The secret behind Chirp's rapid scaling, and what it really means to understand your market

Zach Johnson

Dylan Carpenter

Brian Nielson

Episode
91
|
1

Brian Nielson

,

VP Marketing

Chirp
Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsLive on SpotifyLive on Youtube

Brian Nielson is the VP of Marketing at Chirp, a health & fitness company dedicated to providing quality pain relief products. He believes in data, design thinking, and that all great products start with empathy, and if we fail to listen, we'll fail to solve the problem.

Episode Summary

TAKE AWAYS

  • How Chirp was able to rapidly scale being a new brand
  • How they go about creative testing at scale.
  • Understanding your target audience and building a community

RESOURCES/CONTACT:

Transcript

1
,
Episode
91
Transcript

Dylan (00:00):

On this episode of the rich dad, poor dad podcast, we have Ryan Nielson, the marketing director over at her. You may have seen their ads, you know, guys pop in their bags to this sounds really good and probably about five and myself, but these guys are spending well over seven figures. You know, every single year we're doing absolute damage on the creative status, things, scaling how they perceive pricing value, how they're boosting their LTV. There's just so much going into this one. I mean, if you're a fan of how business cute, you know, zero to 100 real quick, you want to tune in there's nuggets of this bad boy.

Brian (00:35):

People are like, well, what, what's your budget? Like, is it like you have $30,000 a month on a budget? And I'm like, no, I have infinite money a month, as long as I get a return on it. Which, I mean, it totally makes sense. Like if you knew you were going to get a three X return, like I'll put a trillion dollars into that thing like that, I'm going to get a three X. So, uh, but how I can control that is really just been down to like a scientific method of like, okay, uh, I need to trust the past of what I've been able to do with the creative. Um, and I need to be able to, uh, try to forecast accurately. Okay. When I start pushing things above, above a certain level of spend, where does it go? What do I, what, what happens to my return? And so I built on the sheet,

Zach (01:29):

You're listening to the rich add poor ed podcast, where we break down the financial principles that rich advertisers are deploying today to turn advertising into profit and get tons of traffic to their websites without killing their cash. These advertisers agencies, affiliates brands are responsible for managing over a billion dollars a year in ad spend. You'll hear about what's working for them today. They're rich ads and we'll roast their Epic failures and crappy ads on the internet with four ads. Let's get into it.

Dylan (01:56):

All right, everybody, we are back in business with another episode of the rich dad, poor dad podcast. We've got your host, Dylan Carpenter in the house. And today I'm pretty pumped about this one. I'm always in pain with my back and whatnot. And I think I've found a new product to buy it later today, maybe, but you may have heard from them. You may have seen their ads. Most likely they're spending well over seven figures generating some awesome numbers. Um, we got chirp, you've definitely seen the ads of the guy in the woods and his back popping a little bit. I love that ASR stuff. I don't know what it is, man, but it does wonders. So, I mean, we got the marketing director, Brian Nielsen over there. He's going to be sharing some awesome things, kind of what they're getting into. So Brian, what's up, man? What's

Brian (02:35):

Up Dylan? Thanks for having me, man.

Dylan (02:37):

Not a problem. I was pretty amped about this one. Cause I mean, I was just going through kind of finding all these bad-ass brands and I was pumped. You kind of followed back up and I'm like, hell yeah, I'm going to get sharp on this thing. It's going to be Epic.

Brian (02:50):

Well, I'm gonna, uh, I'm gonna get exposed by all the really good ad buyers out there. They'll be like, how did this dude scale so much with such this sketchy tactics? It'll be good.

Brian (03:00):

I'm glad to see. I hope everyone pokes holes and they make fun of me and I'll make fun of them back. But I'm excited

Dylan (03:07):

That way. My background of kind of who you are kind of when you joined church kind of what you all are getting into. So everybody kind of,

Brian (03:14):

Yeah, for sure. So what happened, uh, is I have a background, uh, I got my bachelor's degree in, uh, business management with a dual emphasis in marketing and finance. Uh, in high school, I had a little bit of experience with entrepreneurship. Uh, done a bunch of internships, went to Quicksilver when this, trying to get my life straight. Um, and I was, uh, out a job right out of college. Um, and I wasn't loving it wasn't really, for me it was an insurance company. So I got really heavy into analytics and started geeking out and was like, Oh dude, like Microsoft XL, like coding and VBA, like this is dope. Um, and one of my friend's brothers owned this company called plexus, uh, which is now chirp. And he was like, Hey, I'm looking for someone to start the marketing team. Because until that point he didn't have any really, like, he didn't have any salaried employees.

