YEAR VLOG CHALLENGE DAY 19 | Ever wonder what a CEO of a digital marketing agency REALLY does?

All right, on my way to the office this morning, looking, uh, forward to today.

It's got a lot of fun things planned.

I had some thoughts. I actually wanted to cover a couple of things that I wish that I would have known, uh, prior to starting my, one of my e-commerce businesses.

So actually, I'll kind of give you guys the background right now.

Um, you know, my business partner and I right now started an agency back in 2018 and, uh, you know, we, we had a couple of clients. One of the clients that we had was like a training and development company. And one of the main guys at that training and development company had this idea to start a golf grip company. And, uh, you know, being a, you know, a, a lover of golf, being all things that was obsessed with golf at the time, especially this was before I had kids, so I could actually, you know, play golf.

But I said, you know, they, they approached us and said, hey, would you guys like to kind of go in on this with us?

You guys actually just run the marketing, uh, do the marketing for us and kind of go in 50/50. And so we did. We actually started that business like back in 2018. Um, and we had no clue what we were doing, like literally no clue. We had no idea. We just had an idea. Um, you know, we saw, we kind of, kind of came up with a name. We kind of created a little bit of a logo. Uh, we come up with some of our initial designs. We mocked up some products. We, you know, created what's called a tech pack where you essentially design your product and, you know, send it over to a designer. You send it to a factory for, uh, designs.

But we had literally no idea what we were doing.

We didn't even know where to start. We knew that we had to manufacture these things overseas in China. Uh, but we didn't know where to even go or how to find these factories. And what ended up happening was we found a broker who specialized in, you know, product creation and product sourcing and development. And, you know, he basically took our product, took our designs, went back and forth with a bunch of different factories, eventually got it across the finish line. And, you know, we had our product. But like, I had no clue what I was doing. I didn't know what MOQs were. I didn't know what, you know, PPU meant. I didn't know what the cost for shipping was. I didn't know about any of that stuff. And so if I were watching this video, you know, 5 years ago, 6 years ago, and I was just starting an e-commerce business, an e-commerce brand, man, I would have loved to be able to watch a video like this where somebody sit me down and walk me through some different things that would help me get off the ground faster than We got off the ground. So number one, okay, don't go with a broker. Do not go with a broker. The guy that we went with, it was, you know, it was good because it got us off the ground. It got us going. But after really being in this business for 5, 6 years now, I mean, these brokers just mark up your price so much. So essentially what they do is You know, they source the product, they get the cost from the factory, and then they usually mark it up 100, sometimes 200%, and then pass that cost along to you. So, well, you know, let's just give you an example here. Like, let's say you got a $3 widget that you're, you know, a widget that you're creating. You don't know how to create it. You go find the broker. The broker kind of finds the product, sources the product for you. That might cost $3 of that widget. Um, well, maybe what the broker is going to do is mark it up to $6, or maybe even, you know, like $9, uh, and then give that cost to you. So when you pay for the purchase order, what the freaking broker does is he just arbitrages and makes, you know, an extra $3 per widget, or maybe $6 per widget. And you then have to still go sell the product, market the product, fulfill on the product, ship the product, and deal with the returns and the customer service. So that extra $3 or $6, whatever the amount is, is significant for you as a business owner. And, you know, I would say 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago and beyond, there was definitely a time and a place for broker-dealer because somebody to find your product, source your product, because communication was tough. It was a lot harder. There were no online marketplaces. It was a lot harder to find products and communicate with factories than it is now. Now it's a lot easier.

A lot of these factories are online.

It's easier. It's easy to find them. There's online indexes and directories for products that create certain things. If you just do a little bit of research, go to conventions, do some talking, You can find factories that will make your product and will be happy to do so and will be willing to work with you on price. So that's the biggest piece of advice that I would give any e-commerce business owner that's starting out right now. You know, what would I do if I had to start all over? I would immediately go and I would find the product and source the product myself. Now, here's the reason why. If we had done that from the beginning, we would have an extra, I'd say, $750,000 to $1 million in our bottom line.

