How These 8 Common Marketing Terms Have Mislead You

All right, today we're going to be talking about the most misunderstood terms in business. So things like product, market, fit, founder led growth, product led growth, personal branding, finding your unique isp. All of these terms that you hear people use, but I find that A, they don't really know what these words mean, and B, they don't really know how to think about these words in the context of their business. So especially, you know, if you're brand new to the business world and you're surrounded by all this jargon and you don't know what these words mean, you're going to get a lot out of this one. But even if you've been using these words, chances are you're probably either A, using them incorrectly or B, you don't really know how to think about this word in the context of your business. Like I said. So let's get into the first one. Product market fit. I think this is one of the most misunderstood words in all of marketing. One of the most misunderstood terms, and the reason why I don't like this phrase very much is if you just think about the words themselves. Product, market, fit. These words imply that there is an existing market in the world and you have to fit yourself into that market. Okay? And whenever I explain this, obviously there are, there's the group of people that go, no, that's not what that phrase means. I understand. We're going to get there. The reason I don't like these words is because for beginner entrepreneurs, this roots your thinking in the wrong place. It's very, very easy and it's very common. And I see people make this mistake all the time. For a beginner entrepreneur to think, in order to build a business, I have to go find an existing market and then I have to figure out how to fit inside that market. And that is certainly one approach. There are obviously success stories of people who do that. However, I will tell you that it is typically a lot harder and a very easy metaphor that I like to share here is imagine that you're at this amazing party. This person has this huge house and you go to this really fun party. It's a costume party, everyone's dressed up. And at this party you start thinking, wow, I would love to throw a party just like this. I want to have a similar party. And so you think, well, this is the market and the next weekend you try and throw the exact same party, but with one little change. So let's say it's a pool party and it's neon themed and everyone shows up to the pool and they're all dressed in neon and everyone like the, maybe there's a costume contest and everyone, whoever has the most unique sunglasses wins the costume. And they serve randomly Chinese food. That's the theme of this party. And you go, I'm going to do everything the same, but instead of Chinese food, I'm going to change one little thing and it's going to be tacos instead. Okay, well, unfortunately, this is how most people think about entrepreneurship and building businesses and creating products is they go, I found something that works. I found something that I like that I think is cool. I found something that a lot of people are gravitating to. And I'm just going to do the same exact thing. But I'm going to change one variable, AKA I'm going to create the same sort of product, but I'm going to make it a little bit faster or a little bit cheaper or a little bit stronger or I'm not going to use, you know, plastic, I'm going to use a different material. They change one, maybe two variables and they go, I'm going to play the I'm better game. And in reality, if we stick with our metaphor here, it would be significantly easier for you to go, I want to throw a party of my own. Let me go throw a completely different kind of party, AKA let me create some sort of categorical difference. If you want to go to a pool party, go to that first party. If you want to go to insert different category of party, come over to my party. Right? And I find that the term product market fit really anchors a lot of beginner entrepreneurs thinking in let me look at the way the world currently is and let me figure out how to fit into the way that the world currently is. And if you look at all of the products that you value most or the companies that end up having the biggest impact on the world, not saying that you have to go build the next Apple or Uber, but it is worth recognizing that the things that have the biggest impact, whether it's a massive multi billion dollar company or it's just some really niche product that you value, they tend to be products or companies that create something new. They are typically not some company that just takes the way the world is and then just goes, I'm one variable different, I'm just incrementally better. Okay, so instead of product market fit, what should you be looking for? And something that I think about a lot is instead of approaching the problem from the lens of how do I fit into an existing market and Much easier. And I think it's a. It's like a more clarified way of thinking about the problem is asking yourself, where is. Where do I have founder problem fit, AKA what is a problem that I could think about and talk about and want to solve for the next decade, two decades, three decades? Because that quote, unquote, fit, right. Is more of something that's within yourself. And it's more. You're starting from a place of where do I have an information advantage? What's something that I deeply care about? What's something that I could sink my teeth into