Sell The Story Podcast. E-Comm Winners Build Brand Before Accelerating Ad Spend.

Hi, welcome to the Sell The Story podcast. It's a podcast where we provide advice to e-comm owners on how they can better sell their story to their customers. Today we talk about how e-comm winners typically build a brand before they celebrate through paid media. We have on a very special guest, Andrew Maff of one of the leading e-comm agencies in the US, Blue Tusca. So let's jump

in and understand Andrew's perspective on building brand and particularly why brand is more than just your logo and why you really should be taking it a lot more seriously. Okay, let's dig in.

Thanks. Hi, welcome to Sell the Story with my co-host Clint Armstrong. And today we have Andrew Muff, Maff, fuck. Today we have Andrew Maff from Blue Tusca. Andrew, welcome to the podcast. Sorry.

What's going on? Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

That's fine. That's fine. So yeah, so Andrew, we— It's short for Maffetone, but it gets butchered so many times that I just do Maff and I leave it at that.

Can I ask what background is that? That's a fantastic question. So technically

it's Italian, but I'm not Italian. I'm Irish. So that's a different podcast, different story.

We're not getting into the genetics of this. That's the American story. Irish, Italian, you're both sides of the tribes of New York. Okay, well, welcome. I'm not Italian. I'm basically just, well, I'm Australian, mostly English, fortunately, unfortunately, whatever. But Clint down in

Florida. Yeah. So welcome on. We like to talk about brand within the e-commerce space. Andrew,

Florida. Yeah. So welcome on. We like to talk about brand within the e-commerce space. Andrew,

you have a pretty significant brand of your own as an agency. Actually, before we start, are you drinking any coffee this morning? Yeah. Three in me already.

Exactly. Yeah. What do you got?

I'm outside Philly and that is basically all I've always got because they're all over the place around here. Oh man. Looks like we lost Ben. I already had my coffee 6 a.m. this morning so I'm done. Usually I'd hold up a big mug of like two day old coffee that I put in the fridge that then Ben looks down his nose at me.

It is. My wife's a big coffee person and like to me, I'm just like, I just need function in the morning. I don't care what roastery or whatever it came from, but she's a different beast. So sometimes I get some really awesome stuff, but yeah, I'm cold brew straight out of a bottle. It really takes two seconds.

Love it. Nice. Yeah. Actually,

today I cheated. I used these guys, Cometier. They work with a bunch of roasters globally and they flash freeze espresso basically. Pretty good, pretty good flavor, but I didn't get to make my espresso this morning. So it didn't happen. And so my wifi kicked out, which was fantastic. Clint,

I'm sure you spoke about your coffee routine. Yeah, no, I already drank my coffee.

It was 48 hours old per usual. It matures. Copyright. Anyway,

Andrew, welcome. Thanks for coming on. Talk to us about e-comm businesses as they come to you. I'm

sure you have lots of different sizes and shapes of businesses. And at what point do you sort of have that conversation around, all right, we need to get the brand fixed or right-sized.

This is what we can do. Day one.

Day one. Nice. Good aged coffee.

It's the best. Day one. Like it's—yeah, like you mentioned, we work with brands of all different sizes. Some are just starting off, others well into eight figures. Everyone's got, you know, kind of a different situation that they're in. We're a full

eight figures. Everyone's got, you know, kind of a different situation that they're in. We're a full service marketing firm. So for some of the brands we work with, we really are like their entire marketing department and basically act like an outsource part of their team. In other scenarios, especially for the bigger guys, like it's not recommended to work with an agency running all of your stuff at that point. It's much more justifiable to bring it in-house.

So we usually are more of like a puzzle piece of whatever it is that they're missing internally.

And that's kind of where we maintain. But the fastest way to onboard an agency, the fastest way to onboard an employee or a contractor or anything is to have very solidified brand guides, brand voice guidelines, brand aesthetic—like a whole book mapped out so that you understand the rules of what you can and can't do. That makes sure it stays aligned,

to make sure you keep that cohesion across the board, to make sure you're not saying something that is going to be completely misaligned with who it is you're trying to speak to.

