Hosted By

Rabah Rahil
CMO at Triple Whale

Guests

Ash Melwani
Co-Founder & CMO of MyObvi
Cody Plofker
Director of E-Commerce Jones Road Beauty

Is MER a Useful KPI?

Today, the boys are back together and dive into MER. Is it a useful KPI? In what context? Listen to this episode to hear our thoughts.

#Adspend

Notes & Links

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- Cody's Twitter: https://twitter.com/codyplof
- Ash's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ashvinmelwani

Transcription

Cody Plofker (00:00):

I do think Mer is important. I think if our Mer was, we were spending a hundred percent of our revenue on ads, I would be worried. Right. So taking to the extreme, it, it clearly tells you to see something, right. If we were spending 5% of our revenue on ads, I would say there's room to grow and scale. There's probably a decently healthy correlation between Mer and and net profit margins. So I, I, I do think it's important. It's, it's not the only thing. It shouldn't be the only, like a good Mer doesn't mean you should spend more, a bad Mer doesn't mean that, that, that you, you know, that you are spending too much, however, it is one metric that can just kind of help guide you in that direction and show you the profitability. So I look at Mer daily,

Rabah Rahil (00:45):

Almost into the double digits folks, episode nine, we have Cody back. He has a little bit of a vacation hangover. Uh, how were The Bahamas?

Cody Plofker (00:52):

It was good. It was dope, but excited to be back with you guys.

Rabah Rahil (00:55):

Yeah, absolutely. We're excited to have you back. We had a Canadian fill in the shoes. Didn't do two too bad of a job. And then as always at my P C down here, Ash wan, Ash, how are you?

Ash Melwani (01:05):

Good man. Good, good, good. Number nine.

Cody Plofker (01:08):

The guru himself.

Ash Melwani (01:10):

<laugh> it's kind look crazy for episode Ted.

Rabah Rahil (01:14):

Ooh, that's a good idea. Maybe that'll be the drinking episode, the drunk episode or whatever.

Cody Plofker (01:18):

<laugh> let's do it.

Rabah Rahil (01:21):

No. Um, so we're gonna do something a little bit different this episode. So Ash actually tossed out a thread that, uh, caught some teeth. So there's some, actually some really good questions in here. Um, so I'm just gonna pepper the boys with the questions we'll riff on the questions. This might be a shorter episode, but Hey, you know, such as life's not, everything needs to be a 75 minute banger. So if you guys are ready, I'll start, start it off.

Cody Plofker (01:44):

Let's do it.

Rabah Rahil (01:45):

Okay. So first one, this is from Matthew gai. I should actually know how to pronounce his name, cuz he does the production of the show, which is, uh, I feel horrible now. Um, but the question is strategy on organic content creation and content created to retain customers versus to get new ones. So retention versus acquisition, like your podcast and maybe other content that you have Cody will start with you and then Ash will run to you. Yeah. How do you see content in, in terms of acquisition versus retention play?

Cody Plofker (02:15):

Yeah, that's a great question. That's a great question. I would, I would say the one guy who got me thinking very differently about this, his name is J co and at Clavio, I don't know if you guys kind of know, no, he buys,

Cody Plofker (02:28):

Oh, that's dope. He's a, he's a brilliant guy. And he kind of like blew my mind and I did an interview with him. I don't wanna give too much away, you know, cause I haven't asked for permission to share this, but like I didn't interview with him kind of like telling him like, cuz I'm obviously in their target market, like how I consume content and like what my habits look like, but also kind of what my, uh, consumption looks like in terms of like, what is top of funnel? What is middle funnel? And I think that, that, that's something really interesting to think about is like for your niche, for your industry, like what are most of your customers buying behaviors in terms of their awareness and their consideration phases? You know, are they using YouTube as a search engine? Are they using now TikTok as a search engine?

Cody Plofker (03:11):

I think first of all right before we talk about the type of content, like understanding where we're actually placing the content I think is important. And then understanding, you know, is TikTok top of funnel and is like for us, I, I consider TikTok very top of funnel. Um, 85% of the sessions are on the, for you page. And I consider Instagram very middle of funnel. So Instagram is, is much more, you know, customers, it's much more of a retention play the type of content that we do, whether it's Q and a or anything like that, it's much more middle funnel. We also have our own editorial piece where we actually use it as middle funnel. You could use it as top of funnel SEO acquisition, and we're planning to do that with a, a Jones road blog in the future. But I think that's the first thing is understanding where you're trying to reach people in the funnel. And are you trying to get new eyeballs? What's your distribution strategy behind that? And, and whether that's SEO and you're doing keyword research and, and ranking stuff or whether you're doing TikTok and you're trying to go viral, that should be very different content than if you are trying to retain customers and trying to educate your customers on how best to use your products.

Rabah Rahil (04:18):

I love that Ash,

Ash Melwani (04:19):

What's your take? So for organic, I think on, we didn't really see much growth on organic because we really started with paid, right? So I think now with channels like TikTok, where we can get that organic reach, um, I think what we're kind of focusing on is putting out similar content that we're using for top of the funnel ads, but it in a more or less salesy way. Right? So on TikTok, we're coming out with videos like how to use our product, right. And what is the product good for? So for example, collagen is good for this, this and this. And then like, you will have several videos talking about, well, it's great for hair, cuz it'll do this for your hair or it's great for nails cuz it'll do this for your nails. Right? So those are probably the types of content that we're pushing organically on TikTok.

Ash Melwani (05:12):

And we're still trying to figure out how to like capture that audience. We haven't had any like hits, right? Like getting like organic reach, like a lot of it outside of paid. But I think that's probably the, the route will go down is just educating based on what the product is now in terms of, uh, retention. I think we do that better than acquisition, like organic content for acquisition because we have like, we have the videographer, we have videographer video editor, um, and we're basically filming content of how to use the product or like as if you already have the product, what are ways you can use it? Right. So we have a whole, uh, recipe series, like here's, you know, a recipe for overnight oats, coffee, ice, coffee, this and that. So we're just constantly putting out content because the, the question for us is how else can I take this?

Ash Melwani (06:02):

Right? Like I'm not gonna just take an almond milk 30 days out of the month. I gotta like figure out ways to do it. Right. So we do like eat, uh, drink, bake, like those types of things where it's like, all right, well I can make a smoothie. I can make ice coffee. So I think separately, we're still trying to figure out the organic content and like how to drive revenue that way and growth for like social. But I think retention wise, a lot of our stuff we're focusing on kind of goes on YouTube, which is then repurposed on our app and then also kind of shown in the community. Uh, but basically just weighs on how to, how to use all the products.

Rabah Rahil (06:41):

I, I have a couple questions for you guys. I'm gonna start with you Ash. Don't you guys have a podcast

Ash Melwani (06:47):

And the podcast. Yeah. But it's, it's more so for, I don't, I guess it is more so for the community. Right. It's more so just additional content that the community can, um, kind of

Rabah Rahil (07:02):

Consume, talk about. Yeah,

Cody Plofker (07:03):

That's right. That's retention though. It just seems like most of your content is, is retention focused, which is totally fine.

Rabah Rahil (07:09):

But that was either

Ash Melwani (07:10):

Question so, but it isn't, I don't know. I don't know if you would call it like retention focused more so than like keeping people in the community and like just kind of, cause the podcast has nothing to do with the product right. At all. So in, in theory, maybe by

Rabah Rahil (07:25):

What's the podcast called

Ash Melwani (07:27):

It's called don't over spill.

Rabah Rahil (07:30):

Not like by my, not like by Avi or anything, there's literally no company.

Ash Melwani (07:34):

It's not a it's from the, it's from the girls that are known in the yeah.

Rabah Rahil (07:38):

Yeah. So you're

Ash Melwani (07:39):

Right. So I don't know if maybe indirectly, right. You're, you're kind of providing entertainment to your community, but not in a way where it's like directly product related. Right. So it's tough for me to say that it does help retention, but I do know that it helps with engagement within the community, which could possibly lead to higher attention if that makes sense.

Rabah Rahil (08:03):

Makes sense of sense. And so the other question is you don't see those recipe creations as an acquisition mechanism.

Ash Melwani (08:11):

We tried, we did try it. Doesn't um, it like we, we used to run like, uh, recipes at top of the funnel. And then back when like retargeting was doing well, we would place those in like middle

Rabah Rahil (08:24):

Of the funnel. No, I'm not talking about paid again again, just in organic, like you having a YouTube channel showing the like some, almost like YouTube SEO where you're showing these recipes. Cause I didn't know, you could bake collagen. That's pretty cool. Like, so there's all these cool things that like, so I don't know. I see that to me anyways, as, as a bit of an acquisition vector where it's like somebody randomly stumbles on your, your YouTube video, I'm sure there's a link right. To the site to buy it to the, in the description. No, there's something there. I mean, you could even use like bit Lee or some sort of UTM to track mm-hmm <affirmative> like if people are clicking through that, but um, that's

Ash Melwani (08:57):

I

Rabah Rahil (08:57):

Think it can be, you're not giving yourself enough credit.

Ash Melwani (09:00):

Yeah. It it's tough because I just, we don't see that reach as like, as maybe Cody does. Right? Like we just don't have that, like that organic reach where, where we'll put out the recipe, the majority of the user are customers. It, it,

Cody Plofker (09:15):

Yeah. So that's the thing with that's the thing with organic is like the distribution is so much harder to come by that I think like a lot of organic on your owned or I, I hate calling social channels own, but whatever on your own social channels is gonna be your existing customers and, and your followers, like there are very few organic top of funnel distribution you're right. Or you can reach way new people. TikTok is obviously one of them. And like Rob said, I do think YouTube SEO is another big one. Pinterest. I'm not a Pinterest expert. We, we don't do it, but I could see that maybe Pinterest could have some decent SEO in, in distribution, but I think you have to create the content with that in mind. Right. You'd have to be like do some keyword research and be like best collagen, poor weight loss, or like weight loss, smoothie recipes. And like, I'm sure those are incredibly complicated and I'm not a YouTube SEO expert, but that's kinda what you're thinking, Robert. Right?

Rabah Rahil (10:08):

Yeah. Just kind of like, I think you're not giving yourself enough credit where you're just kind of proliferating across these channels. And I think Cody hit it on the head where I think it should be channel focused first where I think YouTube would be fantastic for you guys to really just start to own the, because it's the second biggest search engine right behind Google proper. Um, so I think like people would go there and like how to like the best ways to get better skin or blah, blah, blah. Like there's all these, it's this big question, answer machine. And if you can start to, uh, put some, uh, resources behind that and you're posting daily, um, I think it makes a ton of sense for you guys. And then also to Cody's point, I think TikTok is another big place where you could still get a lot of organic reach. I think Instagram and Facebook are pretty much dead in terms of organic reach. It's, it's pretty much a pay to play platform. Um,

Cody Plofker (10:52):

I still think you can get organic reach, but you're gonna get just your followers. It's a hard part like distribution beyond that is, is

Rabah Rahil (10:58):

Really hard. Yeah. So I, I, I should probably been more precise in my language incremental reach where like you're gonna hit your, your followers where you're not gonna hit the trending page anymore, whatever, where you're gonna get into new buckets of content. Yeah. Um, one more question then I wanna pick on you a little bit, Cody. Um, do you guys have a newsletter Ash?

Cody Plofker (11:15):

<affirmative>

Ash Melwani (11:18):

Um, not in the sense of like we like

Rabah Rahil (11:23):

A whale mail or something. Yeah.

Ash Melwani (11:24):

Why not? No, we don't. It's a good question. I mean, we, the way that we kind of put out content on email, it's either blogs or recipes when we have them. It's not like on a, alright, every Thursday, this is coming out. Right. It's more so like, alright, do we have a new recipe? Do we have a new, um, blog going and out? Do we have a new YouTube video that we put out? Right. It's not as scheduled as what you would probably want, if that makes sense.

Rabah Rahil (11:57):

Yeah. Do you guys supplement that with push notification with the app?

Ash Melwani (12:02):

Yeah. So anytime that there's a new recipe, so there's

Rabah Rahil (12:04):

A little bit,

Ash Melwani (12:05):

Yeah. So we upload a new recipe on YouTube backboard on the app and then we push notification, Hey, new recipe for cinnamon pancakes is now available. Go check it out. Um, and then just go straight to that video.

Rabah Rahil (12:19):

I love it. Okay. You're off the horns,

Ash Melwani (12:21):

Not the consistent newsletter. Yeah. <laugh> we definitely need to work on our organic, I think.

Rabah Rahil (12:27):

Well, I, I think for you guys, you have so much content already that you can almost do an aggregated newsletter. Um, and like if you build a cadence and a social contract with people, um, it would be something. And then you could also build in kind of like a, um, engagement question or something like that, that you could build in. Cause you just have such a big, fun community. And like if your Facebook group is that big, your email list could be 10 times as big. I mean, it, it, for me, it's a no brainer.

