of your friends and all of.

Your dates, that girl that you took a date on that you're going downtown, you're like, oh great, I'm looking for a parallel parking spot. Like, when has anyone ever looked for a parallel parking spot? Right. It's like I'm showing off this feature. Right.

Yeah. And nowhere in like in a Tesla ad now that not that I have ever seen a Tesla ad is it going to talk about how comfortable the seats are, how.

How well it handles. It's gonna show me hitting it. The accelerator in ludicrous mode.

Yep.

And watching that's. That was what made me buy a Tesla.

Yeah.

Absolutely was watching the faces of people's reactions in luxury. Ludicrous mode.

Yep.

And yet we as entrepreneurs spend so much energy talking about how like the stupid features that nobody cares about, but that we're proud of for some reason.

Yep. Yeah. I have nothing to add there.

So, I mean, let's talk about this. Max, who is our customer? Who are we targeting here on the brand builder podcast?

So I guess there are a lot of different people, but that kind of core person for me is someone who is truly trying to build a brand who, whether they are starting out and from scratch and are building up this business from nothing. Right. Or if they have a business and they are trying to transform it into a brand, if they want to get to know their customer, if they want to make an impact through what they sell on that person's life. Right. They want to help them tell that story. And they want to build something that is actually worthwhile, that is not, you know, just cash flow for as long as I can hack it on Amazon. Right. But is actually trying to build something that is going to be a financial asset that an investor or private equity firm would be proud and excited to invest in or purchase. Like that is the person that we are trying to serve here.

Yeah. And for me, I'm a yes. And I am after helping the person who creates products that gives customers a shift in their lives. And the reason I positioned it that way is obviously I'm the owner of capitalism.com I believe that capitalism is the way that we initiate change. And you initiate change through people, and people change through shifts. And they shift their. Their mindset, they shift. Something becomes easier and. And as people elevate, then the world elevates. And so I want to serve the person who is creating something in the world that shifts it one degree in the direction that we want to go. That, to me, is what a brand exists to do, is to make it easier for customers and human beings to take one step closer to their fullest potential. And that's how we fix everything.

That's how we fix everything. Done. You heard it here first. And we will.

Fixing everything.

Fixing everything. Good night.

Hey, Max, obviously people can follow you here on the podcast, but do you put out any public content anywhere else?

I'm working on that. I haven't really put out a ton yet, but we'll do it here on the podcast. Exactly. We'll be doing it here on the podcast and I'll have more stuff coming out soon.

And I have no content in the world.

No content anywhere. Can't find your face Haunting me around.

The Internet, Retargeting you everywhere. But I'm @ryandaniel Moran and my website is capitalism.com max, so excited to go on this journey with you, bud.

Same. Hey, brand builders. We hope you enjoyed this podcast by capitalism.com. check out our website for upcoming events and additional content about building businesses, building brands, and investing. My name is Max Furwick and my mission in life is to transform businesses into brands. If you have any feedback about the show, any guests you want to see, case studies, covered topics explored or frankly, just any questions about branding in general, just shoot me an email email@maxmaxrandbuilderstrategy.com Again, that's Max brandbuilderstrategy.com and I'd love to hear from you. One quick note, if you could subscribe to the podcast or even leave us a review on itunes. These things really do make a big difference in helping us book amazing guests and then also helping people just like you find the podcast. So thanks and we'll see you next time.