How to win in ecom in 2025 (from a $200M/yr marketer)

0:00 I'm glad you guys invited me here because you're slumming it down with like the ecom millionaires again. This is like a make a wish type of episode for us. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my law in it like my day's off. On the road less travel, never. There's really two things that I need to talk to you about. There's two reasons you're here. Number one. I cannot believe That you sell hundreds of millions of dollars of this stupid little wallet. This is unbelievable to me. It's been blowing my mind ever since I found that out. And now you're here finally to give us some answers. And two,

0:36 Um, I think you're very opinionated when it comes to ecom. You don't hold back, you don't pull punches. And so we like that. We like spicy guests, and I think you're you're gonna be able to have both of those things for us. I think you sh you should smack Sean right now for calling his stupid little wallet to do that. Stupid little wall I'm just trying to get him fired up. I told you he gets fi he gets fiery, he gets feisty, so I wanted to you know stir the pot a little bit. You you better play nice. I'll dox your your e commerce brand. He knows he's got he's got some uh promot on me. Dude, I've been a uh I've been a Ridge wallet owner since two thousand and sixteen or seventeen. You know, Ridge uh sponsored the hustle. Well, dude, thank you for the support. And you guys were super early for newsletter sponsorships. Like we probably run like a pretty big sponsorship. like ecosystem now. We sponsor like a ton of newsletters, like

1:26 You know, YouTubers, obviously. You guys were like one of the first people selling that ad space. So Yeah, and you know what I learned about your guys' industry. Well, just any marketer who's savvy is people like you and Sean. You guys know how to find early interesting stuff. And you take all of the risks. And you and you just you understand the arbitrage, like the underpriced opportunity. And so we had a lot of smart people who would buy these ads with us, and I'm like, I can't believe they're doing this. This is so unproven. And then I realized that that's like the theme of a smart marketer, which is throw dollars at a variety of things and then exhaust it on once everyone else comes and finds it. Yeah, it's at arbitrage, right? Like everything's attention. So if I'm giving Facebook

2:06 at this point fifteen dollars per thousand views. And if I can get a better price off of newsletters or influencer or YouTube, like It's all just an attention economy. And it's so funny to watch that like pendulum swim back. Linear TV. Like the TV your parents probably watch is so cheap to run ads on because nobody's buying it. So like, you know, I I'll probably spend it. A dollar. Like because there's all these channels, right? There's been like you know thousands of channels that have come out that like have eight hundred people who watch them. So like you just buy like big blocks of random ad space that are just very male male targeted.

2:46 Um and like yeah, literally like a dollar to reach a thousand people. Do you know what our best performing ad channel is, our marketing channel for my brand? Postcards. But you would not believe it. Postcards. It's not super scalable. Like you can't just like spend to infinity on it. But you know, you put a dollar in, you'll get eight or nine dollars out of revenue. It's amazing. Uh That's great. Use postpilot? Postpilot, yeah, nice.

3:09 So okay, so Sean, we should start at the start. So What's cool about y'all story is you sell uh A simple product. It wasn't like some Mark Zuckerberg, you know, innovation or anything like that. And you've scaled it up, you've built it brick by brick, but you said you started. In the serv in like a side of sort of a sweaty services business. You didn't start the company and you didn't start off in the product game. So can we just do your story for a little bit and then I want to brainstorm other D to C ideas with you afterwards, but first let's do let's do your story.

3:37 Sure. Um Yeah, you got that right. Uh the show's my first million. So I made my first million dollars off of an ad agency. So you know, Facebook ads came out in twenty twelve. That was like when it was probably like an open beta anybody could join. And I learned how to do Facebook ads. I worked at an agency with my CMO Connor. And the agency sucked. Like, you know, it was two hundred, two hundred people working there, probably five hundred clients.

4:03 No. You were an employee? Yeah, yeah, I was just an employee. And then I was like, Oh, I should do this. I could do a better job of this. The add agency I worked at, the average client was around for four months. So imagine that sales cycle. Like it takes 60 days to onboard them. They're they get 30 days worth of work and they're like, This sucks, and then 30 days to offboard. The average client was four months. Right. And I'm like, imagine if I just did this, but I kept them for a year. I'm like, I'll make so much money, right? So I started ad agency. I have ten clients. Um you're saying this like it's simple. So you you're working at a ad agency. How old are you roughly at this time? I was twenty two. They're twenty two years old.

4:44 You're not like a marketing expert yet, right? You're like You know, you're learning on the job, I would s assume. Yeah, yeah, but like It was It's kinda like TikTok shops is today, like nobody's an expert, right? Like it's it's a brand new thing that came out. Like

5:00 I was we're probably two and a half years in the Facebook ads. People still thought Instagram followers were the most important metric, and they're like wanting to run campaigns to get followers, right? And was your agency super bullish on Facebook as a channel, or it was kind of like this new thing that you know you got really interested in because it was new, but the w was the whole agency like, Hey, this is gonna be a really big deal? Yeah, it was like a cookie cutter D to C agency like in the heyday. This is probably like twenty fifteen, right? So Facebook was Facebook and email was the services we were providing. Like there was no other services. Maybe there was one guy doing Google ads, right? But it was really all in on Facebook as like this brand new channel. And If I could go back in time, I would have been even deeper into Facebook. Like the biggest challenge with Rage.

5:45 uh then we're skipping up a couple of years in the future, but like we try to diversify too fast. Like I was doing newsletter sponsorships and like they worked. I should have put all of my dollars into Facebook back then up until like twenty twenty. Um, I would have just been better off putting as much money into that as possible, but And Ridge was one of your clients. Were they an early client? Yeah, so I had ten c so I'm at an agency. It sucks. I think I can do a better job. Me and my CMO, uh

6:13 Connor. We end up starting an agency together. We take ten clients with us. Um Eight of them you have never heard of. Okay. Like they've just You know, gone extinct. Uh, one of them was Ridge and then one of them was actually Mudwater, which has actually gone on to crush it. Like we did their Google ads or at some point, like in twenty sixteen or whatever. But yeah, so we end up Taking Rage over

6:36 Father, son, best friend, they start this business. They get for like five million dollars a year in sales, and they are You know, like The dad was a special ed teacher, like, you know, Daniel was gonna go to go be an accountant, and this thing just kind of caught fire. And he really didn't want to be an accountant. So like Their expectations for the brand, when they got to five million dollars a year, they're like, This is the best thing that's ever happened, right? And me and Connor being hella young and I'm like, I think we can get to fifteen million dollars a year. I think we can get this thing to thirty million dollars a year. I remember I telling Connor, I'm like, I think we can do a hundred million dollars a year selling this wallet. And he looks me down in the face and he's like, There is no fucking way in hell we're gonna do that. Right. This was like twenty seventeen.

7:15 But they didn't really want to run it all that much anymore, right? Like they didn't want to manage people. So I'm like, cool, we'll do everything else. So my agency kinda is gets built around running Ridge Wallet. Uh we do their customer service, we do their product importation, we do all of their marketing, we do their web dev. Uh and then I'm charging them like $200,000 a month. Like all of the money is coming from Rich Wallet. They end up being like 60% of all agency billables for my for my tiny agency. And at a certain point they're like Hey, we should just merge.