Cody Plofker (12:51):

The easiest thing you could do, hold on real quick, the easiest thing you could do, and we do this, just do a monthly wrap up and just like, don't even call like a different thing or you could call it something different and just anything that happened in your community that month. And again, you could segment this to make sure you're sending this to people who actually want it, but just monthly wrap up, here's all of your content pieces. So we, we do like a, what to read, what to watch, what we launched, all that kind of stuff. We get pretty strong reactions to that.

Rabah Rahil (13:18):

Well, and you guys have such a li both of you guys actually have such a lifestyle bent to your products that it's so easy. Like there's new Netflix, like Cody's saying new stuff to watch new stuff, to read fashion, like all these fun things that you could really here's the new look, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Cody mm-hmm <affirmative> take me through your, um, so do you guys, so you said you have a monthly newsletter you're really strong on organic TikTok. Um, do you guys have a pretty big YouTube presence?

Cody Plofker (13:44):

No, we don't. We don't, we, we don't currently want to in the future, it's just kind of like order of priorities and resources and bandwidth definitely want to definitely know it can be huge. I mean, I've done a decent amount of like customer research on, on this. And like, so we get a lot of press, right? We're a lot of them are kind of like more legacy stuff, but they're obviously digitally native now or, you know, digitally first now. And I was thinking like, alright, who are the, we have some really good like partnerships with some kind of some that are good for older demographics. So I was thinking like, alright, we need a millennial version of one. So I started doing some customer research and like, nobody, first of all, nobody reads anymore. I, again, not nobody. I, I hate when people say those blank things, but especially about beauty.

Cody Plofker (14:23):

People are not reading about beauty. They are so, so two interesting things I learned they're, they're watching it's video first, right? Anybody millennial and below is all video, but also it's, it's gone decentralized. They don't care to get their information from publishers. It's all the individuals. So it's influencers. Yep. So that being said where people are discovering new products going to learn about them. It's it's it's, you know, back then, this was six months ago. I did the research. I, it was a lot Instagram and YouTube now. I think, think it's probably a lot TikTok in Instagram and YouTube. Yeah. Long story short. I think TikTok is untapped. I think Instagram is very competitive. I think TikTok is going to become very competitive. I think not enough people are investing resources into YouTube. Yeah. I think it's harder to do. I do think it's harder to do. I think it's less sexy, but I think again, you, like you talked about it's the second biggest search engine, you know, if anybody's interested in makeup and they see a miracle bomb ad, they're gonna go to either Google, YouTube or TikTok and they're gonna search miracle bomb review. So I think that YouTube could be an amazing platform for any brand, but especially a beauty brand.

Rabah Rahil (15:29):

Yeah. I, I think your spot on there and you can build a channel into a monster pretty quickly and you'll be surprised how, uh, things compound cuz the algorithm starts to like you and then you'll have a video with a million views in like over a year or something like that where it's like, it, it gets quick, it faster happens slower than you think. And then faster than you think. Okay. Why don't you guys do a newsletter? Why do you just do, why don't you do it weekly? why.you just do a monthly resources or

Cody Plofker (15:53):

So let's yeah. I mean, so say

Rabah Rahil (15:55):

Squeeze,

Cody Plofker (15:56):

We actually do. So we have a, a media site it's called Jeff bobby.com and we're trying to figure out exactly what way we're gonna take it. We have a multiple times a week can newsletter through that, but that's separate of John's road, but obviously they're, they're, they're very intertwined. And then ours, we didn't really call it a newsletter. It's just a monthly wrap up. It's just like a, oh, like here's what happened this month, but it's not like from a different sender or anything, but we do have a completely separate newsletter. It's just much smaller of a list.

Rabah Rahil (16:23):

What's your take on the podcast? CI, is there ever gonna be, uh, a time that you guys do launch your own podcast?

Cody Plofker (16:31):

Yes, probably. I mean we have one, Bobby has one it's it's currently like through iHeartRadio, so it's not directly related.

Rabah Rahil (16:38):

Okay.

Cody Plofker (16:38):

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, and so it's not super involved, but like yeah, I will use a lot of those clips on TikTok and, and whatnot. Sure. You know? Yeah. So it does do that. I could see, uh, a, a time and a place in the future where we did a podcast. Um, I think a lot of it, but though would be like heavily video based. So I think it could be more of a U YouTube channel, more of like a educational thing.

Rabah Rahil (17:00):

Yeah. I love it. That's fantastic. Um, yeah, I mean, I think you guys are spot on ultimately I think both of your thinking of exactly right where Cody is definitely in order of operations. And then, um, I like how you have the app where there's just kind of a different property that you own and, um, have those emails and stuff like that, where, um, that's, I mean, transparently to our strategy where we're actually gonna start to build a content network in terms of podcasts, where we're gonna start bringing in more and more people into the triple well universe and then basically, uh, have almost like a, a Gimlet or something like that, where we just have all these kind of random podcasts that are under the triple well umbrella and just start getting more content in front of people cuz it's just, um, it can compound really quickly, but a newsletter is a heavy lift to be fair. And if you do it bad, it sucks. Um, and then YouTube does really reward, um, almost like daily uploads. So I, I really take your points there. Um, okay, cool. Thank you for the question, Matthew, let's go to the second one. Unless you guys have any other points you wanted to touch on.

Cody Plofker (17:58):

No good on that. Totally agreed with everything.

Rabah Rahil (18:01):

Cool. Uh, look at that. Everybody in agreement, we gotta turn up the heat. He comes back from the islands. All calm, not even drinking that much water. What is going on? What is going on?

Cody Plofker (18:11):

Oh, I got it. I got it.

Rabah Rahil (18:13):

Oh, okay. Okay. And the Fiji flex. You see this guy? This guy

Cody Plofker (18:18):

Ready? Ready?

Rabah Rahil (18:19):

Um, oh gosh. Don't do it. Plug your ears. People plug your ears. Um, okay. So this comes from chase Masani I hope I pronounce your name. He's actually come up with my feet. Like he's a really bright guy. I have to talk to him some more. I don't have any clue who he is and he's, uh, really hip to it. Um, but he says help people with economics that they need as a foundation to grow. So let's keep this kind of like a 1 0 1, but how do you guys look at your economics

Cody Plofker (18:41):

Question for you guys? Question for you guys. What do you think of Mer? Do you think Mer is useless or not?

Rabah Rahil (18:48):

Oh, I think it's super useful, but again, I don't think one metric is the end all be all. I think if you look at one metric you're already lo losing, like there needs to be a constellation of metrics that you're using to get to synthesize into how the business is doing.

Cody Plofker (19:01):

For sure. I've seen somebody won't name who on Twitter recently talk about Mer being useless. So of course just wanted to throw out there, be a little bit spicy, but I couldn't agree with more. I, I don't see how Mer is useless by any means. I think it can be useless if that's your only number you're looking at, but I, I hate the, the one, right. A north star metric. Like why should there be one, you know, net, net profits, net profits in north star.

Ash Melwani (19:28):

Yeah. Like

Cody Plofker (19:29):

If you need, if you need one based

Ash Melwani (19:31):

Like if, if you're using it, are you using it for paid? Are you using it for like, are you trying to understand how your business is doing overall? Like it it's so context heavy that you can't even say absolutely. That it's useless, you know? Cause it's obviously very

Cody Plofker (19:47):

Absolute. Exactly. I just had to start. All right. So Ash, what are the few, what are the financial KPIs that you look at on a weekly or monthly basis? I think, cause it was kinda a broad question. I wonder if that'll help

Rabah Rahil (19:57):

Narrow us. Yeah. You narrowed it down. Yeah. That's a good, good way to do it.

Ash Melwani (20:01):

Okay. So I think on a paid side, constantly looking at the N CPA, um, and

Rabah Rahil (20:12):

New customer, right?

Ash Melwani (20:14):

New customer acquisition cost and average order value. Right? So the reason obviously N CPA, we're, we're looking at to see if as we're growing and we're scaling. If we are acquiring at an at, let's say, let's just say our target CPA is $45, right. If we can continue keeping that number while scaling the financial model that we've built out, right based off the last three years worth of data tells us that we can continue to, you know, pump money into advertising and eventually make that money back right now that has to also be paired with AOV. Right? So for example, if on our landing pages, we get a little bit more aggressive with discounting or free gifts and this and that and the AOV drops, but volume increases, right. Can we still support that $45 CPA if our AOV is at, if it's coming down or if it's higher.

Ash Melwani (21:10):

Right. So those are the two things that we kind of look at on a paid side. Um, Cody, I know you guys have done like a, a little bit of, um, a study on LTV based on AOV, right. And we've kind of done the same things. We, we know kind of where our numbers are at, where like, if consumers aren't falling between that 50 to 60 range, their LTB is predicted to be this versus if it's at 70, it's predicted to be this. Um, so we kind of like play around with that when we're, when we're designing landing pages or even offers on those landing pages. Um, two, I think, I know you said weekly, but we also look at a return rate on a monthly cadence. So are we, you know, if, if for example, now we're acquiring pretty heavily on a TikTok, are we getting more or less returns?

Ash Melwani (22:00):

So, you know, if, if our return rate is under, I believe 1%, which it has been super strong, you know, consistently for the last three years then we're, we're okay with the, the quality of the users that are coming in. I'm interested to see what it, if it at all changes at all with the addition of TikTok, um, just cuz I've seen a lot of people talk about how like the quality of the users maybe less, or maybe maybe the same, I don't know, but we'll find out in the next, you know, 60, 90 days. Um, so monitoring those numbers I think is, is super crucial. And then honestly like on more on the finance end, which I'm not really too involved with, but I know that cash flow, like literally that cycle, like, you know, we have a lot of net terms with literally everybody that we, we use, you know, man from manufacturers to even Facebook, right.

Ash Melwani (22:54):

Having those net terms in place is super crucial because then it's like, you know, that you can continue to spend bringing the cash. And if you're on that positive cash flow cycle, which I mean, again, like I'm not privy to those, those conversations as much because I'm more on the marketing side. Um, as long as Ron's like, all right, we're on a positive cash flow cycle. We're good to go. Right. So Hey Ron, those. Yeah, exactly. So I, I think those are the, the few things where NCPA AOV and then 30 to 60 days out probably return rate so that I can get a gauge on, are these customers decent and in those channels, if that makes sense.

Cody Plofker (23:34):

Yeah. I love for sure. For sure. I'll, I'll chime in there. So yeah, definitely. It's similar. I mean, I do think Mer is important. I think if our Mer was, we were spending a hundred percent of our revenue on ads, I would be worried. Right. So take to the extreme, it, it clearly tells you to see something, right. If we are spending 5% of our revenue on ads, I would say there's room to grow and scale. There's probably a decently healthy correlation between Mer and and net profit margins. So I, I, I do think it's important. It's, it's not the only thing. It shouldn't be the only like a good Mer doesn't mean you should spend more, a bad Mer doesn't mean that, that, that you, you know, that you are spending too much. Exactly. However, it is one metric that can just kind of help guide you in that direction and show you the profitability. So I look at Mer daily, hourly almost, right. Be

Ash Melwani (24:21):

Fair. I do want to chime in one thing. Um, when we were, when we were like struggling a little bit back in like October, right. Um, our finance team, which kind of has changed now, but prior to that change, they were telling us to look at Mer. Right. So if we were at like, we could only scale if we were at like 30% of, um, uh, revenue. Right. So for me it's like, okay, well, if I'm spending 20 K like, am I, am I supposed to get like 60 K in revenue back, like to get to that point, it's very difficult. And then when we weren't hitting those numbers, because one, I wasn't creative testing at all. I wasn't like doing shit on any of that. Right. Landing pages, like conversion rates were dropping. I had no idea what to do at that point. Um, and it's like, okay, well now we gotta keep cutting the budget, cut the budget.

Ash Melwani (25:12):

And we were like down to like five, $10,000 and spend a day and just to hit that, like that ratio. But like, it hurt us in the long run because we weren't acquiring enough customers to make up, you know, revenue for that lifetime value. So when we kind of changed up the strategy and we weren't really looking at Mer, but more so on a NCPA base, the financial model started to work out in our favor as we spent more. And we were, may not, we weren't like following the ratio of Mer. We were like slightly higher, right? Like we were like 50% instead of like 30% at like 10 K a day. But we were like 50% at like 20 K a day. And it's like, yeah, you break even. But the financial model makes sense. We're in a positive cash flow cycle, we're moving inventory. And like, things are kind of pumping. Then you start to see these other things pick up like vitamin shop, Rite aid, all these other external factors that you don't want to see day to day, start to pick up more outside of just online D TOC. So two, two sides to the corner there. I feel.

Rabah Rahil (26:18):

Could I jump in before you keep going?

Cody Plofker (26:20):

Yeah, go ahead.

Rabah Rahil (26:22):

I'm itching for it. So what's happening there is when you're using new customer CPA, you're only measuring incremental lift with Mer. You're getting everything. And so that's why we have like the three row as to roll them all. And so the Mer wasn't necessarily a bad projection. It was just that you were looking at your whole marketing ecosystem. Whereas when you went to your finance people and you said, Hey, forget about all the money, the marketing ecosystem's making, how much can I pay for a new customer? And I know they're gonna be worth, say a hundred dollars in six months and then they can give you more budget and then you can do that. So I don't think either of you guys are wrong, it was just using, um, a different way to look at how you're gonna measure incremental lift because Mer does include everything.

