Rogan: Meta Projected $16B from Scam Ads? | TikTok Bans Peptides | U.S. Food Prices at Record +34.5%

Welcome to Ecom Cowboy. This is D2C's daily show, the capital of consumer commerce and home. Of the One Man Brand. We believe that advertising is awesome, ignorance is expensive, and the American dream is alive and well on the wild web. Today it is Wednesday, October 21st, 2026, in the year of our Lord, coming to you live in a living color from a beautiful yet undisclosed location hidden in the Austin, Texas hills. We are brought to you by Slash, Rocked, AfterSale, Universal Ads, TrendTrack, Propel, Outer Signal, Tie, Rich Panel, Intelligems, Northbeam, Seguno, and Postscript. And we got a jam-packed Show for you today. Joe Rogan airs a report, a proposed internal Meta report that Meta is earning $16 billion on scam and banned goods ads. We're going to be talking about it. TikTok is banning all peptide-related content, and those of us who are organizing peptide parties like Jeff Tang not excited about this. U.S. food prices are up 34.5% since 20. 19. That is a high on the record. What does that mean for Q4 and more? Gonna be joined by Nate Lagos of Bottoms Up Copywriting here at the top of the show, Jordan Menard and Phoenix Ha debuting a new thing that they are creating and rolling forth, Adam Katain, co-founder and CTO of Intelligems, and Jeff Tang, thrower of peptide parties and more. As always, I'm joined by my partner in crime, Colin Doherty. Colin, roll inside this show.

Get in here.

Wow, fiery! I may be on heater today. I may be on heater today. We are, uh, 35, 36, 34 days to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, something like this, Producer Jack. I believe that we are. I don't know where our incredible chart is right now.

I don't even know.

Maybe it will show up. Maybe it will show up at some point. I don't know.

I don't know if we don't have the chart.

Good news for all of us, the copywriting king himself, Nate Lagos of Bottoms Up Copywriting, is here. We must welcome him inside of this show. I like to refer to him as Bourbon Nathaniel, otherwise known as Whiskey Nate. Get inside of this show, Nate. Get inside of this show.

Wow, looking like a Taylor Sheridan character over here, dude.

I love this look on you. I love this look on you.

Thank you very much.

You like the shorter beard and cowboy hat combo?

Yeah, it's like, it's like the guy from Yellowstone, the guy that used to beat everybody up. Whatever his name was.

Rip.

Great, great. Yeah, Rip.

Rip.

Yeah, great character.

I'll take it.

Maybe you should be known as Rip Legos here forward. Gentlemen, top story of the day. Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan airing a report that is supposed to be internal Meta documents here specifically on scam ads and Meta making lots of money on it. Perhaps? Question mark. We're going to see. Producer Jack, please bring this up. I'd like to review said video here. We're going to watch the first 2 minutes. minutes of this on 1.5x speed. Scroll down here, Jack, and show us said video. Please play.

There was an incredible Reuters investigation done last year where they got, they got a hold of internal Meta documents from Meta. And in the Meta documents, internal Meta documents, they estimated inside Meta, the worker, the different departments estimated that there were 15 billion ads every single day that the users of their platforms— WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook— were exposed to around an estimated 15 billion scam ads every single day, scams that were higher risk, that were— that displayed clear signs of being fraudulent. They also estimated that they were— that year they projected that they would make $16 billion. This is in 2024, I believe, or 2023. I'm not sure. $16 billion worth of profit from scams and banned goods. That's 10% of their full profit at the time. So they're making a ton of money from this. And then this is where it gets really worrisome to me. because of their personalized ad system, if a person clicks on a scam, you know, those ads that you have like Elon Musk holding a thing and saying investment opportunity, and then you click it.

I do.

There's tons of these. I mean, there's gazillions of these out there. If you click it, you are more likely to be fed more of these ads. So it starts with just maybe you're exposed to one and then suddenly the next day you're exposed to 100 of these scams, right? So your reality starts being, you know, filled with scams. And then this is, I think, even the crazier part is that If you report these as scams, which a lot of users do, I think it's 100,000 reports every single week. They, if they have a 95% or over certainty, Meta, if their system sees that there's a 95% certainty or over that these are scams, they remove them. If there's less than 95%, let's say 94%, what they do is they give you a penalty fee. So you have to pay more, but they allow you to stay on the platform.

What?

Yes.

Wait, what? Check that out.

They're making money. I mean, it just raises lots of questions, right?

Right.

If you're charging more money, That means you know something's wrong with this ad, so you want to cut.

Yeah.

Okay, you can stop it here, Jack. You can stop it here. Very interesting things here. Okay, so from a few years ago— okay, I, I do have to say, you can bring us back here, Jack. 15 billion scam ads on the platform per day and only profiting $16 billion from that over the year doesn't seem like they're making too much money. Okay, if those stats are accurate. But, but I do think this is an interesting point that she brings up because we are all competing inside the ad auction, um, with all of these, uh, all of these folks. And, uh, I, I don't like to see that, especially when it, uh, could be ruining the user experience. And, uh, I want to get my ads that actually sell profitable things in front of people rather than, uh, ruining their lives. Colin Doherty, we start here with you. Your thoughts on this?

I mean, I don't love it. I don't love to hear that Meta is running basically 10% of their ad inventory to scam ads. This is probably horrible PR for them. I love, I mean, I love the fact that if it is above 95% certainty automated through the system, they'll basically just nuke it out of existence. The issue with this is I think it's a lot of like you cut the head off the snake and then 2 more heads appear.

Of course.

It's really, really hard to do this. And I'm not trying to defend Meta. I, I would never try to defend Meta. It's really, really hard to do this. And so I do empathize with them where it is, it is almost an impossible task to be like, make sure that your platform that is as big as the earth basically doesn't have any scams on it. It's like, golly, man. Like, I don't know. I don't know how you manage that ask, and I don't know if there's— I don't even know if the AI possibilities are there yet. Maybe we get there, but it is a really rough ask. They are trying to clean it up.

Nate Legos?

Yeah, rare great take from Colin.

Um, let's go.

No, because like, because like, I like gut reaction wants Zuck to come in with an axe and be like, cool, we'll take a 10% haircut and we'll make it right for our users. We'll make it right for all of our, you know, genuine, uh, you know, white hat advertisers. Um, but you're right, you can't just do that. That's not easy to do. Um, oh, but imagine if they could. Imagine CPMs the next day. Imagine CAC the next day, right? Would be so nice. Um, but yeah, I gotta think they're working on it. Maybe they're not. I guess like that's the bigger issue here is like, are they at least trying? Because if they're not trying at all, like, this sucks and they're just gonna make money and it's gonna happen more and more, and I think that 10% is going to grow. But I'd love to see them come out and say like, hey, we are trying, here's what we're doing to get better at this. Because if you're 90% sure something's a scam and that's not getting cut, that feels like a problem to me. That feels like we could be doing more.

The, the piece that, that Joe Rogan is tripping over here, it's like, wait, wait, wait, it's 94%, then they just pay more money to Meta and they keep rolling forth? Like, that doesn't seem right because now they're They're profiting off, uh, said like potential scam. I would imagine like she's bringing up this from a couple of years ago. Um, Meta definitely making more than $160 billion, um, in revenue per year from a couple years ago. Uh, question for me is— There's a lot of people inside of our industry who've been getting dinged, okay, for non-scams. Uh, I mean, you know, of course health and wellness, if you categorize yourself at all If you got categorized, you got a health and wellness tag, however you wanna call it, if you fit inside of that mold, well, your CPMs went sky high not too long ago. Okay, 18 months ago, maybe a little longer. And maybe like this was part of their attempt to like cut down on scam ads. But I know that people get locked out of their ad account, like people get their ad account banned, et cetera, for not doing scams, for not doing scams. And so, I'm pleased for the hammer to come down on like egregious advertising, like Elon Musk saying like, hey, you can buy my next rocket house, you know, and clearly AI, and come buy it and give me all your money while I take away everything inside your bank account. I want that gone. I think it would help all of us and our CPMs in addition to have, you know, 10% of the inventory you know, released. Okay, I would like that as well. But my, my bigger question is like, what about the folks who are like, they're like genuinely good operators? Like maybe they did something wrong in their Claude code setup and they got their account banned, et cetera. Like I would like, I would like those folks to be, uh, taken care of rather than, uh, you know, just the gray hats, the black hats are getting a ding.

Yeah.

I'd like to see that.

That is such a good question 'cause I've seen ad accounts banned for no reason at all for like reputable companies that are doing good things. And then like I meet someone, they're like, I sell marijuana. On, on, yeah, cool drugs. And they're like, yeah, it's fine. And I'm like, how, how does this beef organ supplement get banned but this guy's just swinging dope? Fair. I, I don't understand that. I would question their 95% rule.

It's a good question. I'd like to see an update on this.

It's like an operator trying to be better at his business is like, I'm gonna connect my Claude MCP and work faster, and it's like instant ban.

And then there's a There's just drug dealers and prostitutes on there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then he is like, it's a no shipper, like fully black hat funnel that goes to like, uh, some type of crazy thing. And you're like, well, I've been ripping and scaling.

It's like, why?

I just changed my color and I got banned. Like, what's going on here? I changed from green to lime and I got banned.

There, there are some illicit things that you will see out there in the wild.

Mm-hmm.

You know?

Uh, yeah. Yeah.

Mysterious offers from massage parlors. Okay, I don't think I need to like go into any further detail. Like, there— these things are out there on the Facebook ecosystem. I would love some update. I would love some update from the platform on this because I think probably if they did come down, bring the hammer down, probably make all of our ad performance maybe a little better, maybe a little cheaper, at least for a little bit.

Yeah.

And also We need to help like the genuine operators inside our space who are getting banned for nothing. Like, I, I hate to see that. I hate to see that. Request. We request 100%, um, you know, some response on this moving forward here, gentlemen. Another top story here, uh, TikTok definitely bringing the hammer down on peptides and peptide content particularly. Bring this up for us, Producer Jack. This first from PolyMarket, who always has the news on everything for whatever reason why, I do not know. Just in, TikTok has reportedly banned all peptide-related content. Jeff Tang, who is coming later here on the show, uh, details this and how, uh, his, his, uh, his statement, his one-liner here is that Oracle doesn't own TikTok, Eli Lilly does, uh, because he's actually bringing out some peptides that have existed and been used in products we all know and love for the past 50 years. You cannot find content about them on TikTok as well, not just Redda and the others that you would predict may be banned from the platform as Eli Lilly continues to roll Redda forth. I'd like to start here with you again, Collin Doherty, because methinks that you have something in your bag on this. This is kind of the waters you swim in all the time.

Well, this is what kind of the main reason why TikTok is establishing this is because the Demographic on TikTok is very young. And so basically what is being surfaced to 15-year-old girls, 15-year-old boys is basically a gray market of peptides that they can then now have access to. So your 15-year-old son and daughter is now ordering a gray/black market Reda that is not verified on its validity or purity. And they're also ordering like GHK, like all the things. So there is like this piece of this where it's like, golly, you really don't want these kids to have this ability. And they also shouldn't be ordering any of these things.

This, this is actually happening. Like people are ordering, like teenagers are ordering this on TikTok.

Yeah. So that, that's like the main push from TikTok is like, we're trying to protect the kids. We're trying to make sure that they can't order any of these peptides.

And we'll look at that.

Oh, this is where they pick their spot to protect the kids.

Yeah, this is it. This is where they picked it.

This is it.

This is the flag.

That seemed congruent with how they operate with everything else. Because again, same thing with Meta. I see drugs on there, I see insane things on there. Yeah, you can order a lot of stuff on TikTok. We're drawing the line at PP-158, whatever it is. Yeah, so that feels sketchy to me. I renounce and denounce censorship in all forms, um, and this actually makes me like believe, uh, peptides are better than I thought they were. Like, I've been skeptical of them. I'm trying to lose weight on my own right now, but if If ByteDance is against them, I think that moves me a step towards pro. So, uh, we'll see. I might get on some, some good stuff soon.

I, I do think you, you, you did, uh, put a tweet here in the run of show where somebody— yeah, Bowtie Broke is talking about this. One of my daughters told me tons of her teen friends are taking injectable peptides, which is like crazy to me. I just like can't even imagine that girls as young as 15— I mean, it makes sense from like a PR stance.

Yeah.

Uh, well, I mean, what else do you have? I mean, what do you— do you think like that's what they're actually doing, Colin? Are they trying to protect themselves from Eli Lilly or what?

I don't know. It's a really weird situation. I could also see where like a middle school girl is like getting bullied or like feels insecure, and then she sees this thing on TikTok that basically is like, do you want to look like Kylie Jenner tomorrow? $50 and you're good to go. Here's the sketchy website. None of it's verified. And you're like, oh gosh, well, She probably could just get her parents' credit card and like do this pretty quickly. So I see, I understand their stance on this. I don't think it is why they're actually doing it. I will say Eli Lilly is coming after pharmacies right now within the last 2 weeks, basically like a mercenary hunting down Osama bin Laden. They are murdering pharmacies and shutting them down entirely.

Wow.

And peptide sellers. So it's gonna get very dicey if you try to get in Eli Lilly's way because Retta alone is gonna be a $4 trillion drug and nobody wants to mess with that money. If you wanna try to get in front of Eli Lilly, it, you're gonna get the fear of God because they're gonna come after you.

Nate, I have, I have some, I have a kind of a funny thought that I've floated a number of times, but I, I do half believe it.

Okay.

I kind of feel like all of us, all of us at some point will end up in telehealth. I do. I feel like all of us in e-com are gonna end up in telehealth. I mean, you have, you have worked very much. I, I, I less so. I have definitely spent time on the health wellness CPG side, but you've worked more concertedly on the supplement side, health and wellness. I mean, give me your, give me your thoughts on this, reactions on this.