7:46 Right. Um so me and Connor take an equity stake. Everyone at my agency just goes in house to Ridge. I ended up selling off the agency to one of the people who was running it. And That was probably twenty eighteen, and since then

8:00 ridges gone from, you know thirty million dollars a year to over two hundred. That's amazing. What I what I love about that story is that It sounds like when you're running the agency like almost

8:12 Yeah. Nobody would in in a business school would recommend, hey, you're running this marketing agency And then for one client you're gonna start doing Customer service, you know, logistics support, all all these other things. It sounds like wrong to do that. It's like wow, one customer's gonna make up sixty percent of your billables. From a business school perspective, that would be like a bad move.

8:32 But Darmes said something once on the podcast, he goes with my first business. J he goes, I I got I got mixed up later. He goes, Just because I was ignorant doesn't mean I was wrong. Meaning I didn't know the right way to do it, but my instincts actually were leading me in the right direction. It just wasn't I uh uh you know, I didn't have like some sophisticated game plan and maybe it wasn't typical, but it was my instincts were correct. And it sounds like your instincts were correct that you should just keep leaning into the ridge thing, even though it was like Maybe not what a normal agent m normal marketing agency ever would have done.

9:01 Most clients suck. Like if you guys have ever done client work, like most clients fight with you, they don't pay you, like they're always trying to fire you, right? And Ridge as a business was ran by really cool guys who didn't want to take any like reins away from us. They were very happy with the five million dollar year business and they're like, we could always go back to shipping the orders ourselves, right? Like I mean the the guys are are like, you know, Buddhist, like raised raised Buddhist their whole lives. I think that's part of it. But they were very much like Hey, this is a good thing. These guys are growing this business. Let's

9:34 Give them more responsibility and You know. You can't really exit agency businesses for all that much, right? One reason why we went all in on Rage and did the merger is like an agency is probably worth Maybe one X client contracts and like maybe at the peak it was two X client contracts, right? So like if your clients, you know, if you have a guaranteed million dollars in revenue, you might be able to sell it for a million or two. Where Ridge

9:58 At the time we're like fucking ten billion dollar bit year business right here. We're gonna grow this thing to the fucking moon. Uh So it just made sense to put all our chips in that basket. What was the metric that you saw that gave you the aha moment where you were like, All right, they're doing five million now, but this could be thirty, this could be a hundred. Was there one or two metrics or was it just a guess? What what was the research process like? It just it just seemed like they could always put another dollar into Facebook and it could work, right? Like the limiting factor wasn't like marketing or awareness. It was

10:28 Like the operations of the business. Right. We ended up like we had a year where we didn't have any wallets because we couldn't keep them in stock. So like we went from fifteen million to eighteen million one year. And that was just because we couldn't make enough of the fucking product. And I'm like You know, so often demand is the thing that stops these brands. Like you can only get to so big of a dam. And that wasn't the case here. Uh You know, we we did like a wearable and it was so hard to get people to buy the wearable. Like the cack on Facebook was four hundred dollars back then, okay? It was like so fucking hard to get people to buy these wearables. Where the wallet, it was like a six dollar cack. Like we could just put up a new ad and they were just static images and they were just selling. So That was the metric man. That's like an interesting um process because a lot of people, myself included, will say, Focus, focus, focus, get it right, make it great. It's gonna take a decade plus.

11:18 But your story is more so like I tried this, I tried this, I tried this, none of it worked. This thing was clearly the winner. I should go all in on this. Is that what your recommendation is? Well, my recommendation as a person trying to make it is you should make the best decision. At the time.

11:35 So whatever the facts are, when the facts change, make a different decision. Right. Uh, strong beliefs held held loosely. So like I'm like, I'm at an agency. I could have just like did that grind and be like, I'm gonna be a VP at this agency when I'm 26. I'll make like 200 grand a year. But I was like, no, these people suck. I think the best decision for me is to just do what they're doing better. Right. And then from the agency to ridge, I'm like running an agency business. I'm like, running an agency sucks. The Ridge thing seems to be going better. So I should just do that instead. I should find a way to to to encrench myself inside of this business. And then at Rage it was just like

12:09 I mean for so long we did not launch any other products. For eight years it was just selling more of the wallet because that's what was working. As soon as it started to get a little hard, then we pivoted to everything else. Which is funny because I would have thought early on I would have the uh a paralysis of analysis would have been like Well there's not that many wallet like you're like if you told me two hundred million dollars a year in revenue, I would say well you've You've sold every man in America a wallet. Like there are no more wallet buyers. You know what I mean? That's like one of my uneducated

12:37 Self limiting. belief a little bit would have been on that. If you said two hundred million a year and like well There are no wall m there are no m no more people who need a wallet. Dude it's a weirdly big Tam. Like the reason why like we in you know in retrospect I could tell you all the reasons why origin wallet worked. It's a$10 billion a year TAM. Okay. And like most of that is luxury brands. LVMH sells like four billion dollars a year in men's wallets. Like curing the own Gucci, they sell a ton of men's wallets. But then Tapestry, which owns Coach, Coach does a billion dollar a year in men's sales. So

13:10 It's men's accessories. No men are buying those products. They're all gifts that are given to them. And Nobody's ever excited about getting those products. So the reason why like I I'm very public that I think Rich can get to a billion dollars in revenue is because tapestry. has a men's business doing a billion dollars a year in revenue with nobody

13:28 loyal or passionate about that. So I'm just gonna make whatever they make. uh in all of our cool colors and our cool materials and You know, I think it's been so sexy to be talking about tech and AI these past 10 years, right? Or you know, tech for 10 years, AI for 10 months. But

13:45 I was at like the all in summit and I'm looking at those guys and Like the the products they're talking about exist inside their phones, right? Like they exist inside some server somewhere, but they're all wearing fucking Cool suits and watches and leather belts, and I'm like, okay, I'll just sell them all that shit. Right. Like, I'm just gonna sell like all the Like the most practical thing ever, because also smart people don't enter the space, right? The reason why Ridgewall was able to be so successful is because we're the only people running Facebook ads for wallets. Like then there's been a bunch of other like people who've started up and like and have tried, they've all end up going out of business because it's really difficult to get right, right? Like there is no repeat business. You can't like believe that the L T V will come save you later. It's very much like can you tactically acquire customers profitably every single day.

14:32 Hey uh Brown Sean. White Sean's got that immigrant im energy that I love. He's got the what do you call it? The Korean restaurant. I call it the uh a Korean s uh Korean convenience store owner energy. You know, it's just like there's not like too too much think overthinking it. It was like Well, you guys are all wearing this. I'll just sell that. Right. Yeah, and I think you'll keep wearing this. So y you know, uh Munker has these great quotes where he's like his his main thing is like instead of trying to be brilliant, just avoid stupidity. Or he'll be like, you know, the best thing in the world is stupid competition and we just have

15:08 Not much. And stupid competition. It sounds like That's part of what in retrospect made ridge work. Hey, look, we took the simple idea.