And not just that, but it's completely impacted the entire ordering of our business because now we're ordering through a middleman and he obviously is marking up the product to such an extent that it affects how many products we can actually order. So it's harder for us to go and test new product. Test different designs, launch new designs, do different capsules, do different collaborations because he's marking up the product so heavily.

So without that, we would have been able to order a ton more product at the exact same cost, do a bunch of different things, order a lot less, uh, you know, minimum order quantities every single time that we actually do order, and we could do a lot more testing. It would have changed the entire trajectory of our business., but it is what it is. You know, sometimes you gotta, you gotta wade through some crap. You gotta figure things out, uh, before you can really, you know, get momentum and traction. And it, and it, for us, that was the case. Um, the second thing that I would recommend is that you have, this is the thing that we did good, is that you've gotta control your online sales and you can't be totally dependent on one source of traffic.

And I would just say, you know, we did do this. But a lot of e-commerce businesses don't do this.

And I want to make sure that I iterate the importance of why this is going to kill you. A lot of people will do all of their sales just through Facebook, all their sales just through Google, all their sales just through Amazon, all of their sales maybe through one wholesale or retail channel.

If that's you with your, with your e-commerce business and you're going down that path, that's a dangerous place to be.

Because if you have that traffic source change or they don't order or whatever happens, it can kill your business overnight.

And we actually got into a bad habit for a little bit there of doing a ton of orders through retail, and that was really the only way that we were making money. So it killed our business for a long time because when the retailers dry up, then there's no sales, there's no money. So diversify your income and your, and your traffic source, and you're going to be a lot better off. Those are the top two things that I would say you have to absolutely do if you want to grow and start an ecom business. And now I'm at the office. Uh, we'll continue this conversation throughout the day. I've got a lot more things that I'd like to teach you about, you know, what I would do differently if I started an e-com business today.

And hopefully this is valuable to you guys.

So one thing I want to share with you guys today that's been pretty kind of good feedback, good information, is we're getting a lot better system of editing our videos and, uh, figuring out the right way to communicate on all this. Like, if you aren't creating a ton of content, and this is something that I really didn't understand until like 2 weeks ago. It's hard to know and kind of dial in that system, but this just goes to show, this just goes to show the importance of just jumping in and figuring stuff out, jumping off of a cliff with a parachute and like building that parachute on the way down. It's never gonna be perfect. You get better like step by step incrementally over time, but I'm gonna share with you kind of what we've learned over the last 2 weeks of filming these videos, editing these videos, uploading these videos, and communicating on the edits back and forth with my internal team. And hopefully this is helpful for anyone that is thinking about A, creating more content, A, creating, or B, creating ads for their business and how to do it at a higher level. And once again, completely open to feedback. This, this system is subject to change, but it's been helpful for us. All right, so it's been kind of a crazy day. Uh, lots of kind of administrative stuff, been responding to emails, solving a bunch of support tickets on the TikTok shop that we're trying to launch and get set up. It's been going back and forth, back and forth. Our business hasn't been able to get registered. Boring stuff. Um, but Bruce and I have shot a bunch of, uh, content, UGC content for a new client, a bunch of ad content that is going to be freaking awesome. So took some— about an hour, hour and a half to do that this morning. I can actually walk through some of the scripts that we use to create all of the, um, video ad scripts, outlines, and hooks. We use ChatGPT for everything. AI is something that we leverage and use a ton here. So created probably 100 hooks, uh, as well as like probably 30 or so ads in about 45 minutes. Um, and obviously there's some refining and whatnot, so that was really, really good.

Um, and then right now we're going to be going live.

I'm having Bruce set up the camera right here.

Oh wait, that's— there we go, right there.