So if we don't have those things, we either need to build it out ourselves or we have to guess—and guessing is horrible. Like a lot of people end up with this issue of like, “Well, if you just read our website, then you would know how we speak to our brand.” Like, you're a hundred percent right.

And that's actually where we got all of this from. And so you're telling us now that what we used was incorrect, but that's what your website says. So that means that your vision is not aligned with what's on the website, which means how are we supposed to do it? So that becomes a whole situation of we have to make sure we have clear rules on what you can and can't say,

how to use certain logos and certain colors, etc., to make sure everyone stays on the same page.

That's the—I do find that that's kind of one of the most common items that trips up your clients is just that not everything is aligned. You said it is day one, but do you find that that's one of the biggest challenges that you have with new clients as they come into your agency?

Yeah. I mean, one of the things that—like, look, this always turns into like a venting session of how difficult it can be to be an agency because like, you know, a lot of people in agencies have negative connotations and honestly, I think rightfully so. It's so easy to start an agency and that's why people accidentally get caught up in an agency that just—someone

started because they think they know marketing and those tend to be two different worlds.

But the issue is that what they also don't realize is that if you're going to do that, it's no different than onboarding an employee. It's no different. Like they're not going to immediately understand exactly how you want stuff unless you have that clearly documented. There's

way too many times that, you know, we'll have problems with clients when we first start working with them, where we're going through multiple rounds of revisions because they don't like the way certain things sound. Or they do like the way certain things sound, and then they have someone else look at it and they're like, “Well, I don't like it now.” And

so then they want to change it. And so then it takes longer for things to actually get completed. And that could easily be solved if there was just a very clear and concise

completed. And that could easily be solved if there was just a very clear and concise set of rules in everything that's being created. Yeah. It's funny, like jumping on it early in the relationship is so important and it can feel like the easy thing is just to let it go and sort of do the work that's in front of you. But you really need to seize that momentum because

otherwise it becomes very difficult to have that conversation later on. It can be a bit of a killer. And it's great to hear you talk about brand as organizational mechanic, right?

It organizes them and it organizes your work and ultimately sounds like you're saying it saves you money, you know, and produces better work for the client.

Yeah. And that's—I mean, that's my own biased opinion on it. There's also the flip side of it, right? For the consumer. Like we do a lot of work with brands that are kind of more omnichannel,

right? For the consumer. Like we do a lot of work with brands that are kind of more omnichannel, right? So they probably sell on their own website. They're also on Amazon or Walmart or, you know,

right? So they probably sell on their own website. They're also on Amazon or Walmart or, you know, Chewy or whatever. And a big problem that we often find as well is if someone is—let's say a brand is a really big Amazon seller—their Amazon product images, their A+ content, their storefront, all beautifully aligned. Well done. Looks great. You know, product bullet points and titles

are all pretty much aligned with Amazon best practices, but still within their brand voice.

And then if they're coming to us to help them start to do DTC, you almost immediately can see like, wow, big drop off here. Like these are different images, this is different copy. Your DTC site sounds like a different business than what you're selling on Amazon.

copy. Your DTC site sounds like a different business than what you're selling on Amazon.

And what a lot of brands don't realize is when you really start to pour gas on your DTC site, it's kind of a rising-tides-lift-all-boats sort of thing, right? So you get a lot of people that will leave your DTC site, they'll go over to Amazon or whatever. And if you're not cohesive across the board—if your aesthetic is even slightly different, or if your copy doesn't match your

brand tone across all marketplaces—it actually becomes sketchy. People think it's a scam.

So they may not shop with you at all. And they may feel like, “I don't really know who this company is,” and so then they don't do it. It's another problem with social media: you'll get brands like, “I'm supposed to be on TikTok. So let me start a TikTok,” but it looks like crap. And so now when someone actually comes to your TikTok, they're like, “I don't actually know if this company is real anymore.”