and never get bored of it? And that thing is usually where you end up creating something new from. That is the source of the inspiration. Right. But it's a lot harder to find that source of inspiration when you start with, well, the world is the way that it is. This market exists. Lots of people are already in this market. One or two people own this market. How do I fit within that market? And so I find that this is a very misunderstood term. If you ever consume any of my content or listen to how I talk about business, I never use this term ever, because I don't find that to be a very helpful place to begin the thinking. All right, second term, and this is. I'm going to have to do a whole separate episode on this. I think this topic is so misunderstood in business is personal branding. A lot of times people use the term personal branding to talk about the act of creating content online as an individual. And while that's not wrong, I think it severely misunderstands the purpose of personal branding. Like, what is actually happening and what do you want to have happen? What is the goal here? And so personal branding is not really about telling your story and it is not really about creating content. Okay. These are like means to the end. They are the medium, but they are not the goal. They are not the purpose. It's not about creating viral TikToks. It's not about creating reels. It's not about having a YouTube channel. That is not the goal of personal branding. The goal of personal branding, and this is where everyone gets confused, is about creating an association between you and a specific category. If you do not do that, your personal branding has no value. And I find that so often when people talk about personal branding, they talk about it through this lens of how do I create as much content as possible? How do I upgrade my quote unquote image? They almost think of it like they're building themselves into this celebrity. It's like being a modern Day being Paris Hilton, and you see it all the time. And people even think, oh, if I have professional headshots taken, then I have a strong personal brand. If I take pictures of myself in my office, I have a strong personal brand. If I start a YouTube channel, I have a personal brand. If I start a newsletter, I have a personal brand. And on one hand, it's not that any of these things are wrong, it's that they misunderstand the point. The point and the whole purpose of building a quote unquote personal brand is, is to create an association between yourself and a specific category. The goal is not actually for you to become known, which is what a lot of people think. The goal is for you to become known for a niche that you own. The goal is for you to become known for an association with a specific category. And as an example, my goal in building my personal brand is not to become known. I have no aspiration of becoming known. My goal is to become known for my association with digital writing. I want. When someone thinks to themselves, I would like to start writing on the Internet, I would like to have a successful career as a writer in the digital age. Who should I follow? Who should I read? Who should I study? Who should I look to? The association that I would like to make is that who should I look to? I should look to Nicholas Cole, that association. When I achieve that, as I achieve that, as I create content that allows me to achieve that, I am then building a strong personal brand with an association within that category. And that association is what allows me to build the relationship with that sort of person, allows them to see me as a quote unquote authority, allows me to build businesses, allows them to trust me to become a customer of my products and services and businesses. Right? And then once you establish that in one category, you can begin extending to other tangential categories. So I can talk about digital writing. I can also talk about ghost writing. I can also talk about, if I want to, fiction writing, I can talk about newsletter writing. These are all related tangential categories, but the reason that I can bounce around to them is because I've anchored myself to a specific category and a specific niche category, digital writing. And so if you don't understand that the goal is to create this association, then what happens is you fall into the trap of, I need to get a bunch of pictures taken of me and I need to start vlogging and I need to have someone record me every time I take an ice bath. And then I need to post motivational quotes on the Internet. And then people are going to know me. And that so severely misses the goal. And also what a. Just to play it out. Why would you want that outcome? Why would you want to become known, but then not reap any of the rewards of becoming known for a niche you own? Why would you want someone to recognize you on the street, but to not feel like they have built this trust with you and then buy your products and services? And I noticed that a lot of times people confuse the two. They think the more known I become, the more followers I have, the more quote unquote famous I am, the more then that I will benefit and the more people will buy from me. And I can't tell you how that is, how much that is not true. Because someone doesn't buy from you just because they know you. Someone doesn't buy from you just because you have a hundred thousand followers or a million followers. People buy from you because of what you contribute to a specific