Brian (04:07):

He didn't have anyone. He was just working with kind of freelancers. They had just made a kind of a bigger hero video that they had launched and they had seen some success. Um, and they had recently just pivoted from yoga, the back pain. Um, and so with that, he was like, yo, I need someone to, to build this out and made us being prideful and overly confident. And I was like, yeah, I'll build out a marketing tool for it, for you. So, um, he hired me, um, to build that out and that is where I am now. I had no previous experience with Facebook ads, no successful experience, at least with more than $10 in spend. Um,

Dylan (04:47):

It was this

Brian (04:47):

Actually, this was in 2018, this was May, 2018 that I came on and, uh, the name was changed from plexus to chirp, uh, in July, 2018, we launched a Kickstarter, uh, and on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, we did over 2.1 million, uh, which is the highest, uh, funded pain relief product in history that I know of. Um, so yeah, it was really successful and I just kinda came and was drinking from a fire hose by our fire hose and, uh, been learning ton sense. So, so you throw yourself to the wolves? Yes, sir. Yes.

Dylan (05:26):

Awesome, man. That's the way to do it though. I mean, heck yeah, yeah. That's, that's a cool story there. So I mean fast forward to, you know, these days you're killing on the meta biasing, how meta biting seeing, or you kind of worried you stepped out of it for a little bit. Yeah.

Brian (05:42):

Yeah. So I guess I left out a chunk of the story. I suck, sorry, podcast. Yeah. So anyways, we had someone doing Facebook ads for us. Uh, he ended up in and he works for us still. He's great. But he ended up hiring someone outside. One of those like classic grooves that are just like, yo like hire me, I'll triple your ad spend. And I have like 10 X row ads on this like $20 spend or whatever. So, um, so he was doing it and I just got really nosy. And so like, as they were spending money, I was like, I had this little campaign called Brian test and I was just like testing. Cause I was like, I don't trust this dude. Like I feel like, cause I was leading a lot out on all the creative also. Um, and so having that kind of like short line between creative and ad buying is such a key.

Brian (06:32):

Um, and so I was just like, yo like video team let's make this video and I'm gonna plug it in right here and see how it does. And I started doing outperforming him in my tiny, tiny little test campaign. Uh, but eventually like a year into it year and a half into it, I was just like, dude, like this guy sucks. I don't trust him. I have trust issues with all ad buyers now because of this. Um, because of the things I promised and they just can't deliver. Um, and so last black Friday, which is a terrible time to take over an ad account, if you don't know what's going on, I was really freaked out. But, uh, so I took over the ad account and we just ended up plugging in all the assumptions that I had, all the small scale testing, we're able to just build into it. Um, and lots and lots of ad dollars spent later we're here. Uh, and I have done it up until the 1st of October and now we've just hired an outside guy to do it, but there's a lot of money that has been spent since then. So,

Dylan (07:32):

Oh yeah. You may remember this. I remember like this happened like two years, but like there is three days before black Friday where like Facebook was down. Yeah,

Brian (07:42):

Yeah. It was, uh, it was, yeah, that was freaking crazy

Dylan (07:47):

Current situation. Is it more of an agency all kind of work or is it a freelancer?

