Jeremy Weisz 12:37
Talk about the strategic partners for a second. Who are ideal strategic partners for you now?
Brett Curry 12:42
Yeah, so really, anybody that serves D2C brands, so anybody that’s serving, and I say D2 C, I really mean e-commerce, because pure D2C is just from your website, direct to consumer. But we do a lot with marketplaces. Amazon is a huge part of our business. And I really think most brands that are pure D2C, they’re expanding, they’re going, they’re selling on Amazon, they’re trying to get in store, things like that, but so e-commerce brands, so that could be a software provider. So shout out to one of our partners Gorgeous, they’re an e-commerce helpdesk, so they kind of combine your chat and all your customer support things in in the one area, so we don’t compete with them. But they’re working with our ideal clients, development agencies, we’ve worked with other development agencies, so Shopify and Magento, back in the day, Big Commerce, those types of development shops, they’re a partner Big Commerce themselves are partners. So Shopify, so really anybody in that space, and also influencers, like an Azure fire, some people that run masterminds and training groups and stuff like that. Those are good partners as well. So I’ve always been pretty good at identifying who already has the year of my ideal customer. And then how can I build that relationship and partner in a way that’s mutually beneficial? And so we’ve leveraged a handful of partnerships over the years to really accelerate the growth of OMG.
Jeremy Weisz 14:07
Yeah, I love that. What are some of the you find the e-commerce masterminds? You work with a lot of top-level e-commerce, founders, CEOs, what kind of groups should people look at if they’re an e-commerce owner? What’s out there?
Brett Curry 14:23
Yeah, that’s a great question.
Jeremy Weisz 14:25
I think Ezra didn’t he disband his at some point.
Brett Curry 14:29
No, Ezra is a still going, Warroom, war room just disbanded. So that was Roland Frasier, Ryan Deiss and Richard Linder, and I’ve been paired Belcher and so Warroom was not exclusively e-commerce, my business partner and I were in that for a while. That was great. Love that mastermind. We had to kind of back out just because of too many commitments, but it has since kind of disbanded and now some of the partners those various partners are doing kind of their own things or masterminds. My favorite of all favorites is the Blue Ribbon mastermind, which is led by Ezra Firestone. So part of that is because Ezra has become a close friend, but he’s one of the smartest one of the best in the game. And he’s done a really good job of building a community of people that you want to hang out with, right? So this is like, I go to this event, I’m like, I would hang out with these people. If they did something totally random, right? I just I like them. But they’re also they’re in the DTC game. They’re crushing and super successful. So that’s my favorite. There’s some of the good ones. Big fan of Ryan Daniel Moran. Ryan is a friend. I’m an investor in one of his funds when his e-commerce wants that super cool. He’s got the 1%. And the backroom, those are both great. There are few others, but I don’t have much experience with many others. So those Ezra’s and Ryan, Daniel Marantz would be the ones I would recommend the most.
Jeremy Weisz 15:56
Talk about Chris your partner for a second. And how do you divide responsibilities? You’re both kind of you come together, you had your own companies. It’s kind of like two CEOs coming together? How do you divide the responsibilities and labor?
Brett Curry 16:13
That’s a great question. And really, transparently, it’s been a challenge, or that was a few of the challenges we’ve had to deal with over our history is, how do we really divide and conquer, so to speak, but still stay unified as a company? And how do we utilize our skill sets? Because we do have some overlap, right? There’s some things that we’re both really good at. But in some ways, we’re totally different. Right? So bottom line, though, is Chris is an awesome guy, man of integrity, like shared faith, shared belief and marketing, shared belief with the way we run companies, like we just, we get along, right. So that’s, like, without all those things that might be challenging.
Jeremy Weisz 16:51
What have you found or is different? Like, there’s probably a lot of overlap. What is like, listen, I hate doing this. Chris loves doing this.
Brett Curry 17:01
Yeah. So Chris is kind of a rapid-fire idea, guy. So he’s brilliant with ideas. He’s kind of rapid-fire. He’s really, really good at sales, we actually are both great sales. But he loves the sales process loves being tenacious and following up and things like that. I get excited about closing big deals, and I forget about small deals. And so he’s a better pure salesperson than I am, I’m great on pitches, like if I’m pitching a big company, and I’m talking about YouTube and how to make it work, I can crush that. But he’s a better salesperson. I think I’m probably better leading teams than he is and kind of an effect the drill and really deep to a project for a long time. Like, we’ve built courses and trainings and things like that I’m better at kind of that long attention span doing deep work on stuff like that.
