In this episode, John and I talk about Subscription Trends, TikTok, Paid Ads and everything else to do with GROWTH! We all want to grow our boxes, learn from one of the best right here with John Roman of Battlbox and Carnivore Club!
Transcript from video:
0:02 [Music] hey Eric Music here welcome to the subscription box show and if you enjoyed
0:08 this podcast or it has even helped your business in any way then I'd ask you to please consider supporting the show by
0:14 visiting the subscription box show dot locals dot com any dollar amount would
0:21 be a blessing to us thank you so much for considering
0:27 you see the recording notification that you might have to click yeah okay cool that means we're live right here yeah
0:32 it's recording live so new format um everyone's going to be seeing this so from the pre-banter post
0:38 banter and the uh potion when does it start right now right now we are
0:44 okay probably this is probably easier than post-production stuff well
0:49 yeah i don't know like there's just more things for him to add so we have a youtube channel now a locals community um so yeah I'm just gonna bring up to
0:55 date here so I guess our editor Jun art's still the same editor he he just has to add icons and logos and stuff now
1:01 he'll have your name with the the Battlbox logo hey i got a question are you are you are you guys still with
1:07 Carnivore Club are you still to do it there too yeah okay so yeah so Carnivore and Battlbox are are
1:14 now the Battlbox group and that was that was what emerge emerge purchased okay that's what i thought i knew there
1:19 was some news there and um i thought maybe they got acquired or you know you sold or whatnot but cool well
1:25 maybe let's start there let's um i'll i'll quickly start with like what's new with us and what we're going to be doing here with the show and then maybe we'll
1:30 get you a quick update from you and what's happening at headquarters and still in Atlanta
1:35 uh yeah yeah I'm still here but i mean you know our parent company's in Toronto now so
1:40 yeah that's crazy yeah with the carnivore club side of things right no or just we can we can get into it we
1:46 were we were acquired in October oh no kidding yeah in October okay well
1:52 yeah hold on to that so i'm just gonna quickly so uh yeah new format of the show this will be on youtube uh this is
1:58 also gonna be on locals the a lot of the post banter show stuff um if there is any
2:04 and then the the q a there's a specific q a so i asked the locals community our supporters and members to ask questions for you so those q and a that q a will
2:11 be at the end of the show that's just just going to be for the supporters so if you want to be part of those and you want to ask questions and you want to
2:18 hear the answers from our esteemed guests like john roman here you're gonna have to head over to the subscription
2:24 box show.locals.com and there you can join as a member there and you'll see your options so um that's
2:31 what's new with us john a bit of a new kind of a format more engaging i'll say um the show with many of the people that
2:37 just want to have more like day-to-day um touch points so uh what about you so yeah wow you guys
2:44 got acquired in october let's say yeah let's start there let's go back a second how many episodes
2:50 have you done now this is uh do you know the quantity uh yeah i don't know what number this episode will
2:56 be um but as we're recording this right now what is it it's friday yeah february 11th uh on tuesday so it's
3:04 only one show a week now since post christmas and new year we are at 208 i want to say two or nine
3:10 two weeks holy cow yeah so it's still going strong yeah
3:16 i've never i've never slept with anything that long [Laughter] oh yeah
3:22 man and the funny thing is we've known each other for for a few years now and we've actually never met in person we
3:29 were close to meeting in person and that whole uh pandemic thing started yeah what's up with that it's kind of good is that over
3:35 yet yeah it should be um but yeah tell me about uh yeah so
3:41 hopefully maybe in june uh we're we're seeing a lot of provinces open up right no restrictions that kind of stuff
3:47 so i'm hoping it's the same here in my province i'm in right in the middle here in manitoba they're pretty pretty safe we'll say
3:53 usually so we'll see what happens there but yeah i'd love to be able to get this sub summit i've talked to the sub team there
3:59 to get the to get up down there in june right june 2nd yeah yeah it's uh just the beginning of june um so when when i
4:06 it's obviously we have that office our office up in in toronto um so when they
4:11 were going down through the lockdown again recently did you guys go through any kind of lockdown oh yeah yeah canada
4:16 is pretty like again they play really safe i'll i'll be honest like my opinion on it and
4:22 my opinion only too safe like it's like we're very we only have 35 million people here spread out in one of the
4:28 largest countries in the world and i mean you look down south just look no further to down south where you guys are
4:33 you guys have ten times as many people and you guys are doing fine like florida for example i look at it as a great
4:38 example right like there's more people in florida than canada i think and um wow they're they're they're doing okay
4:45 yeah and they're not they're not following any protocols at all that's what i mean yeah i mean and they're living on top of
4:50 each other compared to here right so yeah anyways we're not gonna get into that but yeah hopefully i'd love to be able to get down there just to get some
4:56 sun too like looks like it's it's all sunny here right now but um actually i should do this i'll i'll pan over okay it's um
5:03 like minus 21 or 22 right now and it's gonna be with with the wind it feels like minus 40. there was actually a
5:10 blizzard this morning it's it's calmed down a little bit but
5:15 that you know it might be cold but that is beautiful yeah so all to see i need sun i need some
5:21 vitamin d some natural vitamin d not just my supplements here yeah yeah well hopefully hopefully
5:27 you'll uh you'll make it down to disney world yeah yeah it'd be nice to bring the family
5:32 too and you know we got five little kiddos now and oh they all have they'll have a blast oh
5:38 geez would they ever yeah for sure so let's go back to you then let's what's new with you what since we last spoke i don't know when when it was the
5:44 last episode recorded but it was a while ago it was a while ago but you came back a couple times yeah
5:49 yeah we had that one thing where we were all on
5:55 i mean the last time we decided to roll on some kind of video conference okay so yeah you first came in just talking
6:00 about battle blocks and carnivore club that was episode say i don't know 40-ish 30-ish summer's in there probably
6:06 and then we had you back on for a black no holiday special talking about holiday deals
6:13 and then we had the episode 100 which is um actually the first video i released on the youtube
6:18 channel because it's such a cool video with you and the other eight panelists there's seven panelists where we talked
6:24 about um you know international trends for 2021. right that was the last time we probably
6:29 spoke and i got i got uh called out on my uh i think i had a a suit jacket or a
6:35 blazer or something the suit the suit ladies and gentlemen i guess i should introduce you um
6:43 today's guest here uh john the suit roman all the way from atlanta georgia thanks for coming on
6:48 [Music] oh man so i never get to wear wear that
6:53 stuff and i was uh that same day i was in i was accepting
6:59 an award for sub summit when it was virtual um
7:05 and i never get to wear this stuff like i have this whole closet full of um clothes from when i had to wear a
7:10 suit every day so when i find the opportunity to do it i do it and then y'all gave me a rough time on that
7:18 john was a bit of the whipping boy for the virtual summit suit wearing geez yeah you guys all called her to call me
7:25 um anyway so this um since we we got acquired so
7:33 um probably traded company out of out of toronto emerge commerce um
7:40 they are literally a an acquisition mode to acquire these independent business units
7:46 like like us and um in october they acquired us um
7:52 so no longer the uh no longer one of the owners of battle boxing clan war club i am i'm an
7:59 employee um which which is cool and different and um yeah so that's that's the big big thing
8:06 that happened um so it's interesting it's uh the cool thing is not a lot has changed
8:13 um their motto is they don't want to come in and um you know like like jump in and start
8:20 disrupt yeah yeah like they their their model is is getting these
8:25 operators that that they want to keep in place um
8:31 and kind of create this ecosystem where like you're sharing best practices and we're leveraging all of our buying power
8:36 to get a better rate on x um so it's pretty cool it's um
8:42 probably the best the best scenario we could we could have had we talked to
8:48 when we decided we were at the point to do this and we talked to some like private equity companies and
8:54 i just it was not a warm and fuzzy feeling from from some of them like they when we asked them the hard questions
9:00 because ultimately we were interviewing them too right we wanted to find uh the right place for for the brand and
9:06 um all the private equity companies like there was not going to be any job security for for our team
9:14 um it was very like spreadsheet management which which i'm not a fan of right
9:20 there's those intangibles that you don't see on a spreadsheet um so yeah
9:26 interesting like i'm curious to like if you want to let's rewind a little bit here so like for people that are listening like you know you might be
9:31 like wow that must be nice to getting acquired but i mean at some point that might have not been the vision for
9:37 your brand and the company but you guys kind of just grew into this position of of of you know an advantage i guess like
9:44 you had a you know a bit of a power advantage being you know just what you guys were the success
9:49 you've seen whether it was with a netflix show whether it was uh i mean you know we can talk with that that's uh
9:55 i mean there's just been so many good things that you guys have put together like just so you guys actively worked at a point where you decide to seek to be