category or to a specific niche within a mega category. And so that association is very powerful. The only reason people buy my books or my writing products or join our programs or use our software or whatever it is is because I continue to reinforce that I care deeply about this niche. I care deeply about this category. I want you to associate me with it. And that is what builds the trust. Okay? So personal branding, it's a rabbit hole I could talk about for hours. But you know, that's the high, high level is when you're talking about building a personal brand. It is really not about telling your story. It's really not about creating as much content as possible. It's about drawing an association between you and a specific category. The next term, product LED growth. Okay? So this phrase implies that products grow on their own. If you build a good enough product, it will just miraculously attract customers. And Silicon Valley is notorious for this thinking. And the reality is that products do not grow on their own. Okay? And there's two big misunderstandings here. First, the way that a product or service truly grows on its own comes from word of mouth. Word of mouth is always the most powerful vehicle of marketing, right? Something grows on its own when one out of every two customers goes, I love this so much, I need to tell someone about it, okay? However, word of mouth only accelerates and really only compounds when each person is saying the same thing. Okay? So just think about it. If 10 different people talk about your product or service in 10 different ways, as in they have 10 different definitions of why they love it, they have 10 different reasons why they use it in the first place, it solves a different problem for each sort of person. Right out of 10 people, they all talk about it in 10 different ways. Then no one unifying message ever gets scaled. What happens is your message gets fragmented, because 10 people out of every 10 people, there's 10 different definitions of why they use your product or service and why they love it. So word of mouth never compounds. The way that word of mouth compounds is when you give the language to your customers, allowing them to talk about it. And when 10 out of 10 out of all of your customers use the same language to talk about your product or service, word of mouth compounds. And that is when things start to spiral out of control. That is when products or services seemingly grow on their own. The nuance that gets missed, though, is that they don't grow on their own, and they can't grow on their own unless you give your customers the script, unless you are very clear about the language you would like your customers to use. So I will give you a very simple example. When we started building ship 30 for 30, we did not say, join ship 30 for 30 to become a better writer, because that is very lazy languaging. Saying, do you want to become a better writer? Has so many subconscious implications in it. Okay, first of all, it means you're already writing. Do you want to just do it incrementally better? It already means that writing as a category is predefined. And, hey, we're just doing it incrementally better. Everything about the word better implies incremental progress. What we did is we created a categorical difference and we gave it specific language and we said, join ship 30 for 30 to become a digital writer. No one was calling it that until we built ship 30. And because we used that language, what happened is every. Every single person who went through Ship 30 started telling other people, I'm taking Ship 30 to become a digital writer. And now, you see, three and a half years later, the term digital writer is very common. Even people who haven't taken ship 30 call themselves digital writers, because that is what happens when word of mouth starts to accelerate and everyone starts using the same exact language. And the goal, just to be really clear about it, the goal is actually for you to create new language that isn't just new language. It's that the language creates a categorical difference between what is and what you are building. There's writers and then there's digital writers, right? There's legacy writers, and then there's digital writers. There's copywriters, and then there's digital writers. Right? And so that is really the goal. And that's how you get things to start seeming like they're growing on their own. Okay. The second misunderstanding whenever you hear people talk about product led growth is, you know, if you look at a company like Dropbox, Dropbox is a very famous example of what most people would call or associate with product led growth. And if you're unfamiliar, when Dropbox first came out as a company, storing things in the cloud was an entirely new concept. You know, SaaS was a new concept. And Dropbox had this feature where you could unlock more free storage by inviting another person to use Dropbox. And that feature created a, essentially like a viral growth feedback loop where, you know, 10 people would use Dropbox and then four or five of them would invite other friends to unlock more storage, and then the people they invited would invite more friends to unlock more storage, and then the friends they invited would invite more friends to unlock more storage. Right? And that feature ended up helping Dropbox become the company that it is today. And so a lot of people cite that success story as an example of product led growth. However, the big misunderstanding here is that the