Rabah Rahil (27:01):

And so if you're not using Mer with, in conjunction with NNC Roaz or an N C CPA, you're, you're going to get kind of lost in that. Cuz what can happen is you're just gonna, uh, you know, you could be, um, just activating a bunch of old people and your ecosystem already and your Mer is gonna look great. And then it's gonna fall off a cliff because there's gonna be an LTV ceiling that you're gonna hit. But, um, so I think that's really, really smart in what you did there. And I love that you have that. And I would say be careful using an N CPA, unless you have kind of a mature business like you guys have where, you know, you have a pretty good, uh, peg on what your LTVs gonna be. Cuz if not, it can get really weird cuz if you don't hit those LTVs then your whole financial model kind of falls apart.

Ash Melwani (27:43):

I think it, like you said, it depends on the stage of the business, right? Like if you're on growth mode, like NCPA, for sure. If you're on profitability mode, Mer will tell you, right. Or if I'm at 30%, I know I'm profitable. So I think those, those two are, like you said, it's the stage of the business as well. Cause in the beginning we were like, we have to be at three X to be profitable and that's what we did, but now it's like, we have other things going on where like retail needs marketing support. So like, alright, let's just continue to spend. And if we can break even we'll break even on D DC.

Rabah Rahil (28:12):

Yeah, exactly. Okay. Cody it's yours.

Cody Plofker (28:15):

Yeah. All, all Mer tells you is the percentage of your revenue that you're spending on ads today and, and everyone can use that information to kind of choose a story that, you know, it's gonna tell for their business. And yeah, I think if you have a sophisticated financial model, which you know, you should have at your scale, then you can make more informed, calculated decisions about future growth, projections and assumptions, which is what you guys did. You know, I still think you could probably pair it up and project and know that like, all right, to, if we're gonna be at, you know, you probably still used Mer today when you're looking at your NCPA model, you're just Mer today changed based off your model. And instead of having to be at, you know, 30% you were like, all right, we'll run to 40, 50% because of this model.

Cody Plofker (29:01):

But I think like they're very similar. I think it's just understanding what they're telling you, but totally agree there. I don't wanna be a dead horse. Um, but I do look at that. I look at, um, net cash increases, right? So I kind of just look at like the, what, what our finance team kind of sends over every weekend part. Partly it's not something that I'm necessarily acting upon. Like I like to look at our accounts payable. I like to look at our accounts for receivable. Um, I, you know, just to understand what we have coming in, what we have due looking at net cash increase for a period, just, just to understand, all right, we had a great sales week this week. Like how is that affecting our cash? How is that affecting our cash conversion cycle? Knowing that an increase in revenue is not always increasing and just kind of just, again, it's not a scientific thing, but just looking at all these variables that I see fluctuating within our marketing side and then understanding how that's affecting our, our cash position at our company. And not that everybody has to be an expert at it. I'm certainly not an expert, but I do think if you're a media buyer or you're head of growth, you should have a decently strong relationship with your, with your finance team and, and just understand what the vari variables are going to be at the very least, you know, be given a number from your CFO, from your finance team of this is what you can afford to spend to acquire customer like, like Ron did for Ash. Like I think that's super important.

Rabah Rahil (30:18):

Yeah. I, I echo all of that. And ultimately, so like from when I was running paid, basically I would look at my Mer. So I think of think of it in three lenses. So effectiveness, efficiency, and profits. Um, and so the effectiveness is my Mer, how effective are my ad dollars? How efficient are my ad dollars is my NC row as, um, I didn't really work with really mature businesses. These are two, three year old businesses that I was working with. So I was really nervous to use LTV. So I really wanted to have that NC row as how much is my new customer, my, how much are my ad dollars driving new customer revenues. And then I would look at the PO ads. So my gross profit divided by ad spend. And I actually had a client where we're really, really tight where, um, I, I never worked off a percent ad spend.

Rabah Rahil (31:00):

I'd always kind of basically just partner with the company. And, um, we actually use net profit as an numerator. So I could tell him we were driving for every ad dollar. We were driving $2 or $3, an actual net profit for the, the company. And so I found those really helpful. And then obviously the three business metrics I would look at would be proper revenue, um, net margin, net profit, which are same, same, but different. One's just a percentage and one's an absolute, but I love the way you guys are thinking of it. I think that's absolutely right. And to Cody's point, I don't think anybody needs to be like a CPA here or anything like that. But if you are spending money, you should understand some semblance of the economics of the business, whether it's, um, dash Asher's point, a new customer CPA target, or to Cody's point, you could have an Mer target where you say, Hey, Rob, if you make a hundred thousand dollars, you can spend $10,000. Now, you know, your murder has to be at 10 and if it's below 10, then you need to pull back, spend or launch a new creative. If it's over 10 it's cocaine, champagne, and you can scale up. And it's a pretty easy way to pace, um, your budget that way. But if you don't have acquisition targets, you can just kind of get caught with your pants down. I think sometimes.

Cody Plofker (32:06):

Yeah, for sure. I think definitely knowing I knowing your, your CPA targets based on your contribution margin is probably like the, the most important thing, you know, that I think that's number one. If, if you don't know that, like that would be like somebody's listening and they're just starting like understanding what your CPA targets are based on your contribution is like step one, because it's really hard to buy media. And like, when I started as a media buyer, I was like, what's a good ROS. And you see all these screenshots of people getting a four and a five and a six. I'm like, shit, I'm getting like a 3:00 AM I bad? And it's like, no, this is fucking great. You just have to understand like, every business is going to be different based on your margins, based on your LTV, based on the operating cash. This is why I think for a bootstrap business, that's not in hyper growth that we're trying to be profitable. Now, this is why I think Mer is important because organic traffic, number one, it lowers your blended C, which is much more important than any what any platform tells you. But also that provides the operating cash flow, then support growth a hundred percent. And so I do think that understanding those numbers is like step one, super important.

Rabah Rahil (33:09):

Yeah. And like Ash said context, I mean, uh, are you trying to be profitable or are you trying to grow? Was it two totally separate goals that have two totally separate metrics and uh, yeah, I, I love it. Um, yeah, totally cool. I could nerd out some more, but let, let's be good boys. Okay. My client has pro this is from elevated Alexander. My clients have good products, which struggle to get picture and video reviews, best apps and strategies would be great. I like a kind for app reviews or for reviews, but I don't know any maybe type form video reviews. Do you guys, how do you guys solicit, um, video or picture reviews? Well, kindo does picture reviews, but I don't know. How, how do you solicit video reviews

Ash Melwani (33:49):

Video honestly?

Cody Plofker (33:52):

Is he talking like video UGC?

Rabah Rahil (33:54):

No, no, no. Like a proper video review. I bought the product. You, you love the product. And then is there any apps or strategies that you guys use to get kind of, uh, video reviews? That's a good question.

Ash Melwani (34:07):

Video has been tough, tough. I don't think we've ever, I don't think we focus on video. I, uh, images we have, um, our reward. I mean, our reviews are linked to our rewards program. So if you leave, um, if you leave your review, it's X amount of question. If you leave a photo or video, it's even more.

Rabah Rahil (34:27):

Oh,

Ash Melwani (34:27):

That's cool. There's like some incentive there to actually leave it. But I think the majority of people just leave a, a photo to be honest. Um, but then also a lot of people will tend to leave images in the, our community instead of on the website because they want to join the conversation that's happening. Sure. So I don't know if people do both as much. Um, but it's there. I mean, if it incentivizes somebody leave a photo. Great. But I think a lot of it happens in the community too.

Rabah Rahil (34:59):

So elevate Alexander start a community. What's your review app? You or reward smile or what do you use?

Ash Melwani (35:06):

Uh, YPO

Rabah Rahil (35:08):

YPO. Oh my gosh. You're just gonna on fire. Don't let Moise hear that. <laugh> I love it. Cody. What about you? Do you guys solicit any kind of video reviews

Cody Plofker (35:19):

Or anything like that? No, we, we don't. I mean, even like for photo, like we don't, we don't like, we like to curate our PDP, so we don't really show photos. So, so, uh, we use Juni. Um, you, I know you can use, you know, photos. I, I have seen that a lot of customers will submit photos. If you can video reviews. There's a few things. I mean, we don't, we really don't do it. Do it anywhere. Most of our UGC is really pay to play. I think that's, you know, most people's UGC, but there are a few apps. I mean, there's, um, archive app. It's, it's a Shopify app. Uh, they got backed by strip and that'll kind of like archive anything that you've been tagged in. So if, if people are tagging and, and leaving reviews on Instagram TikTok, that's a good one.

Cody Plofker (35:59):

And then hope I can say this. And I'm an investor in an app bounty and they're, uh, what they'll do is they'll kind of give a bounty. So they'll like pay customers and customers will get rewarded to post on. I think right now it's TikTok. They'll do other platforms. I think they're still in beta, but that's a, that's a pretty cool one that, that can kind of get you some, you know, some UGC of people kind of talking about the products. Um, and then obviously, you know, the, the, the, the big elephant in the room of UGC is most UGC is not really UGC. It's paid content creators. So, um, if you really want like a video testimonial for an ad, find a content creator, pay them and, uh, and tell 'em to talk about your product.

Rabah Rahil (36:38):

I love it. Fantastic answers. So elevated that Alexander saw, we didn't have any more explicit stuff, but there's some good stuff in there. So re-listen to that. Um, this one comes from Brad plot, um, merchandising when to add more skews, offer creation, cash flow management. Um, I guess it's three different questions. When do you guys think about adding more skews?

Ash Melwani (37:03):

So for us, when we started, we had two skews, right? Two flavors. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, I think when people started to, when we saw like the community started to grow a little bit, people were more active and we saw retention kind of kick in. Think this is like from the start of your business. Once you start to see that retention kind of kick in, then I think it's time for you to start thinking about maybe an expansion, like maybe a new flavor or new product. Um, and then as we saw the effectiveness of that, when we dropped a new flavor, it got a lot more people to come back. Um, then we're like, okay, well, we gotta go to the next flavor. And we kind of spread that out over a couple months. And then as we were growing rapidly, we did two launches a month last year.

Ash Melwani (37:50):

Um, and that really came from like every time we launched something, the amount of cash that it would bring in was insane. So if that kept happening, it didn't make sense to not do it for the following month. Right. And then obviously there's diminishing returns, but you also have to keep up with, like, I think we saw diminishing returns when we started to see our acquisition go down naturally. Right. So now when our acquisitions start picking up, like now in January, February, um, we started picking up on releases again. So we launched new gummies. We launched a new flavor for our instrument collaboration, and then you start to see that like, kind of grow. So I think to answer the question is if your acquisition is growing, then I think you can follow it up with, uh, some new expansions and, and new products or new, um, uh, I already said my flavors, right? So I think as your acquisition grows, then you can keep going, but not until that part starts to happen and you start to see some type of retention. Um, for

Rabah Rahil (38:51):

Sure. I love that. What about you Cody?

Cody Plofker (38:54):

Yeah, I, I hesitate to say too much cuz I'm so not involved in, in, in this, but we do launch a lot. I mean, if anything, I think, right, it's all about resources and bandwidth and, and that can be re that it's about resources that can be bandwidth in terms of team. And one of the problems for us cuz we're new and like, you know, makeup companies have a, a decent amount of skews usually is that takes away from time to be devoted to evergreen strategies. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so I think that's one con, but obviously as Ash talked about, there's incredible pros of, of launches and it definitely is great for retention. It it's great for press and, and earn media and stuff like that. Um, but you have to understand and you have to run a model and understand what is gonna cost for product development, what it's gonna cost for freight and all that stuff.

Cody Plofker (39:38):

And, and project that against the potential revenue increase that you're going to get. But, and I, so it just, it totally depends, but I, I do think it, for most brands, it should be part of their growth and retention strategies. Right? You talk about it. Most business growth is gonna come from outside of the ad account and that's something where you can get a good, a good peak and a good spike in, in revenue and retention from doing something that's outside of your ad account, that that will actually affect your ad account in, in a positive way.

Ash Melwani (40:10):

I love that. And I forgot to mention in one thing, um, cuz you, you actually just mentioned it, um, when we were doing these launches, right. A lot of these were flavor expansions that were limited addition. So it wasn't like we would launch and then keep them throughout. Right. Cause that would've been way too insane. Right. Like Cody said, yeah. Is adding an additional skew going to either add incremental revenue or is it just gonna kind of divide it across whatever you have? Right. So for us it was just limited edition, drop it in like two, three weeks it would sell out and then onto the next. So it wasn't like we had to forecast, forecast, um, getting more inventory of those, those flavors. Uh, but there were products that were supplementary to the business, right? Like the multivitamin sleep product, weight loss, etcetera, et cetera, that there have been products that we had to cut because they didn't, um, add incremental.