Jeremy Weisz 17:51
Would you say he’s kind of more of a visionary personality type. You both seem like visionaries. So it’s hard to say. But like I feel like visionary integrator.
Brett Curry 18:01
Right. So we both skew visionary. Sarah, still who’s our CEO? She’s more of the integrator. I’m a little better, like financial analysis and kind of numbers. I’d say there’s just kind of some of the differences. But really, we do well, together, we complement each other well, we tend to agree on big stuff, and we’re not afraid to argue over the little stuff, because you did a good result comes out of that. But overall, yeah, I mean, it’s been a 13-year partnership, right, which is like, that’s way longer than most it’s like a 60-year marriage or something like that. It just, it just doesn’t happen very often now. And so it’s been really good.
Jeremy Weisz 18:42
Partnership is a marriage. So people with co-founders out there, Brett, what would you say? What’s some advice that you have that’s helped with managing your partnership and in the longevity with that?
Brett Curry 18:56
Yeah. So I think, having really clear expectations. So one thing we did not do in the beginning is we did not set really clear expectations. Right? So what are you going to do versus what am I going to do? Because we’re both pretty good sales. We’re both pretty good at building relationships. We both understand marketing, we both write headlines, like, what are we gonna do? So we were not really good at that was kind of figured out as we went, I think, some partners that come together, where it’s like, hey, this is the salesperson, this is the developer, or she’s operations. And he’s, like, that’s clear cut, we still want to spell it out. And how are we going to deal with things that we have disagreements? We actually did you that we create this document, you know, is like, kind of like, pre-operating agreement, where it was like, hey, what if there’s a disagreement, or we’re gonna have kind of like, help us solve it and stuff like that. And so that was good, but I think really getting clear on roles. And that’s now something we revisit frequently. So we just did this our executive team myself, Chris and Sarah, like, okay, what are our roles, how our roles need to shift now that we’re working with 73 now, so team 73, we’re pushing that 10 million and beyond in annual run, right, and so I thought it would show up what our roles are like now because we can’t be what we were, even a couple years ago. Exactly. And so anyway, I think clear expectations, understand what you’re good at what you’re not. And I think using some tools to get there. So my favorite personality tools are Enneagram. Not everybody likes it, but I do. Culture index, which is not affordable, but it’s awesome. And then…
Jeremy Weisz 20:25
yeah, I think it’s like $5,000 for license, I forgot what it was.
Brett Curry 20:30
Culture index only makes sense. If one, you’re gonna be hiring a lot. So we knew we were gonna be going from like, 15, to whatever you would have 15 to 70. So like, we did a lot of hiring. It was extremely valuable. The training on it takes some time, it’s like, you really got to train on it. It’s like two days’ worth of training. So it’s not super easy. We’re get something like this, which just honestly is not my favorite, but it’s so useful. That’s like, super easy to understand.
Jeremy Weisz 20:54
For the right size company. I mean, 5000 I mean that it helps you hire someone exactly like pays for itself. Hundreds of times over.
Brett Curry 21:02
It does. It doesn’t. It’s really geared towards work, really digging into and really doing this, but I’m a big fan of Patrick Lencioni. And he runs a table group and he’s an author, but they have a tool called work.
Jeremy Weisz 21:13
I love his books. Yeah, one because they’re super short and you can get through them.
Brett Curry 21:19
Yeah, he’s a good sellers books, like The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. I think that’s yeah. It’s like an allegory. He knows the story, which is kind of fun.
Jeremy Weisz 21:27
He’s got a desk by meeting which is pictures. Great, right?
Brett Curry 21:32
That’s when you want to buy just because like the title is great. But yes, so working genius. We’re going through that. So anyway, I think, understand your personality, understand your partner’s personality, and then get really clear with how are we going to divide responsibilities, how we’re going to work together? What kind of decisions require both of us, what decisions are we gonna have the autonomy, give ourselves the autonomy to make on our own that type of thing. And then really understanding things like you’re working genius, or your Enneagram type and things like that. Because that’s another I don’t know if you follow the Enneagram at all, but we’re both threes and threes are the achiever performer. But we show up differently, like our working geniuses, I’m a galvanized and a wanderer. And I actually don’t know what Chris is now, because we just take this test.