Yeah, this is where like, I think the, the brands and the operators that are doing it right need to be rewarded and should be rewarded and protected. protected from the people not doing it right. The, the hardest thing that we see when I'm, you know, writing new ads and LPs for the supplement companies I work with is that like the competition says that their thing cures cancer and says that you'll lose 30% of your body weight in 30 days and says that your testosterone will 5x in 30 days. And like they make all these claims that aren't true and it's so hard to stay compliant. And write more persuasive copy than that. Now I can do it because, you know, the pen's hot, kid's gifted, but, uh, let's go. Most brands don't get to work with me. And, uh, yeah, I would love to see protections put in place for that reason. When it comes to protecting the kids, I would immediately ask like, where are the parents? If your daughter is injecting things into her body in your house and you don't know about it, like, that's on you, I think, as a dad. Um, so I don't know, I'm like torn on this. Like, this should be regulated to reward the good operators, but I don't believe for a minute that TikTok's like, we're out for the good of the youth. It's like, shut up.

No, you're not.

Yeah, I agree with that too.

I, I agree that the, um, you know, trustworthy, especially those in supplements, and there are some who are, uh, very trustworthy, doing the right thing. I mean, it is truly a conscious uh, level, conscience level, like, hey, we have to do this right. And I think those who do in this kind of, um, you know, circus of everything that's happening on this side of the board and consumer, those who do should be rewarded. RFK, he is looking to like spin up a marketplace of some sort to certify all of these, uh, peptides. Uh, be something interesting to watch. Uh, but for those who are concertedly in this realm, uh, TikTok Probably not going to be your place to yap, uh, here forward. Methinks Instagram and other places are the places for to have your voice and your pin-worthy copy, uh, displayed and sent forth, uh, to the interwebs. Last story of the day here, top story of the day here, gentlemen. US food prices up 34.5%. Yes, up a third I'll take the— Since 2019 though, since 2019. Okay, I know, I think a lot of us want to say that since 2025, but I hear this comes to us by way of Kobayashi Letter, uh, since 2019 up 34.5%, the highest on record. I bring this up because this is something that we have discussed on the show multiple times, and actually Jay Leno himself was on TVPN yesterday and he commented In this regard. He said when it comes to restaurants, many things inside of consumer, there is no longer a middle. There is not a middle class. There's inside of the K-shaped economy, you're either going to the Four Seasons or you are going to the Motel 8. Okay, it's either one of those things. When it comes to restaurants, you are either going to eat steak and drink bourbon or you are going to grab In-N-Out. That is the way that it is. I want to ask, and I want to start here with you, Nate, is there a middle to sell to anymore, or must we, uh, concertedly find a way to strategically get our businesses and sell our wares at the top or lower ends of the economy?

No, the, the middle's dead, Jack. If you pull up that tweet and actually scroll down, I quote tweeted what I tweeted on Monday before Jay Leno said it.

Just want that really good take, by the way.

Nate had a great take.

They have great—

If we can pull up my K-shaped tweet, that'd be awesome. But everything is K-shaped. I talked about like either sip top-shelf bourbon or do shots of Jack, either go to a restaurant where you can order a ribeye for $139 or go to Taco Bell. And when it comes to building these brands, I don't think there's room to play in the middle anymore. I think you should be building and selling to the top 10% income earners in America and try to build a luxury boutique, better for you, you know, more luxurious, more sustainable, whatever type of product, or build the cheapest thing possible, sling it on Amazon and Walmart, and try to win the mass market game. But no, I think the middle class has been dead. I think it's been written in the stars for the last 8 years that they are dying. And, uh, yeah, I'm not hopeful for anyone, uh, who doesn't escape, uh, quickly.

Look at this.

This was great. I said, even the Bible tells us not to be lukewarm. It says be hot and cleansing or be cold and refreshing. That's a bar.

Shout out to the Apostle Paul. Wow. Yeah.

Everything K-shaped.

Everything K-shaped. Colin Doherty, your thoughts on this?

I, I am just seeing this play out. And then if you future project this out the next 5 years, it just looks very not great. It looks very not great. And I don't know where we go from here. Because I, it's funny because the United CEO got in some hot water yesterday for what he said when he was on the news and when he was on, I think MSNBC, where he was basically like, we have no middle class Americans anymore. It is either you are in the tippity top or you are very, very on the lower end of the income earners. And he said that live on air and everyone was kind of like, did you just say the quiet part out loud? And he was like, I'm doubling down on this. We have to like fix this somehow. And we're seeing it play out in consumer. And I totally agree with Nate where it's like your product has to sit on one of those. You have to see either push very high or you're pushing very low. But you, it, this whole middle section is, it's a bloodbath. It's a pure bloodbath.

You know, this was a big part of the secret of Bruce Bolt's success is that they took a commoditized product, batting glove. $20, $30, go to Dick's Sports. Um, and then they made an $80, $85 version, okay, with better materials and all the things. Truly better, truly better, you know, from my, from my POV. Um, and then, uh, sold them to who? To whom did they sell them? They sold them to travel baseball families. And when you look inside travel baseball families, there are 2 specific kinds of households. There are those who make $250,000+ per year. Okay? We had a name for them. I cannot, from our Experian data, I cannot remember the name we had for them. But then there's also those who make, you know, $150,000 or so. And they do their very best to live like these folks. Okay?

Yep.

They live further out. Okay? They drive further in to go to work. But they are still getting in the car, driving to all the places, and doing their very best to make sure that their kids have the opportunity to live like these kids. I say all this to say, if you can do it, you should do it. You should, because the disposable income is— it is up there. They actually have it to spend. And inside of 2026, those dollars are only growing fewer. How many is— are they going to spend more dollars for Black Friday and Cyber Monday? No, no. All the numbers that we look at, they're growing less. And so one has to do a better job of how can I actually innovate with my product, position it specifically for people who want it inside of a very specific customer base, where people do have a little bit of extra disposable income to put forth for their own benefit and for their families. I, I think this is wise. I think this is wise. And one has to find a way to do it if you can. Or, you know, be Walmart. And sell, sell the cheap, which you won't be.

Don't even try.

I kind of like to do it though. I would, yeah, I would. I kind of like to do it. I would.

But no, and I, I want to reiterate what Chris said here. The batting gloves were actually that much better. Yeah, like you can't skip that part. You cannot put lipstick on a pig and double your price because the, the, the, the bad side about high-income customers is they have high standards for the things that they buy and use. So if your product does not match your price Then they're not going to come back. You'll survive for a little bit, then fizzle out. So go make awesome stuff and charge a bunch of money for it. That is the way forward in consumer.

Wise words. Let's go from Bourbon Nathaniel or Whiskey Nate, whichever you prefer.

Whichever you—

I like Bourbon Nathaniel. I kind of like it.

I do. Or Rip Legos, you know, you never know.

Hey, when he's got the trim.

You're, you're looking, you're looking good with this black Stetson that you're rocking and the trim on the face. And who knows, maybe we all get Peptided up and we'll all be Brad Pitt by this time next year.

Hard to say.

So hard to say. Uh, Nate Lagos, we appreciate you making the time to join us. We look forward to having you back. You are the man. Appreciate you. Thank you, bro.

See y'all. Colin, great job today. He's always working you.

I'm winning him over.

He's always working you. Coming inside of this show, ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Jordan Menard and Phoenix Ha to talk about a very new development upon the interwebs and what are they doing and bringing forth to all of us inside of consumer, maybe especially on the health wellness side. They're coming in to talk about it. And can we follow the white rabbit? I am. I'm signed up and I am following the white rabbit. They're gonna talk to us about it more. On our way to them coming inside the show, a word from our sponsors over at Seguno. Play it for us, Producer Jack. Seguno is the only marketing suite that lives entirely inside of Shopify. What's that mean, Chris? Your emails, your popups, your banners, your reviews, it's all there where you already work and play every day. And it means that you don't have to cede your trust to big email that's over-attributed data. With Seguno, your Shopify data is the email data. It's a big reason why they won the 2024 Shopify Build App of the Year. One-click automations, actual humans that can help you build for lean teams with big aspirations. Go get the Advanced Shopify Segmentation Playbook at the URL scrolling across the screen. Get a free trial of the platform. Tell them Colin sent you. They'll extend that free trial to 30 days. Many thanks for Seguno being part of— Coming inside of this show, ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Jordan Menard and Phoenix Ha, innovators of wellness, creators of content, and scalers of brands. What are they doing? And bringing forth to all of us inside of the space. Methinks it, uh, goes against the grain of pixie dusting. We must welcome him inside of this show. Everybody welcome Jordan Menard and Phoenix Ha! Get inside the show!

Get inside the show!

Wow, wow, wow.

I need you to like follow around. I need you to follow me around in life so everywhere I go I get that intro.

That's what I want to do, actually. I want to do that. Um, Lady and Gent, uh, we appreciate you guys making the time to join the show here. Can we, uh, can we just get like a little update here on what is happening?

What is happening?

I know a big podcast just dropped last night. Um, what is coming forth here, uh, to the interwebs and all of consumer? What, what is this white Rabbit, Jordan, here we start here with you.

Yeah, so Phoenix and I and the rest, you know, our team that we work with, who's in my opinion the best team in marketing in the world. I know I'm biased, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. And so, you know, our team has been working really, really hard on a brand that's really not like anything that you guys have seen. I know that sounds weird, but I would say just the DNA of the brand, how we're thinking about it, what we're building isn't really something that people have seen before. And so, you know, you mentioned pixie dusting, right?

Oh yeah.

And for those that don't know what that means, right, like let's say that, you know, there's a study that comes out that says that some active helps produce cellular energy, right? And so, I put that in my product and in all my ads, I say that my product increases cellular energy.

Yeah.

And, what we don't tell you is that the study called for 1.2 grams and we put 25 milligrams in.

Aha.

And, that has quietly kind of become the playbook in CPG. It's quietly become the normal thing. And as users get smarter, more sophisticated, you look at ChatGPT reaching a billion users faster than any platform. You see this, the AI saturation, which is coming, and it's like, in the very near term, how do you think consumers are going to decide if they want to buy your product? They're going to open up their AIs and they're going to ask, is this a good product?

I see.

That AI is going to look at the literature base. It's going to look what's in the product, and they're going to look, is it at clinical doses? Has this been studied? And if it hasn't, it's going to tell you that the product is low quality. This is the future that's coming very soon with things like Ozempic. That are now everywhere, right? People are becoming accustomed to products that actually do something, that actually work, that you can feel the difference when you take them. And so, you know, I think with all the developments that have happened in both scientific literature and CPG at large, I think what we're doing next is going to kind of change the tone around how we approach products and building brands. And there's a tech layer as well that I can't get into right now, but it's really cool. White Rabbit.

Very, very.

And so whiterabbit.vip, if you guys go to that right now, you're going to fill out a quick quiz. That'll give you some hints about what we're doing next. But also, if you go on that list, the new brand is likely going to launch in February, and you buy when we launch, not only are you going to get special lifetime discounts, but Phoenix is coming on. She's in the C-suite at all of the companies she runs with me, and she's heading up a lot of the community building. And let's just say that we have a very special plan for those people ongoing, like literally the entirety of the company.

A special plan, maybe, maybe like a lifetime plan for those who sign up and follow the white rabbit down the hole. Is that, is that fair, Jordan?

Yeah.

And maybe like when this goes all the way into doing big in-person events, those people go for free forever kind of vibes.

My, wow.

Could you talk a little bit about what drew you to what Jordan was building and why you guys are building this together? I mean, could you also talk a little bit about the, the science behind this too? I, I don't know much of the science behind it, so I'd love a little bit more about it too.

Yeah, let me just summarize, and I apologize, I'm getting over a cold, but let me just summarize. This is a reckoning coming to CBG. I love what Jordan said yesterday. I was talking to the audience. It's a reckoning and So true. Like I hope that gives you chills because we as marketers have a responsibility of everything that we're putting out there. Yes, we want to make the dollars, sure. But what if we actually made something that had impact for people that we love? That's what brought me in. And when I went and saw, I was like, okay, I'm in a different phase in my life. Right? We've all been in a place where we've been able to scale brands and take them to the next level. And whether it's our brand, another brand, fine. But if you have something that you could have footprint on the world and know you're making a difference, it just changes the game. It changes the vision. It changes like just the direction. And that's what I'm like, okay, let's go. Also just the synergy of the team that he alluded to, like, guys, it's a next level team. It's kind of ridiculous. My favorite word right now is disgusting. It's just so disgustingly good.

Let's go.

So good. Right, right. Like run through a wall good. Yeah. Um, what I'll say about the science, which is really great, is clinical dosages, is making sure that every single step of that formulation that Jordan and team are creating is again in dosages that matter and actually have impact and you're able to measure. So I don't want to speak too much to it, but I will tell you that every single thing is measured, clinically backed. And a lot of my job in this is education. And you're going to be hearing a lot of drip in terms of what is aging and how do we measure it and the science behind it. I'm going to do the homework and the team's going to do the homework for you. We're going to feed you this information. So as you come as a consumer, you're more educated. So we're not really piggybacking off of your naivety. If anything, we're educating you and bringing you along into this community for long-term value, right? This is like, this is a legacy. So that's what I'm drawn to. That's what I'm so hyped on.

Yeah.

Wow.

Jordan, I mean, as I'm listening here, and I think it's a great point. That Phoenix brings up. Really, what it sounds like to me is kind of saying the quiet part out loud. Inside of health and wellness and supplements, there's a lot of a lot of baloney, a lot of basura, a lot happening that is trash.

It's garbage.

It's doing nothing.

Garbage.

It's doing nothing for us. And you guys want to clear the field and like actually do the thing. Give me some more details here. Like, is it a is it a daily? protocol is going to make me hotter? Is it going to make me younger? Like, what are we getting after here?

Yeah.

So, have you ever seen someone who's like 60 years old but they look 80?

Yes. Yes.

Have you ever seen someone who's 60 but they look 40?

Yes.