10:01 acquired is that kind of what i'm hearing yeah so there were um there were three of us that
10:07 that owned that had the equity in the company and um one one of us was
10:14 you know probably ready to i don't want to say burned out but just ready to ready to you know put the hat up and
10:19 call it a day and probably didn't have the passion um that that that they once had so we
10:26 were kind of at that crossroads where um you know two of us wanted to continue
10:31 on and and and one really didn't so at that point you have a couple options right
10:37 it's it's do we try to buy each other out and um
10:43 the other option trying to trying to find a find a suitor and and the first
10:48 one just we got too big right i uh i don't have
10:53 that kind of money sitting around and um you know at that point do you do you get a loan and um
11:02 then there's gonna be the argument on valuations right like a larger company can justify that that multiplier off
11:07 ebitda um that that is healthy well you know it's tough it's tough for um an
11:14 individual or two people to justify paying a 6x ebitda because that means
11:19 with with the business staying the same as it takes six years to get that money back and um you know that's not
11:26 the the risk there right is is maybe not something we wanted to bite off so
11:31 john just quickly before just i'll just pause your story there try to see if we can get back right to where you're at here just for those who have never maybe
11:38 heard of ebitda you want to just kind of like explain that just real quick yeah so so basically bottom line your money so
11:44 it's earnings uh before interest what is it ebitda uh
11:51 or interest taxes depreciation amortization yeah it's an acronym for people you can just google it too it'll
11:56 yeah yeah so yeah so it's your earnings before all all those things right interest taxes um
12:04 and it it's basically what what companies that are are going to
12:11 make acquisition that's what they're looking at right they're looking at the bottom line um how much how much a company makes and
12:18 typically um they're they're coming up with a multiplier
12:23 off off that to form an evaluation is there a
12:28 for people that are listening i know that a lot of my listeners are all over the place right some that are just thinking of starting a subscription box
12:33 some that i've started and some that are you know in the thousands and they're growing is there
12:39 in your opinion a road map to getting acquired i know for us that louisiana and i'm asking this for myself we're kind of that like
12:46 we're our goal is was to build a company to get acquired at one point so we're still you know not there yet but is
12:52 there like a road map i guess my first question and then my second part of my question would be is there like a level
12:58 not even income or subscriber base but is there like some kind of like size that they look at before they even
13:04 consider acquiring you or does it it depends completely it could be all over the map i think it could be all over the
13:09 map so you look at you look at carnivore club right so carnivore club was
13:14 um was was a couple couple million dollar three million dollar business we we personally
13:22 have acquired acquired them right we've um we sold uh before that we had two
13:30 smaller brands bbqbox.com and spartancarton.com one was a barbecue
13:37 um centric subscription box one was a fitness and supplement subscription box um
13:44 combined i mean i mean they were both six low six figure businesses um scratching and clawing to be six
13:51 figures and we we sold both of those um so there was a there was a buyer for that and in low six figures and we're talking
13:59 one had um 600 subscribers 600 subs and the other one it may be i think 350 400 higher
14:07 price point but but lower sub count um and we found a buyer for both of those so i i think
14:14 i don't think the size um matters now i will tell you the valuations probably differ the bigger
14:21 you get right like um even even us we wear this multiplier off off even up
14:27 but if we could have get it gotten to that next level you can start getting a multiplier off
14:33 um top line revenue right just based on who your suitor is you know they have
14:38 different different roles different things they're looking for um you know i know with the merge they were
14:44 looking for that sweet spot they they are trying to acquire acquire companies that haven't even between um typically
14:52 two and five million dollars um that's that that's what they're looking for specifically
14:58 uh companies yeah we just happen to fall fall into into that so i think there's
15:08 i i think you know it's it's size doesn't matter when it comes to selling
15:14 size matters when it comes to valuation how much you're gonna get um but
15:20 the playbook for it um run run a tight ship right um i know
15:27 it's especially like when you start a business it's easy to say well i i own 100 of this business
15:34 right and daddy needs some money um and there's money in here so like
15:39 doing stuff like that and treating it like a bank account for personal use people do that and and and
15:46 that's fine if you want to treat it as just a lifestyle a lifestyle job lifestyle company
15:52 lifestyle brand that's cool but you're not gonna ever sell because no one's gonna want to buy
15:57 it um and i think i think that's the big thing and to be honest we were we were guilty
16:03 of that when we first started um and uh we we took we took probably more
16:09 money out than we should have and um our books in turn did not look very
16:16 pretty so even you know i think we probably um
16:21 you know the outcome we came to where we decided we were going to try to find a suitor um we would have we've had those
16:27 conversations and probably at a similar point um collectively a couple years prior
16:33 but our books were not pretty and our books were not going to be attractive to
16:39 anyone um in hindsight if you do get to the you know
16:45 um i'd say if you do get to decent seven figure eight figures in revenue
16:51 um the one hurdle we hit post letter of intent was we had to get a legitimate
16:56 audit right this this super expensive um anal probe that lasted months
17:04 um it's mind-blowing you would pay for such pain but um we had to have one and then
17:10 emerge require that they said hey you need to have an audit done on previous year's financials
17:16 and um we had never done anything like that and you know we thought we were running good books and we were to a
17:22 certain extent but there were so many nuances little things like we had never even accounted or thought of that that
17:28 changed stuff significantly um and uh
17:33 if you get to that point and you want to get acquired and your your decent seven figure eight figures
17:39 have have an audit done prior um because there were lots of surprises it delayed the sales pro the us closing
17:46 three four months um because we had to have this audit done and and so many little things like
17:53 change so we we renew on we'll count february so february 15th we have our big renewal
17:59 for both Battlbox and Carnivore Club um now we don't ship that box
18:05 either of them until the beginning of march that's that's our model right well previously
18:12 we were renewing on the 15th we still were knew on the 15th but we were capturing february 15th renewal in the
18:18 month of february that makes sense to me that's when the sale occurred right
18:24 that's incred that's incorrect um because you're shipping in march you
18:29 have to defer that revenue and account for it in march when the product actually ships
18:34 and we weren't doing that um so we had to go back on all the you have to fix all the books on those yeah so it
18:42 was it was it was crazy like nightmare yeah yeah because then you're having a look at all the orders okay so
18:49 these orders shipped at this month but these didn't so you gotta move it's not like you're just taking all february
18:54 revenue and dumping into march these actually shipped in february just one time or whatever so
19:01 um or in the beginning of february they bought so they didn't get it yeah little nuances like that um
19:07 so i would highly advise getting ahead of the audit thing yeah um because we were supposed to
19:12 originally close in june and we didn't close officially into october
19:17 so long that's a long push out yeah especially now you've got to go through the summer drought i don't know
19:23 if that's the thing with your brand or whatnot but i mean and then you're trying to do that in the middle of or beginning of q4 like it's uh
19:31 yeah it's just it's going that long it's weird because then you're like you're in this weird phase right like i
19:38 can't imagine yeah like you're you're still the owner but
19:43 you're not you're assumed not to be and it's so weird it just brings a whole uh
19:49 whole slew of uh variables you had never come across or thought about
19:54 um but yeah i think i think i had some of the answers to your questions there yeah
20:00 for sure is there like a a place you go to look for people that acquire companies is like you know where do you
20:06 start looking or is it just connections or or a network you've had previously
20:11 so so there's there's brokers right so you know when we decided we were going
20:16 down this process um i i leveraged my my network at first and
20:22 i got referred to um this guy out of out of toronto um who
20:29 had done done a deal for this guy they referred him and
20:34 met met him since tim had this great call um meanwhile our cfo is going down a
20:41 more traditional route trying to find you know where do we how do we get sold right
20:47 and he found he found a traditional broker house um and there's a bunch of them in there for businesses all size
20:53 the one we so we ended up going with both my guy and the broker thing and we gave an
20:59 exclusion list because the big broker they wanted an exclusivity they didn't want anybody else
21:04 doing this okay um oh so we we agreed to go with them but then we came up with these this list of 50 people that my
21:10 buddy tim was going to work and we said okay as long as is 50 tim has it anybody
21:16 else or anything you find these guys do it tim got the deal um
21:22 his his first call he's set up um ended up being now we had other calls but the first call he set up ended up
21:29 being the emerge deal um but back to yeah website closers.com was