Brian (07:51):

Oh, he's a freelancer. He's a buyer to a bigger company and has a lot of he's like in, on all the big Facebook sales calls and so he's got pretty good ends there and so

Dylan (08:04):

Heck yeah, well congrats on all the success that's

Brian (08:10):

Yeah, well

Dylan (08:11):

It's time to get to the nitty-gritty man. Let me kind of dive in to what's working for businesses these days. And I think Dell killer example of, you know, a business that's doing wonders in the D to C community online. So I mean, what's your kind of rich hat in this world. [inaudible]

Brian (08:28):

And, and I can only speak to what I have done. Um, we're changing away from it a little bit, but uh, talking to the guy who's handling it now, uh, he's kind of said how weird it was that we have been successful with how things have been set up. So, um, we have a great creative team. Um, and I think that is what sets chirp apart from everyone. Uh, his back pain is boring and stupid and no can talk about it without seeming like a infomercial. Um, and so we just kind of took that and we ran with it and we we've always really wanted to make sure that chirp is a brand that's both relatable and reliable. Um, so rich ad, uh, there was a point when I was doing my little testing, I'm a little campaign and I was just like, how do I sell this product?

Brian (09:19):

Like, how am I going to sell this back pain thing? Like I don't really have back pain. I don't really know what to do. I don't know how Facebook ads work. I don't, I don't know. But I knew that if you can, if you can sell it to someone in real life, you can figure out a way. I figured you could figure out a way to sell it through a digital media. And so I called my mom and I was like, mom, you know, like you want to buy this thing? And she was like, yeah, sure. And I'm like, no mom, like, wait a second. You don't know anything about this. You're just going, you just love me. So she was like, okay. Yeah. Well, what is it? I'm like, it's a Terp wheel. And so I wrote that down and she's like, what is this?

Brian (09:54):

So I wrote down the question, what is it? And then she's like, what's it do? And then, so I was like, I wrote that down. What does it do? And then I wrote it and then she said, well, how's it work? She just started peppering me with all these questions all the way down to why does it come in three different sizes, uh, is shipping free is what's the guarantee on all these things. And I wrote all these questions down until finally I nailed the sale and I sold my mom on a three-wheel pack. And uh, so with all these questions, then I went to the creative team and I said, yo guys, like let's figure out videos. Uh, and let's break down all these questions and let's make videos about them specifically. So let's have a top funnel, kind of a prospecting. Let's have a hot middle funnel, let's have a lower middle funnel and let's have a low funnel because we figured if we can this group, the questions into those four funnels, which I know is that most people are disliked.

Brian (10:45):

They do prospecting and they do retargeting. And so people like you have a four stage funnel, you're wasting it. You're not going to scale like that, but we did so shut up. So, uh, so when we start answering these questions, we just kind of started seeing things turn and start to go. And we had to put, uh, like 50% of our ad spend and the prospecting top funnel. And then we broke down to have like a 30% in the middle on also the upper middle and lower metal. And we put about 20% in retargeting or in the, in the low funnel. Uh, and so as we did that, and as we had the creative to layer in the funnel, because all the creative was different. And I think why most companies can't do this is because basically they're prospecting creative and their retargeting creative is very similar.

Brian (11:34):

Yeah. Um, and the fact that we could have dialed in different things in each part of the funnel that just ended up killing it. And then we just started scaling like crazy. And we started spending more and more money. And, um, at the beginning of this year, we sold out of wheels, uh, in January. Uh, and then we started getting them back and February and March, and then COVID hit and all health products went up. So this was nothing that I did, uh, other than set a base. Uh, and then we sold out again and we had sold, we were sold out from April until like July. Wow. We were just pre-selling people. And we were still getting like a three X or it was on like 500 K in spend each month, uh, for those months. So, uh, that was it. That was a very long-winded way of saying our rich ad was we had a, kind of a more complicated four stage funnel.

Brian (12:38):

But the reason that worked is because we had creative, that was dialed in for each of those things. And I know that people would probably going to be like, well, if you could actually do better, just keep the same creative, just pair it down to this prospecting and retargeting. And that's kind of a direction we're going in right now. But, uh, it worked really well for us. And I, and I, I did test the two-stage, but when you have, uh, Facebook doing the bidding, like lowest cost and everything, it just kind of screw some stuff up. So yeah, that's the rich, that's the rich ad and it worked really well.