What is that, right? Everyone ages chronologically at the same rate year by year by year, but biological age, how old our bodies are, That is a separate age rate, right? That's determined by a lot of different factors. Um, if you think about it like a car, right, a car from 1967, if you take really good care of it, you know, change all the oil and filters and run good gas through it, and, you know, you take really good care of it, well, it's going to start first turn, you know, even now. Right? If you get a car from 10 years ago, you don't change the oil, you're going to scratch the piston casing and total the car functionally. In the same way, our bodies have indicators of how we are aging, whether that's how our body's insulin response is emitted when it encounters sugars and carbs, whether it's our inflammaging markers, right? How inflamed our body is, DNA methylation patterns. Quietly, the literature base kind of like rewrote the rules on what we know about aging in the past 5 years. And I think what makes what we're building unique is like even the CPG brands that you know, will have a clinical dose of something, it's always a clinical dose of one active, right?

Aha.

You know, we're talking 85% of our actives are at clinical doses. Um, and I think the, the tech that we're building, um, is gonna make this bigger than just a protocol.

My, my.

Whoa.

My, my. I'd love to hear a little more on that. Well, yeah, that's exciting.

I, I'd also like to dive into the, the research of this. Phoenix, if you could shed some light on this, because you guys obviously did your research, you did your homework on going through all of this. Is there any finding or ingredient that you guys kind of tripped over where you were seeing this and you were just genuinely shocked going through the research of building this up, where you're just like, I can't believe this is how this is, how this is the world now?

I'll say this. It's not one ingredient. I think that's the point, right? It's like so many ingredients that are at such small dosages. I mean, you know, right now there's like in marketing, there's so many like hot topic items or like I would say mechanisms that we're speaking to and we're constantly talking about it. But then if you really look at the dosages of these products, you're like, does that really help with X, Y, Z? And I think it's like doing that and diving in and realizing, I know Jordan has spent countless hours researching. And what a lot of people don't know, and I alluded to this on the last podcast, is my whole family, they're all doctors. So my sister is an ND, my brother's a DO, my mom opened clinics her whole life. I've been— I'm the black sheep, right? I'm not the doctor. But that doesn't mean that at the dinner table we aren't discussing this. And it also came to the point where like, I'm sitting here and doing all of these ads, whether it be on the media buyer side to, you know, being in the ads, and they're sitting there going, do you know what's actually in this product? And they'll dissect every little thing. And now this is going to be something that I'm proud of and that we're proud of. As for the research, I want to give it to the man that has lost years on his life to help other people gain years back on their life doing this research alongside a medical advisory board. But like, I I just want— I want to ping pong this question to him because he put the hours in.

Talk to me, Jordan Has Wings.

Um, yeah, I, I, you know, I probably— I formulated a, a lot of products at this point, you know. Um, Instant Hydrations Energy Plus is out right now, um, designed to feel like an energy drink with no caffeine. Um, uses the same active that, uh, that Kim Kardashian brand just launched. And throughout all of those, whether it was the very first electrolyte product that I started looking at studies about oral rehydration solution to formulate, you know, I've always based it around the clinical literature base. But I think that there was some stuff that happened recently that I think is like pretty crazy. There was a COSMOS trial and, you know, real humans, randomized, double-blind placebo, everything's peer-reviewed. And this one, this one shocked me. But this was like a moment where I realized that things weren't as I thought they were. But they found that a daily multivitamin actually reduced PhenoAge, which is a composite of 9 different biomarkers that give us biological age. The daily multivitamin— now it was in clinical doses, so keep that in mind— but slowed down the rate of aging on PhenoAge acceleration by a quarter of a year.

Wow.

I know.

Wow.

I know.

That's fire.

That's weird.

That's weird.

That's fire. Like, just a multivitamin, but that had clinical dosages in it, like slowed growth, slowed your aging by a quarter of a year.

I love product formulation because it's like this invisible puzzle that you start to figure out about what science has said, how the body works, everything like that. And, when I started to see this data, I started to go to my wife and say, I think longevity is the Mona Lisa. I'm studying these actives. And then, there's another, the DNAm portion of the biological age biomarkers that GrimAge or GrimAge 2, this is looking at the methylation of your biological age. It's heavily weighted towards things like inflammation, metabolic health, stuff like that. But, with a handful of natural actives, ingredients that come from the earth, not super synthesized, Kosmos showed that in one of them, and this is just insane, it slowed down aging by 0.82 years.

Wow.

And so, I started to find all these studies that were starting to suggest some really crazy stuff. There's a study on the Horvath clock, which I think this one's probably not as high quality as some of the other studies, but they showed a 3.23 biological age year decrease in over 8 weeks.

Really?

With a really intense protocol. And so, this is what I mean when I say that in the past 5 years, I think the Oldest study that I, that I've mentioned so far was from like 2024. Um, and so, or '23. And so this is what I mean when I say that like science has quietly kind of rewritten the rules in the past 5 years. Um, and so, um, I think what we can build, we stand on the shoulders of giants, right? Like what we can build now. with what science has proven is really unparalleled. And if you know how to use the right AI tools, right, like, you can, you can unlock anything. Um, and I think what we're building is a direct result of that. Like, this wouldn't be possible a few years, like, a few years ago, you know. Um, but yeah, I just want to encourage everyone, like, it now is an amazing time to build. Ignore the doomerism and, uh, yeah, go build it. Um, but science, like with aging right now, it's incredible what's being proven.

You know, it seems to be a few, a few things happening here that I love. Number one, uh, I love how you started here, Jordan, with this bet on effectiveness and the consumer being informed more and more when it comes to health and wellness. Like, people are going to be doing their research. And I think, like, this is the case now. I think the buyers are more educated than they have been in the past. And then, you know, there's also, like, both of you coming from instant hydration. I think for you, for both of you to, like, leave to go build another thing, it's like, to me, that signals, like, big bet. Big bet coming here that is worth, uh, burning the boats in some sense, um, standing on the shoulders of giants and taking, uh, taking a giant leap forward when it comes to CPG health and wellness in 2026 and beyond, uh, for consumers. And then, uh, and then thirdly, the, uh, just the context, the context of everything happening with pixie dusting and And kind of this era of a kind of a farce of health and wellness, and like, that is going to be going away. It's been a problem.

Right.

We all know it. That is going to be going away. This seems to me like a, a land-clearing bet, uh, in which like you can totally stand 10 toes down and be proud of what you're selling. I, I can speak for myself. I've sold a lot of things that, uh, on the internet that I'm not that proud of, you know. It's like, it's not like I, I want to necessarily advertise like, hey, look at the ads I made for this specific product and this specific consumer. This feels like the opposite of that. It's like, hey, we're burning boats, we're doing something that's going to change lives that we want our, our family and our kids to know about and participate in. Is that, is that fair? Phoenix Jordan.

I think it just makes sense, right? Like, so I left Instant Hydration and then I started my own agency, and then I was reaching out to Jordan because like we're friends in life, and, and I mean, his wife is my best friend. So it was kind of one of those things like, yo, what's going on? And we were talking, and I will tell you, like, the synergy and, and how we work is pretty incredible. And when he kind of gave me his vision, I'm like, dude, I'm all in. Let's go. And I think that is what it is. It's like I could build my own thing, and I think a lot of the team could do that. But when we saw this vision, we see how concrete it is. It's one of those things where it's like, okay, I know it. I've been in this game long enough to know what is and what isn't. I think we all can. And you're like, all right, let's go. And you lock in, right? And the cool part is it's everyone's hands on keyboard. Everyone is so super driven, no egos, but also some of the best of the best in the game. You have to be excited about that. And then the formula is amazing and the backing is amazing. And I just feel like there's so many exciting things to come and it's been a— I just, I'm excited to tell you guys about it.

So yeah, I mean, our C-suite right now has 4 CEOs in it. I know. And our chief strategy officer was talking to me and he was like, Jordan, this is a problem. He's like, there can only be one CEO. These people are all used to running their own thing. And I was like, I hear you. That does, that does sound like it could be a problem. Why don't you go and talk to all of them? And he went and talked to Phoenix and the rest of the team. And yeah, it's just amazing. Like, we have no ego on the team. The phrase that we use is we take the work seriously, but we don't take ourselves too seriously. And it creates this relaxed environment where everyone's trying to be the very best in the world at whatever their craft is. And the team is pinch me good. Like, I can't believe it's real. I've worked with a lot of teams. I've built a lot of teams. You know, this is hands down, it's not even close, the best team that I've ever seen, much less been a part of. I've ever seen. Um, and I think, you know, it exemplifies what the modern team is going to be shaped like. I think the era of the, you know, 400 person e-com team. I think that era is ending, right?

Oh yeah.

If you look at the writing on the wall with the Meta CACs and everything, it's like OpEx is the only place that you can get meaningful margin back right now, and AI is going to facilitate that happening. And so it's like, so who are the teams of the future? You hear a lot about this one-man band that's— and I I don't buy that. Um, there's just— I, I think it's like the SEAL Team 6 model. Uh, you know, you still have all your leader, you know, leadership hierarchy and everything, but I think it's more decentralized. Um, the way Phoenix and I work together, um, it's amazing. Like she hinted at, I— we align on the plan and then she is fully autonomous. She's making decisions on her own. She's, you know, and same with all of the C-suite, right? And I think that's kind of that decentralized, fast-moving, real authority. Something Phoenix and I were talking about yesterday, like our leaders have actual authority. It's not just a job title authority. People follow them because, you know, the real leader is you can have whatever job title you want, but when the shit hits the fan, who does everyone look to?

Yeah.

That's the leader. And so, you know, I think we're building something that is both in some ways like a judgment day for a lot of people who have been trying to pull the wool over some people's eyes. But I think it's also— we're going to be somewhat of a prototype of the new type of team that's really dominant.

I like the SEAL Team Six. I like SEAL Team Six.

I'm gonna do one more, right?

Yeah, one more.

Howdy, Chris. Howdy, Chris. I wore this for you. You gave Nate like a Stetson shout out. I'm over here going the howdy shout out.

Well, it looks great. It looks great, Phoenix.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'll take it up a notch, right? SEAL Team Six takes it up a notch. Like, you also realize that we says— we say this, it's like a very tall order to fill, which just means we have to be better. Like, that's crazy. That means we just have to be 10 times better. And that to me excites me. So I wanted to take that.

Yeah.

I mean, one of our, one of our main core values is let's be perfect. Um, we tell each other that all the time. Let's be perfect. And being perfect doesn't mean that you did everything right. It doesn't mean that you Won the game. It has nothing to do with the scoreboard. Being perfect means you can look your team in the eye and know that you did everything you possibly could to win. You left it all on the field. If you do that, you're perfect. And what I found— I thought that we were going to enforce these standards and the team would not like them, but then see how effective they were and end up liking them. And the exact opposite happened. People love that they're being held to a high standard and we keep that relaxed vibe. And so yeah, guys, as you can tell, we're super excited about this. Go to whiterabbit.vip. That's whiterabbit.vip. Um, fill out the quick quiz. You're gonna get exclusive discounts for life and membership to all the cool stuff that Phoenix is planning and building right now. And, uh, yeah, check it out. Go down the rabbit hole.

I, I think it's time. I think it's time to go down the rabbit hole. Uh, what would you do with a few more years? I'd do a lot of things. Jack, go down this thing. Can you click through this? Click through this. Take us down the rabbit hole. And we need to sign Colin up. I don't know if Colin has signed up yet.

I am signing up.

Shout out to our CTO for doing this, but also like just It's so funny, um, I like— because we're all friends, right? We were building this, and originally I was like, just choose one, like do or die, just choose one. And Jordan's like, I'm not gonna choose between my spouse and my kids. And I was like, okay, fair. But just realized, like, Jordan cares about you guys. I'm over here just cutthroat, choose one.

She wanted to make everyone make like an existential choice. Do I choose my partner or my kids? I'm like, dude, that's too heavy.

I'm qualifying the funnel. What can I say? Just kidding. No, I wanted to know, but this is great.

Well, I would— I would— I have to say is that I'm in on whatever, you know, incredible deal is coming down. And, uh, I have gone down the rabbit hole and I'm ready for this thing to go forth. Uh, last thing I will say, and you can, you can bring us back here, producer Jack, last thing I will say is that to acquire, to bring together the Avengers team, to assemble the Avengers, you do have to have a vision that's big enough for all of those kinds of personalities and ambitions to live under. And I think it's Signal. I think it's Signal to everyone and everything inside of the space that, uh, big bet.

Dude, I would not— Chris, straight up, I'll say this out loud. I never say this out loud. I would not work for anyone aside from Jordan. I—

whoa.

I don't play nice with others usually, and I love doing my own thing. But because the vision is so strong, because there's backing behind the vision, it's not just hot air. There's something really big here. So I'm just grateful. I'm grateful. And like, let's, let's go, LFG.

We, we can't, we can't be— we can't wait to be a part of it. And I can't wait to get younger, um, and hotter, hopefully, all along the way. And everybody needs to go to whiterabbit.vip and, uh, get ready for, uh, perhaps the biggest bet inside of CPG to come. Lady and Gent, we appreciate you guys coming. We look forward to having you back, and, uh, we can't wait to be a part of it. Thank you, guys. Good to see you guys.

Thanks for having us.

Big thanks. Hey, we, you know, I'm ready to hear a name. I'm ready to hear a name. I'm ready to hear about an interesting tech piece involved to come forth. Um, I'm ready to know, like, hey, I've gone down the rabbit hole, I've signed up. You guys, like, should see this because it's, like, pretty impressive. Like, just the whole experience, like, going down the rabbit hole. But I am signed up. I'm ready to see what potential lifetime special VIP invite one might get as a result of this. Any takeaways from you before we move forward?

Extremely powerful. I think they're absolutely right on all of their accounts as far as a lot of just underdosing within the supplement space right now that is basically being pushed as validity and to the basis points of a a valid dosage for, uh, for proper, you know, benefits. And I think they're, they're really pulling the, uh, pulling the, the, the blanket off and exposing everybody.