reason that feature worked so well is because it was an entirely new value proposition in a new category. At the time, there wasn't really a thing called store all of your files in the cloud. So as a category, this was an entirely new concept. And the feature reinforced the value proposition of the category. Right, the categories. The whole idea behind cloud storage was you don't have to store it locally on your devices anymore. It lives in the cloud. And the feature reinforced an accelerated the point of view of that new category. If you were to take this exact same feature and build it into a cloud storage product today, it wouldn't have nearly the same impact because the category is more mature and this feature is not really new. And it's also not educating people on a new point of view. We all understand what the cloud is now. Cloud's been around for 20 years. We get it right? So just because you take a growth feedback product product feature and you put it into your product, something like this, doesn't mean that the product starts to grow magically on its own. The feature has to reinforce some sort of new point of view of ideally a new category that you are building, whatever that categorical difference is, and then B, it has to be paired with language so that users know how to talk about your company. If you don't give them the language and teach them how you would like them to talk about your business, your product, your service. The message is never going to compound in scale. And so I find so often people use this term like we specialize in product led growth. And they think what that means is adding in a referral button. And that's not what that means at all. And so if you're using this phrase, you should know it is truly only product led growth. When you accomplish these two things, and if you are not accomplishing those two things, which are typically more advanced and things I notice a lot of people don't even bother thinking through, that is not product led growth. And if you use this term, product led growth, you are basically deferring responsibility and saying, oh, I don't need to give language to my customers. My product's so amazing that they're just going to know how to talk about it on its own. And I always love, you know, telling this little anecdote which is, you know, for the first, however many, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, the first use case of the wheel was for pottery. The wheel was on its side, people. You would spin it on its side and use it for pottery. And it took 300 years for someone to come along and go, hey, you know, if we turn this thing right side up, we can use it for transportation. So you could argue the wheel is the greatest invention, one of the greatest inventions in human history. So how did it take us so long to figure out a different way of using the product or a new value of using the product if the product's so great? I thought the product could just speak for itself. It makes you realize products can't speak for themselves. You have to educate people on how you would like them to use your product next term. Founder led marketing. So almost everything I just said for product led growth can be said for founder led marketing. This dovetails off of what we talked about with personal branding. People think that the reason someone buys your product is because of the founder story. And many times, yes, you know, the founder story reinforces the purchasing decision. So I'll give you an example. Like, I love finding new gluten free snacks. I have celiac disease. I'm always struggling to find good, healthy, delicious gluten free snacks, right? And it seems like every time I buy a new gluten free snack, the founder story is, you know, I have celiac disease. I couldn't find any good snacks, so I made a snack that I could eat and that was delicious and healthy, right? That's almost always the some version of the founder story. And I resonate with that. But what gets misunderstood is that the only reason that founder story works is because I see myself in is not that that when you tell your story, quote unquote, as a founder, people magically buy from you. Again, that misunderstands the point. The only time that your story is effective is when it is told in a way that your target ideal customer can see themselves in your story. Okay? And for example, here I struggle to find these types of snacks. I struggle with celiac disease. So when you tell your story that is the same as my story, I see myself in it. And then really I am the main character and I project myself as the customer onto the product and I go, oh, I think this will help me. Because A, your story founder is a mirror for my A experience, B my problem, and C, my desire. And that's why it works. Okay? So simply creating content as a founder or telling your story, or getting press to quote you in magazines like that is not founder led marketing. Founder led marketing is when you tell your story in such a way that your target ideal customer sees themselves in your story. That is the goal. And if you do not accomplish that goal, then you talking about yourself is largely meaningless. The next term, unique selling proposition, otherwise known as usp. So a lot of times, and I see this in sales copy all the time, people think that the unique selling proposition is about features. So it's about, again, you're starting with an existing market and you're going, let me communicate why my product or service is incrementally better