15:18 And um there's not a lot of other really smart you know, D D C marketers that were doing this and so we were able to To make hay. Yeah, totally, man. I mean and and to this day the best D to C marketers are working on stuff like

15:33 you know, AG one, right? Like they're selling supplements. And it's because it's a better business. Like undoubtedly, if there's an LTB tied to your business, like it's going to be better. It's gonna be more valuable. It's gonna trade at a higher multiple. But the other thing is like the best marketers have have more or less left the industry, right? Like In twenty twenty-one, running an econ brand was incredibly cool. It has gotten less cool every single year. So there's less people doing it, there's less voices, there's less people talking about it. And it's because it's fucking hard. Like I I unjokingly call it like the the blue collar work. It's like You know, everyone wants to be shipping cool AI products or everybody wants to be shipping You know. Something that isn't physical boxes to people's doors of products you actually have to like make. Everyone wants to build

16:18 you know, the services of whatever. So anyway, yeah, over the past four years, it's gotten really uncool to do what I do. Do do do you guys on on two hundred million in revenue, are you able to make uh good cash flow and profit or You know, I know so many friends who have these companies and their numbers are huge. But they Cash is always an issue.

16:37 Are you able to manage this well and or at that scale do you still Struggle. I think the reason why you guys asked me to be here is to talk about the fact that you can in fact make a profit running e commerce brands. So uh Ridges never raised any money. We have no debt. So every dollar in this business, every dollar on my balance sheet is profit that has been reinvested. uh I've been able to make millions of dollars a year for the past couple of years running this business.

17:04 So yeah, it can definitely be done, man. Like I I I bought a house in LA directly because of selling wallets on the internet. Give us a sense of the timeline. So you said kind of like I don't know, it was twenty sixteen ish, right? When you When you guys merged or you took over the brand. But can you just give us kind of like a Year one, five million the uh five million when you when you started working with them, then it went to ten, then it went to twenty two, then it w you know, give us a timeline. Yeah.

17:28 And I'm fucking horrible at timelines. So I'll I'll I'll give it my best. It's basically been It's like a fifty percent keger since I started working with the business. So I think they did a Kickstarter in Twenty thirteen. the first year they do like a million or in revenue. In twenty fifteen they probably do two or three. When I meet them twenty sixteen they do like five million bucks. So

17:50 I think it went from five to ten to fifteen to eighteen. And that's like the hardest year of the business. When we went from fifteen to eighteen, that was like we had no inventory with this massive fucking tax bill. That sucked. That was probably twenty eighteen or nineteen when that happened. Twenty twenty we do fifty million dollars. So I might I that must have been twenty eighteen. It m it must have been thirty. So eighteen to thirty to fifty. And then we then fifty this the Covid year, so it went from fifty to a hundred.

18:18 And then it's been like Yeah. I mean the last year was a I'll just say a multi hundred million dollar year. So let me let me let me let me recap that for the listeners. So you started in fifteen, I didn't hear what you said, but in two thousand sixteen, five million. And then each year for that was five million, ten, fifteen, eighteen, thirty, fifty. A hundred with last year being multi hundred. That's incredible growth. Yeah. Yeah, something like that.

18:45 Uh So it's been super fun, man. Um Sam, you brought up Have I sold every wallet in America? That was like one of your concerns, right? Uh So

18:58 Like I said, it's a massive Tam, right? And I always say that we're a great uncle gift. Like you guys are gonna go to Christmas or you guys are gonna go to fucking a birthday or whatever, and you have to buy some guy in your life a present and you don't know his size, right? The ridge wallet's a perfect price point. You can get one on sale today for like seventy-six bucks and it is sizeless. And like every guy in your life, you'll be like, Hey, look, it has your favorite sports team on it, or it has carbon fiber or whatever else, right? So it's a perfect uncle gift, and most of our products are probably sold as gifts, right? Some woman in their life buying it for some guy in their life. And the wallets are about half of revenue right now. The other half of revenue is all the other stuff we've launched. So the biggest unlock we've ever had was in 2022, we started selling men's wedding bands. And once again, This is a category where people thought it was so fucking dumb to sell men's wedding bands. They're like, it is a commodity good. Like who the hell is buying this? The first year we do eight figures, it is the highest margin, fastest growing part of my company is selling. Men's wedding bands on the internet.

20:00 So let's let's talk about this because we're in this group chat that you you have, which is like a bunch of Bunch of D D C brands. I don't I don't know what the cutoff is. I think I'm like below whatever the cutoff was supposed to be, but you let me in, which was nice of you. You're in the uh like the charisma higher. Yeah, exactly. I'm the personality hire. So So I um you you talked about like going into new categories and like the wedding band was obviously a smash success. You've said the wearable thing maybe wasn't as big of a success. And you have this kind of interesting way of looking at it, because I just thought Ridge Wallets that kind of like the the sort of carbon fiber metal wallet company.

20:32 And you were talking about like Mont Blanc and you were talking about these other Almost like luxury accessory brands and that was the vision you had for the company. When did that vision kick in? Um so like When did you reframe what the company is? Because I think

20:47 Entrepreneurs We hear stories where somebody already has the vision and they already have the right frame and it sounds beautiful and big and And really appealing. Um, but at the beginning they don't always have that. You know, Mark Zuckerberg, there's a video of him on a couch somewhere and somebody's like, Are you gonna expand past colleges? He's like, No, that wouldn't be cool.

21:03 And now he's like got satellites above India giving people internet so they can use Facebook. Like, you know, your vision expands as you grow. Um When did your the vision kind of change or when did you reframe it? And secondly, how do you think about Going into new categories.

21:17 Yeah, well, I'm a very paranoid person. So like in twenty eighteen, I'm like, this is gonna end. We have to fucking find some other shit to sell. So we got into backpacks and phone cases, all this stuff pretty early in 2018. Um and we the first year we did like four million dollars in backpack sales, or maybe it was three million. It was like a big chunk of revenue. And we canceled that program because I was too stupid to know that was like actually a good amount of backpacks. I was like I'm like the wall is doing twenty million dollars. How come we can't do twenty million dollars in backpacks? In retrospect We've since relaunched backpacks. So I was just too stupid, right? So we were always looking for new products to sell, mostly because I was worried that I was going to sell every wall to every man in America. But as you learn more about the industry, like the very common thing is very large. Hold coes holding lots of accessory brands. Like LVMH is just an accessory brand. Like everything inside their portfolio just sells accessories, mostly to women, but there are occasionally pop-ups of like very strong men's accessory brands. Mont Bloc is owned by Rich Mott, they own Cartier, like that is the strongest men's accessory brand, and they do$500 million a year. You think it's gonna be pens, pens were like

22:23 eighteen percent of revenue. It's mostly just like small leather goods, right? And it's across the world, people buy each other gifts, like wallets and backpacks and belts and everything else. Um So it's there's a playbook here. It's like You have to find a group of customers who like you. You have to like continue to make product that they like and sell it into them. And

22:43 I am more ruthless with product expansion than I think a lot of brands are. And I think more people should just try. They're really worried about hurting brand. And I'm like, your customers never fucking think about you. Like you're lucky. If somebody is mad to launch something like You know, I always go to uh like BIC is one of my favorite brands. Like they make lighters and they make pens and they make razors, right? And We buy all of those products independently and they're best in crystal. I didn't even think of the I didn't even think of those three. Yeah. But you saying that I'm like oh Let's say.