And, and maybe we need that inside of our space a little bit. Maybe a little, uh, a little, a little shedding of light so that we can, uh, you know, dwell together in the light. Yeah, fellowship with one another and get younger and, uh, better looking and feeling better. All along the way. Coming inside of this show next, ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Adam Katane, co-founder and CTO of Intelligems, coming forth to talk to us about the things we need to do inside of Q4 and BFCM in order to test our way to the moon and all have more profits all along the way. Before he comes, word from our sponsors over at Universal Ads and Tie, play it for us, producer Jack. Your email provider and your tech stack probably only recognizes about a third of your returning shoppers. Everyone else, they're browsing anonymously, and your flows, they're just sitting idle. Tie identifies up to 70% of your total site traffic and pushes those shoppers into the flows that you already run. Caraway, as an example, uses Tie's Predict scoring to lift opens by by 40%, clicks by 30%, while sending 20% fewer emails. Go book a walkthrough. Go to meetty.com/cowboy. When you do, tell them that Colin and I sent you today. Many thanks for typing. If your growth is plateauing on search and social, it's time to rethink TV. Universal Ads makes it simple for DTC brands to run TV campaigns designed for performance without the usual mystery of getting involved with television. You get both premium streaming and linear inventory all in the same place. Okay, you reach a net new New target audiences outside of the same crowded social feeds we're all spending our dollars today. There's no hidden markups or fees. Campaign setup and management, it's just like search and social to get running in minutes. TV that's designed, that delivers for performance marketers. Go to universalads.com, use code UACOWBOY, you can get $1,500 in matched ad credits. Many thanks for Universal Ads being part of the show. Colin, wouldn't it be nice if we could just find somebody come in here and talk about, you know, My Black Friday Cyber Monday offer, like, golly, you know, is this thing working? You know, what do I need to know in order to make sure this thing's working? You know, maybe I take 20% off, sell 30% off more, you know, 30% more than usual. Like, I mean, wouldn't that be nice to kind of figure that out?

Suss that out?

That'd be huge, especially given the— this guy right here.

It's 37 days. We're 37 days away from Black Friday Cyber Monday right now.

Better start dialing in, folks. Better start dialing in.

Well, let me just put this out there. Like, what if, like, if somebody different ways— one on my VIP list, one from an email, one from an ad— like, do they all need to see the same offer? Like, wouldn't it be cool to, like, I don't know, just be able to talk about all the intricacies and various things and the strings that we could pull to make profits go up during this Super Bowl time of the year? Wouldn't that be nice?

It sounds impossible. It sounds like you're, you're just saying, you're saying nonsense right now because that doesn't seem, that doesn't seem possible.

I am trying to bring the man himself inside of the show. I'm talking about the one and only Adam Cattane, co-founder and CTO of Intelligems, coming inside this show right now. Adam Cattane, get in here. Get inside this room. Oh, whoa.

Wow.

Adam, that is powerful. Adam. Adam, we gotta, we gotta. Oh, we can't hear him. We can't hear him. We can't hear him.

Can you hear me?

Oh, now I can hear you now, Adam. And you're looking good.

And you're so excited to be here. I've got, you know, I've got the hat. I was like, this is—I was made for this moment. This is—I've been waiting so long. I thank you guys again.

It's—it's like—it's almost like it was destiny. Adam, you know.

I feel like it was.

And I must, I must say, the, the intelligence logo that you got neon going on behind you, great touch.

Great touch.

Thank you.

I don't know if it was there last time.

Let's go.

We've got, we've got logos. We've got logos. We're ready to be here. We're in the studio. Thank you guys for having me. And by the way, guys, congrats on the success. I feel like I see you everywhere, but not just like in my socials. I was watching football and you guys were on primetime.

Whoa!

I don't know if you've seen that, but it was connected TV ads with, uh, yeah, your guys' faces. And I was like, it's true. Wow, this is awesome.

You know, our best to be everywhere.

We, we, uh, we have, uh, one can see us every now and again on Monday Night Football. It's true, it's true. I've gotten some texts, I have gotten some texts. But, uh, hey, like, here's what I'll say, Adam. I, I think it's time that we get this clip of this interview up on Monday Night Football. Maybe the— maybe the NCAA National Championship. I don't know, you know. Um, we got some big things happening here.

We got Black Friday. We gotta get it out, get it out there. People have to know. We've got the countdown on the bottom right to the 37 days until Black Friday. People need to know what's going on. And, and yeah, thank you. Totally, totally. Thanks for having me.

And it's, it's good that we have you here. Riddle me this, Adam. As we're like foraying into Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the time has drawn nigh. And marketers, they're thinking about, man, how can I really impress my boss? There's some like intricacies of knowledge and things I could be testing, some little nuggets, some golden nuggets that I could be handing him or her to show like how on the ball I am. Tell me this, if there's a brand that's, let's say they're taking 20% off, for Black Friday and maybe they sell 30% more than usual.

Yeah.

How can they know like, hey, this thing worked or not? Like, what do they need to know in order to answer like, hey, we did good. The number didn't just go up. We did good.

I feel like this is the classic question. And I think that also thinking about Black Friday just in terms of your percent off and your sale is, is narrow. I think we have been using this term funnel maxing because everyone's maxing everything these days, right? We're like, Protein maxing and token maxing. So here at Intelligems, we're we're we're we're big proponents of funnel maxing. Have you guys heard this term funnel maxing?

I'm glad that it exists.

Dive into it.

Funnel maxing, baby.

We're funnel maxing. So basically, funnel maxing is like making the most out of your traffic that you're sending top of funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel. There's so many components to the site. There's the offer that's part of the funnel. But obviously, like you've got your landing pages. Maybe those are dialed. Maybe they're not. You've got your checkout. Maybe that's dialed.

Maybe that's not.

But if you have an upsell. at checkout that is not dialed and it could be selling, I don't know, 6% more and that's a $50 upsell, that's $3 per order in your time where you're doing the most orders of the year. That could be tens of thousands of dollars from just a little dialing of that upsell. So we're at Intelligems, I think, first of all, let's think about this as the entire funnel. And we break it down into sort of like top of funnel, which is Your landing page, how that's speaking to the traffic you're driving to it. There's the middle of the funnel, which is like your pricing, your buy more, save more, your discounts. Like, what are you— how are you pricing and packaging that Black Friday offer? And then bottom of the funnel is what are you doing for shipping rates? Who's getting, you know, are you going to charge for shipping rates? Are you going to do free shipping rates? What's the offer there? What's the upsell? Because is there a post-purchase upsell? I'm talking to brands that don't have upsells at checkout, but they're on Shopify Plus or they don't have a post-purchase. Upsell.

Oh my.

It's like we're leaving money on the table by not having these things. We can test to make sure that it's that it's doing it right, but we can also set up all of these really sophisticated but really easy to set up rules to make sure that those are dialed and personalized and driving the most for you guys. Because yeah, leaving a couple dollars on the table at checkout would be a real bummer when you have five thousand orders over that course of that period.

I love this answer. I love this answer. It's like offer, buddy. That's just one piece of this whole thing. We're funnel maxing all the way to the end.

I love this.

We're funnel maxing.

Yeah.

Adam, Adam, could you talk a little bit about the new product that you guys just launched? I believe it's called Onsite Upsells. Could you dive into that a little more?

So we have a couple new products. We've had checkout upsells and post-purchase upsells for a while. We just launched onsite upsells. All 3 of them also powered by a pretty new product we call Agentic Rules Engine. And so you can describe to an agent An algorithm or rules. Algorithm sounds too fancy. You can describe to this agent some rules. Hey, I want a pattern match. If someone has the gorilla pattern in their cart, I want the gorilla pattern. If someone has denim top, I want denim bottoms. So you just describe conceptually what you want. If they have a cart that's over $200, show an upsell that's in the $60 to $80 range. But if they have a lower cart, show a cheaper upsell. You just describe to this agent. what you want, and the agent looks at your store data, your shopper data. It can then build this really sophisticated set of rules for you based on the logic that you've set, and then you can A/B test that against your current upsells to make sure that that is driving more. We've got the upsells on the site, at the checkout, post-purchase, and then this very powerful rules engine behind it across all 3 of those surfaces.

Wow, I like this. I just speak and the rules are created and it acts on my behalf.

Yeah, and I think that like one thing that we've seen is, hey, if I want, let's say I have 50 products in my catalog and I don't know, I'm a CBD gummy brand and I have 50 different flavors and sizes and whatever. And for my post-purchase, I have this, I want to offer this just another one of the same, you know, get a second for 30% off because adding a second of the same, I already know you've already bought one, adding a second makes it really easy. Now instead of having to set up 50, you know, if they bought, you know, the strawberries, show them a strawberry, if they bought the blueberries, right, forget that. But also, if you have, if you're a fashion brand and you have all these different patterns or styles and you want to match The gender, you want to match the pattern, you want to match the style, but you want it to complement. And all of that is set up in your Shopify through tags, but you don't want to have to set up 100 different rules to come up with all the different permutations. You could do that jewelry. It works in a ton of different ways.

Sounds like, sounds like testing and e-com and iterations and all of the things made easy. I like to hit the easy button. I like it.

It's super easy. And the thing is, is that, you know, there is so much to do. So we talk about funnel maxing. It's like, okay, it's not just the discounts, all of these things. But like, we don't have to— you don't have to reinvent the wheel or learn all these new things. That's what's great about AI. It's like, by the way, plug your Claude into the Intelligems MCP. And yeah, I don't know how— are you guys token maxing too?

We're token maxing. We are token maxing.

Yes, we are. You can Funnel Max while you Token Max and then maybe eat a protein bar and be Protein Maxing at the same time. You can be maxing, maxing, maxing.

Come on, bro.

All right, so right now, yeah, so, so get Claude hooked up to IntelliGems. It makes it really easy to get these things set up, configured, um, and, uh, you don't have to, you don't have to do a lot of work. And there's still 37 days, so it's only 37 days, but there's still 37 days. So hey, I want to run this as a test, I want to set this up, I want to make sure that it works, I want to know Again, we don't have to be testing the discount right now. Your discount's probably locked in. You're like, those emails are ready. People lock those in in July. But like, what are the upsells that you have at checkout? What are the post-purchase upsells? Like, those are probably a little less dear to your heart and probably have $3, $5, $7 per order. So, you know, this is, this is, this is a lot of money.

That's a fair point. It's a fair point.

You know, Adam, obviously you see a ton of insane tests in Intelligems. Have you come across any recent tests that folks have been running where you've just been mind-blown about the results?

Yeah. I mean, I think that there's so many small things about like, I never would've expected this, but like, this is gonna be a button color one. Okay.

Let's go button color. Let's go button color.

I always poop on the button color tests.

Yeah.

But, and this is why it surprised me. So this is why I'm bringing it up. We had, um, we had a situation where they're like the, you have a size selector or the variant selector, all of these things. And the button color kind of has a little faded and it looked disabled. It looked like they hadn't done everything right. And the button looked disabled. And so changing the button color to a much more saturated tone actually increased the add-to-cart rates. Who would have thought? I never thought that button color tests would have worked, but little things. We spend a lot of time also— I want to emphasize, we spend a lot of time thinking about big swings. How do you take big swings with pricing? How do you take big swings with the way that your navigation and your searches is laid out? How do you take some big swings with your shipping rates? That's a big part of our philosophy is that You need to be taking big swings. But I know you guys had Mike DeLee on the show. He talked, he talked a lot about this concept of like, you need to be doing the big swings, but also the base hits. And like, you know, gotta play small ball. You know, we're in the World Series right now. So we got, we got a baseball analogy here for you guys. But yeah, we're trying to hit home runs, but you need baserunners too. So you need the combination.

Moneyball action.

A little Moneyball, a little Moneyball.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need to play some Moneyball.

Never hurt anybody. I feel like Moneyball actually is a large metaphor for everything that we do in e-commerce, but I digress.

That's why I brought it up.

That's why.

I mean, it's very astute of you.

Listen, you guys have the smartest data people on your show, right? Like people are looking at data for their ads. There are people who are looking at data for their flows, for their— data is everything here, right? Like this is— e-commerce is a data-native business. It's not brick-and-mortar retail. It's not, you know, we don't have a— some people do, but we have so much data capture when it's through, you know, you have a click, you have a view-through, you have people land on your site, we know what pages, what scroll depth, what products they're viewing, what they're adding to the cart, you know, how many people abandon checkout when they see a shipping rate over $7.

Yeah.

Like, we have all this data. Again, like, there's another token-maxing opportunity here. Ask Claude. So, uh, maybe another plug for our MCP. We wrap the Shopify ShopQL. So all the data that Shopify has is exposed through the Shopify query language, but it's kind of hard to get to. And so the Intelligems MCP wraps your Shopify ShopQL. So you can ask our Intelligems MCP anything about your site, and we can tell you all the onsite because we have that pixel. Anything about your order data, like, we can tell you because we're connected to ShopQL. So all that data, like, You can go mine it using, using some tokens.

Fancy.

Adam with the sauce.

I see you, Adam. Builder's gonna build. Builder's gonna build over there. Riddle me this, riddle me this. We recently had, um, Alex Greenfield on the show, and she, she proposed something that I had never really thought of before, not in the way that she described it. And she was bringing up this thought of like, hey, earlier Black Friday, Cyber Monday, like your VIPs, however you describe VIPs.

Yes.

They get the best price. Do it early.

Yes.

Uh, give it to them specifically now. I've always been like, hey, we're gonna have one offer. We'll do it early for the VIPs, but we've got one offer. Simplicity. Uh, let's make it hum. Let's make it win. But I'd love to throw this out at you just to think about, because I wonder, because of all the things you guys are testing and doing, and have you ever seen somebody like on Black Friday during this period, etc., and maybe they're coming from— somebody's coming from email, somebody's coming from a paid ad, maybe it's somebody who typed in the address directly. Have you ever seen somebody getting different offers? Like, is there, is there a credence to that. Would you recommend that? Do you see people do that? Or does, do we keep it simple, keep it simple, stupid? Everybody gets the same offer all the time, etc. What's your thoughts on this?

I mean, listen, Chris, you're like, I want to keep it simple. It can be simple and targeted. So I don't think that those 2 things are necessarily in opposition of each other. So yeah, we have some— I agree with simple. It should be easy to understand. It should be like, I don't know, all of these moving pieces and gamification and all of that kind of stuff. You know, there's, there's something to be said for Merchandise it, right? Like if there's a threshold, they need to spend a certain amount to unlock a discount, make sure that's merchandised because the reason you're doing that is to drive AOV. And if they don't know that they need to get to that to get the discount, then you're shooting yourself in the foot. Merchandise it, but it should be simple. It should be simple to understand. It shouldn't have too many moving pieces, but that doesn't mean it can't be targeted. And so, you know, yours like one offer for everyone is simple for you, Simple for me. Simple for you, but for your customer—

come on, bro. That's true. It's true.