21:35 who we used as the main from they didn't you know they didn't find us a deal but they got us lots of lots of meetings um
21:42 and they're one of the leaders in the space and it's super easy you can go there to buy businesses you can also go there to
21:48 you know fill out a form and one of their brokers will call you and they handle the rest um
21:55 big big takeaway after going through the deal is man i'm in the wrong industry i need to be a broker
22:00 getting getting getting six to eight points um for a couple of meetings
22:06 yeah they they do they do they earn their paycheck in your opinion or is it
22:12 i'm sure there's situations where they do and you know it's a relative question right
22:17 do they earn their paycheck would the deal have happened without them no yeah right we we didn't know a merged uh emerge
22:24 um so so probably i guess they do but man they earn their
22:30 paycheck but they're just highly paid um so it's like realtors they don't uh no
22:37 offense realtors out there
22:42 irritates me so much um and taking my equity for
22:48 yeah and so so the other thing no offense realtors if you're listening good for you but there's there's two
22:54 different groups of realtors right there's these hustlers grinders they're putting in the
22:59 the hard work they're they're they're smart they're intelligent they have they have critical
23:04 thinking they're they're going to be successful and they chose real estate
23:09 then i'm sorry you have this other bucket that [ __ ] failed at everything else
23:15 and they're not gonna be a realtor sounds easy um but they and they want the same
23:21 percentage i don't know why i'm so irritated right now did you ever did you recently have a bad
23:26 experience with the realtor john no i have no i i haven't had some great experiences
23:33 um i have some realtor friends that if they hear this they're like you probably hate me now
23:39 yeah i know we have a lot of realtor friends too and i i kind of you know let's i tell mark to their face if i
23:45 sell i'm not using you i'm going to sell myself it's 2022. like what do you yes yeah i would also keep i'll keep my own
23:51 home equity thank you right thank you i uh that was really mad i i i really thought um zillow was gonna
23:59 like change the game on on the road to market zillow yes
24:05 so in the states zillow decided um you know you can go so on zillow you
24:10 can go and it gives you a zest a zestimate of what your house is worth um
24:16 but zillow probably traded giant company started saying we're gonna get into real estate we'll buy
24:22 we'll buy your home so you're you were eliminating brokers
24:28 and they they bought a lot of homes but the zestimate um
24:34 always was kind of higher than than appraisers and real estate people would say your house was worth okay yeah i
24:40 think zillow was kind of going more off their zestimate which was like highly inaccurate so they for six months they
24:46 bought thousands of homes and spent hundreds of millions of dollars and then they just
24:52 said all right we're not doing this anymore like this isn't right but i thought that that was going to be like
24:58 that that game changer where it it says okay you don't need a real estate agent
25:03 anymore because yeah i'm surprised still yeah i think it's i don't know if it's just the boomer generation i mean like i know
25:09 here in canada we have something called kijiji yeah i don't know if you guys have kijiji it's like a buy and sell app right you
25:16 can do your vehicles there you can sell i can sell you know you know my calculator i can sell
25:21 anything i can literally post anything take a picture exactly and then people do that for land
25:27 for properties and their houses now so i'm like you know people always post their first facebook market and then i
25:32 think you between facebook and kijiji here anyways
25:38 it sells like people see it so i don't know how uh i don't understand how they they've continued to be this yeah this space to
25:44 your point of 2022 i'm going to sell my own house yeah and and so thinking now it's
25:50 like so we the house we live and we bought in 2015 so it's been a minute but the internet was still the internet back
25:56 then yeah and like we did all we did the majority of like the research we knew this and we
26:02 knew that and you can go to the the sites that have the listings anyway i know
26:08 what exactly what exactly do you do for your for your percentage not to mention
26:14 no one knows your house as much as you do so i mean yeah i know my house more than you know my buddy brett or a realtor or
26:20 whatever right like anyways uh let's take a you know i'm just gonna take this we're going off
26:26 we're going off the off rail here but i'm just gonna take a second to thank our sponsors this is a new thing too john we're thanking our sponsors in show
26:32 here so this one here is close to your heart because i think you've been on stage either virtually or with your suit in
26:39 person uh multiple times as a multiple winner so uh sub summit sub summit 2022 is
26:45 sponsoring this episode uh the great team at septa chris paul and um
26:52 george john chris paul and john sorry sorry john the
26:57 hodge father yes um so yeah this episode is sponsored by
27:02 substance we were actually we kind of like teed it up a little bit you know nonchalantly in the beginning but sub summit 2022 is in june june 2nd to 4th i
27:10 want to say it's in i mean just go to subsummit.com um june art's going to be posting
27:15 the link on the screen here or you can also go to sabta.com s-u-b-t-a
27:22 and you will um you will find a link to sub-summit but sub-summit has amazing speakers and and people like john that heads out there um
27:29 i was gonna say former cmo are you still cmo at battlebox no i'm i am a ceo now
27:34 um so part of part of the switch um with the new with the
27:39 new ownership i stepped into the ceo role excuse me well look at that
27:46 even june june 1st 23rd june 1st to the 3rd yeah okay so
27:51 apologies to sub-summit but yeah june 1st the 3rd in sunny orlando florida and i think there's even like a hotel block
27:58 you can you can rent there and stuff um i think it's that's the same place we went to pod fest i want to say like i
28:04 went to pod fest in 2020 and i think it's the same kind of like a resort hotel that was
28:10 beautiful there i think it is this is i'm gonna i'm gonna start talking about the sponsor here yeah so it's in disney
28:15 world okay at the swan and dolphin which are on on in disney uh near epcot theme park
28:22 um you can literally take a little tram or walk to uh or take a boat ride to epcot
28:29 you can take a you can take a little boat to disney studios um it's right there in the action it's
28:34 going to be it's going to be fun yeah and there's always a massive lineup of speakers there i mean go check it out
28:40 subsummit.com you'll see all the speakers that are supposed to be there so yeah check it out i'm definitely going to be there if i can i mean it's
28:46 just kind of got him you've got to make it i know i might have to uh ski-doo across the border and then fly from grand forks
28:52 north dakota or something we'll see but yeah have to find a way to get there if not obviously like
28:59 i mean i'm i'm kind of done with such virtual things but worst worst case scenario i would be going virtually uh
29:05 virtually anyways but yeah my plans to definitely be there and i think um if i can be there we've got some cool plans
29:11 for even the subscription box show supporters um to kind of have meet and greets with some of my past favorite
29:16 guests maybe like john maybe john would come in and partake with that i'm gonna be there i'd love if if you're there i'm
29:22 i'm 100 in yeah we'll have some drinks and uh some of my bring some canadian pints
29:27 maybe i don't know something cool we'll figure something out some good coffee some good some good beer um are you a
29:32 beer drinker sean i'm not so we've talked about this before i'm not i'm not a beer drinker what disappointing that
29:38 is very disappointing you look like you could uh you should be you know somewhere in a pub having a pint
29:44 it's friday yeah okay so let's continue so since the
29:49 acquisition what's the new role for you look like you went from cmo to ceo um so you know we kind of went through like
29:54 the process of getting acquired and we can keep kind of going down this uh this rabbit hole here so you guys get
30:00 acquired in october what does that look like as soon as like you know day you know day one and in the new position
30:05 here yeah so so as far as as far as day to day goes there
30:11 hasn't been a lot of changes um for for for what my day-to-day looks like i've i've leaned
30:18 um heavily a little bit more than usual on a
30:23 gentleman named walter he's our director of marketing um and he's he learned in really smart kid
30:31 and he's learned a lot of the stuff um that i was doing on the day day-to-day but he was but he was
30:36 learning that prior to the acquisition um as as it's always been the plan that
30:42 he's going to continue to take all things sales and marketing um and then i have some involvement now in
30:49 the procurement process which i didn't have before um but that's in in general all of us in
30:56 leadership are involved in the procurement process now i'm just to ensure it was the one piece
31:02 my business partner who decided to retire daniel that was the one thing he did for the company was procurement um
31:08 so we said okay well if we're losing him we're gonna need to overcompensate um
31:14 just to be be safe and make sure we don't we don't miss the mark um so we made a full-time hire to lead
31:21 procurement and we have kind of this board of procurement to ensure everything um
31:27 is is a better experience even before so so the day-to-day
31:32 um hasn't changed the way the business operates hasn't changed much if i if i'm
31:38 thinking of what's different um they're probably traded so
31:43 there's one i'm not i didn't have to send reports and updates on numbers ever before
31:51 because i would listen to myself i'd look at them and and and see where we're at and that would be
31:57 it now we're having to put together um a decent amount of like reporting
32:02 and and forecasting and shareholders yeah so we're setting that up to parent
32:08 company um so that's new and then this whole publicly traded pieces new
32:14 because it's um we're having to get financials by a
32:19 certain date um you know up to up to corporate so they can put him in this combined thing