Jeremy Weisz 22:22
Some people don’t like it. Why is that?
Brett Curry 22:25
I’ve only heard a few people say, like, it’s lightweight, but there’s actually, so the thing with Enneagram is you can take like a really cheap free online version. Or you can take like a really inexpensive paid version, it’s 20 bucks or something. But you got to kind of dig deep into Enneagram. But for me, like for me and my wife our marriage. Enneagram has been awesome. So my wife has a one. I’m a three. And so it was one time we were in our small group where it was like I was Googling ones and threes in a marriage and it like it gave us a scripture. Really, yeah, what fights are like, and we’re reading and we’re like, that is us like that is describing us, because threes don’t like rules, right? And ones are all about rules. And so threes feel judged and one feel like threes don’t care. Anyway. It was brilliant. It helped us tremendously in our communication. And I’m a big fan.
Jeremy Weisz 23:15
So anyone out there you could use this for personal. I did a Kolbe score Kolbe, and then my wife did a Colby and we actually had a consultant do like a joint session explaining, it was amazing? Yeah, I loved it.
Brett Curry 23:30
So I just did…
Jeremy Weisz 23:31
I have to try the Enneagram. I’ll also check that out.
Brett Curry 23:33
Enneagram Yeah, it’s fun. Because you got like your primary and you got a winning and then like their books written on a podcast on it. It’s great. But anyway, the Kolbe test though, I’m actually today I took I took a test, I don’t know, week or so ago, I’m meeting with a lady today to go over my results. So we’ll see. See how that.
Jeremy Weisz 23:49
That’s great. How has your role shifted through the company? What were the key points are like, here’s my role? And then there was a clear distinction and change.
Brett Curry 24:01
Yeah, so one kind of story. One story I’ll tell the kind of illustrates a moment. I used to be very involved with every client was very involved. I was on calls. I was mapping out Strategy. I was reviewing ad accounts like I was the strategist on essentially all accounts or at least trying to be. We start hiring and we started getting more experienced people and like people that just kind of mesh with our culture and our vision of what we’re doing. And I remember traveling to Boulder, Colorado to meet with zero shoes, Steven Sash and shout out a longtime friend. We helped him for years with our marketing. And I was in this meeting with and has been with Steven and with his team and my team. And my team was sharing and they were there kind of walking through performance and results and plans. And I was just sitting there and I was thinking, I don’t need to be here. I’m sitting here. I like Steven, I like chatting but I don’t have to be here. And I’ve never really felt that fully before and so I really last minute, if I can help my team, I help them level up playing provide training, I can help them become brilliant by people that are better than me and a lot of things and stuff, then we can really do some cool stuff. So that was kind of an aha moment. As we’ve grown, I’ve shifted to, hey, let me just be a strategist on a couple of key accounts, I can kind of keep my hand in the game. So I can still do speaking and training and some of those things that attract clients to the agency. But then I need to be thinking higher level, right? What’s next for the agency? What services do we need to offer? How do we need to pivot? What is going to be changing in the coming months or years that could impact Google ads, or YouTube or Amazon? And then, how can I develop leaders and train leaders from a high level and that’s been one of the most rewarding things for me is seeing my team really step up and own departments and find solutions and really do cool stuff that I wouldn’t be able to do on my own. And so that those have been kind of the major shifts I’m less involved in the day-to-day on clients. I’m more big picture, more leadership development, more overall culture design, and like vision of the company. That’s where I’m spending my time then, of course, financial health and digging in there as well. So, but it’s hard man and camera, what CEO is talking to me, Brian Burke, from Canopy management, we’re talking about like, it’s a talented entrepreneur issue, right? I’m pretty good at marketing. And I’m pretty good at sales. I’m pretty good at talking to people. But then how do you choose what you step out at will get the highest and best, right, what’s highest and best for the agency? Not for me, that just what I get the most reward from but what’s highest and best for the agency? And how do I shift my workday to account?
Jeremy Weisz 26:52
I mean, Brett, one of the reasons you could do that, when you said I don’t need to be here is because you built a great team that was handling things. And so what do you do? Or what are some of the things you do to develop and train leaders?