But for your customer, they only see the one offer anyway. So if it's 15%, 20%, 25%, depending on what level of targeting you're getting, that's just as simple for the customer. It's only less simple for you. But again, when you have an MCP connection, you can ask Claude to go set that up for you. That's simple. So I think it can be simple for everyone. And we definitely see— I mean, we've been seeing this actually This is probably our 4th Black Friday that we've had a targeting offers product, and all 4 years we have more and more and more people doing just exactly this strategy.

Love it.

In our first year of having targeted offers, this was only reserved for the most sophisticated brands, but I would say by now, I think 30 or 40% of the people that work with Intelligems are doing something along these lines. It is definitely a strategy.

That's incredible.

Let's go.

Let's go.

Yeah.

Love that.

That's incredible.

That's incredible.

Absolutely love that.

Wow. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. Not everyone wants the same offer. Not everyone needs the same offer. It's inefficient. If that were the way the world should work, we would all— the guy sitting next to you on the airplane would've paid the same price for their ticket, but they're not.

Okay.

Riddle me this.

I love throwing these out at you, Adam, because When some— when you've been like in the trenches, like building so much, you know, like you, you're seeing, you're seeing things that I think we all wish we could ask. Let's, let's say I've got a price test of some sort and, uh, I'm coming back higher revenue, higher profit. Okay, it's looking good. Um, in my mind it's like, great, it's a win. Like, keep it there, you know?

Yeah.

Keep it there.

Like, let's keep rolling forth. Is that always the case?

Okay.

Or is there, do you find like sometimes like, hey, actually digging in the weeds here, maybe it's not, you know, look at AOV, LTV, et cetera, et cetera. Talk to me about this.

First of all, there's, there's, there's, there's 2 points. One is, is it static and are we done? And the other is, is there another story in the data? So on the first point, is this the answer and are we done? We just roll with it and like accept that as truth. I would debate that because I think that the market is constantly changing. What if your competitor then raises their price or lowers their price? What if your paid strategy changes and you're now acquiring a different type of customer and over time they are maybe a little less price sensitive or more price sensitive? So I think that there are things that change over time. And so just because you found the answer today on October 20th, whatever, doesn't mean that that's going to be true in January. The second is, when you find the answer, there's often a story to unpack beneath it. Was this actually— let's say we run a test on a smart cart redesign and change the way that your cart is laid out. Maybe we see that it's pretty flat, but under the hood, that new design is tanking on desktop and crushing on mobile. You wouldn't have figured that out if you didn't start looking at that. Where is it tanking? Is it actually tanking in the fact that like AOV is lower because the way the in-cart upsells are working is worse? Or is it tanking because people aren't getting to checkout? Or is it tanking because, you know, the pricing is displayed differently? So I think that you have to understand the why. And there's all the ways that you can instrument these tests and look at the data that we're already collecting to understand. So I think there's always a story to understand. It's really important to understand that story, especially when you're running A/B tests. The reason to run an A/B test in my mind is not just about the outcome. It's not just about finding out what works, but it's understanding like, how do I then apply this knowledge to where I'm going to go invest my energy in the next 3 or 6 weeks to make another improvement in the site? And so it's not just about finding winners, it's also about getting better and smarter about where you want to spend your time and energy looking forward. So if you have a good grasp on the why, the story, you're going to be much better at making those changes and optimizing yourself going forward.

Let's go.

Intelligems revolution. I think I think one thing's clear. Token max, token max, and token max.

If there's one thing your listeners are going to take away from this, we're maxing and token maxing, baby.

And do it with the intelligence MCP, and do it now in Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and more. Adam brother, we appreciate you making the time to join the show. Appreciate you being part of the show.

This is this is a tremendous success that you guys. I'm happy to be a part of it. Love being a sponsor. And keep crushing it, guys.

You're the man. You're the man. We appreciate you building, brother. Thank you, bro.

You got a protein max, you got a token max, and you got a revenue max. That's your Black Friday, Cyber Monday right there, folks.

And you got a funnel max and—

Funnel max, MCP max.

I think Jeff Tang would say you got a peptide max coming inside of this show right now, ladies and gentlemen. Uh, the creator and investor, an organizer of peptide parties, and, uh, I would say knower of ball when it comes to the next cutting-edge transformation of health inside consumer and more. Jeff Tang is coming. Before he comes inside this show, word from our sponsors over at Rich Panel and Northbeam. Play it for us, producer Jack. If you're in the ads manager all day long, you know the problem. Every platform takes credit. Every dashboard tells a different story. Meta says this, TikTok says that, Shopify says I made this much, I spent that much. Sometimes it's hard to know which ad platform is telling the truth. Northbeam fixes this with their own proprietary data, starting from the actual purchase, rebuilding the customer journey from real orders, real clicks, real verified ad views, and then pushing that measurement back into the platforms so they optimize on what's actually driving your revenue, not what those platforms assume is driving your revenue. Start measuring what was previously unmeasurable. Go to northbeam.io, book your demo today. Many thanks for Northbeam being part of the show. Your CX team is buried in repeat tickets that are costing you money. Rich Panel is the AI help desk that fixes this massive headache and automates 70 to 80% of your interactions. You're only responsible for the exceptions. Your team of Rich Panel AI agents has got you on the rest end to end. If you're paying humans $2 to $10 per ticket, you need to see what 30 cents feels like. Ridge did this, cut their cost per ticket by 70%, saved $500,000, and 50% autonomous resolution in 30 days guaranteed or your money back. Go to ridgepanel.com, book your demo today. Many thanks for Ridge Panel being part of the show. Coming inside this show right now to talk TikTok's ban on peptides and more is the organizer of peptide parties We were talking about Jeff Tang. May he come inside of this show right now. Get inside this show, Jeff Tang.

We need you in here.

Let's go.

What's up, guys?

How we doing? How we doing today?

Jeff, Jeff, bro, when I saw TikTok banning peptide content, I could only think, what does the one and only Jeff Tang have to say about this, brother? What is going on over there?

Yeah, I mean, well, first I think I'm the one who broke that news. The Verge covered it and a lot of other people did.

So let's go, Jeff.

Basically, I was just looking on TikTok, like, what are people saying about BPC, Reddit True Tide, all this stuff? And no results showed up for a lot of the most common peptides, even ones that are FDA approved and fully legal to be accessed by consumers today.

Crazy.

Yeah. And so this has just been unfortunately the pattern over the last few months where I'm seeing huge doctors like Dr. Abud Bakri, Dr. Gabriel Alazaidi, hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and all socials, getting their own TikToks suspended. And again, they're not selling anything, they're not affiliates, they are just doctors that are educating the public. And it's pretty wild. There's even dentists saying they're getting flagged for talking about teeth. So almost a lot of medical knowledge is just being Censored on TikTok. It's pretty wild.

Crazy.

Jeff, you also dove into in one of your video breakdowns, you said that TikTok was not owned by Oracle, it is owned by Eli Lilly. Could you dive into this a little more for us?

Yeah, I mean, that was a bit tongue-in-cheek. Obviously I don't think Eli Lilly's formally on the cap table, but the assumption would be that Big Pharma, specifically Eli, most notably, and potentially a little from Novo, has been adding a lot of pressure to the social platforms, to the payments processing companies, to the banks, to the advertisers, of course. And so when you actually talk to a lot of these operators, they basically have all these stories where they're getting these letters. In fact, just yesterday, Hims House, another great podcast in this space, they had on Peptide Partners, which is a pretty big vendor in the space. He was saying how over the last 2, 3 years, 2 years since they've been running the business, they would get letters from Eli Lilly going to AWS web servers and to their storefronts, like whether it's WooCommerce or whatever, trying to get them taken down. And I've heard of different—

Wow.

I've heard of many stories like this where someone's basically saying Eli Lilly is pushing some platform, some provider to shut down some From better.

What's interesting about this is like there's this juxtaposition of you see all of this and then on the flip side of this, you recently shared a post where peptide companies are getting all the fundraising right now. There, all the funding is going into peptides. And so there's this weird juxtaposition of everything is getting banned on socials, but you, you shared this post recently where I think it was like 5 or 6 companies are getting multiple tens of millions of dollars for peptide funding. Could you dive into this?

Yeah. So the post you're talking about was from last week. I posted 5 different startups that have collectively raised over $48 million. It's, it's definitely more than that.

Right.

And that's just the public announcements. And there's startups that I've heard have been funded that which haven't even been announced yet, larger rounds that haven't been announced yet that I just show it's public. Um, basically what we're seeing is for the majority of those ones that are receiving funding, they are trying to do it a different avenue, right? There's 2 ways to sell peptides. One is through a licensed physician and prescriber and a licensed compounding pharmacy fulfilling that script.

Right.

And the other way is the gray market, and that's selling what they call research use, sometimes physician use, Sometimes clinic use only. And that's where there isn't necessarily a licensed provider or pharmacy involved. Most of those companies that have raised have done it through the legit way, which is they're using LegitScript, they're getting advertising on Meta and Google, they have actual doctors involved. The other ones— there are, well, there are startups that are raising that are also not doing that from what I can see. Uh, but the majority are trying to do it the compliant way. And again, they're selling, let's say, semaglutide, uh, compounded tirzepatide, compounded semaglutide, PT-141.

Sure.

Those are all completely fair game, but even those compounds are being censored on TikTok. And so what we're seeing is like a blanket, a very, a very broad approach to censorship on TikTok where even legal compounds are, are getting Sounds scary.

Wow, scary. Kind of like a, uh, you know, kill them all and let somebody else sort them out. Kill all the content. Yeah, let somebody else sort it out later on. Jeff, I have, uh, said this tongue-in-cheek, but I'm kind of like half serious. I feel like all of, all of us in e-commerce and DTC, like, at some point, like, we're going to end up in telehealth. It just seems like there's so much happening on sphere, this frontier, um, inside of tech, inside of consumer. There's like so much happening there with biotech. Uh, everybody can be healthy and hot and younger and awesome, feel great, etc. It's like we're all going to end up here, um, someday, even despite the, the things happening in the, uh, you know, zeitgeist right now. Uh, interesting to me that RFK is like, well, hey, like peptides are awesome, like we need to like create a marketplace of some sort. Um, to centralize everything here and make it all available. I find this fascinating in the midst of everything else taking place.

Yeah, it's— I agree with your first statement. I agree with the second one. I mean, certainly we're seeing a lot of movement into telehealth from people we wouldn't expect, right? Grindr last month acquired a telehealth service for, I think, $250 million, right?

Yeah, I mean, that's a couple bucks, right?

Yeah. And, uh, you know, Grindr, if you know anything about them, they are basically the most profitable dating app, uh, right? They're the only ones that actually are crushing it still. And, and so they know what they're doing. As far as building the marketplace, yeah, it's this really weird tension, right, where we're seeing RFK publicly saying he wants to do peptides, where we're seeing again on social media, even outside of TikTok, but especially on TikTok, Everyone's just like normalized this, right? Like everyone is just taking Reda for some reason. It's not FDA approved. You can't get it legally. And yet it's just so normal for everyday citizens to be, to be taking it. And there's just this really, really big disconnect right now between regulations and just how fast culture and technology are moving. And so my whole, my whole mission around all this is like, how do we empower the individuals to just take agency over their own biology. And I had another tweet go viral last night in the same thread. I was thinking like, you know, what is similar to, you know, people doing peptides but not, isn't quite just, you know, selling this little compound? Well, yesterday I posted this tweet about 7 people on X, Twitter, trying to cure their own cancer or successfully cured their own cancer.

Yes.

Using AI, designing their own vaccines, sequencing their own DNAs, getting biopsies of their own tumors and then manufacturing or trying to find manufacturers to manufacture a one-of-one solution for their cancer. It's wild what's possible today. And so then you see all these acquisitions, right? Like yesterday, OpenAI acquired Orchestra Bio. Claude announced with Citrini, the finance newsletter, that they ran an experiment where they generated 211 protein designs to create an antivenom for scorpion. This is by 3 analysts, financial newsletter analysts who who have zero scientific background, right? And they just did that with Claude, right? And so it's like there's this huge, just huge gap. But the crazy thing about that Claude Citrini article was that they generated these 211 designs in 64 hours, and then it took another 2 months to actually test them.

Stop it. 64 hours?

64 hours, 5 messages to Claude. And they generated 211 designs. I mean, that would've taken years before. Bro. Wow.

But then on the flip side of that, you're saying it's basically taking so long for the regulation to catch up to all of this on the tail end, which is—

Absolutely.

Classic regulation in government.

Those first 2 people I mentioned in my tweet about people curing their own cancer, number one is Sid, who's a billionaire founder of GitLab, a public company. Yeah. Right. And then the second is Rosie. I think we've probably all seen that story now of this guy who cures his own dog's cancer, or at least comes up with a treatment to reduce the tumors, right? Like both of them said, the hardest part was actually not getting their own data, not even designing a solution. It was actually the hospitals, the review boards, the regulators saying like, no, no, we can't do this. We can't do this. And so they had to take things into their own hands. This is like where we're at right now with bio and pharma and healthcare in general, which is like patients and users have all this access. They have an infinite army of doctors effectively, and scientists and researchers at their disposal through tools like Claude and ChatGPT. But then they can't get over to the actual development, the actual solution. And, and if we look at where biopharma is right now, it's just like everything except for Eli and obesity drugs has, has suffered. And it's because these, these, these processes are so expensive where, again, on average it's taking 10 years and $2 to $3 billion to get drugs over the line, even though people are sick, you know, even though like these could be solutions. It's just that the, the incentives and the cost structure of pharma today make it so that even though we could, we could actually make a good amount of money, but like a billion dollars a year is still just break even. That's like a 1x for a pharma company this year. They need blockbuster drugs.