Dylan (13:09):

That's killer. I mean, and that works for a ton of businesses, you know? I mean, you got to understand where your buyers are at and the customer journey. Cause I mean, people are going to have questions and I think that's so funny. You want some mama bear to be like, ask me, what do you want to know to just really figure out how that messaging should go? Because I mean, somebody who's been to the websites can be super different than somebody who's initiated checkout. So I mean the fine tune that messaging there. Now, a question I have for you, this may have been, you know, it's may not be as relevant now because Facebook changes so often, but how were you all kind of scaling out of curiosity, doubling the budget of being a 20% duping, that campaign and raising that there are so many ways to do it. And I mean, I feel like there's not really a specific way on here's how to scale, how to, how to spend from a hundred K to 500 K a month. You may not be able to share it.

Brian (14:01):

Oh man, I just feel bad for everyone listening. They're going to be like this dude, what's up like this, this has worked for us. And that's all I can testify of. It is this, this is probably like this worked for the 1% of people that will try it, but I just started spending more money. I don't know. I didn't really have a strategy. I was just like, this is working. I'm going to spend more. Um, and occasionally things would mess up and I'd be like, okay, let me do the creative. Let me do. Uh, probably every like three or four months, I'd Duke, the whole camp, all the campaigns. Uh, and I'd change a little bit as far as like ad sets. Um, and, and who's included in each ad set once we went to campaign budget or a CPO, um, that was a huge game changer because it took a lot off my back rather than being like, okay, I'm going to spend like 2000 on friends of fans.

Brian (14:51):

I'm going to spend 3000 on website visitors. I'm gonna spend three, like whatever. Uh, I was just like, look, I'll put the right demographics that exist in there and the right creative. And then Facebook, you just pair up because we have so much creative. You just pair up the creative with the ad set with the person. So, uh, it was cool. And I don't know if this is just in my head, but I felt like we were just like, look Facebook, like we're giving you everything that you need to be successful. All you have to do is like keep sending the right creative to the right people. Um,

Dylan (15:22):

Oh, you're the algorithm is way smarter than any media buyer out there. I don't care what anybody's done. I mean, some of the campaigns, I have one campaign on like 10 K a day right now and is zero targeting broad 24 to 64, maybe creative assets in there. And I'm just like, go crazy Facebook.

Brian (15:42):

It works, which is, it's just like, Oh, this is great Facebook.

Dylan (15:45):

How many creatives are y'all testing actively? You know, w before you kind of find one that just really hits that spot.

Brian (15:52):

Um, let me, uh, we have, Oh gosh, we it's like in the hundreds, uh, like easily in the hundreds, probably actually not easily in the hundreds, probably in the hundreds, uh, uh, different things we have. Cause we will try to have our video. We have two videographers and they'll make several videos a month. And then of those videos, they'll chop up, uh, to different things. Uh, along with videos that we've seen that are successful, that are just kind of like our core videos. Like you mentioned, uh, Clayton, the bigger guy rolling out in the woods. Um, you have, uh, the bubble wrap test, uh, which that's another key for success is if you can show your product working rather than just tell someone about it. That's great. Um, but uh, yeah, lots and lots of creative, like overwhelmingly and amount of grit.

Dylan (16:49):

I feel like it's y'all's fault partially because I feel like I saw the ad of the guy's back popping and I just go down a rabbit hole, the chiropractor's popping people's necks and I just, it's so rare that so appealing. So I feel like it just like, I get hit by all these on my Instagram feed now, you know?

Brian (17:03):

Yeah. Oh yeah. That's our fault

Dylan (17:07):

Killer man. Yeah. Very different way. But I mean, it's never a one size fits all. So I mean, Hey, if it works, throw some fuel on the fire.