Brett Curry 27:07
Yeah, so I mean, I think there’s several things right. And I’m a big fan of the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, he does actually, my pastor too is really well known as a huge Leadership Podcast. He says, everyone improves when the leader gets better, right. And so, and there’s the old saying of everything rises and falls on good leadership, right? So a few things. One, I lead a monthly leadership development training, it’s actually open to anybody. So directors and management stuff have to come but it’s open to anybody in the company, because we’re all leaders, right? We all have influence. Leadership has influenced such the title. And so we do that big believer in providing training and resources and help and empowering people to make decisions. Right? What I don’t want to do and what’s happened over the course of the company is there was a period of time when I was a bottleneck, right? Where every decision had to run through me. And then we had periods where brand coo so I can do other things. And then everything runs to the COO, and you’re like, wait a minute, we’re trading bottlenecks here. Right? So we got to revise this a little bit. So empowering people to make decisions. And I think that that works when you have really crystal clear culture. Who are we and what is important is what do we value above all else? And then where are we headed? Right? What are we trying to accomplish? If you can have those things, then good, good leaders working with you, then they can make a lot of decisions, right? So it’s empowering people to make decisions. And, and reiterating that trust and pushing back if someone’s like, hey, what should we do here on the hill? What do you think we should do here? And so Empower…
Jeremy Weisz 28:52
It’s tough to do that, because you probably built that, you flex that muscle, so much of solving problems?
Brett Curry 29:00
Totally. And solving problems is fun, right? Like, we’re entrepreneurs, I love solving marketing problems, or even client relationship, like I can do in my sleep, and I enjoy the things where I have to really dig in and think about it. So yeah, not that I’m back out 100%. But you want to teach people that, I trust you. And you can do this, and then sometimes they come up with better solutions and you would have come up with and so yeah, that’s powerful.
Jeremy Weisz 29:25
That’s a great reminder. I appreciate that, because I need to do more of that. What do you think? What are some of the key hires? When you look at over you started, you and Chris, and you’re like, I don’t know how big this is gonna be. Maybe we’ll have a few people. And then the kind of path led you to now what were some of the when you look back some of the key pivotal, hire moments.
Brett Curry 29:52
Yeah, it’s funny, man. I think a lot of this kind of goes back to the against the John Maxwell book Failing Forward. I believe he’s the author of that book. A lot of us just Like making mistakes and just figuring stuff out as we go. I did read The E-Myth Revisited. And that kind of shapes on my thinking and the book Delivering Happiness by the Zappos founder Tony Shieh, he talks about brand and culture, that’s all you got. And he talked about his team. So everything’s kind of shaped my thinking, but we’ve made a lot of mistakes.
Jeremy Weisz 30:20
Like what would be an example?
Brett Curry 30:22
Oh, just hiring people, because we know them. And because they’re this person, or that person knew him and stuff. We did, I think we were pretty good at attracting people with good character and integrity. So a lot of the hires were good from that standpoint, we did make a few hires, we’re just like connections of hey, this person said they could do this. And so let’s give it a shot. And they were disasters, but there was one younger lady we hired who’s really sweet. And she was like a friend of some of the other employees. And this is an embarrassing story about tell it really quickly. We say we need to fire her because she just wasn’t performing, right. But we never like, helped her or corrected her or tried to coach her. Right, and none of that. And so we bring into the conference myself, my business partner. And so I’m like, nervous. I’m so like, how’s it going? And then I start to like, fire her, and she loses it. Like, everybody in the hallway here. She like slams, the table starts crying. And she’s like, I’m being fired. I’m like, long story short, we unfired her. We gave her a corrective action plan. And then later, it was like three months later, she quit. And fortunately, she’s really bright. And she’s having a great life. And I follow her on social media. She’s doing fantastic. Probably no thanks to us. But anyway, so that was the untiring. But we got better after that learn a lot from our mistakes. Interestingly enough, a couple of our key people Sarah mentioned as a COO, and then brandy, who is our Director of account management. They were both really early hires, like early, early days, and they’re still with us. So even though we did a lot of stupid things, we didn’t run everybody off. Yeah. So those are key hires. There’s several one gentleman named Greg, who, who is just somewhere on top strategists and in the business and, and another story we he apply, and we’re like, we can’t afford this guy. And so we told him, No. And then he wrote, like, this epic email is like the best-written email, the email is so good. And this does not happen. Because we hire a lot of people now, but I read this email, couldn’t sleep at night was like, We got to fit. We got to figure out a way to get Greg in the door, get a fair way to pay, Greg, so the next day I walk in the stairs, awesome. Like, we got to figure out a way to get Greg in. And so I’ve got an idea. And so we ended up giving Greg an offer. And he’s just been a legend he’s been with us for a long time.