Yeah. Like a Reda. I would push back on this conversation too, because there's a really interesting through line where basically you're saying the end consumer now has all this data. They also have all these means. How do you think this changes the relationship with their doctor? And also how does the doctor now Have this conversation with patient. So like an example is guy comes in, 250 pounds, he decides to get some reta, he drops down to 170. Doctor's like, I don't know what you're doing, dude, but you're healthy and amazing. And I, I don't know, do I tell you to keep taking the reta? Like, I don't know if I can do that as your doctor now. Like, how does this change this relationship?

That's a good question, and I, I don't think it's something that anyone has a great answer to. Basically, people are going to continue doing what they're going to do. You know, some doctors are going to say, look, I, it's— I can't take liability for this, so I just, I can't even say anything. You can talk to someone else. And actually, that's what you see sometimes. Like, let's say, you know, for instance, if I'm getting aligners or LASIK, I can't get a scan at one doctor and then like go to another. Or if I, if I do get partial treatment at one, if I switch to the other, I have to pay a lot more to that new doctor because they're taking on a liability from the other one. So I think a lot of, I think a lot of doctors are just going to cover their own butt, which is fair because that's their license to lose. But it's, it's really just, uh, it's really who's going to take on the risk, right? And at the end of the day, people are just going to continue using what they have available to them. And so if that's research use peptides, they're gonna do that. If it's ChatGPT, they're gonna do that. And, you know, again, based on that, the, the 7 people I mentioned trying to cure their own cancer, like, it's gonna have to come into the hands of individuals, unfortunately. Right. Um, cuz they're the ones who can take full responsibility for it.

Jeff, I am blown away by just the knowledge you have dropped here in these few minutes. It's mind-blowing to me like the just breadth of opportunity for a non-technical, non-trained person to simply get inside of Claude and like solve their own problems. Like, it's fascinating to me. Like the story you mentioned about the finance guys who were like, you know, like, let's, uh, let's figure out these different designs that we can do for Scorpion venom and etc. Like, it's fascinating to me. It actually makes me incredibly bullish on like new developing opportunities inside of biotech, not only going to benefit the lives of those who take them, but also like become incredible businesses if they can somehow like navigate this incredibly murky regulation thing that exists. I don't know if they need to move to Nicaragua and do it or what. But I find it, I find it Fascinating. It actually fires me up about, uh, what's to come inside of this space.

It's, it's exciting. It's never been a more exciting time to be alive and doing things in AI and bio. I think we are going to see more and more of this, which is essentially, you know, what I call it vibe coding drugs, right? I think just like we've been vibe coding our websites, our content, our social media posts, like you can now and our apps, you can now vibe code your own drugs. And again, we're just going to see more and more of that. We're going to see more and more people trying to solve their own problems because the current systems and establishment are not optimized for how fast things are changing technologically and culturally. But then what we're going to see is that bottleneck shift from science and these ivory towers of like, oh no, we know better, you don't know anything, to, oh, you actually are in control of everything. You have all the access. you need pretty much. Now, how do we get the discovery and the solution and the problem solving upstream to manufacturing, finding your own treatments? And I actually do think going to Nicaragua or doing medical tourism is potentially what people are going to do. Like, if you have cancer, some of these people that I mentioned in my post, like, they're going to different countries because the current countries don't work. And even in America, people are going to states like Montana. And I know there's a few other states that have these right-to-try laws where you are saying like, I can, I'm willing to do this therapeutic that's not FDA approved yet. I'm willing to do this experimental phase 2, phase 3 drug. I'm willing to do stem cell therapies. And the laws are actually changing in certain states to where you will probably end up having to have to go to some of those states to cure your own cancer, which is like obviously not ideal, but like that's— That's gonna be the starting point. And hopefully, you know, state by state, more things change. And, you know, we're seeing that right now even with AI doctors. I don't know if you saw like last month, there's AI doctors now, right? And that's starting off in Utah, which is the sandbox. You know, first they started off with refills of dermatology, you know, tretinoin, something pretty harmless, right?

Right.

But eventually, you know, we have a, we have a huge scarcity of doctors in this country, right? And eventually we're going to need AI doctors. doctors. We're going to because there's just not going to be enough doctors for how many people there are. And people are already using ChatGPT and Claude like your doctors, right? It's like they already have access to your health records. You can talk to them 24/7, even if it's not a real doctor. It's like, well, if I only can see my real doctor every 6 months for 15 minutes and I'm late and there's all these insurances, I'm always like surprise billing, like, am I really gonna even want to do that? Like, no. Yeah, right.

Yeah, yeah. I, I like this, uh, vibe coding drugs like phraseology here, you know? It's like we got Big Pharma, now we're gonna have Solo Pharma or Entre Pharma, or I don't know.

I don't know.

I feel like there's like a, there's like a lot of great phrases.

I call it Neo Pharma. Neo Pharma.

Neo Pharma.

I like that.

Neo Pharma.

Jeff, you also covered recently, a couple weeks ago, there is a push within the, I would say the administration and the government, specifically by Nancy Mace, to push BPC to veterans. If you want to dive into that, basically what What is that initiative, what BBC does, and how this could potentially benefit veterans as well?

Yeah, so basically the trend that I've noticed is more and more startups and companies actually partnering up with different defense agencies such as the CIA, such as State, such as working with Veterans Affairs. And the reason here is that it's actually easier now to work with regulators in these agencies and, and like, let's say veterans, than it is to work with the FDA. Like, that's, that's what's crazy. Like, last week I went to a biotech hackathon in San Diego, the very first defense biohackathon. And there's startups that have contracts with the Department of War to develop next generation fuels, to develop next generation foods.

Whoa.

And there's, and then they're selling to Navy bases, Air Force bases, maybe to screen pathogens in the air. That's what one startup called Pilgrim is doing. And then I can't share too much, but yeah, again, one startup is trying to sell peptides to the Army, right? To the defense, because that can get accelerated and state-sponsored new drug trials on the way, which could get applications and real data faster than the traditional clinical trial process.

Right.

And again, for, in terms of Nancy Mace and what's happening there, it's like, again, can we— so looking from the perspective of a regulator, you know, they're oftentimes speaking to a constituency that's different than the one, let's say, on X right here on Twitter, on, on, yeah, in tech, right? They've got an older demographic. They don't know about peptides. They don't, they don't even trust tech necessarily, right? They probably don't, right? They probably don't trust advertisers. They probably don't trust a lot of mainstream media, but If you're a vet and something can help you with chronic pain and the current alternatives are just painkillers like fentanyl, you know, opioids, right? Like we have to find better solutions.

Yes.

And like, that's, that's the goal, right? And so when we saw with a few months ago, they also had psychedelics pass. I forget the exact one, but it was for psychedelics, but it was for veterans, right? And it's like, let's start with a very scoped use case where there's people that are suffering, the current standard of care is not working. Let's get creative because the current solutions just aren't good enough. And maybe they don't meet this like FDA clinical trial process. But again, like, why is that? It's because it costs billions of dollars. And if you don't have a monopoly on that IP, which you can't have on a lot of these peptides because they're— they've been out for a long time or they're already discovered naturally in your body, like, let's get them to them, right? Let's get—

Yeah.

Same thing for psilocybin, same thing for MDMA. Same thing for all these other drugs. Like maybe they can help people. Maybe they're hard to monetize, but it doesn't mean they can't help a lot of people.

Wow, Jeff!

Dropping bars, dropping bars, dropping truth bombs, truth bombs on the ship. The developing landscape of biotech, neo-pharma, yes, and what is available out there and how it's going to affect the consumer. Jeff, I must make the request again.

I'm.

ready for Austin Peptide Party. I don't think it's happening. No, I don't think anybody can do it but you. I don't think anyone can do it. You are the guy, Jeff. Come on.

I know, I know, I know. Hopefully soon. I, I need to, I need to grow more on IG, to be honest, because I feel like Twitter, I've like— bro, it's a lot. I don't know that many people in Austin. I mean, you guys are there.

We do.

I will get everyone and their mom. We will get everyone and their mom. It'll be the biggest peptide party that has ever been thrown.

Easily biggest.

Okay. All right, let's do it.

Well, I will, I will—

huge.

I will plug my next peptide party, which is November 4th in San Francisco. First time I'm talking about it, but please follow, go to my website and join my email list because I'm going to send an email out very soon. It's going to be November 4th in San Francisco. We're going to do it on a battle Bro, killer, man.

Incredible. Wow. Okay, what's the website, Jeff? What's the website?

Yeah, we got the website, jefftangx.com. jefftangx.com. And yeah, I will send out blasts out shortly. If you're in San Francisco November 4th, please drop by. It's gonna be—

oh, I see it, I see it. Yeah, get, get the next peptide party.

I, I—

yeah, get the next party invite. Everybody go to jefftangx.com. Sign up, go hang out on the battleship, and then we look forward to having one in some later to be mentioned future in Austin, Texas. Jeff, you're the man. We appreciate you making the time to join the show. We look forward to having you back. Thank you, man.

Thanks, guys.

Wow!

Incredible, man. Incredible show.

Crazy show.

Crazy show. I think we may even have some breaking news to review next. Before we get there, before we get there, word from our sponsors, ladies and gentlemen, from Propel and TrendTrack. Play it for us, producer Jack. People are the most important part of your business, and finding real A players is hard and incredibly time-consuming. Propel is the best Recruitment agency out there for e-com brands and agencies to source talent from the US, Latin America, and beyond. We're talking video editors, graphic designers, media buyers, and more. The best part is they work on performance. You only pay a one-off fee, no retainers and no ongoing costs. Every hire comes backed by a 3-month guarantee. Go to wearepropel.com/ecom-cowboy-propel. If you mention Ecom Cowboy, you're gonna get 10% off your first hire. Many thanks for Propel being part of this show. If you want to know what's really working right now, not what worked 6 months ago, but what's actually scaling on the market today, TrendTrack gives you full access to the marketing playbook of any brand in the world. From every Meta, Google, TikTok ad they run to every email newsletter they send their customers, your direct competitors, the biggest players on the market, it's all there. All the market data centralized in one place, refreshed every 24 hours. Go to trendtrack.io and get hooked up with them today. Know what's actually working on the Internet. Many thanks for TrendTrack being part of the show. Breaking news, ladies and gentlemen.

Breaking news.

We have a very interesting post to review here from Dhruv Patel, Dhruv, co-founder and CEO over at AfterSell. Producer Jack, bring this up. Let's read this here on the show. There's been a lot of speculation about AfterSell over the last week, including some erroneous claims about checkout Hijacking. Okay, I have been reading news about checkout hijacking. I was not aware of any of those rumors being directed at AfterSell though, but there, there has been, uh, there has been murmurings on the timeline specifically about certain apps, um, inside of the Shopify ecosystem. I hadn't heard that it was, uh, perhaps related to AfterSell. Here, there's been a lot of speculation about AfterSell over last week, including some erroneous claims about checkout hijacking. We understand given what's going on in the ecosystem, but here's what actually happened to AfterSell. Starting October 7th, an attacker sent millions of malicious requests to our servers.

Boo!

Terrible.

Most failed or did nothing, but the attack exposed non-sensitive upsell configuration data, discount settings, from a subset of 22 stores, and they have of course been notified. It was an automated and almost certainly AI-assisted attack, sent millions of requests in a single day. And switched to a pool of 1,460 rotating IP addresses. Golly. The moment we blocked one, the next one would appear. We closed the vulnerability within 2 hours. Good on the team. For everyone speculating about checkout hijacking, I want to make it very clear that this did not happen to us. No shopper data or payment info was exposed and no money moved. AfterSale merchants do not need to take any action. The app remains fully functional. Great news, no sensitive data was exposed, but the responsible thing was to take ownership and make sure the security of our product came first. I'd rather take the install hit before BFCM than ask merchants to trust us before we checked everything. Here's what we've done since. We've been working closely with Shopify security team and have brought in third parties for external incident review, VA/PT, and specialized pen testing. AfterSale is part of Rocked, and Rocked's security team has run this investigation. Teams led by an ex-FBI cybersecurity leader. Crazy. And recently joined Anthropic's Cyber Verification Program, which gives our security team access to Anthropic's most capable models for defensive work. Kind of crazy. Like, this is like the Thanos, you know, Thanos model that we always talk about.

Exactly.

These models are now continuously reviewing every public route on Aftersale and are built into our security stack. We've informed the FBI and other partners that share cyber threat intelligence to help stop attackers in the ecosystem. We will continue to work with the cybersecurity community to ensure the highest of security standards on AfterSell. We are working with Shopify to ensure we get relisted as soon as possible so new stores can install and set up AfterSell ahead of BFCM. Our commitment to the merchants who use or are considering AfterSell, number one, Security comes first on our roadmap. Awesome.

And—

Let's go.

Should be. Priorities correct here. Our entire engineering team has spent the last few weeks on security work, and we're using AI to defend against AI with those same models now built into our security stack. We'll keep investing. We'll stay transparent. If something affects your store, you'll hear it from us. This is an always-on program. We contacted affected merchants. We will always do this to ensure you know what is going on. Number 2, We will share what we learn. Appreciate this. They don't have to do this, but I do appreciate this.

Exactly.

I do, I do appreciate this point for the sake of the community and, you know, the Shopify partner network. I mean, it's, I mean, it's significant, this. And they don't have to do this. Attacks like this are becoming more common by the day across all platforms, and we want to help our partners get ahead of them too. More on this soon. If your Shopify app has been hit by something similar, DM me. Happy to share our notes and learnings. Again, this point here, if this happened to your app, DM me. We take a lot of pride in serving a larger— a large portion of the Shopify ecosystem, and we're committed to building the best and most secure upsell product out there. If you have questions, comment below or DM me directly. Incredible synopsis, and appreciate the steps that they're taking here. Some incredible points they're in.

Go ahead, Collin.

Well, I was just gonna say, where on earth could you find the CEO of a publicly traded company that says, hey, if you wanna learn more about this, or if you're being affected by this, or you're one of our merchants or customers and you have any concerns, shoot me a direct message. I'll respond back to you. Hey, that's crazy. That's unbelievable.