They don't realize how wildly important proper asset development is, because once you go to pour gas on it and you start doing more performance marketing elements, you start doing advertising, it's like pouring water into a bucket with a ton of holes in it where it's like, there's a billion things that could be going wrong right now because it wasn't properly executed in the first place.

Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of things that I feel like—it's almost like you're telling too many stories and it's hard for them to consume it and know which one is the right one and which one should resonate, particularly if those stories are conflicting. But it's also you're building up trust because this isn't like a brand that you go into the store and there it is on the shelf,

right? And you've seen it, it's been around for 20 years. That trust element is such an important

right? And you've seen it, it's been around for 20 years. That trust element is such an important piece for newer brands coming into the space. And you know, I think to your point, having that continuity of story and a library of assets that all say the same thing, and maybe say it in different environments, really is a trust builder. I think for our clients, you know, we've worked

with enterprise side in the past, there was always this thing about, you know, if you're telling somebody a story across three different touch points, three different channels, then that's much more effective than if you're just doing it on the one channel three times. And it's almost like three friends telling you something, right? You're more prone to believe it than if it's that

one friend telling you that thing three times. Yeah, that's—and Andrew, is that a big part of your work? Like cleaning up all those assets? Sounds like that's almost a three–six month

your work? Like cleaning up all those assets? Sounds like that's almost a three–six month project, just landing that sort of plane. It is. I would say that probably one of the hardest parts of our jobs is trying to convince brands how important it is. You know,

as a marketer it's like, “Yeah,” but if you're not a marketer at heart, it's really difficult to kind of understand how important it is because even if you try to articulate it as best as possible, it's still like, “Yeah, I get it. I know my colors need to match.” Like—“It's way more than that.”

So it's kind of like, okay, you get it. And then the other issue we run into is especially for brands where—and you know, these aren't always just like the new guys. It's not like, “I just started my business last month.” We've got dozens of brands that have been in business for decades that still don't have a brand guide. Like still nothing. And even with them,

you run into the issue as an agency of like, all right, we're going to start working with you now.

You know, let's say we're helping you with some of your paid ads and maybe your email and some SEO or something like that. You know, “Hey, we really need something to make sure that each of those individual teams knows how to talk to your customer.” You know, while SEO needs to make sure there's keyword elements to it, it also needs to make sure that they're spoken to correctly. While

paid media needs to keep things short and concise, it also needs to make sure that it's perceived correctly. There's a ton of different stuff where all of those elements are useful across the board.

correctly. There's a ton of different stuff where all of those elements are useful across the board.

And when you first sign up with someone and they're like, “You know, my last agency didn't do this and they didn't do that and that's why we're coming over to you guys,” like—“Yeah, well, I'll bet they also didn't tell you that you need a brand guide and a brand rule book” kind of thing. Then it becomes an issue of like, “All right, well now you're already

trying to sell me new stuff.” So there's a lot of times where we will—at this point, honestly, we've started to just comp it off. Like, we're not going to build out anything too crazy. We're not going to do any additional customer research. But we're going to at least

too crazy. We're not going to do any additional customer research. But we're going to at least take the data you already have and build this out and have you sign off on it just so that as we're creating stuff, we don't have to go through 500 rounds of edits to fix things based on your personal preference at that time. So that's where it can become really important.

But even on the consumer side, you know, if you've got brands that are in retail but then also obviously selling online, you don't realize how much the internet is just another marketing channel. And so they're going to find you in retail. And if it doesn't look the same,

marketing channel. And so they're going to find you in retail. And if it doesn't look the same, it doesn't sound the same, they may feel like it's not you. And then they may buy from a competitor.

So there's a lot of elements to that as well. No, it sounds like you take it on yourselves to knock off the rough edges, you know, and at least the biggest barriers that would hold back the quality of your work. That's the other thing, right? You want to make good work for your clients and you need to remove those things that limit it. So based on what you said, just in terms of kind

of how you can slot in—I think you called it a puzzle piece—to those larger clients that may have separate teams. Do you find that the challenge there is that you actually have to coordinate all those teams you don't necessarily work with or touch because they're not coordinated internally?