Brian (17:15):

Exactly. Uh, it w I mean, it was a little bit more technical than that, but because I don't, I'm not like in it, like I'm not a, I'm not an ad buyers ad buyer, you know, I'm a sketch bootstrappers ad buyer. Um, and so I couldn't really tell you right now, like, Oh yeah, this was scientifically what we did. But I do remember in the moment it was like, it was a very thought out decision of how we chose to scale things. And, um, but it was really just like a, there's no one key to success to add by like, you test you test until it works. Um, and the more you test, the smarter you get at testing and the less money you waste on testing cause you know what to test. So yeah,

Dylan (18:01):

No perfect. One thing I've noticed recently, I feel like I follow brands around a little too much kind of creepiest, whatever I noticed you've recently changed your offer within the past, maybe 30 to 60 days, maybe from like maybe one 29 to 99. Maybe

Brian (18:18):

I was

Dylan (18:20):

Curious on how often y'all change offers or if you kind of test one at a time or how that kind of comes to life.

Brian (18:25):

Yeah. So man, chirp is seriously just like, I hope there's a case study one day with all this, the weird changes and stuff that went on, because I feel like in college or whatever, I read a lot of case studies like Dropbox or pay pile and all these things. And you don't realize how many, just flippy things went around. I probably should have written them down. But, um, so the offers, uh, in the early days, we'd switch it around a lot. Um, and it kind of came back to haunt us and which was something I really wanted to go against was we had the wheels price really high and we would just always sell them on a discount. And so something that I started to notice was like, Hey, people will only buy if we have a discount, they won't buy just straight up. And it's because we've taught people, you only buy trip on a discount if we're always running a deal.

Brian (19:12):

I got. And I understand once again, the people listening to this are like the idiot, because you need to give the people that deal. I understand, but I'm just too much of a deal too often. It would just kind of train people to buy on price and not buy on value. Uh, and so with the creative, we really, really tried to amp that value. Um, and it has paid off. So, but we did, we did mess around with the price, all the wheels individually, if you were to buy them, there are one 65. Um, so, but for a long time, when we came out with the chirp wheel, plus it was, it was priced at one 20, the beginning of this year, we had a sale that was supposed to be for March madness, rest in peace. And, um, it was, this must have been, was supposed to be a good deal, closer to a hundred, but not quite a hundred because a hundred was in the past.

Brian (20:01):

Like that's our black Friday thing is a hundred dollars. Um, but then when COVID hit and we're just like, shoot, like people aren't going to have money. Um, and people really more people are going to be at home with back pain. Uh, it was really probably the most genuine like, Hey, let's just hook the people up with a good deal, uh, of a hundred dollars. Uh, and not only is that like a good marketing play, but it was also just like, Hey, like let's just suck the people, like let's do a good thing for people. Uh, we're still making money on it. Um, and once you get under the a hundred dollars threshold, you get a whole new set of people just like when you get under 75 or when you get under 50, it's just a certain mental block. If you're like, Oh, it's under a hundred dollars. I don't have to ask my wife if I can buy this. Um, so we've actually been running that since March. Um, but yeah, so go find the dealer com for the deal. Don't worry about the value. This is fricking interesting.

Zach (21:07):

This episode is brought to you by a funnel Nash's add card, the only charge card exclusively for your digital ad spend. And if you're an advertiser spending tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands dollars a month on ads and you're in e-commerce and you're looking for more capital or credit to scale, then you're probably familiar with solutions like Shopify capital Brex and clear bank problem with these solutions is the cost of capital is expensive. They take a percentage of your revenue, one of the beauties with add card, when you combine it with one of our in network of our 5,000 in network agency partners, you have the opportunity to qualify for free ad capital funding where we'll load up your ad card with an additional $50,000 all the way up to a million dollars of additional capital to deploy on platforms like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and more. So if that's you, if you're an e-commerce spending a ton of ads and you're looking for a way to decrease the cost of capital checkout ad card,

Brian (22:09):

We'll get back to the show. So of course, that was quite a rich ad segment. Now, when it comes to the, we love to, you know, showcase, we're not all perfect. We all tests how, what percent of tests actually works 20, maybe 30% let's be real. So, I mean, what's, y'all's poor ad and this chirp world,

Brian (22:33):