Jeremy Weisz 32:43
What was an email that stuck out?
Brett Curry 32:47
Man, I have to go back and read it. We actually revisited it recently. But he was just he was not like, overly pushy, but he was like, hey, here’s why this would be such a good fit. Yeah. And here’s why I think you should reconsider. And it was like, everything was sound, it was just like, it was perfect. And I was like, right. And so anyway, thankfully, we realized we were wrong. We made him an offer. And the rest is history.
Jeremy Weisz 33:17
So we must have done something right in the interview process for him to really see that vision.
Brett Curry 33:24
Yeah, totally. Yeah. And that’s one of the things too, that I’ve always believed I enjoy. I enjoy podcasting. I enjoy speaking it’s because of a number of events each year. And I would do it just because I like it, if I’m being totally honest. But it also it attracts clients, that’s a big win, but also attracts great people, right? So people are like, oh, this is a thought leader. This is a real, that’s really cool perspective. I like the way they do that. So I’d like to work there. And so that’s one of the biggest annoyance. Yeah, for sure.
Jeremy Weisz 33:54
At what point did you realize, we are ready and need to COO, because some of these leadership positions, like you said, some people do it. They’re doing it ahead of schedule, like we’re not ready, kind of like Greg, like, we just need to figure out a way to pay this person because we know this is in the future. And some people do it after the fact like, oh, my God, we’re swamped. What did that position look like?
Brett Curry 34:19
Yeah, it was actually really interesting. We were in the culture index process. So again, Mark Connolly was our culture index advisor. And it was it was myself and Chris and Sarah, we were still we’re the ones heading it up. But Sarah was not COO, she was director of finance. But she kind of helped with some leadership things too. And we’re talking about like, we just need a we need like an operations person when he called COO at the time, although we I think we quickly did, but we’re like we need Director of ops or whatever it is, we’re talking about and whatever. And we’re like, well, wait a minute, like, what about Sarah? You said looked at her culture index and talked about we’re like, she’d be perfect, and then she wanted to do it. Yeah, we, it kind of came out. I think I mean, if you look at entrepreneurship, some of these just kind of making up as you go, right? Like, we want to tell us more sophisticated, we want to tell like we’re super, super smart, but really in life, like parenting life business, you’re making it up as you go to a certain degree. And so we’re like, figuring stuff out smart entrepreneurs running again, and type of thing. But we’ve always had good about bringing on outside perspectives, and help and consultants and coaches and things like that. And so it was through that process, we realized, okay, we’re sort of operating as a three-headed leadership team, but we to formalize this right and Sarah needs not be financially she needs to be operations. And so, it was through that culture index process that came to light.
Jeremy Weisz 35:44
Thanks for walking through that Brett super valuable to hear your perspective and some of the journey on that. I’d love to talk about, in the very beginning, you mentioned a few things and one is email. So I’d love to talk about your perspective on email.
Brett Curry 36:04
Yeah, I think email is still extremely powerful. I’ve been in the marketing game long enough as you have where I think we’ve heard that email was gonna die maybe two or three times but before, so I haven’t heard it in a long time. Now, I think it was like, it’s never gonna die. It’s like the cockroach of this very endearing term, but it was never died. But email, I believe like, for direct-to-consumer and e-commerce brand, email should touch 30 to 45% of your revenue, not that it’s fully responsible for that revenue. But email should touch it right. And you use email to kind of indoctrinate or warm someone up on your brand. So if someone just subscribed to your list, and they’ve never bought anything yet, email can really cultivate them to be a great client, great, great customer. Once they buy at your post-purchase sequence, to really get them ready to enjoy the product and get the most out of it. repeat purchases, cart abandonment sequences, product, launch sequences, all those things, email just facilitates all that really, really well. And it’s the one-on-one communication feels one to one. And it’s also powerful, because we’re big believers in top-of-funnel advertising. And we talked about living infomercials and stuff, I think, partially because that I love YouTube and also love YouTube because it’s kind of a combination of video, which I’ve always enjoyed and search, which has been my bread and butter for over a decade. And so love YouTube, but YouTube is usually used at the very top of the funnel, right? So it’s not that common. If someone clicks on a YouTube ad and buys right away the first time they’ve heard about a product but someone might say a YouTube ad and click on a landing page and maybe enter their email for something and then you can follow up with them and close the deal through email and so we’ve got this ability to really scale with YouTube ads, but email often is what closes the deal, right? I’ve always been a big fan of Google Shopping I mentioned that Google Shopping is kind of a closer as well it’s kind of bottom of funnel traffic people got their wallets out ready to buy email does that and so and also think that your customer lists your first party data that’s the most valuable thing you have in addition to your brand and so you know being able to reach out to people when you want to when you need to is extremely powerful it’s that owned media right yet paid media which is powerful. We love it. You can scale it, turn it on or off, get earn media, which kind of like SEO and then own media email where you can use that anytime you need.