So, kind of to your point, the messaging across all of those different places is a little bit disparate, not as coordinated as you would like to see, not as on-point as you would like to see.

But coming in, again knowing that your success is determined by the work that you present and actually do—is that something that you find as a challenge as being that puzzle piece versus, you know, maybe an Amazon-only product that—you know, you have access to the founder, you have access to kind of the two people that they have working on their team, and it's a

little bit easier to coordinate across physically those two people versus, you know, five or 10 different teams within a large enterprise brand? I mean, I would say it kind of depends. Like if

they already have a brand guide of some type, then we're fine. I wish I had the data before this episode where I could just be like, “Hey,” you know, because I'll bet nine times out of 10, if they have an existing brand guide when they start working with us, it's wildly smoother in the beginning. Almost guarantee it. We're a puzzle piece to their existing marketing department. So

the beginning. Almost guarantee it. We're a puzzle piece to their existing marketing department. So

let's say they're a really social media–heavy company. So obviously it makes a ton of sense for them to have social in-house. We're helping them with SEO, right? We still need to be aligned.

Social media copy is very different from SEO copy, but it still needs to have that kind of correct element where you're using the correct brand voice and speaking to the right customer. Regardless,

it's just a different medium. So that's where we still have to make sure we're aligned.

Where it becomes a little bit more of a struggle is if they're disorganized just internally from a project-management perspective. The reason I started BlueTusker was when I was in-house, I had a Google Ads agency, an SEO agency, I had a web developer, I had social media contractors, I had writers. Like I had so many different outsourced things that made a lot of sense—and

I totally understood, especially from a financial perspective, it can be done and there are probably better people where I only need fractional amounts of their time and I get it.

But from a marketing-operations perspective, getting them all on the same page was basically non-existent. So I spent more time almost account-managing my own business,

non-existent. So I spent more time almost account-managing my own business, which was just stupid. If I wanted to do a sale, it was like so-and-so would make one creative and use some words, others would make one creative and use other words. And even once we did develop a brand guide, I still would be way off on timelines of who would be ready at what time. They

don't want to work with each other regardless, even if they don't think they're competitive.

Then we went to full-service stuff and that was just—that was horrible. That was like, you're getting a fractional amount of time from some kid out of college who knows a little bit about a lot. And so it's just like, okay, this is just bad across the board.

So what I had realized was there wasn't an agency where it was like: you have a point of contact who's effectively like a fractional CMO, and then you have fractional time of each individual department that is specialized in their area. So while sometimes, you know, one of the issues we'll run into is we'll start working with a new brand and they'll

have one point of contact to make life easier. But we make sure that the entire team is involved.

So the entire team hops on a call and stuff like that all the time, but their main point of contact is their account strategist, which is effectively their fractional CMO. But because of that, they feel like they're only working with one person all the time because that's who they're seeing a lot.

But the reality is, you've just onboarded like 10 people. I've got a writer, I've got a designer, a video editor, I have SEO writers, I have email people, I have tech people—like all of them, we have to get up to speed on your brand. And so there's that cloak who's behind the scenes that they don't see a lot. And that's something that we're trying to work on to make sure that they

understand. We've got a lot of people we’ve got to get caught up on your brand and it's a

understand. We've got a lot of people we’ve got to get caught up on your brand and it's a nightmare if you don't have rules in place and if you want to keep changing the way you speak to people or the type of creative you want to use. That's where obviously those types of rules come into play. Yeah, that's great.