Even, even tests that don't work, I think it just depends on how, how positive you are is how many tests work. I'm a Hunter, I'm positive, man. We never have tests that fail now. Um, so our, our poor ad, it's not necessarily an ad necessarily an ad as much as we have not been able to find products that pair super well to upsell on the backend with the Charleville LTV. Yeah. So we have an, which is weird is that we, we easily break even on our prospecting for like, and I know that a lot of people they're just like, yeah, like even with Facebook ads, I'm cool. If I just break, even because we have such a good LTV and I'm like, we can't do that. Like we need to, we need to kill it. Um, and so it's really just been the backend product and we're still are not searching really anymore. We have some tests coming up. So by the time this comes out, we should be out with our new topical gel called alleviate, shout out to this thing. It is, uh, it's like an icy hot or a, uh, a deep blue. Um, but it, uh, and with supplements and stuff, it's kind of a weird world of things you can say. And can't say, but I think I can say that it, uh, gives cooling sensations, uh,

Dylan (23:53):

If they choose your back within 24 hours, everybody know,

Brian (23:57):

Thank you, Dylan. Thanks for saying what I'm not allowed to say. I know that I'm not allowed to say that it relieves your back pain, so not allowed to say that. Um, but yeah, so that that's, uh, going to be awesome. And honestly, it, it's a great product and it's a consumable product, which makes it a great product from a business standpoint. So, uh, we have that coming out. We have a, um, uh, a third version of the chirp wheel, uh, which is going to be super rad. It's going to have kind of vibration and heating technology in it, which will be super sick. Uh, and that's going to be a higher price point item. So, uh, those are just a couple of things that we're trying to do, but for the longest time, like on the backend, we have just been like buy more turf wheels, like, well, we'll sell them for like instead of 99 bucks, we'll sell them for 60 bucks.

Brian (24:48):

And honestly, like, it kind of works, um, because people will just be like, Oh cool. Like I could give these to my friend. I can give him to my family. I can give them. So it works. It works especially well in Q4. Um, but because we don't really have anything else, it's just kinda like, we're just shoving, like here do more stuff, which works also in supplements. It's like, Oh, you bought one supplement, but sell you ate. And people were like, Oh, that makes sense. I'll get through these eventually. But at chirp wheel we have like a great warranty on it. And so if it ever breaks, like we'll just give you one for free. So there's not really a reason to have multiple sets in your house. Um, save the planet, don't buy multiple sets for your house, buy 'em for your neighbors. They can kill the planet and fix their back. Um, but, uh, yeah, so that's,

Dylan (25:34):

So it was more of just, you know, finding other products that match with, you know, these types of pain points, more or less of this boost, AOV and LTV. That was just kind of having tricky spots with the guests.

Brian (25:45):

Yeah, totally. And, and last year I wasn't fully supportive of this idea, but what we did was we did a, uh, a big like backend upsell, like very, it was very gimmicky. Like I, it made me mad, but it, we were testing for testing sake, but I, like, I was livid. I was like, this is destroying our brand. But, um, because that gimmicky stuff works on older people who you would think have back pain, if it's like, Whoa, like that's why the freaky infomercials look how they do, but it is the polar opposite for people that are like us who are like 25 to 35. Like they're like, no, that's cheap and gimmicky and I'm not going to do this. So, uh, we saw a lot of pushback on that. All like comments just turned negative on Facebook. Like, ah, everything was going great until I got to this sketchy up page on the end.

Brian (26:36):

Um, and so the key to that was really just knowing our demographic. Our demographic is 25 to 45. Uh, with the key person is five years old. And most people that go into back pain, they're like, Oh, I don't know, like 50 to 75 years old. No. Like we know who it is. And it's not that. And the messaging turns our demographic a way that we really need to go after. So that is, uh, also paired up with the LTV because we need to do, we're trying to do these upsells, but yeah, that was not a good thing for us. Yeah.

Dylan (27:04):

I'm getting some killer highlights over here on paper. I'm like, that's a,

Brian (27:10):

That's great.

Dylan (27:11):

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it's interesting on the life cycle of the brand, you know, it's, it's, you know, it's not always all butterflies and rainbows, so I mean, it's, you gotta test and sometimes come out to life, you know?