Crazy.

That's unbelievable customer service. Also, by the way, we didn't really like this. So guess what? Guess who we got involved? The FBI. Do you know them?

Yeah.

Oh yeah, they're like the scariest people on earth. To make sure that we would protect our merchants, our customers, and our partners, we decided to get the FBI involved. Uh-oh, now I'm afraid. So the way that AfterSell has handled this is absolutely beautiful and incredible. You can, you can get to, to message them directly if you wanna talk to them about any concerns you have. Then on top of that, they have the top folks in the entire world making sure that everything is handled perfectly, and they are making sure that the security of everything is next level. So this is incredible through and through.

Yeah, it seems like a couple things are really clear. Something happened, was not checkout hijacking, okay? But something happened, acknowledging that, sharing what happened, what they're doing, how they're solving it. Also, like, Opening themselves up to the community. Hey, if your app got attacked, like, let's talk. I would say of note here, like you mentioned, FBI, okay, Anthropic Cyber Verification Program, Anthropic's models, the scary models, okay, that we're always hearing about, the Thanos models, okay, and using those to like verify, hey, what's going on in Aftersale? Incredible. To me, the piece about them being open about this And sharing the knowledge and then also like opening up to the community like, hey, if this happened to your app inside the Shopify store, like come talk to us. Because I appreciate this because the fact is inside of the Shopify ecosystem, the partners, app developers, etc., not everybody's going to have the resources that AfterSell does. Like not everybody's going to have access to an ex-FBI cybersecurity leader. Is that fair? Like, I mean, not everybody's going to have access to Anthropic's most capable models for defensive work. Is that fair? I mean, not everybody's going to have those. So it's incredible to me that the limits and the kind of lengths that they are going to, like, verify, hey, everything's okay here in-house. You're going to be able to download and use After Sale in the Shopify App Store again very soon. But also like incredible to like extend this olive branch to the rest of the partner ecosystem and just, hey, we're going to be transparent with communication. Of course, our own people and merchants that we're working with, but also to other people in the ecosystem. Hey, you dealing with this? Like, uh, we got some, we got some horses in the barn, uh, to protect what we got going on over here, and, uh, we'd love to help if we can.

Let's go.

It's like, it's pretty significant. I feel like it's a great move on their side.

Incredible. Incredible to also make merchants, you know, have a little bit more of a, a great headspace before the most important— oh, the most important time of year.

Yes.

Make sure that merchants are in the best headspace possible before, before this guy.

Exactly. Before that guy. Yeah.

And hey, man, What's more comforting, um, as a merchant than knowing you've got the Thanos model and FBI cybersecurity leaders on your side, like working inside the apps that you have downloaded? And methinks that helps the merchant sleep at night. And, uh, good on the after-sale team, uh, for being on top of things and making it happen.

Good on them.

Absolutely.

Great move by them. Moving forward here, ladies and gentlemen, to some great finds upon the interwebs. The first of which, Amazon planning to hire 300,000 holiday, uh, hires, persons, etc., up 20%. Okay, and this is like in conjunction with retail looking to have a pullback of sorts. Uh, this tweet Comes to us from Walter Bloomberg. Amazon goes big on holiday hiring as U.S. retail pulls back. Amazon plans to hire over 300,000 seasonal workers, up 20% from last year. It's a good sign for us, good sign for everybody inside the Amazon ecosystem. Even as broader U.S. holiday hiring is predicted to hit its lowest level since 2008, seasonal wages will average $20 per hour, while Amazon has committed $1.5 billion to workforce pay increases. Your thoughts on this, Colin Doherty?

I mean, there's going to be a ton of Amazon purchases within the next 37 days and some change, so you need as many bodies as physically possible. I think there's also going to be a lot of Amazon purchases after those 37 days. I think the before Black Friday Cyber Monday, the after Black Friday Cyber Monday, they are going to be flooded, and it's going to be I truly think it's gonna be record number from Amazon this year based off of some early data we've already seen. That is my guess. That is my called shot on the show that this little Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and a little bit after, I would say, I'd say call it like the week after. If you put those 2 pieces of data together, it's gonna be record numbers from Amazon. And so they need bodies for that. They need a lot of people to be shipping out.

Yeah.

some, some Christmas gifts to make sure little Johnny gets his bike or peptides, whatever one he wants this year. Hopefully it's the bike.

Amazon, I have to say, impressive, uh, hiring this many and up 20% from last year. And I will say it does seem like Prime big deal days— day 1 seemed a little shaky, but they finished that out very well. It seems like they, uh, in a good sense got their hand in the cookie jar early. And ate up some of that. You know, for some people, about a third of people ate up about half of their holiday spending right there and then, early days October. And of note here, Mike Beckham, who we reference often on the show, he had this to say, which we covered yesterday. Amazon, best place to make contribution profit in e-commerce. Not a hot take. Numbers show it. And it is true. Now, Our Meta spending for Shopify feeds those Amazon sales. Uh, everything we're doing on TikTok Shop also feeds those Amazon sales. But Amazon, uh, having a moment, having a moment here. Um, and very, uh, very bullish, very bullish holiday hiring up 20% from last year. Next in our great finds, I want to show you this because I, I am a lover of boots as, as one might expect. Blue Ox work boots. Number one, if you don't know where Blue Ox come from, that's Paul Bunyan's pet. Paul Bunyan had a Blue Ox. Okay, these are step-in work boots. If you've ever owned work boots or needed them, uh, maybe you got a little property, you spend a little time outside, maybe work with your hands, etc., you need some good work boots. Okay, the horrible thing about work boots is putting them on and taking them off.

It's horrible.

It's horrible. It takes so long. It's laborious, etc. Producer Jack, scroll down. You can see here people stepping into them very easily. I want you to play this video. You don't have to do sound on. Don't do sound on. What's up, guys? Jensen of Blue Ox.

I'm here today testing out our new samples you just got in.

It's the world's first and only hands-free boot where you step in upside down and you're gonna walk in, and we believe it's enough to hang you upside down. Should we test it out? Yeah, let's find out. Look at these things, bro! I think it works pretty dang good. Look at that! Yeah, you can stop it here, Producer Jack. I, I have to say, I am impressed because it is actual product innovation, which always helps with marketing. Best marketers have the best products, just like the best coaches have the best athletes. That is the way it works, ladies and gentlemen. Gentlemen, uh, I, I'm impressed by this. You, you like— do you like—

Of course, but it's originally by Kizik, and so they basically did the partnership with Kizik to license the technology from Kizik. And so did they? Yeah, so that's, that's why— so Kizik owns the patent on step-in, uh, to the shoe, and they own the patent on basically a step-in type of, uh, functionality. So they could do, they could do this specifically because they partnered with them Through, through this product innovation. So this is a little bit less of product innovation and more of an incredible partnership by 2 companies that are putting it together and making something special.

Okay, let me, let me read, let me read from the article here because I think you're making some good, some good points. After Kizik launched with its line of step-in shoes in 2017, it focused on demonstrating that its assortment, mostly lace-up sneakers and casual shoes, were easy to slide into as Flip-flops. Now, Hands Free Labs, the footwear tech company behind Kizik, exactly, is launching a new step-in work boot line. So this is coming from Hands Free Lab, who is either Kizik or is the footwear tech company behind Kizik. It's like, yeah, kind of the same or same same-ish. Uh, Blue Ox, if we got that right. And while Blue Ox again is promoting how easy the work boots are to stay on, It's also going to great lengths to show that the boots stay on, especially in situations where losing a boot could be dangerous. That's very important on the job site. I, uh, I, I appreciate you, uh, highlighting the relationship here. It's impressive to me. I did not know that this would be possible with work boots.

Yeah.

I doubt this ever comes to cowboy boots, but, um, I'm impressed with the work boots nevertheless.

I mean, Kizik, it's high heels next. That's the next move. You got to go after high heels. And make it very easy to do high heels.

Okay.

All right.

Why?

Why is that?

Why are you laughing at that?

Yeah, I don't know.

It's important. Are high heels hard to get on? Don't know. Never worn them. Producer Jack, are high heels hard to wear? I'm, I'm not sure. Is this applicable? She says no. No problem. Yeah. Not coming to high heels.

All right.

Sorry. Next on our great finds, ladies and gentlemen, Go Brewing Cold Standard. I would like to show you this. I'm really more bringing this up because it fits in a popular trend, but also I want to pitch you on an idea here. Okay, Go Brewing, they're recruiting non-influencers, people who are hardly ever posted, to launch Cold Standard. Cold Standard is a non-alcoholic beer, 45 calories. Okay, the, uh, the push here— I'm not so interested in them going after like non-influencers. influencers. I'm mostly interested in the product. They have said 45 calories, okay, zero alcohol. They have worked extensively, millions of cans it has taken to produce a simple, great tasting light beer without alcohol, only 45 calories. They have worked on making the better cup of coffee and they believe that they have it. I think this is cool. I know this is like fits in, in your Uh, you know, fits in your wheelhouse. You know, we've talked about non-alcoholic, uh, beverages. Um, we've talked about them a lot— craft, domestic, non-alcoholic, light— so many labels. What about just a beer, a good one? Here's what I'm saying. I feel like it's a great looking can. Can you show us the can, Producer Jack? It's a great looking can. Okay, here's, here's what I would like to see— not no alcohol, but low alcohol. I want to see low calories. I want to see low alcohol. And here's why. There's something that nobody has cracked yet. And that is the, uh, that is the all-day drinker, the day drinker. There needs to be a kind of alcohol, a kind of beer that is specifically designed for the day drinker on, uh, let's call it, uh, college football Saturdays. And they don't want, they don't want to have a 6-pack or so and then pass out. Okay, they— but they do like to drink a lot of them. They want to be able to have a whole case because it feels good to have the can and, uh, you know, get after it and take it down and whatever. And, and it feels good to be able to drink 12 or 18 or so. I, I think there's an opening here, not for no alcohol. Of course there's an opening there. I think there's an opportunity for, for low alcohol and, uh, the, uh, you know, occasional Long, long day drinking endeavor.

I would say that this is not that exciting of a product innovation because they didn't really add anything to the, the beer market. Also, the beer market, the non-alcoholic beer market, I don't know if you know, it's extremely saturated and it's basically a knife fight.

Well, it's growing though. It's growing. There's opportunity there.

Sure, it's growing, but I don't know how, how much you know about shipping liquids across the country. It's really, it's really difficult to ship liquids across country.

Not, not built for D2C. It's not built.

So there's a lot more things I would have loved to have seen that have been pushed into this can for it to be more exciting. And I think there's an opportunity for that, but this is just the next, the next on the next on the next Dawn.

So I'd love to see even lower calories. Okay, 45, it's about like half of a normal beer. I'd love to see even lower calories, you know.

Imagine, uh, David Protein Bar takes on beer, bro.

They would do a great job. There needs to be a Coke Zero for beer.

So this is like, that's what it needs to be.

Zero. It needs to be zero calories. I'm gonna drink non-alcoholic beer, it needs to be zero calories. It should cost you nothing.

Yeah, so that's what needs to happen here, not another copy of a copy. There needs to be a, a true innovation, and I think someone like a David could, could do something like that.

What do you think about my, my low alcoholic, uh, pitch here though?

Don't you—

don't like this idea?

Uh, I mean, it's kind of boring though. Like, okay, all right, I, I, I, I don't know. I— it's just like, what if they put caffeine in there too? Then you're just making Four Loko.

Well, Four Loko did pretty well. But there's something though, there's something though about like drinking a lot, you know? There's something like just like, oh, some people want to do that. Like some people want— some people want to be, to be able to drink 12. They're not just looking for like, let me just get hammered. No, they're like, I like drinking, I, I like having the cold thing. Like I would rather be able to drink 12 like over a day Then like drink 6 and then I have to take a nap. You know what I'm saying? Like there's something to this, right? Am I crazy?

Yeah.

No, I mean, you're, you're, you're, you're right, but I just think the formulation has to be there and I don't think anyone's done it yet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Maybe that one gets— deserves to get thrown out with, uh, the bathwater. Interesting one coming up here next. Sparkling bone broth does exist. Sparkling bone broth. Are you interested? Pass. I'm totally not interested. I'm totally— I totally don't want to try it myself, but it is interesting to say the least. Marrow Sparkling Bone Broth, uh, lands at Raley's, Nob Hill Foods, Bel Air Markets, etc. Uh, the, the picture here, Producer Jack, you can see it. Essentially, it's, uh, they're like taking bone broth, but they want to make it taste like a blueberry lemonade and various other cold Sweet drinks, peach mango, blackberry lime. I mean, they are interesting sounding flavors.

Okay, I like it.

I can't make bone broth— salty saline hot soup is what's going on in my mind— I can't make it meet, uh, blackberry lime sparkling in my mind. But I'm sure they've done a great job of making this taste good.

Look, if sparkling bone broth nails the taste of this and they are actually doing what they're talking about where it is 12 grams terms of protein, collagen, amino acids, electrolytes, B12, all the things, and they also nail the taste on top of this, I could see this going parabolic. So I, I am back on the train. If it tastes like sparkling bone broth, I'm out. I'm fully out. I don't want that. I don't want sparkling bone broth. You can barely get me to have bone broth normally.

Here's what I want. I wanna roll up to Starbucks. Or my local coffee shop during the holiday season, you know, which about now through— I don't know, let's call it January, February here in Texas. I want to be able to roll up and not get a hot cup of coffee. I want a hot cup of bone broth. That's what I want.

I want it salty.

That's fair. I want it spicy. I want all of that. I want to be able to roll up and get a cup of that, cup of broth. That's what I want, sir. I, I think that would be incredible. Who's doing that?

It should be Starbucks. Starbucks should capitalize on that and then basically add pumpkin spice to that bad boy and crush. Stop it.