That's like very similar experiences across the clients and the agencies that we've—clients we've worked with, agencies we've worked in—where there is a lot of confusion about who's doing what, and the “percentage of a person” that you just said really hits home. So great comment. 100%

accurate. Absolutely. Especially when you're working with a massive, massive agency, it's just, you don't know who it is. But to bring it back to the brand: I think there are other challenges beyond kind of the look and the feel and that ethos of the brand, whether it's the brand voice or the brand logo. I think there are three things that Ben and I really

try and harp on—“harp on” is not good—but talk about when it comes to brand. One is just building that tribe, and it's: who is that community? Who are those passionate followers that are going to help economically drive your business, talk to all their friends about it? You know, who are they, and being able to identify them. And then after that is just: where are you located, either from a digital-shelf standpoint or from a physical-shelf standpoint,

making sure that you are at a place where that tribe can actually purchase—where they are. And finally is building that brand moat and making sure that you have that protection,

are. And finally is building that brand moat and making sure that you have that protection, especially if you're a smaller seller. If you have a product that you just brought out to market and you've got 90 days to 180 days before you see a copycat—maybe it's a little bit longer now just because of how tariffs are working—but you don't have very long before somebody steals your design,

brings it back onto Amazon and you're competing. That brand moat—having those followers, having that distribution—is a way for you to keep them away for longer. Not that it's going to be impenetrable, but it's a way for you to kind of hold them off a little bit longer until you can bring out either your next product or kind of connect with them offline or on your DTC side

or whatever it is. So I'm wondering if that's part of the process that you all have as well, or if that's not something that you typically talk about with your client.

No, I mean, it definitely is. I think the thing really becomes—to your point of calling it a brand moat—there's not only the benefit of they become more aware and more comfortable. They

become more aware and more comfortable with… I love these Macs when they do those stupid things.

They become more comfortable with the purchase. It's also just like an elevation, right? You can

build a brand that's a premium-looking brand. You can build a brand that's a value-driven brand.

But either way, having that cohesion and clear, exact copy and really nice-looking imagery allows the user to be that much more comfortable with the purchase. And then to your point of building that brand moat, eventually you're going to get knocked off. So you've got two options. You either created something that is wildly differentiated and so your brand needs to help educate the customer

that eventually purchases—but then eventually you'll get knocked off and that's a new problem.

Or you're a “me too” type of product where you're a little bit different than your competitor, and so now you need your brand to differentiate you even more so than your actual competitor.

So either way, your brand is going to be the one carrying the team.

The issue is, it's not a data-driven thing, right? There's no ROAS to a brand. There's no,

“Hey, let's build you a brand book and it's going to make you X amount of money over the years.”

There's no physical way to paint that picture. And that's where I find e-commerce sellers often go wrong, because we’re spoiled with the five to 10 years ago where you could literally see every penny, what it got you in return. That's just not the case anymore. There are 500 places people can

shop, there are 10,000 places they could find you on social media. It's all over the place.

So attribution has completely put that stuff out the window. I say it over and over again that I feel like digital marketing is becoming more and more like traditional marketing. Back in the day, no one said, “What was the return on my billboard?” Like, you can't do that now.

So that's where I look at, from a brand perspective, you have to keep that cohesion across the board and really differentiate. Because when it comes down to the time for the user to make that decision on who they're going to purchase with, and it becomes like: maybe on paper both your products are the exact same—the one with the stronger brand is going to win every time.

Yeah. And one thing we talk about too is active preference. It's sort of like a final stage almost when you're building brand—from awareness and up and, you know, mental availability, etc. We found, you know, Amazon and just the visibility around brand search is tremendous. And seeing that as a metric build over time is just a great proxy, because Amazon is so wildly available, right? It's

a great proxy, at least in the U.S., of your brand strength and how you've been able to build that.

And some clients sort of get that and some clients you have to sort of dig deeper, too, because obviously they're on Amazon. Having, you know, 10,000 people searching for your brand every month just puts that algorithm into overdrive. It makes everything else so much easier. There's

a real quantifiable bottom-line benefit to having built that brand up to that point. And

it does make the job a little bit easier, but it's still a bit of a jump sometimes because a lot of our clients aren't traditional marketers and this isn't stuff that they geek out on and spend time on LinkedIn and reading reports and research studies. So it can be a little hard.