Brian (27:24):

Oh yeah, yeah. Like we're last October, uh, October has never been a great month for us the last October. Like something was going wrong with ROAS. And this is when I started to take over it. Uh, we had to just completely shut off our Facebook ads because, and it just like destroyed. Like we depend, we depended a lot on Facebook ads and last October, like we, I was scared. We were going out of business. I'm like, I'm gonna lose my job. Like this sucks. And then Q4 hit and it was like raisins for everyone we're buying a building. We're yeah. So, Uh, yeah, it was a lot of rollercoaster going on at church, but we're getting better sort of black, right? Exactly.

Dylan (28:09):

Well, the snap man. So these have been solid. So, you know, we'd love to take a page out of the rich dad, poor dad book, kind of meet the crossroads of marketing and some sort of financial principles or financial tips. So what can you kind of share with the audience on your experience there?

Brian (28:24):

Uh, so when I, I, and I knew this question was coming, um, and financially the owner tape take stock, great dude, a great entrepreneur works his butt off. Um, he is like the least risk adverse person I've ever met. Like he, when you say risky for the biscuit, like he's like, yeah, he, he, he straight up does like, he and I, this is a shout out to him. He's still living in the same, like apartment that he lived in, in college, like five years ago, uh, he drives like a $700 car. Uh, he is not like the classic, like entrepreneur, like, Oh, like I'm like, self-made, I've just bought a Tesla. And like, he's like anti that, uh, he is just reinvested everything into the business. And he is just told me, Brian, like, I don't care what you spend, as long as we get a return on it, which is people are like, well, what's your budget?

Brian (29:29):

Like, is it like you have $30,000 a month on a budget? And I'm like, no, I have infinite money a month, as long as I get a return on it. Which, I mean, it totally makes sense. Like if you knew you were going to a three X return, like I'll put a trillion dollars into that thing like that, I'm going to get a three X. So, uh, but how I can control that is really just been down to like a scientific method of like, okay, uh, I need to trust the past of what I've been able to do with the creative. Um, and I need to be able to, uh, try to forecast accurately. Okay. When I start pushing things up above a certain level of spend, where does it go? What do I, what, what happens to my return? And so I built out a sheet that kind of just has our spend levels by our row as, um, and then I have our fixed costs built into there to show me like, okay, if I'm spending this much, I need at least this row as to cover our fixed costs.

Brian (30:27):

Um, and so it does like a little rainbow thing. And so if you build out that sheet, you can, it really is liberating. Cause you're like, maybe we want a three X row as, but maybe at 600,000 a month in spend a two X row as actually is more profitable, uh, because you're spending way, way more. So if you can, if you can get that dialed in and you can build that sheet of like realize versus spend versus your fixed costs and what you actually need to cover to go by. That's great. And we're in the stage right now of our business to where sales is everything. Like if we want to get into retail, if we want to get, uh, deals with deals with these companies to help us flow more organically and not have to spend so much on Facebook, we needed to prove them like, Hey, the demand's out there.

Brian (31:13):

All we need are eyeballs. Um, because the only reason we're not as profitable as we could be is because we're paying so much for eyeballs on Facebook. Um, and so once you prove that to them, then you move up in a new stage of business. And I think a lot of people get caught up in that, Oh shoot, like I'm so dependent on Facebook ads. Like, how do I get to the next level? Will you sell more? And that will attract bigger people to help you out and flow more organically. Um, and that is where the business starts getting more cushy and, um, not more cushy, more stable, uh, and stabilized growth. So, uh,

Dylan (31:47):

Sounds like we're ships of leadership was the moving factor for the whole business to keep that momentum going, not getting hockey reinvesting back into the business. So it sounds like, you know, he definitely had his head on straight to really realize where he wants to see this, Hey, the first couple of years, maybe tricky, but I mean, we're going to build a beautiful monster, you know?

Brian (32:06):

Yeah, totally, totally. And, uh, it's, it's helped, we've gotten a lot of, uh, great contacts and retail and other places we air on shark tank tomorrow w which is October 30th. I know this will have aired already and everyone will know what happens. I can't say, but it happens. So hopefully you guys all know, and then we're on like a Saturday morning spot at QVC this Saturday. So hopefully we're still on QVC when this airs and we're not out of business, but yeah. So it's helped us a lot. It's helped us a lot and we're moving to, uh, uh, areas where we don't have to rely completely on Facebook ads. So

Dylan (32:46):

That's the way to do it. These platforms are getting sketchier on sketchy.