32:25 you know literally this week um i believe maybe wednesday they you know
32:31 emerge announced that their their preliminary q4 results um in order to do that we you know we
32:37 had to get our numbers into this so so that whole nuance is is new
32:43 um luckily i i you know knock on wood our cfo richard and his team
32:50 um they they take 99 of that love lift of the lift from that so i'm not having to
32:56 deal with it um too much on the financial side the reporting side i have some stuff i have to do
33:03 but um that and then um there's always going to be an audit
33:09 which is which is not fun so um poor patrick who uh third partner the
33:16 other partner that also stayed on healing he runs our warehouse needs operations logistics shipping
33:21 fulfillment inventory management all of that is his domain well they had to do at the end of the
33:27 year they had to do a a fun inventory audit which which these things are not fun so
33:33 like um did you guys still do everything in house john we do yeah
33:38 um i think that was one of the um probably one of the uh a
33:44 list of attractive things that that we had going for us was that we had our own fulfillment so is that
33:49 work why is that attractive to them so emerge has um where we were their
33:55 second acquisition their first acquisition true local um which i don't know if you're if you're familiar with that sounds
34:00 familiar yeah i'm trying to think about it yeah so it's it's like a butcher's block butcher box it's it's these high
34:06 quality organic um cuts of meat and they're they're 99 of the business maybe 97 95 the
34:14 business is in canada okay um and they don't have too much of a us presence and some of the other
34:20 brands they have just golf stuff wag jag is all canada-based but
34:26 they have some fulfillment in canada but they really don't have u.s fulfillment at all so it allows as there's expansion
34:34 these canadian companies and you know just golf stuff for example we're talking with them sister company
34:39 now and you know it probably makes sense we come to a deal where we do some fulfillment for them um instead of them
34:45 having to ship to a 3pl in the states they can ship to us
34:50 or keep it in the family um so that that's cool that's the synergies
34:56 and and whatnot um but yeah so yeah yeah
35:02 yeah yeah it's incredible what a journey i mean like uh i think do most people stick around after they
35:08 get acquired or do a lot of people just kind of like you said i think it was daniel like they just kind of retire because often i think you you know right
35:15 off in the sunset but you want to keep uh you want to stay you want to stay in the game i guess
35:21 yeah so i wasn't a couple reasons why not you know personally i wasn't um
35:28 i i i wasn't done with the battle box journey okay um there i want to see a little you know how far can we take this
35:35 what else can we do we had some um you know some initiatives and plans
35:40 and things we wanted to launch that we haven't gotten to yet um i think i think the potential is
35:46 there to um to keep going with it now a merge wouldn't have bought us if we weren't
35:52 sticking around um so we were very very forthcoming when
35:57 we started the combo with emerge and we said hey um patrick
36:02 john richard our cfo um who wasn't a partner but he basically
36:08 might as well be um the three of us are staying daniel was not so there was some some major due
36:13 diligence by them because their motto is they don't want they want independent business units that are self-sustaining
36:20 they can run themselves they don't they don't want to have to like stick some leadership in there yeah um
36:26 so they there was major due diligence to make sure that they felt comfortable we were confident comfortable that we
36:32 were fine with daniel not staying on but they obviously needed to make sure as well
36:37 um because their whole motto is staying on now yes we weren't ready to leave and hang
36:44 up the hat but there's major financial
36:50 um goals and and payouts if if we can hit these goals over the next few years so it's
36:56 advantageous for us to stay too um it's they they've definitely
37:02 aligned made sure we were we were aligned with them in and staying on yeah um
37:09 so as long as you know as long as we hit our goals it's it's very advantageous to stay on yeah right on sounds exciting so
37:15 let's just move into the day-to-day stuff i mean what are you guys seeing for 2022 here we're still fairly early
37:20 february 11th like i said as we're recording this um are you guys um [Music]
37:26 what's the plan for growth are you guys are at a spot where you're saturated you you know you're kind of like just kind of maintaining are you still looking to
37:32 keep you know growing acquisitions what's uh what does that look like so we have to grow um
37:40 the the power of the bees say we have to and and you know in in reality we're we're still growing we're still looking
37:47 to grow um i think it's it's a for us it's a combination of the continued acquisition
37:54 on digital advertising that we've done it's launching new products um and new
37:59 offerings and then we're gonna we're continuing the very cool thing that we were up front with emerge and
38:05 they like it is we're going to continue our talking uh model of trying to find like additional carnivore clubs these
38:12 these other subscription businesses that are smaller than us that we can talk in where our existing team
38:19 um can can you know replicate and do 85 90
38:24 of of the job of of that other company um so it's all of them we're um
38:31 we're still having the love hate hate
38:36 kind of like relationship with with facebook i mean i think we're all in the same boat of
38:42 of wtf after this this ios thing right um trying to find
38:49 what works um and what doesn't work and it's interesting
38:54 right now facebook and instagram are actually going really well for us and
39:00 everybody i've spoken to where it's going well we all are doing the exact same thing on
39:07 there which is a very aggressive offer
39:13 for for us it's um right now on all of our battle box as we're giving
39:19 we're giving away a free single man tent um so it's a gift i was gonna ask you about your offer i'm glad you went there
39:24 because i was just gonna ask you like so what kind of offer like was free box kind of posse now it's like you have to
39:31 have this killer kick-ass gift i think that people really want and they'll almost sign up just to get that gift is
39:36 that kind of what you're getting at um yeah i it and it's
39:41 you know for for for five six seven years we we
39:47 didn't like these these huge offers in top of funnel we just didn't want to do that right now
39:52 we might give you middle of funnel give you 10 off your first box you know maybe something even more
39:57 aggressive and end up final just to close you and then what we used to do is um for the last three years a couple
40:05 times a year typically three to four times we'd have a very aggressive um
40:10 offer typically black friday cyber monday yeah and we'd find two times
40:15 strategically later or earlier in the year to do a a that's a very similar thing and those
40:21 were needle movers that was okay let's like let's turn it off let's add some
40:27 major exponential growth to our subscriber base let's let's do this and they were
40:32 planned and now the unfortunate reality is that's just going to be the
40:38 norm now it's an evergreen ex aggressive offer
40:43 um now the good news is we we we did major testing as through the
40:49 years as we've done this and looking at those cohorts um they perform
40:55 not identical to nor to the normal regular battle box subscribers but but close enough where we can do
41:01 modeling and understand what the ltv is and understand what the behavior is and
41:07 it it makes it where it's it it makes sense it's profitable it's
41:12 um but it's just it's a it's a new world where we're having a lead with this offer
41:18 and um it's but it's working it's working right now and every and i've
41:23 i've probably in the last month talked to maybe 10 12 um businesses
41:31 in our space that are that are our size or bigger and that's what's working for them
41:36 they're it's work facebook instagram is working right now for them and they all are doing the exact same thing which is
41:43 which is interesting um tick tock is for for us
41:49 has been the savior um it started off organically and we were getting customers organically
41:56 um and it was our focus we doubled down on content and we really made it very very
42:02 important so before ads you guys were just strictly going just a lot of content posting a ton like are you talking like four times a day kind of
42:08 thing no i'm talking like four times four times a week
42:14 and then and it was a slow ramp right and and now like we're we're pushing for daily daily posts and once we can
42:21 consistently hit that we'll we'll probably go move it twice a day um but it's it's it's a slow it's a slow build
42:27 it's it's tough to get that much content and then still do your other job requirements
42:33 i just have like short posts on there yeah so we we go anything from from
42:38 short and funny to to a minute to um i think this week's best performer is
42:43 actually a three minute video um so we're we're we test it all
42:48 the uh but but literally in the last 30 days we've we've actually seen success with
42:55 tic toc advertising um which is which is pretty exciting because all of last year we saw we
43:01 couldn't get anything to work on there the only thing we saw work and the only thing we heard about working was
43:07 um taking influencers and having them kind of white list and running the ads on
43:13 their their channels that was the only thing that worked on tick tock and now
43:19 actual traditional advertising is working on there and it's exciting because it's
43:24 if they if they can keep it working like it needs to they're just going to continue to
43:29 dominate like right now tick tock is dominating the the social space and if they can figure out advertising and
43:36 knock on wood it looks like in 2022 they might have if they if they can continue this it's
43:42 it's they're gonna it's a game changer like it really really is uh it'll be a game
43:47 team it'll be good for everyone because it'll it'll have some that competition much needed competition from facebook right like i think um