23:15 Yeah, yeah. And they're the best in class in all three of those. If you want a disposable razor or a cheap pen or a lighter, they that's the only one. They they own those markets. Um and it's just because the guy had a plastic factory and he's like he's it's it's a French company and they they're actually they they got into tattoo removal now, right? Like they're making like They just bought a bunch of tattoo companies'cause they're like, Yeah. whatever takes plastic, we're just gonna do those things, right? And it doesn't violate anything in your brain because you just buy like that's just the way it's always been. So I think it's more elastic than like than a lot of people want to admit. And brands die by being too rigid by that. Like all birds should have got into fucking betting and like all these different type of things, but they didn't. So now they're just a fucking dead shoe company, right? Like you should just be so ruthless with that product expansion.

24:02 You're a very charismatic guy. You you're y you have a lot of uh interesting parts of your personality that I enjoy. What attributes would you say are most responsible for the Ridges success, do you think? Uh one, it's a very trust forward organization. It's a very transparent organization. When I say trust forward, six of us own it. You know, three of them are father, son, best friend, like literally would die for each other. And then me and my CMO Connor I I lived with him for fucking five years. Like the guy we I was talking last night, there was a time when we were in the agency where we did not have a thousand dollars. Like we would have to take

24:39 He his dad gave him a car and it was like a nineteen ninety seven Honda Civic that smelled and like paint was peeling, windows didn't work. We would take it to meetings, we would have to park it behind buildings so people didn't see us get out of this fucking junky car. And you know, tying it to that, it's like not being not being scared to go back to zero. Right. Like I'm from like a very poor bad area where kids died of fentanyl overdoses. And like I lived in a flop house with like fucking like it was like fourteen guys living in uh bunk beds when I moved to LA. And so I'm like, dude Uh not scared to go back there. So just more more willing to take risks. Things are never that bad. Also being willing to eat shit. I'm like, bro. I if I have to fucking be a waiter, I f we'll figure it out, right? Um Yeah. So I yeah, that that fortitude.

25:25 Like not being like so ego tied to whatever the fuck you're doing. If I if I have to pack boxes, I'm gonna pack boxes, right. What are the ways people get Uh Ecom wrong. So we've he talked about all birds, right? It was a A product that was hot.

25:39 And now the stock is, you know, dead. There's, you know, a bunch of other kind of famous examples of that. And then there's companies like yours, which is keep scaling profitably You know, never took a dollar of debt, never took a dollar of investment. And made it work. Um

25:53 What are the kind give us like your your version of the do's and don'ts. And uh maybe just start with the don'ts, like the dumb shit that people do, the bad decisions that people make or the the common traps you see people fall into. Cause I'm sure you, you know, your that's your network is e com so you see The full spectrum. People who Totally flop, people who grind away for years and get nothing out of it, and people who

26:13 Excel and succeed. Yeah, so you can't you can't out muscle a tam. So like Understand what you're selling and how big the market actually is. I see amazing operators waste time with horrible opportunities, right? Like

26:27 Like the TAM is what the TA is and If you're like the number one fucking garlic breast seller. Like that's kind of a meme in the community. Like, dude, I'm like in your executing ruthlessly to be the number one gar garlic breast seller. That is worse than being the twelfth best creatine gummy, right? Because that market is exponentially growing. There's LTB tied to it. Like So many people just waste energy and time on these horrible fucking product categories. So you can't you can't beat a TAM. You're not better than the trend.

26:57 So Bone broth. There was companies that exploded, got to eighty million dollars in revenue. It was like, dude, which this is the new way people are gonna consume calories, bone broth. That is now at a thirty year low because that's not the cool thing anymore, right? Same with keto stuff. Yeah, exactly. So there's a guy from uh IQ bar, his name's Will, he's incredibly smart. He talks about his uh trend surface area. So it's like look, people talk about their luck surface area. He's like, I make products to have as much.

27:26 trend surface area as possible. So if keto's hot, I'll be keto. If gluten free is hot, I'll be gluten free. If it's sugar that's cool or non-sugar, like whatever, I'll I'll make those products to just hit whatever the trend is and I'll just change my packaging. So I'm always top a trend. And you're not better than the trend, right? So that's the point I'm trying to make is You can write it up, but it as soon as it crashes, you'll crash with it. And then my my third one, the most controversial one, is that L T V isn't real. Like lifetime value only works if you're alive.

27:56 So most brands die waiting for LTB, right? And what you mean by that is you gotta be profitable early on on that customer you acquired. If you acquire the customer For Two hundred dollars. And he only made, you know, twenty dollars and you're saying, Oh, the I the the L T V it'll all pay off. That's kinda what you're talking about, right? Versus the way you guys do it is you're trying to be profitable either first purchase or are you guys profitable first purchase or is it like, you know

28:20 A month or two later? Wh where are you guys at? Dude, I have to be profitable on the first purchase. You think people are coming back to buy a second wallet in a month? It's like I'm like, dude, the the L T V from wallet customers is like Maybe in ninety days I get ten percent. So like it's very much I have to be I have to turn not not not a contribution margin per like actual true.

28:43 paying for all my fixed costs every time I sell a wallet to somebody. Can we play a game called uh Change My Opinion? And this is for both of you guys. I have a bone to pick with your industry. I I think Sean's heard me with this spiel before. What what frustrates me sometimes

28:58 Uh not exactly you guys, but I'm gonna use you as an example. But uh people who They all they worry about is like the CAC and the LTV and the the TAM of these industries, uh or the and they don't spend any time actually thinking, is this product Awesome. Is this the best? You know, like im is this truly solving a problem and Um

29:21 It bothers me sometimes that it's more of an arbitrage, not Exactly thinking about can I create a widget that makes a customer's life better? And is of high quality. I wish that more people in this industry

29:35 sort of talked about that a bit more. Do you think that's a fair criticism or w where am I wrong on this? Do not I mean I think it's a fair criticism. My industry's been washed out though. So like the people you're talking about ha probably have all left. It's that there's so few people left in ecom. Like like Sean brought up like the group chat. Maybe two people respond every single day and one of them's meetup. Like it's it's like we're at we're at like a a multi a multi year low of interest in the industry. So like yeah, all those people have left. The people who are still here in shipping, dude, I bring up Hex Glad. You guys wanna talk about like amazing

30:11 Yeah. Yeah. So like I'm very do tweet about them all the time and like they inspired me,'cause you said they've like worked for three years finding the perfect pan. Okay. So when I met Danny, it was twenty twenty. They they didn't have a website. He says they did, but like you couldn't check out on the fucking website. Okay. They they were fucking selling pans at trade shows and like county fairs cooking up eggs themselves, right? In Costco Road Show. So not even in Costco. They had to pay to show up at Costco and fucking cook up these eggs and

30:44 They from twenty twenty They'll do I mean it's documented at this point, over a half a billion dollars a year. Like they they got to hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in annual turnover with a hundred million plus in profit. Danny will fucking shoot me for saying all this stuff, but like I think it's all pretty pretty rare public. You know, Gordon Gordon joined the brand, they have Fox as an investor now, but pre all that they were doing nine figures in EBITDA a year. Okay. Didn't Gordon Ramsey like write a huge check? He didn't just like sort of join the brand, he like invested a a pretty

31:17 sizable amount or w was he part of a round or was it him personally investing in it? That's all public. There's like uh there's like a thing uh he came in with Fox on some on some thing and like, you know because Fox it's like a three way deal. Fox wants to give him money to make shows and he wants to get more equity in Hexclad, so it's like a big three way deal. Gotcha, gotcha. Dude, I have like twelve hex clad pants in my awesome, Sean. They're great. Yeah, you know, I don't know if they're the best pants that I've tried a hundred pants.