than what already exists. Okay? And as you know, especially if you get into the world of copywriting or sales, sales, you know, VSL writing and things like that, what happens is a lot of your copy then starts to be almost like argumentative where you're trying to make the case, you're trying to sell people on why your incremental improvement is better than the competition. And that is not really what a true unique selling proposition is. A unique selling proposition is all about creating a categorical difference. You'll notice this theme pops up a lot. I find not very many people understand this and it is the core of marketing. If you do not understand how powerful it is to create a categorical difference for your product, for your service, and for yourself, and building your own personal brand, you are completely missing the entire point of marketing. Okay? So creating a unique selling proposition has to do with creating some sort of categorical difference, not a side by side product comparison. All right? So if you find yourself in a scenario where you go, here's the existing product, or here's three of the existing products and here's ours. You see this with SaaS all the time where they're like, you know, how do we stack up next to the competition? And it's like the five biggest companies in the industry and then this startup and every company has, you know, like a couple checkboxes here, but a couple missing features here. And then the startups, like, we have everything, right? And they think that their unique selling proposition is we listed out all these features and we have more features, and so then thus we are better. And the vast majority of the time, this approach to marketing and to offer creation and true and to positioning is very rarely successful because it misses the larger point, which is most customers would rather just keep buying and using the thing that they're already comfortable with, even if it doesn't have whatever the new random feature is. Very rarely is a single feature the reason why someone makes a transition from one platform to another, because switching costs are so high and you get used to how a platform works and you get used to building your routine around it and you have data stored in it and you're like, I have all my files in here. So very rarely is it a single feature or two features or small bundle of features that really creates this unique selling proposition. A true USP is when you're able to create a categorical difference. Even if a lot of the features are the same, but you set a different frame. You're like, all of these existing companies are focused on solving this problem. We are focused on solving a completely different type of problem. That categorical difference forces the customer to make a choice like, wait, which problem am I trying to solve? Right? A really great example of this that you probably see every single day is tea. So when you go to the grocery store and you look at all the different types of tea, okay, it's a giant aisle and there's tons of competition, right? And there's green tea and black tea and white tea and oolong tea and herbal tea, right? And a great example of a true unique selling proposition is, is instead of going in and saying, our green tea is healthier or our green tea tastes better, right? Incremental, incremental, incremental. The way you differentiate is you go, yes, I'm selling green tea, but I'm going to give it new language and create a categorical difference. And I see this all the time. And it's so effective. I see it work on me where they'll name the tea something like Brain Detox, right? Or, or Tummy Fat Demolisher. You can't help but look at that and go, wait, I don't even really care if it's green tea or not. I want that specific outcome. And so what happens is instead of putting yourself in a product comparison conversation, you basically go, yeah, the product itself isn't really all that different. It's green tea. But you're creating a categorical difference saying, yeah, but this green tea is specifically designed to solve that specific problem. And the reality is that specific problem probably isn't really that different than a lot of the other T's out there. But because you're the one who named it and you're the one who called it out, everyone goes, well, that must be the thing that I need then, because you're the one who used the language and you're the one who gave the customer the language, right? And you're, and you're pinpointing a specific problem. So whenever you're thinking through a unique selling proposition, you cannot, you have to get yourself out of feature thinking. And you have to move your thinking more to a place of what is the different problem I'm solving or what is the different outcome I'm unlocking. And when you name that different problem or that different outcome, now you're creating a categorical difference. But if you're just saying, hey, I'm the same thing as everybody else, but I've got three new features, you're falling into a really difficult path that is all based on comparison and incremental improvement. Next term, minimum viable product, otherwise known as mvp. So this is another one. I just, I'm not a fan of the language. If you just listen to the language, I don't think you would use the words minimum viable for just about anything else in life. You know, no one wants a minimum viable marriage, no one wants to build a minimum viable house. You know, no one would want to stay in a minimum viable hotel with a