43:54 it will be good for everybody except for for facebook or meta whatever you want to call them yeah what is that i go on
44:01 my whatsapp and it's just like powered by meta it used to be facebook now it's meta what is that powered by the metaverse
44:07 [Laughter] yeah yeah um so they yeah it won't be good for them
44:15 but um you know shame on them the uh
44:21 uh other stuff um we tested towards the end of last year we haven't figured it out yet uh
44:27 connected tv so think hulu um slang
44:32 all of those um you know over the top um streaming services we tested
44:39 advertising with them and we haven't found anything super scalable
44:45 yet um and i don't know if we will but we saw an uptick
44:51 and it might just be you know part of that omni channel approach of another touch
44:56 point um what i do like about it is the tracking on it has really stepped up
45:04 the game in the last little bit of time so you know you're watching it on your this this commercial for battle box on
45:09 your tv but it's not like an ad you see on your phone or a computer where like you click it like you can't click it right
45:16 so you then go to it on your phone or google it on your phone and go to it so they know that they delivered that
45:22 commercial to that ip address and then they track they track another
45:28 you know another device shows up got it address boom same same user so they can
45:35 track it yeah yeah so the tracking the tracking's definitely stepped up but it's still tough to for us to really know if we're
45:42 gonna find if it's a if it's a prospecting um play or if it's just a very very expensive retargeting
45:50 play reprospecting play i hope it's the first one right i want foreign
45:55 i don't want middle of final yeah um and then the last piece is is podcasts so
46:02 um you know we're doubling down on tick tock and and youtube content and content
46:08 content content double down double downing on it but podcasts were about to like quadruple down on it um that's
46:16 great that's interesting for you guys right because for you guys it's a cool niche like just like a battle box like you know you probably have some really
46:22 cool podcasts on that kind of like niche that you can really kind of target and i
46:27 think is it just a matter of finding the right ones like or do you kind of write it or there's only like a handful that makes
46:33 sense so there's there's only a handful of ones that are in our space and we've
46:39 already talked to them and advertised with them um so this is trying to find
46:46 the larger the the the i'd say the joe rogans of the world but
46:51 joe rogan's too expensive um super pricey but like literally you don't got 100 million to spare
46:58 gosh um so so finding you know we maybe it's outdoor enthusiasts
47:06 um just trying to find even even you know breaking down the demographics of our
47:12 customers and then finding okay there's these five buckets what do this demographic listen
47:18 to yeah um and then finding stuff that um
47:23 might it might be political it might be political on either side um just trying to find
47:30 um you know what are what are what are our customers listening to podcasts we went through some exercises where
47:36 in our members only our community facebook group i think we have i don't know six or seven thousand people in
47:41 there it's like hey what podcast are you listening to right now yeah it's perfect
47:47 okay this is on your list this is what they listen to yeah you know let's try to find some commonalities and
47:53 and let's let's see see if it works so we're gonna we're leaning in super hard on podcasts
47:59 we have a plan um that if we can continue to scale and see the cpas that make sense
48:07 and everything goes right which probably won't but if it does it's possible um we have a plan where we're
48:13 ramped up and we're going to be spending 700k a month by the end of end of the
48:20 year on podcast um now we're starting way way way way way way way below that um but we we
48:28 literally have an agreement in place that if we can hit these these these metrics um in in q1
48:36 we move up to this bucket if we get these metrics in q2 we're going to move up to this bucket
48:41 and it's it's a true plan this a true plan to scale and make um
48:46 may podcast be one of our our major our major sources yeah is it just as simple
48:52 as setting up uh to track it like an affiliate you're an affiliate with the podcaster or do you have like a special
48:57 link uh what do you guys do in there so we went so we went with um so we partnered with an agency for this
49:04 um and we're basically creating um specific urls
49:10 um for for each of the each of the podcasts um with a specific offer
49:18 also a specific coupon code um utm parameters put throughout the entire
49:24 thing obviously but then taking it a step further um and we hadn't gone heavy on podcasts in
49:31 a couple years podcast game changed too just like connected tv you have the oip
49:36 address thing now so we're replacing this pixel so we know what ip address
49:43 listen to the podcast so if they don't go to the landing page if they don't use
49:48 the coupon code we still know it's that same user um so surely with the ip
49:55 address the landing page the utm parameters the coupon code uh post
50:00 purchase survey surely with those five five things
50:05 we'll be able to get a good measure on if it's working right because that's that was always the complaint about
50:11 podcasts is like tracking um but i think we have a plan with those five
50:16 five pieces where we're gonna know with certainty yeah and you could kind of use a some sort of blended
50:23 cpa too right like you know when we're putting to some modern money podcasts you know outside of everything else
50:28 we're still gaining x amount of subscribers or whatever i mean i think it's you can just kind of like
50:35 and you have you have to look at it that way right yeah it's it's just like it's just like any other um this whole blended blended
50:43 viewpoint we're we're at a point where that's just how you have to be this stuff yeah
50:49 i think the podcast is interesting i think we um we it's tough though you've got to find the right one you got to test i guess
50:55 like this only thing they can be very expensive to advertise on right like some of them are so pricey they're
51:00 extremely pricey and or they can be so i think it's important to find the
51:05 right one and not be afraid to test but you also have to have like make sure you're not going to just burn it all on on podcasts first like i think
51:12 it's a it's an it's kind of another tool in the toolkit so i think they can work but they have to
51:18 be a right fit and you have to make sure like you're you're kind of zoned in and dialed in on who is your listener or your subscriber
51:24 and what are they listening to you know like you said you put them in buckets and you try these buckets and it might stick right if it's the right fit
51:30 because i think podcasting is unique thing you know you have a host that host is always in your ear so they become
51:35 there's a trust thing there like you start to like the podcast i listen to i really enjoy the host obviously right over there so i wouldn't choose to
51:41 listen to them so there's a certain truster if they're if they're marketing something it's because i know first of all they believe in it because it
51:47 wouldn't be on their show and i think as a podcast for myself i i wouldn't promote something i don't believe in so i think there's a certain um
51:54 you know trust factor there that's beyond just you know seeing a facebook ad pop up so if you can if you can get
51:59 it right is what i'm trying to get to is that um the there's there is a percentage of the
52:05 audience that will purchase no question if it's just got to be the right one yeah and and so so saying what you said
52:12 and i can appreciate that so much that you know we went out with this plan these are the
52:19 the the 12 podcasts we want to start on and the vast majority of them came back and said cool but like we want to set up
52:26 a call and talk to the guys at Battlbox we want to better understand what they stand for what what what their focus is
52:34 what they're doing outside of of it how are they giving back and
52:39 asking hearing those questions is like to me very cool because it means
52:44 that they they care to your point they're not going to put their name on and and advertise something they don't
52:51 believe it which and i think the the listeners appreciate that even greater right
52:58 that's why that's that's why you and i listen to the podcast we listen to because you like that person you trust
53:05 that person yeah um and it's cool to see the back end of it like them
53:11 validifying that that you should trust them because they are doing the due diligence they do have
53:18 your best interests at heart is it's just kind of cool well we're a brand we're protecting our own brand right
53:23 like that we have to like otherwise you're just gonna destroy your own brand like like any brand wouldn't want to
53:29 seem um untrustworthy in any sense right like think of your own subscription box i mean it's the same thing as a podcaster
53:36 so all right i can't believe that multi guys are going to be hopefully i know you're not there yet but that's crazy
53:41 700k down the road that's um that's a big yeah so we we started
53:47 with that that the test um is it's a 100k test so we've already
53:52 paid for that it starts on monday um it's it's a five week
53:58 five week test twelve different podcasts a hundred thousand dollars just so much
54:03 money and is that how many uh that's more that's more than we then than we paid for a podcast in our first
54:10 seven years in business jump right at it with that you know what that's cool are you about to see which
54:15 shows you're you're gonna be um you're gonna be on um if you if not that's fine um it's just
54:22 because it'd be cool to kind of listen to the uh yeah so here is
54:28 yeah so we're the part of the initial initial john uh jump drinking bros podcast
54:35 uh the adam corolla show um commentary magazine podcasts
54:42 three martini lunch um tim pool daily show
54:47 behind the baller podcast with ben baller surprises me that that that we're testing this one but um
54:55 conservative review with daniel horowitz the steve dees show
55:01 and the news and why it matters oh wait we're still going steve never quit
55:07 um wealth power influence with jason stapleton unashamed with phil and jace robertson