31:43 But they're way better than the pants I had before. And to the point where I bought a second set of them because I was like, these are great. I d I'm happy with these pants. Yeah, and they put years into the product development. Like they actually sp like they care about their customers. What it comes down to is respecting your customers. If you're just like that's why I don't like info products. Like if you don't respect your customers, if you're just like trying to arm them or like you know We have a customer name. Uh so our customers everyday dad, we call him Ed, and I'm like

32:11 Almost every meeting I'm like Are we respecting Ed? Are we delivering value to Ed, right? Everyone has an Ed in their life. Think about like your guys' brothers or your dads. He's just like a guy who likes widgets and like he loves fishing and like he loves NFL. Like that's fucking Ed. And I'm like, look. Ed has Ed has paid for everything in my entire life. We need to take care of Ed. We want to make sure Ed gets like the best, coolest shit possible, that we give him great value and great deals. And that's what Hairsklad did. And like when we talk about like I think this industry gets a bad rap because So many people have entered it and so few people have left with any amount of money. Or like if the people who did leave with money, like it was like a greater fool theory. They were just tricking somebody to give them money and then they bailed out. But then there's companies like HexCloud where

32:53 They'll be a fifty year brand. They'll be a generational brand. And They're fucking crushing it. So it's possible. They're buying Super Bowl ads. Like I mean this is you know a They were bootstrapped up until like two years ago, like a bootstrap brand getting that done. It's fucking amazing.

33:10 Yeah. I I think Sam i what you said is true that Marketing skill is the core competency for most of the winners in this space. Most. There's a few there's a couple who just really nailed product or community. Right. And then they just they they built slowly brick by brick over over the over a decade. But for the most part, the people you'll hear about and the people you'll meet. They're great because they

33:32 Are great at doing Facebook ads and Google ads or now TikTok. Uh content. And so that's true. But at the same time, you're like, Oh, I hate that it's this cack to L TV thing. Well it's like, guess what? When you sit down with your team, you're like, How do we raise LTV?

33:45 Right, like There's some natural gravity, like Sean's saying, like you buy a wallet every seven years. You're not really gonna change that. But like for my product, you do buy it more way more often. You know, in the first six months, we double our double the amount that they v they paid us on the first order, right? So It's really it's a it's Uh it's it's a movable number, right? We can actually affect that.

34:05 And then you're like all right, well How do we increase LTV? It's like, yeah, you could spam'em with emails, you can spam them with text messages, but guess what? The better way to do it is to make an amazing product. that they're gonna want to buy again and like lower the return rate. How do you lower the return rate to get more profit? Right. It's like make a better quality product. And so I think that with you that for anybody who's actually gonna try to win, you will have to make an amazing product. Otherwise you won't be able to do the the ad arbitrage you're trying to do because

34:32 Um how else could you increase the L T V if everyone hates your product or it's not doing anything for them? And so you know, I think the the people who stick around and actually win in the long run are the ones who who do what you Yeah, I think those are good answers to the to the question. I think that um Like, you know, w I when I see someone making like a boost your testosterone like thing or I'm like

34:54 Dude, I don't know if any of this works or if they're just really good at making a label that's appealing. And so I like start to lose confidence in the industry as a whole. Oh, totally. What actually and that's actually I'm actually curious if you guys have any of these like D to C brands where you're like, This product is amazing. And so it's actually really good to hear that HexCloud is one of them. Uh do you guys have any other favorites? Well, going back to the supplement side, um A lot of it is like I mean, a lot of this work is being done for like the the co manufacturers, right? Like there's co packers that

35:26 actually do all the formulation. So a lot of times people are just showing up and buying stuff off the shelf. So If you're getting any sort of supplement, like it's probably the same supplement white labeled a hundred times. And that's just like the way the industry works. So You know, I would put hard goods in a special category and like We talk about D to C brands. I mean

35:46 All of my favorite fashion brands are small and independently owned, right? Like does that count? Like I'm this is Buck Mason, these pants are James Purse, right? Like I just got a suit from Billy Reed. Like these are all small independently owned companies, right? That are that are running. They have Shopify websites. Does that count as D to C, right? It's it's very much like there's there's a a black box of bad wrap products. And I think a lot of the supplements that come from commands, right? Or Anything to do in the health and wellness space. Like that is like typically where there's a bunch of shit. But if you buy a ridge wallet, you're you're gonna get what is on the package. You know what I mean? Like or one of our phone cases or whatever. It's like a fucking phone case, man. Like it's pretty good. What um who who else is crushing it? So what are some GDC brands that we wouldn't know or we wouldn't really r realize how how well they're doing.

36:34 Um just because we're not in the space. We're not paying attention. Yeah, the other reason you guys called me here to talk about the woobbles, okay? The woobles is fucking crushing it. Uh the woobles. Okay, so what are what are the woobles? So we are we are we are three young adult men. We're not the core customer, right? It is a uh crocheting product. So it is like you make little characters and they have licensing and like there's little education it's like basically like

37:02 Either it's You know, young people doing it to have less screen time, or it's you're doing it with your kids so they have less screen time. And that problem Yeah. Do When I met them.

37:13 They might be they might have been doing ten million dollars a year. Like They in two years they've gone from ten to probably a hundred and fifty million dollars in revenue. Like No no capital raised. They are still And I really I like them and I respect them. They will not fucking launch subscription boxes. They're like, Yeah, we don't we don't think it's that important. I'm like, Jesus fucking Christ. Like if I could shoot these people, I would because they won't do subscription. It's like the perfect product. Like it is just educational, it's fun, it's connecting with your family, like it's this movement against

37:47 screen time, which is like a big trend that they can take advantage of. There's Every month they could have new characters. They could just show up in your door, you do them. There's a little community aspect. It's the single best brand. an execution that I've ever seen. Like this will be a billion dollar exit because they're so fucking good at it. They've never raised any goddamn money. Just like it's two people just putting it together in North Carolina. How did they even think of this? Like what how did this get on there? Are they were they big crocheters? What what what is the st origin story of this? Yeah, so I think

38:18 It's a it's a husband and wife team. I think she was just crocheting and she's like, Yeah, I would love to have little guides. And there was like an Etsy community of people like selling crochet guides and she's like she would buy'em and then she'd be like, Okay, I'm gonna make my own. And then she would, you know, release them and then it's like, Oh, maybe I should just sell the my my little crochet kits and bam, fucking explodes, dude. So like if you're listening to this and you're thinking like okay I want I'm I'm not washed out. I want to try e commerce. I highly recommend getting into services first. Okay. Like you should learn how to make money on the internet via services. And if the show's called My First Million, you you'll make your first million dollars delivering good value to people like me or like Wobbles, whoever else. Then Find a trend that's very fast emerging, right? Like I think no screen time, I think creatine, those are the two biggest ones for the next two or three years. Like if you can do a no screen time creatine crochet kit something, fucking you'll figure it out, right? Dude, I've uh spent so much money on Legos lately. For that no street time.