minimum viable toilet, right? So we don't use these words in any other aspect of life, but they are the most common words in the world of startup and startups and business. And I, I just feel like this is a great example of very lazy languaging where people have used it for such a long time. And now I find people use it to sort of show I speak business. And again, if you listen or consume a lot of my content, I never use this term ever. I find that the people who use this term Most often sort of present themselves as beginners, which is fine, everyone starts somewhere. But this term trains people to think that the goal is to create something quickly and that is viable enough that they can get away with it. And that really, really misunderstands the point of business, which is to delight customers. It's to help them accomplish something that they weren't able to accomplish before. It's to help them solve a problem that they haven't been able to solve. Right. And so if it's such a subtle nuance, but if you start from a place of how do I build an mvp? You're not really anchoring your thinking to who am I truly trying to help and what is the problem I'm trying to solve and what is the outcome I'm trying to unlock. Instead, your thinking starts in a place and it moves in a direction of well, how do I just create something quickly that allows us to get some customers? And okay, if you accomplish that goal, what are the chances that those customers actually enjoy using your minimum viable product and then end up wanting to continue doing business with you? Right. So it's a very subtle thing, but I think thinking in business is arguably the, the most valuable commodity in the, in business itself. Right. And so if your thinking is aimed in the wrong direction, then you're going to make a lot of bad decisions. And a lot of these terms start your thinking and aim it in the wrong direction. That's, that's why I take issue with them. Another one is go to market strategy and abbreviated as gtm. So here's a short little just explainer. If you're not running an eight figure business or more, you don't need a go to market strategy. Going to market is sort of like when you're in business school. Not that I went to business school, but it's like when, if you go to business school and they go the first step to building a company is you have to come up with a business plan. And I find most people who graduate from business programs think to build my startup I need to build a business plan and I need to come up with a go to market strategy. And any successful entrepreneur knows neither one of those things are necessary. And if anything, both of them slow you down. So you do not need a go to market strategy. What you need is to get moving and iterate as you go. And you really only need a true go to market strategy when you are doing eight figures or more in top line revenue, because that's the size with which a business tends to get Large and large enough, I should say, where when you roll out a new product, you know, it's not just like you and your co founder rolling out this product that you probably have multiple departments. You have a team of 10, 20, 30, 50 people. And so in order to quote, unquote, go to market, you have to coordinate a lot of different things. And so at that point, it makes sense to have some sort of strategy because you're going to have to coordinate multiple departments working together. You're going to have to coordinate, you know, when do we turn on ads, when are we dropping these product announcements, when are we opening the funnel? Like, there's all of these decisions that really only happen once you have a mature business. But if you're sitting there and you're day one and you're trying to build something and you're asking yourself, what's my go to market strategy? I'll tell you what your go to market strategy is. It's go find one customer and talk to them and see if you can help them. That is it. And if you're sitting there going, I have to have this entire strategy all mapped out, all you're really doing is putting yourself through an exercise of mental masturbation. It doesn't, it's not going to accomplish what you think it's going to accomplish. The strategy is it's go find one customer and talk to them and see if you can help them. That is it. And if you're sitting there going, I have to have this entire strategy all mapped out, all you're really doing is putting yourself through an exercise of mental masturbation. It doesn't, it's not going to accomplish what you think it's going to accomplish. Another term is customer acquisition cost, otherwise known as cac. A lot of times, and I see this in our world, because we play in a world of, you know, digital education products and courses and group coaching programs and things like that, a lot of these, especially because we've built a lot of our business off of organic traffic, and a lot of the people around us have built their businesses off of organic traffic. And so what customer acquisition cost means is how much does it cost you to acquire a customer? And when you are building a business, especially when you have a large organic following or your business is primarily built off of organic traffic, it's very easy to say our customer acquisition cost is zero. And that's not really true. And the reason that I wanted to talk about this is because again, if you're not very precise with the language that you use within your business, you're going to start thinking in the wrong