55:14 the reuben report the eric mataxa show the charlie kirk show
55:20 america first with sebastian gorka uh cbs is 60 minutes world news roundup
55:27 face the nation um and john solomon so quite a lot that's cool
55:34 so how many that's so cool i love that so how many like spots do you get for that then like is it like you get a
55:40 mid-roll you just get an intro like how many weeks or how many shows we're going um
55:46 so we did have some learnings from from previous and this agency has some learnings too
55:51 so we're we're only going to two for each um
55:58 and that seems to be the the the current at least for us on the the
56:03 direct-to-consumer side that's the sweet spot you start seeing diminishing returns typically on the third
56:10 um so your buck is two okay i'm just doing some quick math here
56:17 so so that's 24 spots if it's two each for 12 shows right
56:23 yeah so on average oops
56:32 oh why can't i calculate this one
56:38 so am i reading this right that's going to be around four thousand dollars
56:44 an episode um yeah so not not all uh you know all of these podcasts have
56:50 different um different viewership right so so some have mastered i mean
56:57 i mean that's a that's a big name comedian at least at least to me yeah um so i'm sure he has a
57:03 uh it'll be higher for him yeah yeah yeah
57:08 it'll range on the yeah i'm just saying like on average that's around like four thousand dollars an episode so 8 000 per show let's just say on average like
57:15 that's so that's people are looking at podcasts and i've looked into it for our niche like for the our big mom influencers
57:21 right um i don't know why i did air quotations they are legit mom influencers and there yeah mom
57:26 influencer yeah no they it it's expensive like you're looking at you know you're looking at a lot of
57:32 money when it comes to podcast leadership if they have a lot and it goes by it goes by views right yeah it goes by
57:38 views now views or listen yeah listens downloads you know people go by downloads a lot downloads is funny
57:44 because people go by downloads but a lot of people are going by listens now too because if you're just subscribed to a show that you never listen to anymore it
57:50 still keeps downloading but how many people are actually listening to the show you can track that on certain platforms too which is cool
57:56 so it i mean but the but the pricing seems to be pretty for the most part you're looking at
58:01 20 between 25 and 35 or maybe between 30 and 35 cpm um for
58:08 pogba that seems to be like all of these were in that range that's still the growing rate yeah i'd say so
58:14 as low as 15 as high as 35 yeah yeah yep these were all in the
58:20 high 20s low 30s um but obviously you know some of them have
58:25 way more followers than others exactly and that's why it goes so if for those who are wondering i believe that metric
58:32 cpm is like for every let's say we use 25. um 25 dollars per thousand
58:38 um downloads or whatever i think that's kind of like what it's always been so that's what you're looking at for a price so if you're looking at um if
58:44 you're reaching out to someone in your niche if you're listening to the show like hey you know what i'd love to be on a podcast what does that look like you can go and and look at like okay they're
58:52 going to tell you their their numbers okay you know you know you're you're you know podcast x is getting you know 5 000 downloads
59:00 well you know you can take your 25 and times that by five yep and that's kind of what you're looking at so that's
59:05 that's going to be around what the pricing should be roughly what it should be and it could that can vary um some depending on like
59:11 the if they have like a very engaged audience they can gauge certain metrics of
59:16 outside of that too that's a very broad thing you just be careful with that right because
59:21 um yeah there's more to it sometimes it means ti but yeah you just just a general idea of what you're looking at
59:27 for uh when you're advertising on the show um cool man so anything else you guys are doing when it comes to like
59:33 advertising and just like when a car i know like just actually a question back on the offer because you mentioned the
59:38 tenth is there something where it's like okay we're gonna be eating a lot of money on this tent uh it's gonna cost us way more
59:43 than we thought but it's gonna just in the end it's still gonna fix the cac right so let's say your cac
59:50 on facebook was whatever you know fifty dollars this unit here is gonna cost us you know
59:55 fifteen dollars or thirty dollars or whatever it is twenty dollars so now you're but it's going to lower the the cac to
1:00:02 you know 20 so it's actually lower than that 50 without it does that make sense and that and that's what we're seeing
1:00:08 okay um so so you know we're seeing yes the the tent cost us 20 25 to manufacture
1:00:15 um but the taxes get is just 25 less than acceptable
1:00:22 of scaling so it ends up being um not net it's the same thing it's um
1:00:28 which is interesting yeah and it it when we saw that data we're like okay well
1:00:33 then why would we not do it right it's not like it's not like that the cac is the same rate and this
1:00:39 is that much more and there's that much more risk no we see it lowering the cap um
1:00:45 so it actually makes sense it's just for whatever reason we had stuck in our head for the last six years like
1:00:52 you know don't get that aggressive in your initial offer now there there is some risk right you have the people that
1:00:58 for the 10 for example you can buy the basic boxes 30 a month or the the pro plus 160
1:01:06 and you're getting the 10 regardless you can anybody can get the 10. um so you're going to have the people that those bad
1:01:11 actors that are buying the basic canceling immediately have no they're just doing
1:01:17 to do it right um you do have those but the vast majority of of these buyers are just
1:01:24 like normal customers and they're staying they're staying around for longer for just as long if not longer
1:01:30 um they're behaving behaving in the same way um so there's not as much risk and the
1:01:36 only reason we know this is because we thought there was gonna every you know we thought everybody was gonna be bad
1:01:41 and do the basic cancel be gone but as we ran that we used to run this
1:01:46 unit three times a year we'd watch that cohort and it would just it would behave the same way um without with a small
1:01:53 little difference in the beginning but very very small of those bad actors but then
1:01:59 everybody else was normal so our our ltv and our normal metrics
1:02:05 are the same so it's just a different way to do it and it seems to be the only thing that works for us on facebook and
1:02:11 instagram two questions um one do you guys use like a tool when it comes to measuring
1:02:16 metrics like uh you know you can get into that if you want and um so that's my my first question uh my second
1:02:22 question would be to the did you guys test the tent stuff um and furthermore to testing the tent
1:02:29 before you know buying a ton of them i guess like is there something where it
1:02:34 needs to be a really solid tent not only like people recognize the tent um does it have to be a brand name do you think
1:02:40 or does it just have to be like it has to look like it's a quality tent and the reason i'm asking is because we're about
1:02:45 to test cameras so like baby cameras for our stuff and i can get them overseas for you know
1:02:53 less than i can get them from a reputable company here in canada that sources them and it's going to be
1:02:58 actually about 25 they retail and it's not even like 50 it's like it's a crazy amount um like they retail for say 50 or
1:03:05 40 i think 39.99 okay okay um and they want to sell to me for 25 and i'm like well i can get this camera in china but
1:03:12 i talked to other guys um and they're like well you know there's a difference like we've tested the china cameras and
1:03:18 you know they were you know we're just getting a lot of returns that weren't working so we actually opted to go for a better camera
1:03:24 um and pay a little bit more but knowing that there's they're sort of backed up better does that make sense is there something or that you think it's
1:03:30 important to make sure it's quality so they don't like this junkie yeah so it is it does need to be quality um it does
1:03:38 for the most part um i know i know with dots with our model it has to be something we manufacture right because we need we
1:03:44 need those the the that that net difference of what our cost is to what
1:03:50 retail or msrp or even perceived value is sure it needs to be exponentially
1:03:55 more you know the tent costs us 25 to make but it's because we're making 10 000 of them
1:04:01 um and you know the the the perceived value is
1:04:07 on the low end 80 90 100 bucks we have them for sale on our site for
1:04:12 140 and we sell them pretty regularly um it has great sales velocity so i think i think that that matters
1:04:19 right yeah um i think you almost you don't have to be manufacturing
1:04:25 something you're getting it from overseas but it's having that you really do want that big difference from what you pay to what
1:04:33 anybody else would pay for it um yeah i think it's just initially and we're trying to think of like
1:04:39 to test it i guess like would you yeah test it first so yeah i apologize that was your first question i didn't answer
1:04:45 was 100 so we before we pulled the trigger on the tent
1:04:50 piece um we did we did testing with it we did we did and we did other items too that
1:04:56 failed failed miserably yeah and that's why it's important to test i know it happens us too like we it happens all
1:05:02 the time you think it's gonna you're gonna hit a home run and it's just like a complete flop right right so what we what we've also done is
1:05:09 you know we're trying to um even with the tenths per se
1:05:15 okay so we're going through the the amount we bought and we have a decision to make like we need
1:05:21 to we need more right but there's also a chance that this stops working right yeah facebook and
1:05:29 instagram through the years many times i've been having this exact same scenario saying
1:05:34 we figured it out it's working and then they just you know uh cold [ __ ] me um and start kicking me when i'm when
1:05:41 i'm passed out uh so we had this decision we need more