Brian (32:51):

True. That true that man.

Dylan (32:53):

Well, this has been fricking sick man. So I mean, give everybody an idea, you know, how can we support you? How can people find you what's next? So the chirp world, if you can share it.

Brian (33:04):

Yeah, for sure. So, like I said before, really V8, um, the muscle tension topical, I don't know what I can say still. Uh, that's going to be coming out. That'll be out by the time this podcast comes out, go and try it. It's so good. Uh, you'll be able to get trial sizes, um, and, uh, just to try them out and it's killer, you'll see that, um, same with, uh, the new, the new chirp wheel three. That's going to be coming out next year. Hopefully. So go try a chirp wheel. I, I promise you you'll love it. And if you don't love it, just like send it back. Like it's it's cake. And I know that's, everyone's things like love it or send it back, but like, it is really good. Um, and it's very underrated and you're going to see a lot more of it.

Brian (33:51):

Um, also if you play pickleball, go to McCall, pickleball.com and get a pickleball paddle, that's my own personal thing. That's my shout out. And I deserve that for being on this podcast. So, uh, I wanna hear first, the best pickup there. Great. So anyways, but, uh, yeah, Terp is killer. Uh, and I would L I am super passionate about helping other people, um, especially the kids that are like in college coming out. Cause I had a lot of people help me when I was in college. Like the CEO of like Nixon reached out. Like it was, it was really cool. I had to reach out a lot and I didn't always get like long talks. Sometimes those got like a two sentence message, but it was still helpful. And so I'm more than happy to talk to anyone about, um, ad buying about managing a marketing team about creating a marketing strategy, uh, or starting up a business or, or anything I'm more than happy to talk. Um, and you can find me on LinkedIn, Brian Nielson. Hey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dylan found us. So this is great. Hey, y'all heard it go by some,

Dylan (35:04):

Thanks for jumping off hand. It's been an absolute blast. Thanks so much, John. I appreciate it.

Zach (35:13):

Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich ed or at podcasts. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich ed [inaudible] dot com slash podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add or ed book to learn more about the book. Go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ed or at.com/review. Thanks again.

Host Resources Links

MORE EPISODES
MORE EPISODES

Here’s what people are saying!

About The Podcast

Jason Hornung is the founder and Creative Director at JH Media LLC, the world’s #1 direct response advertising agency focusing exclusively on the Facebook ads platform. Jason’s proprietary methods for ad creation, audience selection and scaling are responsible for producing $20 million + of profitable sales for his clients EVERY YEAR

Zach Johnson

Zach Johnson is Founder of FunnelDash, the Agency Growth and Finance Company, with their legendary Clients Like Clockwork solutions. Under Zach’s leadership, FunnelDash has grown to over 5,000+ agency customers managing over $1 Billion in ad spend across 41,000 ad accounts on. Zach’s private clients have included influencers such as Dr. Axe, Marie Forleo, Dan Kennedy, Dean Graziozi to name a few. Zach is also a noted keynote speaker and industry leader who’s now on a mission to partner with agencies to fund $1 Billion in ad spend over the next 5 years.

Dylan Carpenter

Dylan Carpenter

Dylan Carpenter will be diving into what he and his team are seeing in 200+ accounts on Google and Facebook when it comes to trends, new offerings, and new opportunities. With over $10 million in Facebook/Instagram ad spend, Dylan Carpenter had the pleasure to work with Fortune 500 companies, high investment start-ups, non-profits, and local businesses advertising everything from local services to physical and digital products. Having worked at Facebook as an Account Manager and now with 5+ years of additional Facebook Advertising under my belt, I’ve worked alongside 60+ agencies and over 500+ businesses. I work with a team of Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn experts to continue to help companies and small businesses leverage the power of digital marketing.

Subscribe now and sharpen your advertising skills each week while building your swipe file of winning ads