Because we're gonna be doing a live webinar talking about landing pages, how to set up landing pages, the types of landing pages to set up, how to build and create funnels, and also kind of some best practices as it relates to landing Pages here shortly. So I'm gonna kind of upload some of the highlights from that training here. Uh, hopefully you guys find some of that valuable and useful. And then obviously we have a couple more calls this afternoon, some sales calls. But all in all, day is going good. Just wanted to check in with you guys here. Uh, let's keep crushing. Uh, but what about a landing page? Well, a landing page is a single page that is used to convert traffic into a lead or a purchase. Now this could be be a single page on a website that is attached to a website, maybe attached to your domain. It could also be something that lives completely outside of your existing root domain. Maybe it lives on a subdomain. Now, a website is gonna be a collection of pages that is used to create and build credibility for your product or service. So that word is called attribution. We want to make sure that we are attributing a lead and a click and a purchase and revenue back to a clear system, a clear process, back to an ad. People might see an ad, they might click on that ad, they might go to your landing page, it's very specific, it's very clear, they might understand exactly what you're asking them to do, but they might not be in a position or place in time to actually make a decision to move forward with you yet. So what do they do? They might go to your website and do a little bit more research on you. They might go to your social media accounts. They might look you up online. While I do believe in, you know, test or die, and that done is the new perfect, we have to make sure that our landing page has at least a couple of core characteristics that are going to help us get the best results possible. So number 1, first things first, it has to be simple. The more simple, the better. And we've ran crazy split tests with really robust, you know, incredible UX/UI, incredible design on a landing page with something that's just super ugly, white background, black text, and like 99% of the time, the simple, ugly, I'll call it ugly page, actually converts the best. Now, this is because a confused mind never buys. So to recap there, I thought the training went really well. It's really tough to condense everything that I know about marketing or a specific topic into an hour-long training with like a 15, 20-minute Q&A. It's almost impossible. So my goal on these is just to provide as much value value as I can. Um, but really the biggest takeaway with this training is that people are intimidated. People don't know where to start. People don't know where to begin, especially as it relates to doing something new for the first time. Maybe it's creating a landing page, maybe it's building a funnel, maybe it's launching an ad campaign. And it's just important to get out there and do it. So if you're watching this training and you're like, hey, I don't know where to go, I don't know what to do, I feel intimidated by it, just start. Just jump. Just go. I promise you, the first time you do something, it's gonna be the hardest, uh, the most time-consuming, uh, most difficult time in regarding doing that thing. But the more you do it, the easier it gets. And my whole approach to life, as well as business, is that, man, just jump off the cliff and build the parachute on the way down. And putting yourself in a position where you're uncomfortable is actually where the greatest growth and honestly, the greatest fulfillment comes. So I feel happiest when I'm learning something new, or I'm doing something different. And That's honestly what gets me out of bed in the morning. That's honestly why I love my job. That's why I love what I do. And that's why I love marketing in general, because it's always constantly pushing you. You've never arrived as a marketer. You've never perfected a system or perfected copy or perfected Meta ads or perfected this or perfected that. You can always get better. So my biggest takeaway from this training, if you guys watched it, is to just, man, just go. Just get started. Start building your landing pages, start playing the sandbox, start launching that campaign, launch that ad campaign that you've been thinking of doing for so long. Um, so hopefully you guys got value out of that. Listen, so earlier in the video I talked about how I shot a bunch of UGC content and some ad creative for some of our clients this morning. And this is something I want to hit on really quickly. This is one of the biggest reasons why your ads aren't performing. I see a lot of business owners that chronically have too few ad creatives and videos and images in their ad campaigns on Meta. They're launching maybe 1 or 2 new ads a month, not realizing, recognizing that maybe the only reason why your ads aren't performing is because you're not giving Meta enough tools, enough resources to go out and create purchases and create conversion events for you based on what you're trying to accomplish with your campaign. So just some quick feedback for you. If you are struggling right now, if you can't quite find a way to get your ads to work, maybe just go create a bunch of new things. And when you're creating new, new ads, don't start out by just creating like the exact same video and having just like one different hook or two different hooks on that video. If you're starting out, you're trying to test and find what works, get really creative. Launch completely separate videos, different messages, different scripts entirely, different video edits, different visuals, different cues, and completely different hooks and CTAs. You want your testing in the very beginning to be very broad. Um, and then once you find kind of of those broad creatives, what's working well, you can double down on the things that are working well and then get more specific on what you're testing inside of each one of those creatives.. So for example, if you're launching 3 different videos, right, have each one of those videos be completely different, completely, you know, visually different. Have the messaging, the script, everything completely different. And then of those 3, you'll find one that probably performs the best. Take that one and then go create 3 iterations of that one ad that's performing better. All right, heading home today.