Ash Melwani (41:00):

So like we had a, a vegan collagen booster, which we dropped and it did. Okay. But like it was really just a pain in the ass to kind of keep around because one, it wasn't adding incremental. And then the revenue that it did bring in was like, so minor. It was like, all right, well we just have to kind of, you know, kill it and move on. So yeah, that, that makes sense that you have to kind of forecast it out and see if it's bringing you incremental mm-hmm <affirmative> otherwise just do limited edition drops and you kind of just cash play it, you know,

Rabah Rahil (41:30):

Supreme style let's go.

Cody Plofker (41:32):

Yeah. The other thing I, I know part of that question was about offers. I definitely think offers is, is huge. One thing we had a, you know, something last week, essentially we have a feature. So there's like a lot of like bundling apps. Ours is custom coded, but we have like, we have like custom sets so people can what'll happen is it looks like a set on the front end. It's actually, there's some, there's a script and it's actually fulfilled from our three PLS individual products. Yep. But that allows us to super easily. We don't have to pay a, a, you know, an extra kidding fee, but we also don't have to actually put any R and D into new products, but we're able to generate buzz and momentum and, and get, you know, just get people excited about something without doing a new product. So if you have a business where you can do that, that's a really good strategy where you're able to do seasonal stuff around some type of a, a kit or bundle.

Rabah Rahil (42:21):

Yeah. Cuts does this as well. Um, okay. You do a good job of the business kit and you can add a top, uh, uh, a top, a bottom and a, uh, thing anyways. But yeah, I think bundling is a really good call and offer creation, but Cody I'm surprised you didn't say this because this was your actually two weeks. So this is your thing, um, launching a new skew to change the economics of your business. Um, that is a really your baby mascara.

Cody Plofker (42:45):

Oh, oh, okay. I was like,

Rabah Rahil (42:46):

And that's brilliant. It's a brilliant move. If you can do that, because now you're playing a totally different game where you're literally gonna change the economics of your business now, and now this mascara could possibly drive up the LTV or the AOV of the cart. And then that's a, that's definitely worthwhile if you see there's a, a, a place in that. Um, so I think the bundling and then changing the economics is something that you guys didn't touch on, but everything else is brilliant.

Cody Plofker (43:09):

And then GWP as well. I mean that, you know, just going back a few episodes, our are playing with that mini mascara is with the GWP. So that's an incredible offer. The reason I love, right. We, we don't discount at all

Rabah Rahil (43:19):

Is what he's talking about, guys,

Cody Plofker (43:21):

My bad, my bad, but we don't, we don't like to run discounts. Right. So we, I think if you don't wanna run discounts, you have to be thinking about ways to create moments and, and create some urgency or scarcity. And what Ash talked about is limited edition stuff. We do a lot of that. Ash does as well, bundles. Yes. There's a discount, but I think you preserve more brand equity by if that's the only way to get the discount versus actually calling it a discount. Yep. And then same with a G of purchase. Technically. Yes. There is a margin hit in terms of, there is a discount on if you were to sell it at cost, but it doesn't feel the same to a customer.

Rabah Rahil (43:57):

Yeah. Yeah. And just to nail that home even more, we used to, when I was running my agency, that's exactly what we do is we would find really high margins, semi ticket items, something that cost 20, 25 bucks, but it cost us like five bucks in terms of cogs. And then you just, uh, bundle it up. And so you, if you spend X amount of dollars, here's this free hat, or here's this free thing that looks like you're getting $20 or $25 for free. But in terms of business, it's $5 cogs, $7 cogs. We had this, uh, it was a beard company had this little massager that was like 12 bucks or whatever. It was just like one of those little plastic massagers. It was literally 70 cents. I mean, it was just a no brainer to add that on where the perceived value was 12, $15. And we're taking a 70 cent hit on cogs all day, twice on Sundays

Cody Plofker (44:41):

Arbitrage.

Rabah Rahil (44:42):

Uh, yeah, exactly. We won't get too much in the cash flow management. Just what ashes talked about, the fancy term for it is the cash conversion cycle. Just go look at that up. There's tons of YouTube videos on it. Uh, it can get kind of nerdy and people get, uh, that

Cody Plofker (44:55):

Yeah. Dude search. Like how search like Jim shark cash conversion cycle. Oh, it's

Rabah Rahil (44:59):

Negative. That one. It's negative. Yeah.

Cody Plofker (45:01):

Yeah. Like, but there's a really good article on that. Have you guys read that one? Like a J something,

Rabah Rahil (45:07):

Uh, I'll see if I can find it, but yeah, I, I'm pretty privy to, uh, it's nuts. Basically. They get paid to grow it. It's incredible. They have a 180 net, 180 anyways, again, it'll get nerdy for a bunch of people, but um, like Cody said, look up Jim sharks. You're never gonna get there, but if you can get there, it's incredible. Um, if you can get a negative net conversion cycle or a cash conversion cycle, it's that is as the path as it comes. Um, let's grab a couple more, cause I know we're bumping, 'em against it. Uh, Cody, you don't have a subscription service yet, but maybe you can still riff on it. Can you, this is from Bobby Callahan. Can you talk about subscription DTC, the pros and the cons and how being a subscription brand changes the lens in which you look at key metrics and then R or Maribel is her handle, um, bumped it as well. So Ash, you guys do have a sub service, right?

Ash Melwani (46:00):

We do. Um, so it it's tough because I, it's not a majority of our, of our sales. We've tried, um, like right now, if you go to the website, you try to buy something it's automatically on subscription. Yep. But funny enough is that it's not the majority of the sales rate. It's like, it's still like 5% if that, um, I think it comes down to, so what we're trying to do is with our new brand that we launched, uh, par Rangers. So we launched last week, like soft launch in our community. Um, you know, from the founders of Avi, here's, uh, supplements for your pets, we're doing subscription only. And we want to see how that model model does, because I think a lot of other pet companies that like even food, right. It's subscription only, uh, for me, I have a dog, like I've been on this food subscription for the last two years.

Ash Melwani (46:47):

I haven't even thought about it. Right. So I think we're gonna try it for the pets. Um, my theory is that if you can acquire and see how your churn rate ends up being in like maybe five to six months, then it it's a different way of looking at LTB, right? Cause it's like people are probably gonna be locked in and you can probably figure out what you're willing to spend knowing that your churn rate is X amount after like six months to a year. Right. So it's definitely a model that a lot of companies are trying to do, but few are very successful at. Um, and if you can, I know that like if you're trying to like, you know, raise money or exit, whatever this subscription is such a huge thing that people want to see. Um, I don't know, like we don't do it well for Avi. Cause I think we also, cuz we did a lot of product launches. People don't wanna be locked into a subscription cuz we're, it's a dropping something new. Right. Um, but hoping maybe this year we can figure it out. Um, just through email and you know, post purchase, get people back on. But the initial order, it's very tough to get people to lock in on a subscription. But if you can, it's it's massive

Rabah Rahil (48:01):

Cody, you gotta get people to be, uh, free mascara, get the miracle bomb subscription, you get a, uh, your free, free mini mascara. Let's go give

Cody Plofker (48:09):

The people need. I think it's, I think it's, I'm not the biggest fan for us, for beauty, for a few reasons. But I think you have, um, different replenishment cycles for different products and they're so not they're so not regular, I think for skincare, um, there's a little bit more of a regular subscription cycle. So you see it a lot more in skincare, you know, and in like grooming stuff, but, but makeup is, is everybody's on a different one and there really is none. So I don't love it for us. However, for, for a lot of industries, I love it for skincare, for, you know, like, like shampoo for again, like athletic greens for lollipop. So for food and bed for supplements, I, I, I love it. Especially if it's like here's a 30 day supply. It just makes sense. I think the things to think about is, first of all, if you I've tested this, I don't know if this is universally true, but for other businesses defaulting, I, we did a split test and defaulting to subscriptions versus not our, our add to cart rate.

Cody Plofker (49:04):

And our CPA went actually way down when we auto kind of forced subscription. Um, and you just have to make that decision. Are you willing to take a higher CPA to push more people into subscription or would you rather not push into subscription on first order? Because again, some people have the theory of, they're not really a loyal customer until two to three purchases. Why would anybody want a subscribe to you if they've only got it in the first time? You know? Yeah. So again, every business is different. There's no right or wrong, but, but I think, I think they can obviously work, you know, retention is the name of the game. Um, but you just gotta figure out what's best and, and how you want to go about it from a customer experience perspective. Don't do what, like I order these like volume supplements, don't do what they do and like force people into some subscriptions without knowing don't let them not cancel, allow people to pause, allow people to cancel, don't be scammy about it. Um, but it, it, it, it can definitely work. It just, I think depends what industry you're in and if it's a natural fit, if, if don't try to force it, I think if, if it's not a right fit and figure out other retention plays.

Rabah Rahil (50:10):

Yeah. I think that's brilliantly put, I loved, uh, don't lock people in Ash cuz then the, you know, it's gonna be weird. And then Cody, the replenishment cycle's super on board or, um, you don't want people just having stacks and stacks of toothpastes stuff at their house or whatever. Like it has to be the right replenishment cycle. And um, also don't do any black hat strategies. Zero 0%. That's a horrible idea. Um, always we did it. We got through most of the questions. Um, if you guys wanna send in more questions, um, just tag me, Ash or Cody and we'll do another one of these in a few more episodes, but uh, Cody let the people know, oh, I'm gonna come join you on mentor pass. It'll be fun. Oh, you're

Cody Plofker (50:48):

On there

Rabah Rahil (50:48):

Be yeah, I'm coming on. Awesome. Yeah. People will be able to come yell at me and then

Cody Plofker (50:53):

We're trying, I'm trying to get Ash on there as well.

Rabah Rahil (50:55):

Oh, let's go. The whole APEN crew, like

Ash Melwani (50:59):

Have like listen now.

Rabah Rahil (51:01):

Oh, let's go guys. Uh, Cody tell the people where to follow you. How can they get more involved with Jones? Um, tell 'em about mentor, pass your newsletter. You got all this stuff.

Cody Plofker (51:10):

Yeah. Uh, follow me on Twitter at Cody plot. That's kind of the hub of everything. Um, hopefully by this time I didn't do it last week, but Cody plager.com is live. You kinda just check out some, some of my work, some of the stuff I've been featured in. And then if you want to book some time with me, mentor, mentor pass is the place to do it. And then also, yeah. Subscribe, subscribe to my newsletter, which you can [email protected].

Rabah Rahil (51:33):

And you just got, uh, had a call with Amanda OS. How are you plugged into every single person on the planet? You, you were just the most connected man on the planet. I love it. Just

Cody Plofker (51:43):

Trying, trying to give value, trying to give value. I'm an investor in house so wise, but how

Rabah Rahil (51:47):

Did you, I didn't even let me know next time you're raising Amanda. Come on. Ask, let the people know what's up. Tell 'em how they can get involved in my a what you, what are you doing over there?

Ash Melwani (51:58):

Yeah. Follow me on Twitter, Ash for Milani. Um, we walks from college in new life. So I'm serious college. My a.com. We just got into vitamin shop. If there is one, can you please go to the shop, take a picture and tweet me. It'd be sick. Um, other than that, yeah. That's that's it also Cody congrats on 15 K Twitter.

Rabah Rahil (52:20):

Thanks

Cody Plofker (52:21):

Man. Serious. Thank you. I couldn't care less, but thank you.

Ash Melwani (52:24):

<laugh>

Cody Plofker (52:25):

I'm trying, you know, everyone gets to a point where they probably care about follower account too much. And now I'm like, I don't even fucking care.

Ash Melwani (52:31):

I just want to hit 10 K and then

Cody Plofker (52:34):

Yeah. Yeah, we'll get you there.

Rabah Rahil (52:36):

I just want the brand account to beat me. I'm getting crushed triples. I saw that triples. It's not good. They're about to catch me. Fuck, fuck. Um, alright guys, if you wanna get more involved with triple oil, it is try triple.com. We're also on the bird app at triple well I'm on the bird app. Go follow me. So I don't get caught up by triple well. Um, and then we'll also all three be in, um, Miami, Miami in a couple or in a month, actually a little less than a month. Um, for a geek out. I think there's a few more tickets left. So if you can go, you can go to geek out. Uh, actually I don't know when this is gonna drop, but anyways, go to geek out if you want. Shaq is an amazing human it's one of the best DTC conferences.

Rabah Rahil (53:11):

If you can't make it to Miami, go to another one. It's awesome. Um, boys, it felt good to be back again. It's huh? Awesome. Thanks for all the love on Twitter. It's it's been fantastic. We really appreciate it. We love all the threads. We love all the tweets. Um, it's been amazing. Cody. It's great to have you back, Ash. I'm a little disappointed. You, you went, you went all black on me. You didn't do your little fancy ALS shirt. What happened? Well, O OVO won't sponsor him. So he is holding out. I'm trying I'm I'm trying to get sponsored here. Here we go, boys. I got the shirt. Come on, liquid dead. Let's go throw us some water please. Um, as always people thanks so much, much love all the time and uh, that's it. That's number nine in the books. Thanks everybody.

Podcast

Is MER a Useful KPI?