39:18 Uh trend. What are other no screen time? I feel like um I feel like the microplastics is another another trend, right? Like And air quality. Yeah. Dude yeah, so like

39:29 Just glass everything glass bottles, glass containers. What just like Imagine if you could just buy a backpack and they're like, We guarantee there's no plastic in it. Fucking awesome. J wrap it in paper, ship it to people. Then that's another trend of things can be fast emerging. Um Yeah, no screen time, just more physical tactical toys, right? Like bringing back the fidget spinner, but as like a focus tool, right? Like I think there's a bunch of shit you could do in there. Um But anyway, those are fast emerging trends right now. Protein was a trend that's basically probably dead, right? Pre-protein was collagen. There's always these just like pockets of success you'll find. And

40:06 That's the beauty of the space. It's like Do you know what it is right now in that space, um What's the what's the early boob milk uh call What's that called Colostrum? Yeah. Oh my God, I'm getting so many ads for Colostrum. Yeah. You know, the other one will be like r I think raw honey. I it it had like a small moment. I'm sure it's gonna come back, right? There's like a bunch of New Zealand honey companies.

40:30 And if you if you were a founder, where would you kind of look for these? Do you are you are you a proponent of look in your own life, what what are you doing or what is your wife doing? That seems unusual, but actually there's a passionate community. Are you like I scour Etsy and Reddit? Is that where you would look? How would you do this if you didn't know which trend to start with? Right. So you should look in your own life because You probably don't have the skills to actually go out there and like like You know, or it in the I'm assuming you have no resources to actually pick a trend and double down and actually deliver on those promises, right? So you should find something in your own life that you actually know and are passionate about. If you're a more seasoned professional, I think you can find those things, right? And really what it would be is I think Reddit's dead. I think Etsy's dead. Like that's AI slop, basically, at this point.

41:15 the insidification of the internet has happened to those two websites. Uh I would look at literally what's happening inside of Erwan. Like I would just move to LA and go to Erwan every single day because those those are the best people are catching trends. Like They were anti Vax in fucking nineteen ninety seven. Right. Like that's like they are very, very early on those things. Um And if you're if you're not gonna do that, then it's like you just you have to follow the girlies on TikTok, right? Like the the other one I bring up is Pilates. Like Pilates was a thing in two thousand. It's having a massive resurgence right now. And like

41:52 Once again, we're three young men. How are we gonna fucking make a Pilates brand? But Pilates for guys probably could be another trend. Just needs a new name. Yeah, totally. Well Laplace I think is what the actual name is. Uh Oh no, the Gree. Something like that. My my my wife knows. Uh but yoga yoga is a very much a downward trend, right? And like this yoga was just a not like a a synonym for health and wellness. And like You know, n non

42:20 just Jack dudes wait listing. I think that's actually changing and it'll be something else like Pilates or or something else. What are some other uh going up and going down? Give me like a a topic or a trend and tell me is this a uh buy or sell moment? Well, look, this is not a hot take. This is not Scott Galloway fucking but all all big box department stores. Like it's very, very much Like we just saw Joyce Fabric go down. We just saw container store go down, we just saw Party City. Like

42:53 That's gonna accelerate. Like there's we are over commercial real estate. There's too many big box stores. Like even Target is having a really fucking hard time. And my biggest wholesaler is Best Buy. I crush it in Best Buy. Um But all of that shit is probably The the thud isn't

43:13 real enough. It should be even more real. Like Nordstrom's Macy's, like I think small independent uh brick and mortar shops really do work. Like if you're in LA, you go to Century City, like But the f I was walking around Bloomingdales and You know, like ten years ago, it was or even twenty years ago, probably, it was like the like the the number one place to buy women's fashion, like women's contemporary fashion. It was the coolest thing ever. I'm walking around, they got blouses that are eight hundred dollars and it's dead on a Saturday. Like nobody's fucking shopping there at the at the best mall in LA. So I think the FUD isn't even You should we should we should be even more scared that there's gonna be more collapses and any any

43:53 sort of commercial real estate that's like ten thousand square feet plus that is like selling physical goods. Um The other one is probably better for you, candy. Like Uh Like VCs have really backed this like better for you artificial sugar. Like you go to a fucking Target, like there's all of these like weird artificial sugar brands. I think it it's gonna come out that that causes cancer and RFK is gonna be pretty against it.

44:16 So anyway, I'm probably not launching anything in there, probably probably launching real sugar. And that's a very hot tape that could age age really bad, that like real sugar is gonna make a massive resurgence. Uh, what do you think about like You know, these uh uh Like other people who would do the same model you did, services to product. So, for example, I think the guys behind Brez, which is that uh

44:39 I think it's a I don't know what it is, like a mushroom drink or it's like an adaptogenic drink. It's basically it's like al it gives you a high, but it's not alcohol. It's like Their website says Brez is micro dosed cannabis and mushrooms in a can. The wee drink. Okay, great. So it's a wee drink.

44:57 Those guys were agency people, right? I beg to be the first check in Brez. Um There's screenshots where they said they were working on it. I'm like, let me be the first check because Aaron is incredibly smart. Uh, he was the first person to figure out how to work with Meta to have

45:14 controlled substances be advertised? So like he that's like his specialty. Like if you had a cannabis company, you had to go through him. uh in in his agency called We Are Lucid to actually do the cannabis advertising on meta, right? He found a compliant way to do it. Um So he's incredibly smart. Nick's an amazing operator.

45:32 ran a great agency. That's the best model. The other person is Zach. Uh. uh from homestead he has a company called Hollow Socks. Like Yeah.

45:42 I don't know how much time we have, but to unpack the history of e commerce. E commerce one point oh selling random shit. on the internet. Okay. Like Whatever, pets.com. Ecommerce two point oh was marketplaces. It was eBay versus Amazon versus everything else. Ecommerce three point oh is what we consider DTC one point oh, which was like the first brands coming online, the all birds, whatever else. Then you get DTC two point oh, which was The COVID hotness, the peak, every everything exploding, right? We are now in D to C three point oh, which is small.

46:14 Service. Providers. Pivoting to brands with very lean teams and create gummies. HoloS, the three best examples. Create Gummies has a team of eight people, I think will do$40 million this year, right? HoloSocks is a team of five people, they'll do$30 million this year selling socks. Most of F meta ads, right? And then Brez, they're public with their numbers. Follow Aaron on LinkedIn, and I think they did five million dollars. last month in revenue. Okay.

46:44 In beverage in a controlled substance, that's fucking insane. Like that company's worth three hundred million dollars today, right? And I think their team's incredibly small, maybe maybe twenty people at this point. So um Yeah, that is that is the best bull case for e commerce right now. Service operators who've seen like the Rise and fall of all these different brands. Have learned from them, have spent their money to get good at ads, right? Launching targeted hyper specific brands. And

47:14 The three I named. Are the best. Sean, you should go go to drinkbreads.com. Do you see their website? That's the prettiest website I've ever seen in my life. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's usually not a good thing. The prettiest websites are not usually the ones that that work the best. I hear you and I am on board with that.