1:05:46 tents but there's also the risk of of that right like we're going to be putting a big order that's a big big outlay of
1:05:53 cash and what if we're wrong like so what we just what we've done is
1:05:58 we're making those decisions where we're buying this and it's gonna be actually in the subscription box
1:06:05 um so we're getting that quantity to be in the subscription box far down the road
1:06:11 but the goal is that it doesn't go in the subscription box because we need that quantity yeah so we kind of have a
1:06:18 backup plan yeah and then we'll have a we'll have an alternate product ready to replace it in the subscription box um
1:06:25 that way we can get the big quantity and if we hopefully this continues with facebook and instagram and we need it
1:06:31 and we can use it yeah exactly and pull that inventory but if not we're okay too we'll use it for the box
1:06:37 yeah does it is a gift should the gift fit in your first box in your opinion you guys send it with the first box or is it separate
1:06:43 it's too big it's too it's it's too big hey uh i feel like a a 12 year old child can i run to the
1:06:49 restroom really quickly yeah cool i'm going to entertain yeah this is like go for it yeah give her i'm gonna i'm gonna
1:06:54 see if i can share my screen and we're gonna try to look for your tent while you're doing that let me know if you guys see this here
1:07:00 let's go to battlebox.com
1:07:05 so as you can see they've got a pretty polished site there so apologies if you're just listening to this i'm just on the uh the battle box site you guys
1:07:10 can go check it out on locals or on youtube here if you're watching that way let's see if the offer comes up here
1:07:16 basic advanced pro is it looking to send a kick-ass gift
1:07:25 okay let's see pick your box let's just go through here see if we can see the tent i'm gonna go
1:07:33 let's go with oh i should have asked if it comes with the tent let's go pro
1:07:43 you're back can you see my screen there john yeah i'm going to backtrack
1:07:50 where would i where can we see your attempt here does it is it part of the offer right now so it's it's only part of the offer when
1:07:56 you're when you're seeing the ad so if you hit the ad it tells you about tells you the coupon code if you click the ad we have utm
1:08:03 parameters uh a little code where it's gonna give you a pop-up not a pop-up but a
1:08:08 top bar that keeps reminding you of it you can you can find it though if you just go to search
1:08:14 um in the top right yep and uh search it here yeah just type
1:08:19 intent and it's the second one the free shipping uh down down all the way sorry
1:08:26 second uh product right there yes one here yep so unfortunately in a perfect world and
1:08:33 we've done items that could fit in the box oh cool but the reality is this can't so we have
1:08:40 to ship it separately um it's also very expensive to ship because it's so
1:08:46 big um so we have to take that into the equation too and we're trying to figure out what the acceptable cac is because
1:08:53 yeah there's the cost of this but the cost of shipping is is up there too i think on average it's costing us 12 or
1:09:00 11 dollars to ship maybe wow which is peanuts compared to here
1:09:07 um so you just send it right aways or just send it together in a bigger box or just kind of like wrap it together or whatever but you send it in the first
1:09:13 order so we don't send them with the first order because the their first order goes out um fairly quickly so what we're
1:09:20 doing is we're putting in um
1:09:26 batches of this free order so it the customer gets it it's it's
1:09:31 it's the battle box free tent and then we have in presidencies in the product name ships february 10th which was our
1:09:38 first batch of shipping that way it's not like onesie tuesday like we can knock it out and be efficient so they
1:09:44 received that order confirmation zero dollar order showing the tent obviously tracking will attach to that when we
1:09:50 send but it also sets the expectations of when it's shipping so that you know yesterday
1:09:55 um patrick's team was able to go in and and put together a thousand tents
1:10:01 in these boxes and ship them instead of having a otherwise it becomes a little inefficient
1:10:06 to have to do them every day yeah yeah cool interesting yeah i think um
1:10:12 [Music] yeah i think the offer is good and i think that your offer has to be good like if he um
1:10:17 if you think about you know trying to acquire a customer is there uh is your acquisition cost i mean this is
1:10:24 maybe unfair to ask like what you guys are seeing like traditionally and now you're back to kind of like even if you want to just use general generalities
1:10:31 like it's back to what you what was when it comes to your paid ads with this offer or is it better
1:10:36 it's so the the journey of our acquisition costs
1:10:42 since 2015 it's just been a constant like this um you know we started interviewing if
1:10:48 you're listening that was a straight up hand going straight up yeah yeah it's just it's
1:10:53 yeah it's uh it's just been a constant as time goes it becomes higher and higher you know we started in 2015 we
1:11:00 were acquiring customers for five dollars ah that's insane what's insane is just our naivety and
1:11:07 ignorance at the time if we knew what we knew now i would have taken every credit card
1:11:13 every anything i could have yeah um and just gone all i would have went all in i
1:11:19 would have i would have taken out a a personal loan like because it was a five dollar
1:11:24 acquisition and then through the years it became 20 and then 40 was acceptable
1:11:29 and then um really for the past two years we've been operating on a mid
1:11:36 60s being being acceptable and it then you know that that works for us you know our average order values
1:11:43 over a hundred dollars um lte power you know ltv is
1:11:49 is in the five five hundreds so i mean it makes sense
1:11:54 it's just not not as easy as it once was uh what do you think i i'm i'm i'm
1:12:00 flabbergasted when i hear either in facebook groups or in whatever masterminds and you hear people say like
1:12:07 oh yeah my acquisition costs or i i can't and i never call them out on it because it could be very very much
1:12:13 like they might be crushing it that way but they'll say like i got a 12 acquisition cost right now i'm seeing 12
1:12:19 i'm like what the hell are you doing that i'm not like i don't know like or 16 or 18 it's
1:12:24 like oh like that's insane like so i don't know if it's just like they're dialed in on their or they're maybe not
1:12:30 just taking it considering in consideration the total cost of actually acquiring the customer i'm not sure what
1:12:36 they're i think i i i i don't think it's that they're dialed in you know i i'm not not
1:12:43 to not to hate but um there's only so much especially on facebook and instagram
1:12:49 there we're we're at a point of of platform maturity where there's not many
1:12:56 there's not like some latest hack of 2022 that's going to get you
1:13:01 some that doesn't exist anymore right it existed in 2015 right there were stuff you could do it exists in tick tock
1:13:07 today the the i'd say that the the skill set and hackability and
1:13:16 ability to pull off cool [ __ ] on tick tock in the advertising the skill set of the tick tock advertisers is very big
1:13:23 right now right you have people that have no idea to people that are leading the charge and and and crushing it but facebook and
1:13:31 instagram the platform's so mature and even with the changes they make like the skill set of someone who sucks
1:13:38 or isn't very good to decent all the way up to like the most advanced facebook advertisers that skill set isn't like
1:13:45 exponential like it used to be um so i don't think someone's just dialed in sure they might be dialed in
1:13:52 but dialed in isn't like they couldn't get us for you this eight
1:13:57 dollar acquisition cost right i think i think a lot of it's just simply product right an audience
1:14:05 and um and then there's there's a chance that they're not taking other things into consideration there's the chance they're
1:14:11 they're um they're taking facebook's uh platform at face value on what
1:14:18 they're acquiring customers for right the the the platforms haven't been right in
1:14:24 years um and what's crazy is that we came full circle
1:14:29 when we first started we had a uh it was a pre-purchase survey how did you hear about us right
1:14:35 and now we're seven years later and you know five i guess four months ago we
1:14:41 implemented a post-purchase survey again because we need some truth um and we're not taking any of the
1:14:48 platforms for for face value on what they're doing we're taking google analytics and the
1:14:54 post-purchase survey we're taking those two data points and looking at them together and making
1:15:01 decisions with with them about the platforms we the platforms are right tik tok for example
1:15:07 as we're scaling and we've had we're doing really well on it the last few weeks um but their platform itself on the
1:15:14 analytics and recording is literally the it's a dumpster
1:15:20 it is it is absolute crap but google analytics is telling us that it's crushing it and
1:15:27 our post-purchase survey is telling us that it's crushing it um okay so it's crushing it because
1:15:33 those are the these are those are more more of the truth than the platform itself
1:15:38 yeah and you're right because maybe they saw it on tick tock or youtube and then they went on finally maybe the facebook
1:15:45 ad was the one that turned it or vice versa so there's a lot of touch points there potentially as well what tools are you using to track that i was talking
1:15:50 with a mutual friend of ours we recorded earlier this week so his episode will be you know just a little bit before yours
1:15:56 but um mr josh band from plate crate i love josh yeah we had it
1:16:02 oh he's awesome man like we had a wicked conversation too so um yeah i think he mentioned the tool maybe you guys were
1:16:08 sharing what was that tool again for the post purchase um yeah so he i inquire
1:16:14 that's right it was that's right inquire yeah um so in choir it's it's super
1:16:20 plugs with recharge what's that it plugs in with the recharge yeah it plugs it does both
1:16:25 recharge shopify um checkout so it's it's great um
1:16:31 and it's uh it's like it's not it's not priced astronomical like we have we have large