direction, and then you're going to start making the wrong decisions. So when you are building a business off of organic traffic, yes, it is true. You are not spending any money on ads. For the first three years of building our business, we didn't spend any Money on ads. 0. And I have made this mistake too in the past where I think, oh, our customer acquisition cost is zero. But that's not really true, because how you are getting customers is through organic content and how you're creating that organic content. No, you're not spending money on ads, but you're spending money on labor. And either that means you're employing other people, or if you're the one creating organic content, guess what? You're the one performing the job. So let's say you have a digital products business and you're doing a quarter million dollars a year, and you're sitting there and you think, my customer acquisition cost is zero, but in reality, you're creating organic content for five hours a day. Five hours a day, five days a week. You know, 25 hours a week you're spending creating organic content. So we'll just call that, like, half of your responsibilities. Well, then take whatever your yearly salary is, however much money you're pulling out of the business. So let's say top line, you're making 250k, you pay, you know, some VAs, maybe a contractor or two, you have some expenses, whatever. At the end of the year, you're pulling out 180,000. Call it. Well, take half of that. Okay, so what, seven, eight, nine. 90,000. Math was not my strong suit. 90,000 a year. That is how much you are spending to acquire customers. So half of your compensation is being spent to acquire customers. And if you don't understand that and you're not honest with yourself about that, then what happens is you make decisions thinking, well, my customer acquisition cost is zero. But that's not really true. There actually is a dollar figure attached to that because you are the one performing the labor, or you're employing other people who are performing the labor to acquire those customers. And so I find very often, especially in our world, that people will say, we have zero customer acquisition cost, but they're not honest with themselves about what their labor costs are. And then as a result, as they scale, they sort of don't really understand, wait, why are my margins the way that they are? Because we're not spending any money on ads. So, like, where's it coming from, and it's coming from labor. And so you have to be honest with yourself about what those numbers are, which sort of dovetails into the last term, which is lifetime value, otherwise known as ltv. So lifetime value is. Lifetime value is how much money someone spends with you and your business over the duration of their relationship with you. This is not how much money they spend with you day one. LTV is not how much money they spend with you this week or with one specific product purchase. LTV is really how much they spend with you over the duration of their relationship with you. Right. And as you get more and more customers, you can average out, you know, this is how much, how much money typically people spend with us. Here's our churn rate, on average, then you can blend into this is our average ltv. But a lot of times you don't know what your true LTV is until you've been in business for at least a year. Because for example, day one, a customer might buy one product, but their LTV measured on that day is just that first purchase that they made. Six months later they might buy another product which elongates the ltv. Right? Or if you have services or you have maybe like a, like a mastermind, do they renew next year? Well, if they don't renew, that's going to give you one LTV number. And if they do renew, that's going to give you a different LTV number. Right. Or how likely or what percent of customers can you move from a lower tier product or service to a higher tier product or service? So all of these things actually take time to manifest in your business. And for the first year, my personal preference is I don't really like focusing on LTV for the first year of being in business because I don't have enough information, I haven't let enough time go by. And so yeah, I could get close. I could do some napkin math, I could maybe make some projections, but it's really not until year two, year three, year four, until your business starts to mature that you get a true sense of what the lifetime value is of your customer. And so again, if you don't understand what the LTV is of your average customer, it's hard to make decisions around, well, what is my true margin, how much am I really making here? How much can my business scale, how much could I reinvest in new things? And if you pair this with, I don't know what my customer acquisition cost is, or you think, I'm not spending any on ads, but I have an entire team of labor, but you're still calling it zero. Right? That's going to lead to a lot of faulty decisions. So, all in all, this is something I think about a lot. I think about language a lot. But these are. These are terms in business that I hear all the time. And I find that it's not even just that people use them incorrectly. It's that I notice when they use them, they fail to recognize how it sends their thinking in an unproductive direction. And so my goal here was to just help you better understand what these terms really mean or what they're trying to mean so that you can better think about them in the context of your business.