Jeremy Weisz 38:38
You had a guest on your podcast, Brett that had I think, did funny videos. Talk about that for a second.
Brett Curry 38:47
Yeah, it’s awesome. So Joseph Wilkins, and he creates some of the videos from a buddy Ryan Mckenzie of Tru Earth. Shout out to Ryan and Joseph, yeah, he’s great. He actually was trained by the Harmon brothers and I actually had Daniel Harmon on the podcast was super fun. That and then also Jacques Spitzer from Raindrop. Those guys are awesome. They’re actually my favorite right now. They’re just crushing it. Doing really good work. And Joseph is doing some awesome work too. So Joseph created some ads for Tru Earth and they’re just they’re great, right? They get the pattern interrupt. They follow the pattern of or the flow of benefit and humor and selling point and humor and featuring you and so there’s really good. So we actually we helped True Earth it’s a laundry detergent strip. So it’s like little piece of paper size thing you put your wash washes your clothes. If anybody would know that it works. It would be my family because we do a lot of laundry of like the commercial industrial size. Washing machine with a family of 10. And in Tru Earth works. So anyway, we’re with Ryan Mckenzie and his team. And we launched on YouTube with this ad that Ryan Mckenzie made on his MacBook right? It’s just like stock images. Ryan and his Yeti microphone and just puts it together, right? We get like, a 12 million views on it somewhere like that paid. But it was just cranking. And then he meets Joseph from Funny Sales Videos. And so they start making this video and one of them opens with things you don’t mix with water, right? It’s witches in which his desk water and then it’s cuter as water on a computer. And the other thing, you know, mix water with your laundry detergent, it’s like wow, that’s kind of that pattern interrupt thing. And it talks about the environment talks about the benefits talks about the ease and convenience and things like that. And you’re funnysalesvideos.com is Joseph’s websites look that up to make sure I had it right. But he does great work does phenomenal work. And really, if you look at, and so then with those videos, for True Earth, they’ve racked up several 100 million views. So the other video was great to get started. But these videos really helped take it, it helped unlock additional scale. As we talked about what the guys at Raindrop as well as you know, if you have the right campaign structure and understand media buying and YouTube Strategy and things, creative is super, super important. But certain creatives likely only get you to a certain level of scale. And you got to get better creatives if you want to unlock additional levels of scale.
Jeremy Weisz 41:39
And one of the things where you help people with is YouTube growth. Right. So what are some of the when you think of the do’s and don’ts and with YouTube? That component?
Brett Curry 41:53
Yeah, just a huge, huge fan of YouTube. And the instantly my YouTube is, it is still one of the fastest growing social media platforms and most used platforms by younger generations, right? Yeah, there’s a period of time this is maybe your tool, but TikTok and YouTube, those are the top two social media platforms for people the age of my oldest kids, right. And what’s interesting is my oldest kids, they’re not on Facebook, and long live Facebook, I think it’s great. But it’s sort of like we’re older people hanging on. However, that’s the perception. But YouTube like transcends, so you want to learn something, you want to do something you want to research, something everybody has to. So it’s got reach, but then it’s also got to target ability, right, you can get really, really specific on who you want to reach. And one of the great things about YouTube is it’s owned by Google, and nobody has more search behavioral data than Google. Right. Google has been collecting search for decades, and they’ve been using AI for a long, long time, they bought DeepMind, back in 2015. And so AI has been powering what they do for a long time now. So you can actually tap into that keyword search behavior, and target people based on that. So you can build audiences of people based on what they’re searching for on Google. And then the next time they’re on YouTube, they could see your ad there. And so I think understanding audience targeting, that’s a big part of it. Understanding creatives, because creators on YouTube are different than creatives on TikTok on Facebook or any other platform for YouTube. One of the best analogies that I can use or that I believe is, it’s pretty similar to short-form direct response TV ads. So YouTube is more like TV, than Facebook or tick tock, right Facebook and tick tock some videos that are working there 15 seconds, and on Facebook, you get the video, you get the text around it, right where the video just needs to do part of the work the text and the call to action around it can do the rest of it. With YouTube, it’s just the video, right? So the videos got to do, it’s got to interrupt, it’s got to grab attention, it’s got to overcome objections, it’s got to really demonstrate the product or the service, it’s got to get you to take action now it’s got to reaffirm things and the pace has to be right. So understanding the creative that that’s really really important. And then understanding campaign structure so how do we bid how do we measure how do we look at things so we know we’re getting the most out of it and part of that comes down to measuring because, and I kind of mentioned this YouTube is top of funnel if all you measure our direct conversions from YouTube that’s not enough right because more people are going to watch a YouTube ad and then go buy on Amazon or watch a YouTube ad and then click on a search ad later then we’ll just purchase directly so you got to be able to measure that and there different ways that we like to do that.