March 18, 2024

53:59

Hosted By

Rabah Rahil
CMO at Triple Whale

Guests

Ash Melwani
Co-Founder & CMO of MyObvi
Cody Plofker
Director of E-Commerce Jones Road Beauty

Episode Description

Today, the boys are back together and dive into MER. Is it a useful KPI? In what context? Listen to this episode to hear our thoughts.

#Adspend

Notes & Links

📧Subscribe to Whale Mail for exclusive industry insights and in-depth marketing breakdowns: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/tripl...🐦

Follow us on Twitter for Industry insights https://twitter.com/triplewhale

Follow the people featured in this episode here:

- Rabah's Twitter: https://twitter.com/rabahrahil
- Cody's Twitter: https://twitter.com/codyplof
- Ash's Twitter: https://twitter.com/ashvinmelwani

Transcription

Cody Plofker (00:00):

I do think Mer is important. I think if our Mer was, we were spending a hundred percent of our revenue on ads, I would be worried. Right. So taking to the extreme, it, it clearly tells you to see something, right. If we were spending 5% of our revenue on ads, I would say there's room to grow and scale. There's probably a decently healthy correlation between Mer and and net profit margins. So I, I, I do think it's important. It's, it's not the only thing. It shouldn't be the only, like a good Mer doesn't mean you should spend more, a bad Mer doesn't mean that, that, that you, you know, that you are spending too much, however, it is one metric that can just kind of help guide you in that direction and show you the profitability. So I look at Mer daily,

Rabah Rahil (00:45):

Almost into the double digits folks, episode nine, we have Cody back. He has a little bit of a vacation hangover. Uh, how were The Bahamas?

Cody Plofker (00:52):

It was good. It was dope, but excited to be back with you guys.

Rabah Rahil (00:55):

Yeah, absolutely. We're excited to have you back. We had a Canadian fill in the shoes. Didn't do two too bad of a job. And then as always at my P C down here, Ash wan, Ash, how are you?

Ash Melwani (01:05):

Good man. Good, good, good. Number nine.

Cody Plofker (01:08):

The guru himself.

Ash Melwani (01:10):

<laugh> it's kind look crazy for episode Ted.

Rabah Rahil (01:14):

Ooh, that's a good idea. Maybe that'll be the drinking episode, the drunk episode or whatever.

Cody Plofker (01:18):

<laugh> let's do it.

Rabah Rahil (01:21):

No. Um, so we're gonna do something a little bit different this episode. So Ash actually tossed out a thread that, uh, caught some teeth. So there's some, actually some really good questions in here. Um, so I'm just gonna pepper the boys with the questions we'll riff on the questions. This might be a shorter episode, but Hey, you know, such as life's not, everything needs to be a 75 minute banger. So if you guys are ready, I'll start, start it off.

Cody Plofker (01:44):

Let's do it.

Rabah Rahil (01:45):

Okay. So first one, this is from Matthew gai. I should actually know how to pronounce his name, cuz he does the production of the show, which is, uh, I feel horrible now. Um, but the question is strategy on organic content creation and content created to retain customers versus to get new ones. So retention versus acquisition, like your podcast and maybe other content that you have Cody will start with you and then Ash will run to you. Yeah. How do you see content in, in terms of acquisition versus retention play?

Cody Plofker (02:15):

Yeah, that's a great question. That's a great question. I would, I would say the one guy who got me thinking very differently about this, his name is J co and at Clavio, I don't know if you guys kind of know, no, he buys,

Cody Plofker (02:28):

Oh, that's dope. He's a, he's a brilliant guy. And he kind of like blew my mind and I did an interview with him. I don't wanna give too much away, you know, cause I haven't asked for permission to share this, but like I didn't interview with him kind of like telling him like, cuz I'm obviously in their target market, like how I consume content and like what my habits look like, but also kind of what my, uh, consumption looks like in terms of like, what is top of funnel? What is middle funnel? And I think that, that, that's something really interesting to think about is like for your niche, for your industry, like what are most of your customers buying behaviors in terms of their awareness and their consideration phases? You know, are they using YouTube as a search engine? Are they using now TikTok as a search engine?

Cody Plofker (03:11):

I think first of all right before we talk about the type of content, like understanding where we're actually placing the content I think is important. And then understanding, you know, is TikTok top of funnel and is like for us, I, I consider TikTok very top of funnel. Um, 85% of the sessions are on the, for you page. And I consider Instagram very middle of funnel. So Instagram is, is much more, you know, customers, it's much more of a retention play the type of content that we do, whether it's Q and a or anything like that, it's much more middle funnel. We also have our own editorial piece where we actually use it as middle funnel. You could use it as top of funnel SEO acquisition, and we're planning to do that with a, a Jones road blog in the future. But I think that's the first thing is understanding where you're trying to reach people in the funnel. And are you trying to get new eyeballs? What's your distribution strategy behind that? And, and whether that's SEO and you're doing keyword research and, and ranking stuff or whether you're doing TikTok and you're trying to go viral, that should be very different content than if you are trying to retain customers and trying to educate your customers on how best to use your products.

Rabah Rahil (04:18):

I love that Ash,

Ash Melwani (04:19):

What's your take? So for organic, I think on, we didn't really see much growth on organic because we really started with paid, right? So I think now with channels like TikTok, where we can get that organic reach, um, I think what we're kind of focusing on is putting out similar content that we're using for top of the funnel ads, but it in a more or less salesy way. Right? So on TikTok, we're coming out with videos like how to use our product, right. And what is the product good for? So for example, collagen is good for this, this and this. And then like, you will have several videos talking about, well, it's great for hair, cuz it'll do this for your hair or it's great for nails cuz it'll do this for your nails. Right? So those are probably the types of content that we're pushing organically on TikTok.

Ash Melwani (05:12):

And we're still trying to figure out how to like capture that audience. We haven't had any like hits, right? Like getting like organic reach, like a lot of it outside of paid. But I think that's probably the, the route will go down is just educating based on what the product is now in terms of, uh, retention. I think we do that better than acquisition, like organic content for acquisition because we have like, we have the videographer, we have videographer video editor, um, and we're basically filming content of how to use the product or like as if you already have the product, what are ways you can use it? Right. So we have a whole, uh, recipe series, like here's, you know, a recipe for overnight oats, coffee, ice, coffee, this and that. So we're just constantly putting out content because the, the question for us is how else can I take this?

Ash Melwani (06:02):

Right? Like I'm not gonna just take an almond milk 30 days out of the month. I gotta like figure out ways to do it. Right. So we do like eat, uh, drink, bake, like those types of things where it's like, all right, well I can make a smoothie. I can make ice coffee. So I think separately, we're still trying to figure out the organic content and like how to drive revenue that way and growth for like social. But I think retention wise, a lot of our stuff we're focusing on kind of goes on YouTube, which is then repurposed on our app and then also kind of shown in the community. Uh, but basically just weighs on how to, how to use all the products.

Rabah Rahil (06:41):

I, I have a couple questions for you guys. I'm gonna start with you Ash. Don't you guys have a podcast

Ash Melwani (06:47):

And the podcast. Yeah. But it's, it's more so for, I don't, I guess it is more so for the community. Right. It's more so just additional content that the community can, um, kind of

Rabah Rahil (07:02):

Consume, talk about. Yeah,

Cody Plofker (07:03):

That's right. That's retention though. It just seems like most of your content is, is retention focused, which is totally fine.

Rabah Rahil (07:09):

But that was either

Ash Melwani (07:10):

Question so, but it isn't, I don't know. I don't know if you would call it like retention focused more so than like keeping people in the community and like just kind of, cause the podcast has nothing to do with the product right. At all. So in, in theory, maybe by

Rabah Rahil (07:25):

What's the podcast called

Ash Melwani (07:27):

It's called don't over spill.

Rabah Rahil (07:30):

Not like by my, not like by Avi or anything, there's literally no company.

Ash Melwani (07:34):

It's not a it's from the, it's from the girls that are known in the yeah.

Rabah Rahil (07:38):

Yeah. So you're

Ash Melwani (07:39):

Right. So I don't know if maybe indirectly, right. You're, you're kind of providing entertainment to your community, but not in a way where it's like directly product related. Right. So it's tough for me to say that it does help retention, but I do know that it helps with engagement within the community, which could possibly lead to higher attention if that makes sense.

Rabah Rahil (08:03):

Makes sense of sense. And so the other question is you don't see those recipe creations as an acquisition mechanism.

Ash Melwani (08:11):

We tried, we did try it. Doesn't um, it like we, we used to run like, uh, recipes at top of the funnel. And then back when like retargeting was doing well, we would place those in like middle

Rabah Rahil (08:24):

Of the funnel. No, I'm not talking about paid again again, just in organic, like you having a YouTube channel showing the like some, almost like YouTube SEO where you're showing these recipes. Cause I didn't know, you could bake collagen. That's pretty cool. Like, so there's all these cool things that like, so I don't know. I see that to me anyways, as, as a bit of an acquisition vector where it's like somebody randomly stumbles on your, your YouTube video, I'm sure there's a link right. To the site to buy it to the, in the description. No, there's something there. I mean, you could even use like bit Lee or some sort of UTM to track mm-hmm <affirmative> like if people are clicking through that, but um, that's

Ash Melwani (08:57):

I

Rabah Rahil (08:57):

Think it can be, you're not giving yourself enough credit.

Ash Melwani (09:00):

Yeah. It it's tough because I just, we don't see that reach as like, as maybe Cody does. Right? Like we just don't have that, like that organic reach where, where we'll put out the recipe, the majority of the user are customers. It, it,

Cody Plofker (09:15):

Yeah. So that's the thing with that's the thing with organic is like the distribution is so much harder to come by that I think like a lot of organic on your owned or I, I hate calling social channels own, but whatever on your own social channels is gonna be your existing customers and, and your followers, like there are very few organic top of funnel distribution you're right. Or you can reach way new people. TikTok is obviously one of them. And like Rob said, I do think YouTube SEO is another big one. Pinterest. I'm not a Pinterest expert. We, we don't do it, but I could see that maybe Pinterest could have some decent SEO in, in distribution, but I think you have to create the content with that in mind. Right. You'd have to be like do some keyword research and be like best collagen, poor weight loss, or like weight loss, smoothie recipes. And like, I'm sure those are incredibly complicated and I'm not a YouTube SEO expert, but that's kinda what you're thinking, Robert. Right?

Rabah Rahil (10:08):

Yeah. Just kind of like, I think you're not giving yourself enough credit where you're just kind of proliferating across these channels. And I think Cody hit it on the head where I think it should be channel focused first where I think YouTube would be fantastic for you guys to really just start to own the, because it's the second biggest search engine right behind Google proper. Um, so I think like people would go there and like how to like the best ways to get better skin or blah, blah, blah. Like there's all these, it's this big question, answer machine. And if you can start to, uh, put some, uh, resources behind that and you're posting daily, um, I think it makes a ton of sense for you guys. And then also to Cody's point, I think TikTok is another big place where you could still get a lot of organic reach. I think Instagram and Facebook are pretty much dead in terms of organic reach. It's, it's pretty much a pay to play platform. Um,

Cody Plofker (10:52):

I still think you can get organic reach, but you're gonna get just your followers. It's a hard part like distribution beyond that is, is

Rabah Rahil (10:58):

Really hard. Yeah. So I, I, I should probably been more precise in my language incremental reach where like you're gonna hit your, your followers where you're not gonna hit the trending page anymore, whatever, where you're gonna get into new buckets of content. Yeah. Um, one more question then I wanna pick on you a little bit, Cody. Um, do you guys have a newsletter Ash?

Cody Plofker (11:15):

<affirmative>

Ash Melwani (11:18):

Um, not in the sense of like we like

Rabah Rahil (11:23):

A whale mail or something. Yeah.

Ash Melwani (11:24):

Why not? No, we don't. It's a good question. I mean, we, the way that we kind of put out content on email, it's either blogs or recipes when we have them. It's not like on a, alright, every Thursday, this is coming out. Right. It's more so like, alright, do we have a new recipe? Do we have a new, um, blog going and out? Do we have a new YouTube video that we put out? Right. It's not as scheduled as what you would probably want, if that makes sense.

Rabah Rahil (11:57):

Yeah. Do you guys supplement that with push notification with the app?

Ash Melwani (12:02):

Yeah. So anytime that there's a new recipe, so there's

Rabah Rahil (12:04):

A little bit,

Ash Melwani (12:05):

Yeah. So we upload a new recipe on YouTube backboard on the app and then we push notification, Hey, new recipe for cinnamon pancakes is now available. Go check it out. Um, and then just go straight to that video.

Rabah Rahil (12:19):

I love it. Okay. You're off the horns,

Ash Melwani (12:21):

Not the consistent newsletter. Yeah. <laugh> we definitely need to work on our organic, I think.

Rabah Rahil (12:27):

Well, I, I think for you guys, you have so much content already that you can almost do an aggregated newsletter. Um, and like if you build a cadence and a social contract with people, um, it would be something. And then you could also build in kind of like a, um, engagement question or something like that, that you could build in. Cause you just have such a big, fun community. And like if your Facebook group is that big, your email list could be 10 times as big. I mean, it, it, for me, it's a no brainer.