Yeah. Oh yeah, get the pumpkin spice out of my bone broth. Last in our great finds, who is this for? Who is this campaign for, ladies and gentlemen? Lisa and, uh, PlayStation DualSense, they have dropped a collaboration. Don't play the sound for us, Producer Jack. We'll get We'll get copyrighted here if we play the sound, but Lalisa of Blackpink lore has dropped in collaboration with PlayStation a new controller of sorts that apparently is designed for the girlies, I guess. I didn't know that the girlies were all in on gaming and PlayStation. I would guess a growing piece of PlayStation's customer Customer base, I would guess. Otherwise, I don't know why this would exist. Now the song here playing is not Sawadee ka. Hello, Sawadee ka. I do know a little bit of K-pop ball. Okay, it's not Sawadee ka, but it's you know it's another song of sorts. It's it's it's hip, it's hop, it's it's interesting, etc. Producer Jack, I think a big fan of this commercial and this campaign, I believe. But I would like to go to you here, Colin Doherty.

My question.

Who is this for? Who is this actually for?

Yeah, I think it's more important on the, the campaign's timing of all of this for Lisa PlayStation. This is totally not the right time to be talking about this because there's something else within the zeitgeist of the gaming community that they should lean into 6,000 times more.

Do you know what that is?

GTA 6.

Bingo. All of their campaigns right now until GTA gets released should just be about that. They could quite literally exhaust their campaign budget on just that and make insane creative for just GTA and absolutely destroy and hit a home run. Bit of a distraction right now. I don't like the timing of it. I like the campaign. I don't like the timing of it. I think there's a better way to go about this that you could kind of go around the And go through the actual zeitgeist of the gaming culture, which is GTA.

Maybe they should have La Lisa playing GTA 6.

Yeah, it's bit convoluted, bit convoluted there. You want to get messaging nailed down.

Well, maybe she's excited to play GTA 6. My my my basic question though. Here's my basic question: Like, are are the girlies? Like, I would assume Lisa and her controller, which has like. Her like eyelashes and like different things like on the controller. I would assume like it's— I would assume it's for the girlies. I don't know how many of the, of the boys are going to be buying, uh, Lalisa's, uh, game controller for the GTA 6 drop.

I don't know.

Exactly my point.

But, but let's take your GTA 6 point. Like, why not? Hey, let's get— let's start getting some star-studded celebrities in and like show them like playing GTA 6 early. Like, why not do that? You don't like that?

I like that, but you got to simplify the whole thing. No custom controller, no like anything like that. I just want you to give me Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Brad Pitt, I— maybe Lisa, maybe all these cool people. I just want them playing GTA, or like they're reenacting stuff in GTA and then they get arrested, and then you're like, actually, you can only do that in GTA. And that's the tagline. That's pretty good.

That's pretty good.

There's a way that you could do this really well. It's similar to how Madden launched with Vince Vaughn. Yeah, where you could do this and lean into it very heavy and own all the zeitgeist of GTA, which is basically destroying right now.

Yeah, I think the takeaway here is, um, sometimes great marketing is great marketing, it's just at the wrong time. And I, you know, maybe there is a genuine, like, growing um, girly gamer, uh, population that's really smart for PlayStation to lean into. Again, I don't know their, uh, customer demographics like they do. Yeah, but you gotta think about timing here, and everybody is waiting for GTA 6. I think the US economy is going to lose about a billion dollars that day because people are going to be right off work.

So— You basically, like, with this campaign, you're asking PlayStation to hit a home run when we're saying like, hey, you could have just done a base hit. Like, you— this is very simple and straightforward. There's not a lot we're asking from you here.

Fair, fair points. Moving forward, ladies and gentlemen, to some words of wisdom as we exit today's show. On our way, word from our sponsors over at Postscript and Outer Signal. Play it for us, Producer Jack. The orders that you get online tell you what your customers bought. Outer Signal shows you who they are. Outer Signal sells brands 10 times more about their customers than you know right now. Age, occupation, property value, social following, interest— more. And uses that to identify VIP customers, build custom personas, personalize outreach at scale. We're talking celebrities, athletes, investors, buyers at major retail stores. Don't you want to know who those people are? Yes, you do. Outer Signal finds them in your list, flags them the moment they order. Stop marketing to lists, start marketing to actual humans. Go to outersignal.com right now, tell them Ecom Cowboy sent you. We're gonna give you a free persona report. Cheers. last 5 VIPs who have bought from you. Many thanks for outreaching. There's a reason when people make a switch from whatever SMS partner they have to Postscript, they see a +22% increase in SMS revenue on average. Now, I didn't see that. I saw a whole lot more. Went from making very little money on SMS to being the top 1% account in their entire platform inside of a year. And the secret is I just did what they said. And what they are saying is that you're leaving money on the table when your customers text you back. Go get the Conversation Report, directtoconsumer.co/theconversationreport. The good news is Postscript's AI shopper can now have one-to-one conversations with your customers at scale. Many thanks for Postscript being part of the show. I I have heard this is just in it's just in our Slack. I have heard now that there is a zero-calorie non-alcoholic beer by Asahi. Asahi?

There you go.

A S A H I. I don't know.

Let's go.

Apparently it doesn't exist. Apparently it doesn't exist, and uh. It's time, methinks, for them to spend some marketing dollars over here. Words of wisdom as we exit today's show, ladies and gentlemen, don't share your dashboard? This comes to us by way of a little back and forth with Dave Stickland, who put out an incredible must-watch video talking about the mathematical realities of a brand's P&L in 2026. Not the same as 2019. And in his comparisons back and forth, Luca, Luca Valori— actually found this guy on YouTube. Incredible accent. This guy's from Italy. He's got an incredible accent. Okay, I really enjoy watching his videos. All right, I, I'm being totally serious right now. Incredible accent from this guy. He was, uh, responding and talking with Dave saying, hey, yeah, it's harder, but it's not impossible. basically saying we're crushing. Okay, we're crushing over here. And Dave said, what's the brand? Share your website, not just the dashboard screenshot. What's the brand, brother? Tell us. Um, which this is a common retort, and I would want to know too. Here responded, said, uh, reason people don't share their brand is because you post your store and how much rev you're doing, the dropshipping demons inside of minutes start spying on your ad account Et cetera. And they're running copies of your ads immediately. Luca had this to say, exactly why our main store stays off socials. Numbers public, URL never. $1.91 million in 30 days. Nobody gets the link. But the real moat isn't secrecy. A copycat clone, a copycat could clone your ad in hours, not your around 20% net margins, your creative pace, or calling every abandoned cart in 20 minutes. Uh, your thoughts on this, uh, Colin Doherty? I, I do have to say, uh, Luca, me thinks, uh, noseball. Um, I, I know the dropshipping demons exist, and I know that they're good at what they do. That being said, um, gosh, I don't know, man. I'm still, I'm still on, I'm still on Dave's side in general. It's like, you gotta endeavor to build a brand. that you can hopefully talk about publicly over time. I would say, you know, you hope to. I get why you keep it behind closed doors, you know, for Luca and for DTC Midas. Like, well, I don't want anybody finding out what I'm doing. I don't want to— I don't want the sauce to get out there. Your thoughts on this?

I completely agree because the issue is everybody can look at everybody's creative ad library and just immediately rip within 10 seconds of that thing being up there. It really is a huge problem. I think that there's a lot of credence to, I'm gonna scale the store. No one's gonna know about it. I'm gonna do some numbers. I'm not gonna really talk about it. And then like, I can still talk ball with people if they wanna talk about it, but like, you don't get my store. But I know what I'm talking about when I'm talking about, you know, meta ad buying, when I'm talking about conversion rate optimization, when I'm talking about XYZ, I still know ball, but maybe you gotta be really in the kimono. You gotta be really in the family for me to tell you what the store is. A great example is Shane Peary over at My First Million. He has an e-commerce brand. Basically no one knows what it is unless you are very, very, very, very close with him.

Sean.

Sean.

Sean.

Yeah, yeah, Sean.

So That's exactly how I like— I like that. I love that. It's like, hey man, you know I'm legit. I don't have to share this stuff with you.

Yeah, it's true.

It's like, you know, so that's my thought.

This is a common retort though, especially when it comes from the, uh, dropshipping side of our space, is like, okay bro, hey, you're doing all the numbers, like, what's the store? Show Right, can we see it? Because it— because the, the issue can be like, man, anybody can go on the internet and just say like, oh, I did $2 million, you know? Or like, like, this is why there is a push to say like, okay, well bro, like, share it with us.

Um, I, I do get—

I do get the reasons for like not sharing though.

My favorite troll is when, uh, Chris Mead of Crossnet would find dropshipping stores and be Oh bro, congratulations.

Share the link.

I want to purchase the products and support you. And he would just get, he would just get no response whatsoever. 'Cause you just know it's a dropshipping demon. And I find that super hilarious. But I think what happens is you have to have conversations to a point where you understand if they know ball or not.

There was a great, a kid that we quote tweeted the other day.

Where he was like, yeah, all of the 20 to 30, the 20 to 23-year-olds that are making $35 to $50 million a year stores.

I'm like, ain't that, ain't too many of those, brother.

There's like maybe 6 of those guys. Yeah.

Not too many.

And I promise you, you probably don't know them or you don't know all 6. And so that's a very obvious, like, my dude, you don't know ball. Like it's, and it's obvious at that point. And then from there you're like, okay, great. So I would say get an understanding of the details and the nuance, and then start to press these guys on the nuance without them having to reveal their store.

Here's the thing, like I would love to talk with, with more dropshipping demons, DR demons, direct response demons. I, I want to talk with them more. Yeah. But like, Here's what I'll say. You know, it's kind of like when you foray into the crypto world and it is hard to know like who's for real and like who's just doing a magic trick.

It's like hard to know. It's hard to know. Yeah.

And so I'd love to talk with them more. To be honest, dropshipping as a, As like a model, like, we'd all love to do that. Like, we would all love to just like run ads and then it gets shipped and it makes us money. And like, there's like, there's nothing wrong with the business model if it actually works. Like, I think we would all love to do that if it, if it actually worked and we could keep customers, etc. Now, totally, you know, a lot of flaws with it, but, uh, yeah, the deal is, it's like you just never know, man. You never know.

Yeah.

Like, whose numbers are real? Like, what are they working on? You just It's hard to know.

Hard to know.

But exactly.

I do know the DR demons are out there, and good on them for making it happen. I hope you're actually shipping the product and improving people's lives. And we appreciate you tweeting, tweeting sauce, and being out and active on the timeline. Moving forward, ladies and gentlemen, to a little moment of zen as we exit today's show. On our way, word from our sponsors over at Intelligent. And Rocked After-Sell. Play it for us, Producer Jack. If you're getting 5,000 orders a month and you can sprinkle in $3 to $4 extra on each one of those without touching your ads, wouldn't that be nice? Yeah, it would. That's what brands like Olokai, Cozy Earth, GrooveLife are doing with Rocked After-Sell every single day by adding post-purchase upsells and downsells from the cart through the thank you page and then stacking an extra $0.30 to $0.50 just by showing offers from Disney Plus, HelloFresh, Venmo, etc. It's high margin revenue straight to your bottom line. You can be live in minutes. Go to aftersale.com/offers. Truly a no-brainer. Many thanks for Rock to Aftersale being part of the show. What is the next big idea that could change your business? Is it a price change, adding subscriptions, maybe a new bundle strategy or an app? Discovering and testing those high growth opportunities is exactly why Intelligems exists. It's an AI-powered testing platform, helps you find the changes worth making. If you're looking for your next big idea, they have you covered. Go to intelligems.io/audit. And in just a few minutes, you're gonna have 3 ideas that you can test today. Totally free AI-powered audit. Go talk with Intelligence. Get the next new big idea for your biz. Many thanks for Intelligence being part of— A little moment of zen as we exit today's show. Ladies and gentlemen, everybody knows Super Bowl, biggest advertising opportunity there is. One of the last few pieces of monoculture in the West. Jay-Z and his company is, you know, in charge. of selecting the performers at halftime. Uh, and this year Jay-Z has selected Jay-Z for the Super Bowl halftime show. Jay-Z has selected Jay-Z for the Super Bowl halftime show. And, uh, sometimes you gotta call— you gotta call your own number, you know what I mean? Sometimes you do. On our way out of today's show, Colin Doherty, uh, final words from you?

This is unbelievable levels of lame, and I'll leave it at that.

You're not in on Hova calling his own number for the halftime show.

Dude, this is so lame. That's like crazy lame.

Well, could have been Ella Langley, I guess, but maybe next year.

It should be.

Yeah. You know, maybe next year for Ella Langley.

Please.

But I, I think, I think, uh, there's plenty of millennials that are going to enjoy having Manhova at halftime, methinks, you know.

God, he's like 57.

Well, bro, uh, the halftime shows at the Super Bowl, they're usually for old people. They're usually for— which millennials are, you know, thoroughly into their 40s now. That is the case. I mean, I'm not.

I'm not.

He's 56. God, I'm a shot caller right now.

You are.

He's 56, dude.

I'm not—

I'm trying to see Ella Langley. Like, show me Ella Langley instead, please.

She's from Texas, I can tell by the way she's just stepping around the room. Yeah, it's producer Jack's favorite song. It's Jack's favorite song. It's Song of the Year. I mean, she's always playing it, you know.

Anyway, why wouldn't you just get the Song of the Year as the halftime show? I don't understand that.

Fair, fair.

Like, it's literally America already voting, basically. Makes no sense.

Hova!

Haha!

Gosh, you ready?

So much. I hate it.

Get ready.

Haha!

Haha!

We ready?

Super Bowl 2027.

Let me hear you.

We're back here. Terrible.

Many thanks to Bourbon Nathaniel, the one and only, uh, Whiskey Nate. Nate Lagos, the copywriting king, for joining us at the top of the show. Many thanks to Phoenix Ha and Jordan Menard for joining us to talk about the new endeavor they are bringing to the interwebs. Many thanks to Adam Katang, co-founder of Intelligence, and Jeff Tang, throwing the world's best peptide parties, for bringing their sauce on the show today. Many thanks to Slash Propel, Outer Signal Tie, Rich Panel Intelligence, Northbeam Seguno, Postscript Rocked After Sale, Universe Lads, and TrendTrack. For making this show possible. Thank you for joining us. We will be back tomorrow. See you on the other side.