How do you like to—proving it, case studies, getting them to talk to other clients—is a… What's your sort of trick for getting them to sign on and when does the lightbulb go off, I guess is the question, in terms of the branding side of things? When do

we get them to actually build out a brand guide? Great question. Everything's got to have some type of return tied to it for anyone to really ever bother listening, unfortunately. If we're like, “Hey, you don't have a brand guide. You don't have a brand voice guideline. You don't have

rules around your logos and stuff. We can create one for you. We won't do any additional research around stuff, let's just take what you’ve got and put some rules in place so that we know we're all on the same page”—typically they're like, “Ah, it's a logo. I'll let you guys know if I like the way it looks or if I don't and then just send it.” It's like, no—okay, let me explain. If we do it

that way, A) chances are it's coming out wrong the first couple of times, only because while we have designers that are probably some of the best I've ever worked with, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I've seen my design team make some stuff that I thought was garbage and my clients loved it—and it's because it's what the client wanted. And I've seen the flip,

and it's just because like, all right, that's what you wanted. There were no other rules.

And at a certain point, then you have that other issue, which is the standard agency issue, which is like, at what point do we push back on, “I know this is what you want, but this is wrong,” or “You're just nagging us to death so I have to let you do this.”

So okay, that's where it becomes a different story—“All right, let's A/B test it so I can at least prove that we should have done this a different way.” But

sometimes it's tying it to that to show them like, “Hey, it's going to reduce edits. It's

going to allow us to stay cohesive across the board. It's going to save you time. It's going

to save us time.” That's where even in certain scenarios we've started just being like, “If they don't have one, let's just give them one.” We lost Ben. Back to Orin. But he'll be back.

He's probably going to call. But yeah, that's kind of where we start to have more and more of those conversations. It's just—it's upsetting how brands don't realize how important it is. I would say just because it's the foundation of everything, for the most part.

Yeah, I think that you've got two spectrums. You have the owners, founders that have created a product that's successful and they don't necessarily have a brand. And then you have those brands that are a hundred-plus years old and they've got massive brands. They've

been around so long and everybody knows them and they kind of know the value of the brand, but I think they take it for granted. It's just like, you know, a Coca-Cola or Pennzoil or something that's just been around forever. Everybody knows it. So I think, yeah, I definitely think they take it for granted. So typically we end the… and ask you—you've been in an agency, I dug into your LinkedIn—would love to know what you

have brought from the ShockWarehouse.com days working with you. Like, if that's the beginning, what did you bring from that? Because, you know, there's always something that somebody did at the very beginning like, “Oh, I still do that.” What did you learn? What did you bring with you?

God, I can't believe you just mentioned Shock Warehouse. I haven't thought about that in… yeah, you can tell. So my favorite story of Shock Warehouse—so the way I got involved there, I always wanted to be in marketing and advertising as a kid. I don't know why. Like,

kids want to be firefighters, I wanted to do commercials. I have no idea why. It's just

what happened. My father's also an entrepreneur. Him and his buddies had acquired Shock Warehouse.

And at this time they were already kind of involved in the internet somehow, because this was early 2000s, I believe. Yeah, early 2000s. And so this guy that had this company, he was a pretty big distributor of shocks. He was basically a reseller in the market, and they were like, “We want to put it online.” And so they put it online and it just took off.

So I used to say to my dad, “Hey, this could be the first thing I do to help you with marketing stuff. But I literally have—I'm in high school, so I have nothing I could work

stuff. But I literally have—I'm in high school, so I have nothing I could work with right now.” He goes, “All right, you put in hours in the warehouse and then we will have you intern in exchange for that.” So I would work in the warehouse to only get side marketing projects every now and then. “We need the hard labor before you

can actually go to working with your mind.” And one of my favorite things to tell—because I always tell my dad, every time someone brings up Shock Warehouse, I'm going to tell them— they were offered to be the exclusive seller of shocks on Amazon right when Amazon was no longer selling books, and they shot it down. Oh my goodness.