Cody Plofker (12:51):

The easiest thing you could do, hold on real quick, the easiest thing you could do, and we do this, just do a monthly wrap up and just like, don't even call like a different thing or you could call it something different and just anything that happened in your community that month. And again, you could segment this to make sure you're sending this to people who actually want it, but just monthly wrap up, here's all of your content pieces. So we, we do like a, what to read, what to watch, what we launched, all that kind of stuff. We get pretty strong reactions to that.

Rabah Rahil (13:18):

Well, and you guys have such a li both of you guys actually have such a lifestyle bent to your products that it's so easy. Like there's new Netflix, like Cody's saying new stuff to watch new stuff, to read fashion, like all these fun things that you could really here's the new look, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Cody mm-hmm <affirmative> take me through your, um, so do you guys, so you said you have a monthly newsletter you're really strong on organic TikTok. Um, do you guys have a pretty big YouTube presence?

Cody Plofker (13:44):

No, we don't. We don't, we, we don't currently want to in the future, it's just kind of like order of priorities and resources and bandwidth definitely want to definitely know it can be huge. I mean, I've done a decent amount of like customer research on, on this. And like, so we get a lot of press, right? We're a lot of them are kind of like more legacy stuff, but they're obviously digitally native now or, you know, digitally first now. And I was thinking like, alright, who are the, we have some really good like partnerships with some kind of some that are good for older demographics. So I was thinking like, alright, we need a millennial version of one. So I started doing some customer research and like, nobody, first of all, nobody reads anymore. I, again, not nobody. I, I hate when people say those blank things, but especially about beauty.

Cody Plofker (14:23):

People are not reading about beauty. They are so, so two interesting things I learned they're, they're watching it's video first, right? Anybody millennial and below is all video, but also it's, it's gone decentralized. They don't care to get their information from publishers. It's all the individuals. So it's influencers. Yep. So that being said where people are discovering new products going to learn about them. It's it's it's, you know, back then, this was six months ago. I did the research. I, it was a lot Instagram and YouTube now. I think, think it's probably a lot TikTok in Instagram and YouTube. Yeah. Long story short. I think TikTok is untapped. I think Instagram is very competitive. I think TikTok is going to become very competitive. I think not enough people are investing resources into YouTube. Yeah. I think it's harder to do. I do think it's harder to do. I think it's less sexy, but I think again, you, like you talked about it's the second biggest search engine, you know, if anybody's interested in makeup and they see a miracle bomb ad, they're gonna go to either Google, YouTube or TikTok and they're gonna search miracle bomb review. So I think that YouTube could be an amazing platform for any brand, but especially a beauty brand.

Rabah Rahil (15:29):

Yeah. I, I think your spot on there and you can build a channel into a monster pretty quickly and you'll be surprised how, uh, things compound cuz the algorithm starts to like you and then you'll have a video with a million views in like over a year or something like that where it's like, it, it gets quick, it faster happens slower than you think. And then faster than you think. Okay. Why don't you guys do a newsletter? Why do you just do, why don't you do it weekly? why.you just do a monthly resources or

Cody Plofker (15:53):

So let's yeah. I mean, so say

Rabah Rahil (15:55):

Squeeze,

Cody Plofker (15:56):

We actually do. So we have a, a media site it's called Jeff bobby.com and we're trying to figure out exactly what way we're gonna take it. We have a multiple times a week can newsletter through that, but that's separate of John's road, but obviously they're, they're, they're very intertwined. And then ours, we didn't really call it a newsletter. It's just a monthly wrap up. It's just like a, oh, like here's what happened this month, but it's not like from a different sender or anything, but we do have a completely separate newsletter. It's just much smaller of a list.

Rabah Rahil (16:23):

What's your take on the podcast? CI, is there ever gonna be, uh, a time that you guys do launch your own podcast?

Cody Plofker (16:31):

Yes, probably. I mean we have one, Bobby has one it's it's currently like through iHeartRadio, so it's not directly related.

Rabah Rahil (16:38):

Okay.

Cody Plofker (16:38):

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, and so it's not super involved, but like yeah, I will use a lot of those clips on TikTok and, and whatnot. Sure. You know? Yeah. So it does do that. I could see, uh, a, a time and a place in the future where we did a podcast. Um, I think a lot of it, but though would be like heavily video based. So I think it could be more of a U YouTube channel, more of like a educational thing.

Rabah Rahil (17:00):

Yeah. I love it. That's fantastic. Um, yeah, I mean, I think you guys are spot on ultimately I think both of your thinking of exactly right where Cody is definitely in order of operations. And then, um, I like how you have the app where there's just kind of a different property that you own and, um, have those emails and stuff like that, where, um, that's, I mean, transparently to our strategy where we're actually gonna start to build a content network in terms of podcasts, where we're gonna start bringing in more and more people into the triple well universe and then basically, uh, have almost like a, a Gimlet or something like that, where we just have all these kind of random podcasts that are under the triple well umbrella and just start getting more content in front of people cuz it's just, um, it can compound really quickly, but a newsletter is a heavy lift to be fair. And if you do it bad, it sucks. Um, and then YouTube does really reward, um, almost like daily uploads. So I, I really take your points there. Um, okay, cool. Thank you for the question, Matthew, let's go to the second one. Unless you guys have any other points you wanted to touch on.

Cody Plofker (17:58):

No good on that. Totally agreed with everything.

Rabah Rahil (18:01):

Cool. Uh, look at that. Everybody in agreement, we gotta turn up the heat. He comes back from the islands. All calm, not even drinking that much water. What is going on? What is going on?

Cody Plofker (18:11):

Oh, I got it. I got it.

Rabah Rahil (18:13):

Oh, okay. Okay. And the Fiji flex. You see this guy? This guy

Cody Plofker (18:18):

Ready? Ready?

Rabah Rahil (18:19):

Um, oh gosh. Don't do it. Plug your ears. People plug your ears. Um, okay. So this comes from chase Masani I hope I pronounce your name. He's actually come up with my feet. Like he's a really bright guy. I have to talk to him some more. I don't have any clue who he is and he's, uh, really hip to it. Um, but he says help people with economics that they need as a foundation to grow. So let's keep this kind of like a 1 0 1, but how do you guys look at your economics

Cody Plofker (18:41):

Question for you guys? Question for you guys. What do you think of Mer? Do you think Mer is useless or not?

Rabah Rahil (18:48):

Oh, I think it's super useful, but again, I don't think one metric is the end all be all. I think if you look at one metric you're already lo losing, like there needs to be a constellation of metrics that you're using to get to synthesize into how the business is doing.

Cody Plofker (19:01):

For sure. I've seen somebody won't name who on Twitter recently talk about Mer being useless. So of course just wanted to throw out there, be a little bit spicy, but I couldn't agree with more. I, I don't see how Mer is useless by any means. I think it can be useless if that's your only number you're looking at, but I, I hate the, the one, right. A north star metric. Like why should there be one, you know, net, net profits, net profits in north star.

Ash Melwani (19:28):

Yeah. Like

Cody Plofker (19:29):

If you need, if you need one based

Ash Melwani (19:31):

Like if, if you're using it, are you using it for paid? Are you using it for like, are you trying to understand how your business is doing overall? Like it it's so context heavy that you can't even say absolutely. That it's useless, you know? Cause it's obviously very

Cody Plofker (19:47):

Absolute. Exactly. I just had to start. All right. So Ash, what are the few, what are the financial KPIs that you look at on a weekly or monthly basis? I think, cause it was kinda a broad question. I wonder if that'll help

Rabah Rahil (19:57):

Narrow us. Yeah. You narrowed it down. Yeah. That's a good, good way to do it.

Ash Melwani (20:01):

Okay. So I think on a paid side, constantly looking at the N CPA, um, and

Rabah Rahil (20:12):

New customer, right?

Ash Melwani (20:14):

New customer acquisition cost and average order value. Right? So the reason obviously N CPA, we're, we're looking at to see if as we're growing and we're scaling. If we are acquiring at an at, let's say, let's just say our target CPA is $45, right. If we can continue keeping that number while scaling the financial model that we've built out, right based off the last three years worth of data tells us that we can continue to, you know, pump money into advertising and eventually make that money back right now that has to also be paired with AOV. Right? So for example, if on our landing pages, we get a little bit more aggressive with discounting or free gifts and this and that and the AOV drops, but volume increases, right. Can we still support that $45 CPA if our AOV is at, if it's coming down or if it's higher.

Ash Melwani (21:10):

Right. So those are the two things that we kind of look at on a paid side. Um, Cody, I know you guys have done like a, a little bit of, um, a study on LTV based on AOV, right. And we've kind of done the same things. We, we know kind of where our numbers are at, where like, if consumers aren't falling between that 50 to 60 range, their LTB is predicted to be this versus if it's at 70, it's predicted to be this. Um, so we kind of like play around with that when we're, when we're designing landing pages or even offers on those landing pages. Um, two, I think, I know you said weekly, but we also look at a return rate on a monthly cadence. So are we, you know, if, if for example, now we're acquiring pretty heavily on a TikTok, are we getting more or less returns?

Ash Melwani (22:00):

So, you know, if, if our return rate is under, I believe 1%, which it has been super strong, you know, consistently for the last three years then we're, we're okay with the, the quality of the users that are coming in. I'm interested to see what it, if it at all changes at all with the addition of TikTok, um, just cuz I've seen a lot of people talk about how like the quality of the users maybe less, or maybe maybe the same, I don't know, but we'll find out in the next, you know, 60, 90 days. Um, so monitoring those numbers I think is, is super crucial. And then honestly like on more on the finance end, which I'm not really too involved with, but I know that cash flow, like literally that cycle, like, you know, we have a lot of net terms with literally everybody that we, we use, you know, man from manufacturers to even Facebook, right.

Ash Melwani (22:54):

Having those net terms in place is super crucial because then it's like, you know, that you can continue to spend bringing the cash. And if you're on that positive cash flow cycle, which I mean, again, like I'm not privy to those, those conversations as much because I'm more on the marketing side. Um, as long as Ron's like, all right, we're on a positive cash flow cycle. We're good to go. Right. So Hey Ron, those. Yeah, exactly. So I, I think those are the, the few things where NCPA AOV and then 30 to 60 days out probably return rate so that I can get a gauge on, are these customers decent and in those channels, if that makes sense.

Cody Plofker (23:34):

Yeah. I love for sure. For sure. I'll, I'll chime in there. So yeah, definitely. It's similar. I mean, I do think Mer is important. I think if our Mer was, we were spending a hundred percent of our revenue on ads, I would be worried. Right. So take to the extreme, it, it clearly tells you to see something, right. If we are spending 5% of our revenue on ads, I would say there's room to grow and scale. There's probably a decently healthy correlation between Mer and and net profit margins. So I, I, I do think it's important. It's, it's not the only thing. It shouldn't be the only like a good Mer doesn't mean you should spend more, a bad Mer doesn't mean that, that, that you, you know, that you are spending too much. Exactly. However, it is one metric that can just kind of help guide you in that direction and show you the profitability. So I look at Mer daily, hourly almost, right. Be

Ash Melwani (24:21):

Fair. I do want to chime in one thing. Um, when we were, when we were like struggling a little bit back in like October, right. Um, our finance team, which kind of has changed now, but prior to that change, they were telling us to look at Mer. Right. So if we were at like, we could only scale if we were at like 30% of, um, uh, revenue. Right. So for me it's like, okay, well, if I'm spending 20 K like, am I, am I supposed to get like 60 K in revenue back, like to get to that point, it's very difficult. And then when we weren't hitting those numbers, because one, I wasn't creative testing at all. I wasn't like doing shit on any of that. Right. Landing pages, like conversion rates were dropping. I had no idea what to do at that point. Um, and it's like, okay, well now we gotta keep cutting the budget, cut the budget.

Ash Melwani (25:12):

And we were like down to like five, $10,000 and spend a day and just to hit that, like that ratio. But like, it hurt us in the long run because we weren't acquiring enough customers to make up, you know, revenue for that lifetime value. So when we kind of changed up the strategy and we weren't really looking at Mer, but more so on a NCPA base, the financial model started to work out in our favor as we spent more. And we were, may not, we weren't like following the ratio of Mer. We were like slightly higher, right? Like we were like 50% instead of like 30% at like 10 K a day. But we were like 50% at like 20 K a day. And it's like, yeah, you break even. But the financial model makes sense. We're in a positive cash flow cycle, we're moving inventory. And like, things are kind of pumping. Then you start to see these other things pick up like vitamin shop, Rite aid, all these other external factors that you don't want to see day to day, start to pick up more outside of just online D TOC. So two, two sides to the corner there. I feel.

Rabah Rahil (26:18):

Could I jump in before you keep going?

Cody Plofker (26:20):

Yeah, go ahead.

Rabah Rahil (26:22):

I'm itching for it. So what's happening there is when you're using new customer CPA, you're only measuring incremental lift with Mer. You're getting everything. And so that's why we have like the three row as to roll them all. And so the Mer wasn't necessarily a bad projection. It was just that you were looking at your whole marketing ecosystem. Whereas when you went to your finance people and you said, Hey, forget about all the money, the marketing ecosystem's making, how much can I pay for a new customer? And I know they're gonna be worth, say a hundred dollars in six months and then they can give you more budget and then you can do that. So I don't think either of you guys are wrong, it was just using, um, a different way to look at how you're gonna measure incremental lift because Mer does include everything.