Jeremy Weisz 44:45
So many moving pieces, right so let’s talk about an example right and so Live Bearded Yeah, shout out to Anthony Mink.
Brett Curry 44:55
Anthony Mink, what’s up buddy?
Jeremy Weisz 44:57
What did you do with them?
Brett Curry 44:59
Yeah, so again, brilliant marketers and one thing also a brag on Mink and the crew there is they’re great at building community right so they open all their videos almost with a brother, because like it’s the bearded brotherhood and I got to visit their offices in Tempe, Arizona and they’re all bearded bros right now. I’m I got my beard really tight right now. But thankfully I talked to the guys it’s approved. They’re like, hey, that’s still a beard. So beard the beard starts when you stop shaving. That’s what those guys anyway.
Jeremy Weisz 45:34
They’re not sorry about it.
Brett Curry 45:34
Yeah, I don’t need to comb my beard. It’s great to see it. But anyway, so they were successful on Facebook, they’ve done some Google and stuff had some in-house marketing people. But Anthony and I or Mink and I sort of hanging out some, he’s like, hey, I want to take a look at this. And so we start running their marketing, and then we start experimenting on YouTube. And they’ve got pretty specific CAC goals or CPA goals. And we’re able to hit those with YouTube and, and now they’ve got one of the better-performing ads that we’ve seen in a long time on YouTube. It’s all about their sample pack. And so it’s a simple ad. But it’s with Spencer, the other partner, he’s kind of walking through the warehouse he’s talking about their sample offers, it’s 10 fragrances 10 bucks, and you get a $10 gift card. So it’s just an irresistible offer. There’s humor mixed in our buddy Nathan, shout out to Nathan. He’s actually a standup comedian. And he works for Live Bearded, but he’s in it and he wrote some of the jokes in it. But it’s good. It’s simple. Straightforward is not like over-the-top production by any means. Maybe some similarities to like, $1 Shave Club ish. I guess it’s like the anti-Dollar Shave Club anyway.
Jeremy Weisz 46:50
Yeah, exactly. I do picture that when you describe it.
Brett Curry 46:54
Yeah. I mean, they did not. They didn’t say like, hey, we’re gonna do a video just like that. It’s quite different. But he’s in the warehouse and stuff. So you can kind of get that picture in your mind.
Jeremy Weisz 47:05
And then Native Deodorant.
Brett Curry 47:07
Yeah, Native Deodorant. So got to work with Moiz Ali, the founder. Before he transitioned away, you know, he had a great exit sold to P&G, we still work with Native now. So there have been a PNG brand for several years. And we’ve got a great partnership there. But that’s one where that kind of evolved from D to C only. We’re running YouTube ads just to drive direct-to-consumer sales to the new launch on Amazon. So YouTube gets support that to now hey, we’re launching in these retail stores and we’re in CVS and Target and other places. And so how do we beef up our YouTube spin and key demographic TV DMA’s to spike in store sales and so that’s been super fun. It’s also been super fun to watch as they’ve kind of grown so they went from deodorant only to then adding body washing haircare and toothpaste and sunscreen. And the list goes on and on. I’m actually collaborated with Raindrops a Raindrop did a new campaign called Centaur. So it’s like a centaur because it’s deodorant. It’s a great ad. They did a vampire sunscreen ad, which is great. So we have to do all the media behind that. And so yeah, Native, awesome, brand, awesome. Team love what they’re doing. And so we run all their Google and YouTube.