47:29 This is one of the exceptions. Look at his But I you know, I think uh what what happens is you see the front The front of the house is not always where the traffic is going. So, you know, the front of the house is the it's kind of the hero, it's the brand, it's the aspirational, but you run your ads and maybe you're running straight to a PDP or to a TikTok shop or to different things like that. I think they're very heavy into TikTok, right? Like the their model is the the TikTok blueprint, which we just did an episode with with Rob from uh Rob the Bank about Like the the t tic tac blueprint that a bunch of the brands are using right now. And I think Brez is doing that where it's organic it's It's kind of the TikTok affiliate slash organic model where you're getting really cheap CPMs because TikTok videos can just pop off and you know, you you're you're putting out thousands of pieces of content a month.

48:14 But Uh and it's driving sales un unlike the way you know I've been doing it or you've been doing it, Sean, which is like a lot of Um You know, Facebook, Google ads, you know, you put a dollar in, it's attributed exactly how much that that ad generated in revenue. And you just sort of optimize from there. The TikTok game is a little bit different. It's a bit of a spray and pray game for the most part.

48:34 Yeah, so I just sent you guys This is from Aaron from Brez. They did four point six million in revenue. In month twenty one, January. This is their Lincoln Post. So this is all public information that they share. Uh TikTok shop was thirty seven grand. Amazon revenue was three hundred and forty two. Uh I'm not gonna read this for the audience. Maybe it'll just show it, but

48:56 Um Dude, they're fucking kill it. Rest is awesome. Well they post their P L basically every month on uh Uh not it's not a actual PL, but like you know, sort of a a marketing PL on uh on Twitter and LinkedIn. It's great. So we can read this. So total net revenue. Four point five million. Uh, let's see. That's in you said month twenty one now?

49:14 Yeah, yeah, dude like And literally than their ads. They spent a million dollars on Facebook. Uh four hundred thousand on Google. On Uh

49:24 TikTok ads, they spent zero, but I know that they must be spending on on the affiliate part of TikTok because I if I'm on TikTok, I see Brez stuff all the time and it's always an affiliate link, uh, you know, s swipe up and you can sort of buy it from there. Um Apple and four hundred seventy two thousand. It really seems like the one of the keys to this business, like and this is not always the case

49:45 But it's Picking the right idea. The right idea and the right angle r it it it seems like There's no other way to explain how something can get to four million dollars in monthly revenue in twenty one months. Yeah. I mean and and the reason they were able to be right is because they're both agency operators, right? Like

50:03 They the right people to launch a product like this. And also it's so hard. The reason why they're willingly sharing their PL is they have nothing to hide and they they don't think you can beat them. Right. And I think anybody listening to this can't beat them because are they shutting down their agency or they're just going to keep trying to do both? Like why would you run your agency once this happens? Yeah, I mean you end up just like, you know, selling it off or hiring operators. I mean I mean Nick uh Shackleford, which was the partner in Brez. I mean, he had, you know, an events business, he had an agency business, he had an email business. I think you just you find partners take that over and you just put more time into this. But

50:38 I mean, early on I was like bullying about these fucking guys because they're the best. Sam. I want you to Google Nick Shackleford tattoo. And uh tell me if you want to compete with this guy. Yeah. Ha ha ha.

50:51 Oh my god. His whole body is covered. Yeah. Down to his toe, every inch of his body is covered in a tattoo. He looks like a like a He looks like the guy from prison break, dude. Yeah, he looks like a Japanese murderer. Like you know how they do like the Yakuza, they do like the whole that's insane. Included the sick. I mean he actually got it done, man. He said it was so painful. Oh my god. It looks horrible. I mean it looks great, but I don't want to do it. Yeah, that's what I mean. Uh that's insane.

51:20 Uh, what do you think Ridge is worth right now? Oh man. I mean The m the the market for a brand like us is at an all time low. And like the like looking at the Well what's the all time low number? Uh we'd probably uh market clearing price is probably three hundred million.

51:37 Like I could probably clear that at at the market. With our growth and everything. It's really hard to sell my business right now. And like I'm not trying to sell my business right now, right? Like I think We have like by the end of the decade we'll be doing like five or six hundred million dollars a year in annual revenue. really driven by this big tech rollout. So like we're really big in Best Buy already. We're gonna be in Apple. We're gonna be in Verizon, selling power banks, phone cases, cables. We already sell our wallets in a lot of those places. Um so that's like the next evolution of the brand is just more product expansion. But it's hard for me to sell my brand when Solo Stove is in a public company and I think they're worth

52:12 maybe a hundred million on the public market. Right. Like there's they peaked at two point one billion dollars and now they're probably The market cap today is 100 million. Um, and they have like four hundred plus million in revenue. They own chubby's like Uh, it's very hard for my brand to go to market when if you squint, we kinda look like them. And they are

52:33 They they just need to be taken private. There's a lot of take private needs to happen and interest rates are still too high to take a lot of stuff private. So we're just waiting. Win for all that. What would you want to sell if you weren't doing Ridge? If you had a sell Ridge today, what would you what other pro I mean, you're not a guy who would stop what other product would you want to sell? Yeah, my goal for Ridge. eventually I'm not the long term shepherd of this brand. Like if if it's gonna go public or whatever, or most likely get bought by one of the roll ups, like in our industry, that's the ex that's the exit path. There's 10 strategics that end up buying brands like ours. Um

53:06 I would like to net a hundred million dollars and then I would like to start a portfolio of brands and services, basically. Like, you know, everyone wants to have their own little PE, their own little family office type thing. So I would Launch a bunch of weird little e-commerce brands that I think are gonna be trend relevant. And hire service providers to to run that as businesses. I love that you know what you want. You know, you've mapped this out, uh, like what your ideal setup is. I love that. I love people who call their shot.

53:37 Do you You talk about trans like but but you know bone bone broth. Hot. Then it's not. Keto's hot, then it's not. And so like Why go after a trend if it's

53:49 Gonna ultimately. Yeah. Do what trends do. Most trends don't last forever. So is that like building your sand castle, you know, uh building your castle on quicksand or something like that? Like why why go after a trend when trends have this like shelf life. Are you trying to time an exit or are you trying to You're gonna pop trends? Wha what's the plan if you're gonna build on top of a trend?

54:10 Yeah, dude, going back to Whal from IQ bar trend surface area. Like you create a product and a trend because that's the The best way to grow is in a growing market. You can be average in a growing market and grow very, very fast, right? I was an average operator. when Facebook ads were growing, and that's why my business grew.

54:29 Now I can be a good operator'cause I have to be, right? But when a market's growing very fast, you could just be average. And then Once Once you get some sort of success, it's it's pivoting. So like if I was in the bone broth business

54:43 I would have told them like, hey, we have to do fucking Protein focused bone broth, your bone bars. Like if I I I'm that guy coming in here trying to like disrupt whatever fucking business I'm in. I'm like we need yeah, if I was at Bone Broth, I'd be like, look, that's fine. We should do that. We're gonna do bone bars and we're gonna get Whatever, some jack guy talk about how they're great. And then I'd be in the bars business, and then it'd be like, We gotta do bone supplements. We gotta be the only guys doing bone. Whatever marrow pills. Like that's the type of shit I'd be pitching to them. So

55:12 Uh the I love that that's your answer'cause it's like that's the attitude you have to have to win in that game. My takeaway is man, what a horrible game to play. Uh like you know, I I was just doing a podcast yesterday with a guy and he goes, Uh you don't want to be in the fresh produce business. He's like um you know you know, he's like you want to be YouTube, not a YouTuber. Right, just as a simple example, he's like you it'd you take the best YouTuber