Rabah Rahil (27:01):

And so if you're not using Mer with, in conjunction with NNC Roaz or an N C CPA, you're, you're going to get kind of lost in that. Cuz what can happen is you're just gonna, uh, you know, you could be, um, just activating a bunch of old people and your ecosystem already and your Mer is gonna look great. And then it's gonna fall off a cliff because there's gonna be an LTV ceiling that you're gonna hit. But, um, so I think that's really, really smart in what you did there. And I love that you have that. And I would say be careful using an N CPA, unless you have kind of a mature business like you guys have where, you know, you have a pretty good, uh, peg on what your LTVs gonna be. Cuz if not, it can get really weird cuz if you don't hit those LTVs then your whole financial model kind of falls apart.

Ash Melwani (27:43):

I think it, like you said, it depends on the stage of the business, right? Like if you're on growth mode, like NCPA, for sure. If you're on profitability mode, Mer will tell you, right. Or if I'm at 30%, I know I'm profitable. So I think those, those two are, like you said, it's the stage of the business as well. Cause in the beginning we were like, we have to be at three X to be profitable and that's what we did, but now it's like, we have other things going on where like retail needs marketing support. So like, alright, let's just continue to spend. And if we can break even we'll break even on D DC.

Rabah Rahil (28:12):

Yeah, exactly. Okay. Cody it's yours.

Cody Plofker (28:15):

Yeah. All, all Mer tells you is the percentage of your revenue that you're spending on ads today and, and everyone can use that information to kind of choose a story that, you know, it's gonna tell for their business. And yeah, I think if you have a sophisticated financial model, which you know, you should have at your scale, then you can make more informed, calculated decisions about future growth, projections and assumptions, which is what you guys did. You know, I still think you could probably pair it up and project and know that like, all right, to, if we're gonna be at, you know, you probably still used Mer today when you're looking at your NCPA model, you're just Mer today changed based off your model. And instead of having to be at, you know, 30% you were like, all right, we'll run to 40, 50% because of this model.

Cody Plofker (29:01):

But I think like they're very similar. I think it's just understanding what they're telling you, but totally agree there. I don't wanna be a dead horse. Um, but I do look at that. I look at, um, net cash increases, right? So I kind of just look at like the, what, what our finance team kind of sends over every weekend part. Partly it's not something that I'm necessarily acting upon. Like I like to look at our accounts payable. I like to look at our accounts for receivable. Um, I, you know, just to understand what we have coming in, what we have due looking at net cash increase for a period, just, just to understand, all right, we had a great sales week this week. Like how is that affecting our cash? How is that affecting our cash conversion cycle? Knowing that an increase in revenue is not always increasing and just kind of just, again, it's not a scientific thing, but just looking at all these variables that I see fluctuating within our marketing side and then understanding how that's affecting our, our cash position at our company. And not that everybody has to be an expert at it. I'm certainly not an expert, but I do think if you're a media buyer or you're head of growth, you should have a decently strong relationship with your, with your finance team and, and just understand what the vari variables are going to be at the very least, you know, be given a number from your CFO, from your finance team of this is what you can afford to spend to acquire customer like, like Ron did for Ash. Like I think that's super important.

Rabah Rahil (30:18):

Yeah. I, I echo all of that. And ultimately, so like from when I was running paid, basically I would look at my Mer. So I think of think of it in three lenses. So effectiveness, efficiency, and profits. Um, and so the effectiveness is my Mer, how effective are my ad dollars? How efficient are my ad dollars is my NC row as, um, I didn't really work with really mature businesses. These are two, three year old businesses that I was working with. So I was really nervous to use LTV. So I really wanted to have that NC row as how much is my new customer, my, how much are my ad dollars driving new customer revenues. And then I would look at the PO ads. So my gross profit divided by ad spend. And I actually had a client where we're really, really tight where, um, I, I never worked off a percent ad spend.

Rabah Rahil (31:00):

I'd always kind of basically just partner with the company. And, um, we actually use net profit as an numerator. So I could tell him we were driving for every ad dollar. We were driving $2 or $3, an actual net profit for the, the company. And so I found those really helpful. And then obviously the three business metrics I would look at would be proper revenue, um, net margin, net profit, which are same, same, but different. One's just a percentage and one's an absolute, but I love the way you guys are thinking of it. I think that's absolutely right. And to Cody's point, I don't think anybody needs to be like a CPA here or anything like that. But if you are spending money, you should understand some semblance of the economics of the business, whether it's, um, dash Asher's point, a new customer CPA target, or to Cody's point, you could have an Mer target where you say, Hey, Rob, if you make a hundred thousand dollars, you can spend $10,000. Now, you know, your murder has to be at 10 and if it's below 10, then you need to pull back, spend or launch a new creative. If it's over 10 it's cocaine, champagne, and you can scale up. And it's a pretty easy way to pace, um, your budget that way. But if you don't have acquisition targets, you can just kind of get caught with your pants down. I think sometimes.

Cody Plofker (32:06):

Yeah, for sure. I think definitely knowing I knowing your, your CPA targets based on your contribution margin is probably like the, the most important thing, you know, that I think that's number one. If, if you don't know that, like that would be like somebody's listening and they're just starting like understanding what your CPA targets are based on your contribution is like step one, because it's really hard to buy media. And like, when I started as a media buyer, I was like, what's a good ROS. And you see all these screenshots of people getting a four and a five and a six. I'm like, shit, I'm getting like a 3:00 AM I bad? And it's like, no, this is fucking great. You just have to understand like, every business is going to be different based on your margins, based on your LTV, based on the operating cash. This is why I think for a bootstrap business, that's not in hyper growth that we're trying to be profitable. Now, this is why I think Mer is important because organic traffic, number one, it lowers your blended C, which is much more important than any what any platform tells you. But also that provides the operating cash flow, then support growth a hundred percent. And so I do think that understanding those numbers is like step one, super important.

Rabah Rahil (33:09):

Yeah. And like Ash said context, I mean, uh, are you trying to be profitable or are you trying to grow? Was it two totally separate goals that have two totally separate metrics and uh, yeah, I, I love it. Um, yeah, totally cool. I could nerd out some more, but let, let's be good boys. Okay. My client has pro this is from elevated Alexander. My clients have good products, which struggle to get picture and video reviews, best apps and strategies would be great. I like a kind for app reviews or for reviews, but I don't know any maybe type form video reviews. Do you guys, how do you guys solicit, um, video or picture reviews? Well, kindo does picture reviews, but I don't know. How, how do you solicit video reviews

Ash Melwani (33:49):

Video honestly?

Cody Plofker (33:52):

Is he talking like video UGC?

Rabah Rahil (33:54):

No, no, no. Like a proper video review. I bought the product. You, you love the product. And then is there any apps or strategies that you guys use to get kind of, uh, video reviews? That's a good question.

Ash Melwani (34:07):

Video has been tough, tough. I don't think we've ever, I don't think we focus on video. I, uh, images we have, um, our reward. I mean, our reviews are linked to our rewards program. So if you leave, um, if you leave your review, it's X amount of question. If you leave a photo or video, it's even more.

Rabah Rahil (34:27):

Oh,

Ash Melwani (34:27):

That's cool. There's like some incentive there to actually leave it. But I think the majority of people just leave a, a photo to be honest. Um, but then also a lot of people will tend to leave images in the, our community instead of on the website because they want to join the conversation that's happening. Sure. So I don't know if people do both as much. Um, but it's there. I mean, if it incentivizes somebody leave a photo. Great. But I think a lot of it happens in the community too.

Rabah Rahil (34:59):

So elevate Alexander start a community. What's your review app? You or reward smile or what do you use?

Ash Melwani (35:06):

Uh, YPO

Rabah Rahil (35:08):

YPO. Oh my gosh. You're just gonna on fire. Don't let Moise hear that. <laugh> I love it. Cody. What about you? Do you guys solicit any kind of video reviews

Cody Plofker (35:19):

Or anything like that? No, we, we don't. I mean, even like for photo, like we don't, we don't like, we like to curate our PDP, so we don't really show photos. So, so, uh, we use Juni. Um, you, I know you can use, you know, photos. I, I have seen that a lot of customers will submit photos. If you can video reviews. There's a few things. I mean, we don't, we really don't do it. Do it anywhere. Most of our UGC is really pay to play. I think that's, you know, most people's UGC, but there are a few apps. I mean, there's, um, archive app. It's, it's a Shopify app. Uh, they got backed by strip and that'll kind of like archive anything that you've been tagged in. So if, if people are tagging and, and leaving reviews on Instagram TikTok, that's a good one.

Cody Plofker (35:59):

And then hope I can say this. And I'm an investor in an app bounty and they're, uh, what they'll do is they'll kind of give a bounty. So they'll like pay customers and customers will get rewarded to post on. I think right now it's TikTok. They'll do other platforms. I think they're still in beta, but that's a, that's a pretty cool one that, that can kind of get you some, you know, some UGC of people kind of talking about the products. Um, and then obviously, you know, the, the, the, the big elephant in the room of UGC is most UGC is not really UGC. It's paid content creators. So, um, if you really want like a video testimonial for an ad, find a content creator, pay them and, uh, and tell 'em to talk about your product.

Rabah Rahil (36:38):

I love it. Fantastic answers. So elevated that Alexander saw, we didn't have any more explicit stuff, but there's some good stuff in there. So re-listen to that. Um, this one comes from Brad plot, um, merchandising when to add more skews, offer creation, cash flow management. Um, I guess it's three different questions. When do you guys think about adding more skews?

Ash Melwani (37:03):

So for us, when we started, we had two skews, right? Two flavors. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Um, I think when people started to, when we saw like the community started to grow a little bit, people were more active and we saw retention kind of kick in. Think this is like from the start of your business. Once you start to see that retention kind of kick in, then I think it's time for you to start thinking about maybe an expansion, like maybe a new flavor or new product. Um, and then as we saw the effectiveness of that, when we dropped a new flavor, it got a lot more people to come back. Um, then we're like, okay, well, we gotta go to the next flavor. And we kind of spread that out over a couple months. And then as we were growing rapidly, we did two launches a month last year.

Ash Melwani (37:50):

Um, and that really came from like every time we launched something, the amount of cash that it would bring in was insane. So if that kept happening, it didn't make sense to not do it for the following month. Right. And then obviously there's diminishing returns, but you also have to keep up with, like, I think we saw diminishing returns when we started to see our acquisition go down naturally. Right. So now when our acquisitions start picking up, like now in January, February, um, we started picking up on releases again. So we launched new gummies. We launched a new flavor for our instrument collaboration, and then you start to see that like, kind of grow. So I think to answer the question is if your acquisition is growing, then I think you can follow it up with, uh, some new expansions and, and new products or new, um, uh, I already said my flavors, right? So I think as your acquisition grows, then you can keep going, but not until that part starts to happen and you start to see some type of retention. Um, for

Rabah Rahil (38:51):

Sure. I love that. What about you Cody?

Cody Plofker (38:54):

Yeah, I, I hesitate to say too much cuz I'm so not involved in, in, in this, but we do launch a lot. I mean, if anything, I think, right, it's all about resources and bandwidth and, and that can be re that it's about resources that can be bandwidth in terms of team. And one of the problems for us cuz we're new and like, you know, makeup companies have a, a decent amount of skews usually is that takes away from time to be devoted to evergreen strategies. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so I think that's one con, but obviously as Ash talked about, there's incredible pros of, of launches and it definitely is great for retention. It it's great for press and, and earn media and stuff like that. Um, but you have to understand and you have to run a model and understand what is gonna cost for product development, what it's gonna cost for freight and all that stuff.

Cody Plofker (39:38):

And, and project that against the potential revenue increase that you're going to get. But, and I, so it just, it totally depends, but I, I do think it, for most brands, it should be part of their growth and retention strategies. Right? You talk about it. Most business growth is gonna come from outside of the ad account and that's something where you can get a good, a good peak and a good spike in, in revenue and retention from doing something that's outside of your ad account, that that will actually affect your ad account in, in a positive way.

Ash Melwani (40:10):

I love that. And I forgot to mention in one thing, um, cuz you, you actually just mentioned it, um, when we were doing these launches, right. A lot of these were flavor expansions that were limited addition. So it wasn't like we would launch and then keep them throughout. Right. Cause that would've been way too insane. Right. Like Cody said, yeah. Is adding an additional skew going to either add incremental revenue or is it just gonna kind of divide it across whatever you have? Right. So for us it was just limited edition, drop it in like two, three weeks it would sell out and then onto the next. So it wasn't like we had to forecast, forecast, um, getting more inventory of those, those flavors. Uh, but there were products that were supplementary to the business, right? Like the multivitamin sleep product, weight loss, etcetera, et cetera, that there have been products that we had to cut because they didn't, um, add incremental.