Jeremy Weisz 48:24
I’m curious, Brett, from an acquisition standpoint, there’s usually, obviously a transition of leadership, how do you manage that as a company? Because the incoming leadership may have their preferred partners where they work with you, or how do you manage that transition of from an acquisition,
Brett Curry 48:43
It’s difficult and any other agency owner out there which I know is a lot listen, you know, that you get a new director of marketing you the new CEO, you get a new anybody like very likely that they’re going to want to bring in their own team, right because you bring in someone new they want to put their mark on the business. And so we’ve lost a number of clients that we were doing great work for just because they transitioned right had this huge haircare brand we were killing it like the core team loved us but they sold new marketing director comes in we get the X register it was terrible but it happens like you expect it with this one though. Credits a P&G like they took a real hard look at what we were doing. It took Moiz’s input as well and they’re just like, hey, you guys are crushing it we’re gonna keep going. And so it’s been a good partnership.
Jeremy Weisz 48:44
I thought you were going to share like some secret because that’s how you keep a client after an acquisition.
Brett Curry 49:40
So I will share this and this is nothing groundbreaking or nothing shorter but I think this is important. So we have an escalation process we utilize inside the agency so anything happens a little hiccup little whatever issue, we escalated. So then leadership of departments come in we strategize. we brainstorm how do we fix this problem? We now do that anytime there’s a leadership change or even a change on the marketing team? Were like, okay, escalation process, lead. And now we’ve actually shifted that to problem-solving process because escalation sounds like someone’s in trouble. But anyway, problem-solving process, let’s dig in all hands on deck there in the client account and leadership having to do this. And so we do stuff like will offer fly out let’s meet let’s do a full review. And yeah, so there’s no real secret sauce there because I think some people they just they’re set on they’re gonna bring in their own agency, they’ve got to leave their mark on the company and there’s nothing you can do about that. But yeah, we go through the problem solving process.
Jeremy Weisz 50:41
I appreciate your perspective on that. One last question. But first of all, thank you. This has been fantastic. I want to point everyone to OMGCommerce.com to learn more, check out his podcast, eCommerce Evolution Podcasts and Spicy Curry. Last question is, a day in the life, you eight kids, you have a thriving successful business with a lot of staff. What does a day look like for you?
Brett Curry 51:09
Yeah, I mean, a lot of days I do go to bed not remembering my own name or remembering what day it is, just so it’s so exhausted that this you try and go to bed at a certain time? I don’t Well, yeah, like pre midnight. I don’t know. That’s something that I’m not really great at. I’m trying to get better. We’ve been trying to go to bed in the 10 o’clock hour. But that doesn’t happen often. When you got teens and you’ve got little people like it’s really what’s the range of age. So oldest is 21. He’s not living at home, he just moved to Kansas City for job opportunity really great. And our next daughter is away at college. So only six only six actually live at home right now. 21 down to six, or is the age range age range. And so, but I’m gonna bet getting up early. And what’s really interesting is I don’t know if there’s a lot going on, or I’m just excited about things or stressed about things or combination thereof, but I’m waking up early, wake up at five o’clock, six at the latest. I’m up work and I’ve had a few times recently this been happening like two or three times a month, it’s probably too much. I’ll wake up at like two and work for a little while and go back to bed. And actually Jim Collins does that too, which is interesting. But I work early, I like to have like a reflection time. Journal time I use the five minute journal is very simple. prayer time, time reading scripture and kind of prayer time. And then I work out and then I’m off to the day I’m coaching basketball right now then we have best morning basketball practice. So that’s what I do, then I’m like getting up and eating and reading for 30 seconds and then go to basketball practice. But that’s almost over. And then yeah, I’ve got my day really well laid out. So I’ve got an executive assistant named Tyler who’s like the best. So we’re always strategizing on how to improve efficiencies or some things he gets me off my plate so that I can serve the team better and get involved in projects better. And then we have weekly leadership type meetings and yeah, so it’s pretty well mapped out and then try to and some weeks better than others once I get home, try to put the phone in the bedroom and really be focused be present with the kids as much as possible. Because maybe time goes by quick and so I want to make sure getting and giving everything I can to those relationships,
Jeremy Weisz 53:24
Brett, I want to be the first one to thank you. Thank you so much, everyone. We’ll see you next time. Thanks Brett.
Brett Curry 53:30
Thanks, Jeremy.