That's my favorite thing to make fun of them for. So at that time, social media wasn't really a thing. MySpace was, but not the market. And Facebook was—I don't even know if Facebook had started at that time. If it did, it was definitely still colleges or whatever. So again, not the market. So it was all email marketing. It was really all we could do.

whatever. So again, not the market. So it was all email marketing. It was really all we could do.

What I had started with that I would say I still kind of took with me: the way that you speak to people via email, both from a marketing email but also sales emails. You've got to build a connection. I know it sounds ridiculous, but this is a

emails. You've got to build a connection. I know it sounds ridiculous, but this is a big thing that we talk about after Q4 for brands, too: you're hounding them to buy stuff for the next two months basically. The last thing you should be doing in Q1 is hounding them to buy

stuff again. It just doesn't make any sense. So now you have to pivot to: how can I keep

stuff again. It just doesn't make any sense. So now you have to pivot to: how can I keep you engaged? How can I keep you—how can I provide value? How can I educate you? How can I entertain

you engaged? How can I keep you—how can I provide value? How can I educate you? How can I entertain you? How can I do anything until I kind of feel like the life cycle's in a better spot and then

you? How can I do anything until I kind of feel like the life cycle's in a better spot and then I can try to start to sell you some stuff again. And so back then it was very similar. Originally,

we were still—we didn't want to give up on the original business, so we were still kind of speaking to mechanics and other car dealerships and things like that. But it was shocks. You

need them every now and then and that was it. So I had to figure out, how do I just keep you around? I don't want you to unsubscribe. I don't want you to spam me. I don't want you to bounce.

around? I don't want you to unsubscribe. I don't want you to spam me. I don't want you to bounce.

I want to be able to keep you around so that when the time comes around, you think of us.

And to be relevant to this body, I guess that was the brand building of: I need you to think of our brand next time you need this, because I know you don't need it right now. And that's kind of the big part of brand building that I always talk about with brands,

now. And that's kind of the big part of brand building that I always talk about with brands, because they look at—in my eyes paid media should be an accelerant. It shouldn't be a requirement.

And so many brands are so heavily reliant on paid media that I've seen people go through cashflow issues left and right, and they do nothing to build an asset. There too,

I know we talked about brand search on Amazon—like the amount of increase in brand search you'll see on Amazon because of the amount of solid brand building that you did off Amazon will severely reduce the requirements to run paid media on any keyword that you just can't seem to win because you're going up against these conglomerates that are just going to try to bid you out.

So that type of brand building is what can really help you improve your return over time, but bring down your requirement on paid advertising. And that's the magic number that I wish there was some way that I could paint that picture in some type of KPI to show it to clients of like,

“See how this has come down?” But you run into the other issue of, “They're searching our brand name. They were going to buy with us anyway.” Like—yes, because of the branding that you did.

name. They were going to buy with us anyway.” Like—yes, because of the branding that you did.

Catch-22. That's fantastic. Yeah. And I guess for us, that's almost the tribe, right? Building

that tribe early. And Huel actually, if you look into some of their early interviews, the founder of Huel talks about the first thousand people who would just buy the brand and put down money and subscribe to that brand. And they're that tribe that's carried him through. It gave him early cashflow, but also just understanding: what need is he meeting for those people?

And so that's what we try to do. And that concept tends to carry, right. But it's very hard to pin a number to it, like you were saying. But you can—it's almost like a survivor bias as well.

The brands that make it go, “Yeah, it just all worked,” right? But you see all these other brands that don't make it, and the common thread is: they have not built a brand, they don't have a tribe, and they don't have a science understanding of who they are that actually aligns with what the best customers think, you know? And maybe that's where the study is—do an analysis of all the failures

that spent millions of dollars and didn't make it. Yeah, that's a good one. I don't hate that.

Thanks for coming on, Andrew. We really appreciate it. This was a great conversation. Thanks again,

mate. It was great to have you on. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, Clint, as always, an absolute pleasure. Yeah, we'll talk to you another time. Thanks

again. Bye. Thank you.