It was a really good day. A lot more content that was filmed. Obviously I'm trying to, you know, provide value to the channel, but sometimes, man, it's just busy and it's hard to film stuff. But I felt like I got in front of the camera a little bit more today. Obviously you saw the webinar training that we did was freaking fantastic on landing pages.

And just have some thoughts on my way home here.

Kind of high-level thoughts, nothing super in the weeds or really kind of, you know, nerdy, but some interesting thoughts that I have regarding AI and marketing. So as it relates to marketing, right, AI is not just even marketing, just the way that we live, the way that we engage, the way we interact with each other.

AI is going to change everything.

It already has, and it's going to continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger and more and more and more of a disruption. It just is. And as AI becomes more and more generative, meaning that it requires less and less of a human to become proficient, that I think that this is where it's going to pay dividends for us to become increasingly creative. So over time, hypothetically, if you think about it, there might become a time and place where the content is all generated by AI, and yes, it's being self-generated, requiring less creative input from real people, but that's going to eventually create, in my opinion, a, an event where the content is going to get less and less quality. See, up to this point, AI is essentially being largely trained off of information, books, content, video that has been human-generated, meaning it's been created entirely by humans.

And so I think that over time that there might be a less quality output because the input of what is being trained on is going to be AI generated. So what's my take on this? What's my spiel?

Well, without getting too crazy and in the weeds on stuff, I don't know what the future is going to hold, but I believe that it's going to pay dividends for you to invest to become creative and proficient.

We're going to become even more engaged online consumers. So I think if you take the time to learn how to become a great marketer and to think like a marketer, to understand what sells, why it sells, how to sell a product online, then as there's a shift and as AI continues to learn off of previous AI and get less and less effective, you will be able to take the technology, take the tech, take the inputs, take the AI, and leverage your creative proficiency to get the best output possible, to get the best results possible as relates to selling more products and services. So my take is I'm doubling down on learning how to become a better copywriter. I'm doubling down on how to understand conversion rate optimization better, how to understand human purchase behavior, human psychology, how to understand what goes into an effective headline, effective ad, effective, effective ad strategy, and understanding what captures people's attention online. So ultimately I'm thinking through this because a lot of business owners that I'm talking to right now, they're thinking like, hey, why do I want an agency?

Why would I want somebody to work to do this for me? I can just run my campaigns using AI. Yeah, you can. Absolutely.

But having a human pair of eyes on it still, I think always will be effective because you never know, is AI doing things in your best interest? Could you be getting more out of AI?

Just take a simple prompt.

Sometimes it takes a lot of time and attention and effort to get even right now ChatGPT to create the type of output based on a prompt that's going to get you and yield your results. And only because we have spent, you know, millions and millions and millions of dollars online and sold millions and millions of dollars worth of product are we able to kind of know what type of copy is actually good copy from ChatGPT, what type of output is actually good output. So anyways, kind of an interesting thought here. Overall, really positive day.

Got a lot of great things, a lot more great things planned this week coming up.

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Hope you guys crush it.