55:36 And they're in the fresh produce business. They have to keep running as fast as they can on that treadmill. And then the treadmill gets faster and faster every year. And if they stop, they fall behind and there's a thousand other people on that treadmill. And so same thing. Like if you're on a trend and a trend Yeah, almost by definition it's gonna sort of peter out and then the new trends will emerge. That just seems like a really hard way to win in business when there's other styles of businesses that don't have that problem. Right. But I think but but but Sean, I think you're both could be right. I think the right answer though is to which whichever

56:08 Whichever path you take should fit your skill set and interest and you should commit to it and be that. You know, we had Moyes on, uh Moise Ali from Native Deodorant, and we said, like, why don't you do something easier? He goes 'Cause I'm a merchant. This is what I do. Yeah, I think that stuff is silly dude. No, it's not silly. I actually disagree. I think committing to a path is significantly better than not. And if Sean Frank is committing to this trend thing Then he Yeah, that's exhausting for you because that's like your issue. How much better path could it be? He's got a uh a ten year old company that's doing two hundred billion dollars a year in revenue. That's not like a good path. Yeah, I I'm not saying what he's doing is bad. I'm saying he's the he's a outlier winner. And even he's like, Yeah, there's a company that's like us that does four hundred million a year is probably w and is worth a hundred million on the public markets, right? Or

56:55 You know, we have to continually hop. You know, from one category to the next. And he's in a better one. It's more enduring, but let's say you're on uh the bone broth type of type of thing where it's a wellness trend. And the wellness trends or the diet trends, they change very, very, very rapidly. Right. It's like it that's a hard game to play compared to like You know, uh look at the other look at the um possible set of businesses you could go into. That's

57:17 That's definitely on the hard side, dude. Like e com is definitely on the hard side. And ecom on top of a trend is it is the hard version of the hard version. Oh, dude, look, I I understand completely, but the reason why I'm in it is because it's permissionless. When I was twenty two, nobody would let me build Fucking NVIDIA servers or whatever. Like, you know, a a more

57:38 robust infrastructure led business, right? Like if I was gonna provide I don't know, fucking routing cable services, some random shit like that. Like maybe now I, you know, I could I could get to that, but e commerce is permissionless. And that's why I like it. Agencies are permissionless. It's like The reason why we sold on Shopify is because nobody would give us a Uh Northstrom's PL. Right.

58:00 There's there's a a level of things. SaaS is permissionless. Communities are permissionless. There's a lot of things that are permission. Newsletters are permissionless, but whatever. There's a lot of things that are permissionless. The agency one is actually more permissionless than ecom because You know, for e com you have to buy inventory, right? There's a there is a capital requirement. The agency one is is different, right? That's just I'm gonna hustle my skills and I'll get cash flow. Then what you did was use that cash flow. So then you know, invest and continue to grow the brand, right? But for most people they they get I know a lot of people that got excited about e com.

58:30 And didn't realize like how scaling works with e com. Where Yeah, it's the it like it p people squint and think it's SAS and it's not. It's like it's like your b your problems get harder the bigger you get, right? Like it's bigger POs, it's more management, it's everything else. Where you know, if you're SAS, it's like, you know, if it's if it's If it's ten zeros or a thousand zeros being processed through your thing, who the fuck cares? Um Hey, Sean, you you've gotten more you're you're a great follower on Twitter because you're hilarious. But you're this perfect combination of being hilarious, but also I think you're right, like because you've been there done that.

59:07 But has being as opinionated as you have been and willingness to call people out and this willingness to like say what you think. Has that ever held you back and do you regret doing that? Or do you think that like going all in I'm being a strong personality has benefited you. I mean the only tangible negatives on the internet is is

59:29 If and when you get sued, because you will be sued, right? Everyone gets sued and it it's the cost of doing business. They will read your tweets. And Depositions. So just like that is the reality, right? I think a lot of people like don't want to like offend embarrassing or what like what did you mean by saying you want to shoot the wobble family? I was I got deposed why I told someone I was gonna drop a nuclear bomb on them and they read that. I've explained like I don't have access to nuclear weapons. Um

1:00:04 But I mean you should you should be yourself and authentic and Uh my Twitter has sold like$200,000 worth of wallets. So definitely it's it's an app positive. And and your podcast, right? So your personality and being public about what you guys how well you guys are doing with Ridge. And being funny and opinionated. led to you guys doing this econ podcast. And the econ podcast.

1:00:26 Pays you a bunch of money, right? Like you guys are doing really, really well off that. So that's paid off in in a different way, right? You want to talk about that? Yeah, yeah. So I only have like four minutes. I gotta go to a call and do my real job. Uh maybe something you guys don't know anything about, but you talking about Huh? I take naps after this. Yeah. So look, uh The reason why I got public on the internet is because in twenty twenty two, all of my friends moved across the whole world because of COVID and I didn't hang out with anybody. And it sucks for everybody. Twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, like I used to have a community of people who talk about e commerce and then they've all moved. So I was just by myself and I'm like, Let me just get on Twitter and start talking about e commerce. Um And through that I made a bunch of great friends. Uh

1:01:09 Because it's a very lonely thing. running a big business. Like you know, my my best friends from high school, um One of them goes to like crime scenes and cleans up like when somebody kills themselves or whatever. And the other one does garage doors. So like imagine trying to tell them being like, yeah, man, like, you know, I spent eight million dollars on meta, but I probably should have spent like they they told me to shut the fuck up. So you want you want to find friends who Uh.

1:01:35 you know, can can, you know, have some sort of sympathy for what you're building. So I got on Twitter, found those people, um, they're all like, you know, Jason from HexCloud's on there. Mike. Beckham from uh Simple Modern. He has like$20 million still in fucking water bottles. Matt from Peel of Case. We started a podcast. Yeah, dude. What's it called? It's called operators. So it's a it's a niche e commerce podcast. We have spin offs, we have marketing operators. Dude, I think it'll bill at least two million dollars to sponsors, but it might bill like four million dollars to sponsors. And it's just Us talking about e commerce. Uh probably one

1:02:08 Tenth the listenership? I mean way less. Maybe one and half the listenership you guys get, but because it's so niche. It's like way more of an actual like uh community, right? And you know, I think people want to be you guys because you guys are like an entertainment show, right? You guys are like a big show, you know, massive reach, entertaining people. But if you listen to this and you're an expert of something, do an incredibly niche YouTube channel because Like the the sponsor integrations are just so much deeper. Like our sponsors fulfill the ERP, right? And like you guys don't know what that is, but if you're an e-commerce merchant, you need an ERP and the annual contracts are$150,000 a year and we've probably sold a hundred of them, right? So it's like they'll give us six hundred thousand dollars a year because we're the only marketing channel for them, right?

1:02:54 Um Anyway, but yeah, as we do a podcast. I think that's great advice. All right, we'll we'll let you go. We know you gotta go go sell wallets and rings and other other great things. Uh people give g sh shout out your Twitter, shout out your uh your URL. Where where do you want people to go? Okay, go to ridge dot com slash Uh Sean and buy a wallet. That's the best way to support me right now in this moment of time. Never stop selling, guys. Um we appreciate you, man. Thanks for doing this. All right, that's the pod.

1:03:22 I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my law in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back

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