Ash Melwani (41:00):

So like we had a, a vegan collagen booster, which we dropped and it did. Okay. But like it was really just a pain in the ass to kind of keep around because one, it wasn't adding incremental. And then the revenue that it did bring in was like, so minor. It was like, all right, well we just have to kind of, you know, kill it and move on. So yeah, that, that makes sense that you have to kind of forecast it out and see if it's bringing you incremental mm-hmm <affirmative> otherwise just do limited edition drops and you kind of just cash play it, you know,

Rabah Rahil (41:30):

Supreme style let's go.

Cody Plofker (41:32):

Yeah. The other thing I, I know part of that question was about offers. I definitely think offers is, is huge. One thing we had a, you know, something last week, essentially we have a feature. So there's like a lot of like bundling apps. Ours is custom coded, but we have like, we have like custom sets so people can what'll happen is it looks like a set on the front end. It's actually, there's some, there's a script and it's actually fulfilled from our three PLS individual products. Yep. But that allows us to super easily. We don't have to pay a, a, you know, an extra kidding fee, but we also don't have to actually put any R and D into new products, but we're able to generate buzz and momentum and, and get, you know, just get people excited about something without doing a new product. So if you have a business where you can do that, that's a really good strategy where you're able to do seasonal stuff around some type of a, a kit or bundle.

Rabah Rahil (42:21):

Yeah. Cuts does this as well. Um, okay. You do a good job of the business kit and you can add a top, uh, uh, a top, a bottom and a, uh, thing anyways. But yeah, I think bundling is a really good call and offer creation, but Cody I'm surprised you didn't say this because this was your actually two weeks. So this is your thing, um, launching a new skew to change the economics of your business. Um, that is a really your baby mascara.

Cody Plofker (42:45):

Oh, oh, okay. I was like,

Rabah Rahil (42:46):

And that's brilliant. It's a brilliant move. If you can do that, because now you're playing a totally different game where you're literally gonna change the economics of your business now, and now this mascara could possibly drive up the LTV or the AOV of the cart. And then that's a, that's definitely worthwhile if you see there's a, a, a place in that. Um, so I think the bundling and then changing the economics is something that you guys didn't touch on, but everything else is brilliant.

Cody Plofker (43:09):

And then GWP as well. I mean that, you know, just going back a few episodes, our are playing with that mini mascara is with the GWP. So that's an incredible offer. The reason I love, right. We, we don't discount at all

Rabah Rahil (43:19):

Is what he's talking about, guys,

Cody Plofker (43:21):

My bad, my bad, but we don't, we don't like to run discounts. Right. So we, I think if you don't wanna run discounts, you have to be thinking about ways to create moments and, and create some urgency or scarcity. And what Ash talked about is limited edition stuff. We do a lot of that. Ash does as well, bundles. Yes. There's a discount, but I think you preserve more brand equity by if that's the only way to get the discount versus actually calling it a discount. Yep. And then same with a G of purchase. Technically. Yes. There is a margin hit in terms of, there is a discount on if you were to sell it at cost, but it doesn't feel the same to a customer.

Rabah Rahil (43:57):

Yeah. Yeah. And just to nail that home even more, we used to, when I was running my agency, that's exactly what we do is we would find really high margins, semi ticket items, something that cost 20, 25 bucks, but it cost us like five bucks in terms of cogs. And then you just, uh, bundle it up. And so you, if you spend X amount of dollars, here's this free hat, or here's this free thing that looks like you're getting $20 or $25 for free. But in terms of business, it's $5 cogs, $7 cogs. We had this, uh, it was a beard company had this little massager that was like 12 bucks or whatever. It was just like one of those little plastic massagers. It was literally 70 cents. I mean, it was just a no brainer to add that on where the perceived value was 12, $15. And we're taking a 70 cent hit on cogs all day, twice on Sundays

Cody Plofker (44:41):

Arbitrage.

Rabah Rahil (44:42):

Uh, yeah, exactly. We won't get too much in the cash flow management. Just what ashes talked about, the fancy term for it is the cash conversion cycle. Just go look at that up. There's tons of YouTube videos on it. Uh, it can get kind of nerdy and people get, uh, that

Cody Plofker (44:55):

Yeah. Dude search. Like how search like Jim shark cash conversion cycle. Oh, it's

Rabah Rahil (44:59):

Negative. That one. It's negative. Yeah.

Cody Plofker (45:01):

Yeah. Like, but there's a really good article on that. Have you guys read that one? Like a J something,

Rabah Rahil (45:07):

Uh, I'll see if I can find it, but yeah, I, I'm pretty privy to, uh, it's nuts. Basically. They get paid to grow it. It's incredible. They have a 180 net, 180 anyways, again, it'll get nerdy for a bunch of people, but um, like Cody said, look up Jim sharks. You're never gonna get there, but if you can get there, it's incredible. Um, if you can get a negative net conversion cycle or a cash conversion cycle, it's that is as the path as it comes. Um, let's grab a couple more, cause I know we're bumping, 'em against it. Uh, Cody, you don't have a subscription service yet, but maybe you can still riff on it. Can you, this is from Bobby Callahan. Can you talk about subscription DTC, the pros and the cons and how being a subscription brand changes the lens in which you look at key metrics and then R or Maribel is her handle, um, bumped it as well. So Ash, you guys do have a sub service, right?

Ash Melwani (46:00):

We do. Um, so it it's tough because I, it's not a majority of our, of our sales. We've tried, um, like right now, if you go to the website, you try to buy something it's automatically on subscription. Yep. But funny enough is that it's not the majority of the sales rate. It's like, it's still like 5% if that, um, I think it comes down to, so what we're trying to do is with our new brand that we launched, uh, par Rangers. So we launched last week, like soft launch in our community. Um, you know, from the founders of Avi, here's, uh, supplements for your pets, we're doing subscription only. And we want to see how that model model does, because I think a lot of other pet companies that like even food, right. It's subscription only, uh, for me, I have a dog, like I've been on this food subscription for the last two years.

Ash Melwani (46:47):

I haven't even thought about it. Right. So I think we're gonna try it for the pets. Um, my theory is that if you can acquire and see how your churn rate ends up being in like maybe five to six months, then it it's a different way of looking at LTB, right? Cause it's like people are probably gonna be locked in and you can probably figure out what you're willing to spend knowing that your churn rate is X amount after like six months to a year. Right. So it's definitely a model that a lot of companies are trying to do, but few are very successful at. Um, and if you can, I know that like if you're trying to like, you know, raise money or exit, whatever this subscription is such a huge thing that people want to see. Um, I don't know, like we don't do it well for Avi. Cause I think we also, cuz we did a lot of product launches. People don't wanna be locked into a subscription cuz we're, it's a dropping something new. Right. Um, but hoping maybe this year we can figure it out. Um, just through email and you know, post purchase, get people back on. But the initial order, it's very tough to get people to lock in on a subscription. But if you can, it's it's massive

Rabah Rahil (48:01):

Cody, you gotta get people to be, uh, free mascara, get the miracle bomb subscription, you get a, uh, your free, free mini mascara. Let's go give

Cody Plofker (48:09):

The people need. I think it's, I think it's, I'm not the biggest fan for us, for beauty, for a few reasons. But I think you have, um, different replenishment cycles for different products and they're so not they're so not regular, I think for skincare, um, there's a little bit more of a regular subscription cycle. So you see it a lot more in skincare, you know, and in like grooming stuff, but, but makeup is, is everybody's on a different one and there really is none. So I don't love it for us. However, for, for a lot of industries, I love it for skincare, for, you know, like, like shampoo for again, like athletic greens for lollipop. So for food and bed for supplements, I, I, I love it. Especially if it's like here's a 30 day supply. It just makes sense. I think the things to think about is, first of all, if you I've tested this, I don't know if this is universally true, but for other businesses defaulting, I, we did a split test and defaulting to subscriptions versus not our, our add to cart rate.

Cody Plofker (49:04):

And our CPA went actually way down when we auto kind of forced subscription. Um, and you just have to make that decision. Are you willing to take a higher CPA to push more people into subscription or would you rather not push into subscription on first order? Because again, some people have the theory of, they're not really a loyal customer until two to three purchases. Why would anybody want a subscribe to you if they've only got it in the first time? You know? Yeah. So again, every business is different. There's no right or wrong, but, but I think, I think they can obviously work, you know, retention is the name of the game. Um, but you just gotta figure out what's best and, and how you want to go about it from a customer experience perspective. Don't do what, like I order these like volume supplements, don't do what they do and like force people into some subscriptions without knowing don't let them not cancel, allow people to pause, allow people to cancel, don't be scammy about it. Um, but it, it, it, it can definitely work. It just, I think depends what industry you're in and if it's a natural fit, if, if don't try to force it, I think if, if it's not a right fit and figure out other retention plays.

Rabah Rahil (50:10):

Yeah. I think that's brilliantly put, I loved, uh, don't lock people in Ash cuz then the, you know, it's gonna be weird. And then Cody, the replenishment cycle's super on board or, um, you don't want people just having stacks and stacks of toothpastes stuff at their house or whatever. Like it has to be the right replenishment cycle. And um, also don't do any black hat strategies. Zero 0%. That's a horrible idea. Um, always we did it. We got through most of the questions. Um, if you guys wanna send in more questions, um, just tag me, Ash or Cody and we'll do another one of these in a few more episodes, but uh, Cody let the people know, oh, I'm gonna come join you on mentor pass. It'll be fun. Oh, you're

Cody Plofker (50:48):

On there

Rabah Rahil (50:48):

Be yeah, I'm coming on. Awesome. Yeah. People will be able to come yell at me and then

Cody Plofker (50:53):

We're trying, I'm trying to get Ash on there as well.

Rabah Rahil (50:55):

Oh, let's go. The whole APEN crew, like

Ash Melwani (50:59):

Have like listen now.

Rabah Rahil (51:01):

Oh, let's go guys. Uh, Cody tell the people where to follow you. How can they get more involved with Jones? Um, tell 'em about mentor, pass your newsletter. You got all this stuff.

Cody Plofker (51:10):

Yeah. Uh, follow me on Twitter at Cody plot. That's kind of the hub of everything. Um, hopefully by this time I didn't do it last week, but Cody plager.com is live. You kinda just check out some, some of my work, some of the stuff I've been featured in. And then if you want to book some time with me, mentor, mentor pass is the place to do it. And then also, yeah. Subscribe, subscribe to my newsletter, which you can [email protected].

Rabah Rahil (51:33):

And you just got, uh, had a call with Amanda OS. How are you plugged into every single person on the planet? You, you were just the most connected man on the planet. I love it. Just

Cody Plofker (51:43):

Trying, trying to give value, trying to give value. I'm an investor in house so wise, but how

Rabah Rahil (51:47):

Did you, I didn't even let me know next time you're raising Amanda. Come on. Ask, let the people know what's up. Tell 'em how they can get involved in my a what you, what are you doing over there?

Ash Melwani (51:58):

Yeah. Follow me on Twitter, Ash for Milani. Um, we walks from college in new life. So I'm serious college. My a.com. We just got into vitamin shop. If there is one, can you please go to the shop, take a picture and tweet me. It'd be sick. Um, other than that, yeah. That's that's it also Cody congrats on 15 K Twitter.

Rabah Rahil (52:20):

Thanks

Cody Plofker (52:21):

Man. Serious. Thank you. I couldn't care less, but thank you.

Ash Melwani (52:24):

<laugh>

Cody Plofker (52:25):

I'm trying, you know, everyone gets to a point where they probably care about follower account too much. And now I'm like, I don't even fucking care.

Ash Melwani (52:31):

I just want to hit 10 K and then

Cody Plofker (52:34):

Yeah. Yeah, we'll get you there.

Rabah Rahil (52:36):

I just want the brand account to beat me. I'm getting crushed triples. I saw that triples. It's not good. They're about to catch me. Fuck, fuck. Um, alright guys, if you wanna get more involved with triple oil, it is try triple.com. We're also on the bird app at triple well I'm on the bird app. Go follow me. So I don't get caught up by triple well. Um, and then we'll also all three be in, um, Miami, Miami in a couple or in a month, actually a little less than a month. Um, for a geek out. I think there's a few more tickets left. So if you can go, you can go to geek out. Uh, actually I don't know when this is gonna drop, but anyways, go to geek out if you want. Shaq is an amazing human it's one of the best DTC conferences.

Rabah Rahil (53:11):

If you can't make it to Miami, go to another one. It's awesome. Um, boys, it felt good to be back again. It's huh? Awesome. Thanks for all the love on Twitter. It's it's been fantastic. We really appreciate it. We love all the threads. We love all the tweets. Um, it's been amazing. Cody. It's great to have you back, Ash. I'm a little disappointed. You, you went, you went all black on me. You didn't do your little fancy ALS shirt. What happened? Well, O OVO won't sponsor him. So he is holding out. I'm trying I'm I'm trying to get sponsored here. Here we go, boys. I got the shirt. Come on, liquid dead. Let's go throw us some water please. Um, as always people thanks so much, much love all the time and uh, that's it. That's number nine in the books. Thanks everybody.

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