1:16:37 volume and i think it's it might might be 50 a month yeah um but like the data insights it's
1:16:44 giving us is just insane insane right um here i'll uh
1:16:50 if you don't mind i'll share my yeah yeah let me just fix this here one second here
1:16:56 oh all right go for it so let's see
1:17:04 so so many apps so we our question is how did you first
1:17:10 all caps hear about us this was a learning we took because we really wanted to focus on
1:17:16 what's driving top of funnel um and you simply just go to analytics last seven days this is what's crazy
1:17:24 so it's a post-purchase survey look at that response rate two out of three people are actually playing the game and
1:17:29 telling us wow that's awesome so and you can see where
1:17:36 all the usual suspects but then you see tick-tock crushing it care about us um
1:17:42 and you know facebook and instagram are right behind it youtube has always been up there you know we are a little
1:17:48 blessed that we have the netflix tv show yeah that continues continues to uh
1:17:54 pull stuff but to be able to to just jump in this i look at this every day every morning i
1:18:00 jump in and i'm trying to see you know what's working what's not working i'm i'm breaking it down by maybe we're just
1:18:06 looking at um you know let's look at today
1:18:12 so 70 and again today tick tock
1:18:18 tick tock it's always in first place here if you're uh we're looking at the screen for the the audio listeners there
1:18:24 so it's um what's interesting is the um the i call it the talking
1:18:30 which is which is uh it's the it's the flipping of tick tock becoming our primary it's in the last
1:18:36 three weeks four weeks awesome so we you guys use an agency for tick tock
1:18:43 um for advertising yes for organic no um so we started literally a year ago
1:18:50 created this tick tock account organic organic organic um got up to you know i think we're
1:18:59 right now we're up to uh 377 000 followers so it's it's become
1:19:06 our largest channel uh you know it was a struggle um
1:19:12 it was a struggle figuring out what worked what didn't and what we would see is we'd go
1:19:17 um through these like swings where we do a cool video with a cool product and
1:19:23 tick tock would come to the first second place of like how'd you hear about us but then would fall back down to five or
1:19:30 six and would stay there and then we eventually got to the point in our
1:19:35 growth and follower account was very like good video boom up a little bit stagnant
1:19:40 we said a good video pop again and um we finally a year in
1:19:46 it's just consistently growing because we have enough content um and we're consistently posting too
1:19:53 but at the same time that that's working and then advertising
1:19:59 is working but without the advertising it's still up there too like it's just it's it's we're finally seeing the
1:20:06 fruits of of a year of pounding our head against the wall trying to figure it out
1:20:13 and you again you didn't have to spend a ton of money it was just content right it was just content creation right so what's working is it um it's 20 it's you
1:20:20 know 2022 here is it funny stuff that's working the mo the best is it informational
1:20:26 say that again just what kind of content you're posting when you know never mind the advertising
1:20:32 like is it funny stuff you guys are posting all the time that's working really well you're seeing spikes is it
1:20:38 informational is it blend it's it's a it's a blend right and it's a blend of it's also a blend of time of
1:20:44 day and it's a blend of length um so like you know right now
1:20:51 uh yesterday's post where we're show we're literally it's educational we're showing how to how to
1:20:57 tie a certain type of knot um and you know so far it has 21 000
1:21:02 views um so it's it's it's it's everything it's educational it's funny it's product
1:21:10 specific not product specific um i mean it really is all over the place
1:21:16 and and kind of that's our that's our attack is that we're hitting all those buckets right we're sometimes doing
1:21:23 mindless funny stupid um stuff that's not even relevant to the brand but it
1:21:28 might be trending on tick tock um the only thing we don't do we don't dance
1:21:35 we don't shake up we don't we don't shake our stuff um i'd follow you to see that come out with
1:21:42 this come out with a suit and do it people why is this guy out with a suit
1:21:48 dancing he um i mean and that's the only thing and i get it that's that's what works the best
1:21:54 on there right yeah um highly attractive people dancing but
1:22:00 we don't do that um and it's crazy that we figured it out without doing that
1:22:05 i uh i got so Brandon Currin the face of our brand the face of our tick tock i got him to
1:22:12 dance one time um but it was like it wasn't like a silly dance it was like a trending dance
1:22:18 of a trending uh vid audio and video of like like bad day
1:22:24 like not good dancing yeah and i was like okay we can do this one he's like man all right we really don't really
1:22:30 don't want to dance but um and it didn't perform very well so we're done dancing
1:22:35 yeah i think that's that's inspiring for people like us like me my brand i don't want to dance i'm sure my wife doesn't want to dance
1:22:42 either on but i mean for us to you know show how to properly swaddle a baby or whatever like just different things we
1:22:47 can do like it's just think of your own niche right like you know like what can you do that'd be like educational do you guys also have like um like a garyvee
1:22:55 jab jab jab right hook approach where like once in a while you do all these funny things informational funny
1:23:00 informational information also boom threw in an offer is that just not something you do on tick tock um so we
1:23:08 we tried it actually for the first time last week it was the first time we had put an offer on okay
1:23:15 um it didn't it didn't perform great yeah people are there to get entertained right let the ads they're there to get
1:23:21 entertained but it's what's crazy is that um
1:23:26 i i take it as the so this is the gtf it's this gtfo bracelet
1:23:31 and basically just a bracelet and you can um take it off and it has a little glass
1:23:38 glass breaker piece so you can literally put it on something and you know get out of a situation okay um
1:23:46 it's pretty cool it's inexpensive to make it's arguably inexpensive to buy but like we
1:23:51 did that video and we sold thousands of them um we had we had to order more because
1:23:57 we quickly sold out so the product videos do get us the without an offer
1:24:02 just showing a cool product and showing the utility um
1:24:08 we we see optics and we've always seen optics even when we're still growing like if you know one
1:24:14 out of ten product videos it catches the algorithm and starts showing people like i want to buy that
1:24:20 um like i so i think that the educational piece and the product piece and mixing
1:24:26 them and marrying them um works i don't know if you need to necessarily have that that garyvee
1:24:31 here's a quick offer 50 off today like yeah no it's cool i love that and it's it's
1:24:37 very it seems genuine right like it's just a cool thing you're doing and then you're you know by the way if you want to buy it like you know you can get it
1:24:43 right from this or whatever right maybe we'll have to have uh you come back to do uh an exclusive uh
1:24:50 video just for the supporters uh on tick tock we can kind of look do a screen share and look at kind of some of
1:24:56 the ads you guys have done your your hits and misses your winners and losers those kind of things i think that'd be interesting because uh similarly with
1:25:02 josh we did kind of a post show wrap up just for the supporters yeah that was um actually i think it was tick tock
1:25:08 specific as well i think but i think it's it's at the right time we're doing this um purposely because it's on par
1:25:15 with what's going on in the industry obviously if people like you and josh are all over this there's a reason for that um you guys have the resources that
1:25:22 companies like mine and maybe some of you guys listening don't have to kind of figure this out but you guys do and you
1:25:28 have figured it out so i mean that's awesome yeah tick tock is
1:25:33 talk is where it's at which is weird to say you know chris george has been yelling
1:25:39 that from the rooftops for a year and a half now like he has and
1:25:44 i've been i've been yelling it um maybe not yelling it but like i've been talking about this for
1:25:51 um since we launched i like i remember a year ago when we launched i was like guys we're behind the ball on this and
1:25:56 we have to go we've we've already missed missed some opportunity because we haven't figured out if i remember the
1:26:02 whole team was like what tick-tock i was like trust me like we're gonna this this this is it
1:26:09 like we have to we have to execute on this and we we
1:26:14 hit our head against the wall so hard over and over again and i mean a year later
1:26:20 and it's finally coming to fruition it was it was a year of like
1:26:26 why are we that the team was probably like why are we doing this yeah like john's lost his mind like he likes
1:26:33 to take he like tick-tock personally and he's making this a business initiative
1:26:40 initiative insanity john right yeah but it was we were we were going down that route we were doing the same
1:26:46 stuff day and day posting the same stuff and not getting any success and
1:26:51 expecting and meet me being like no tomorrow it's going to work yeah just wait this next post
1:26:59 i'm glad it finally did um because now i'm not that crazy person that was like screaming tick-tock
1:27:06 right chris is a prophet now he's uh cool he did call it oh man he's yeah
1:27:13 yeah as soon as the first time i met him he was talking about it i mean and that and i knew it it's just the same thing it's like uh you know yeah but how do
1:27:19 you yeah and you can know it too but like still like why do you only like it's still not easy
1:27:25 to lean into it no because it's so unknown and if and if everybody's wrong then
1:27:30 i mean your time is your most valuable asset and it's a very time intensive thing to try to figure
1:27:36 out like if you're wrong like you can't get the time back yeah we were wrong like the amount of time we would have
1:27:42 wasted in the past year on something that didn't pan out would have been embarrassing which i would
1:27:48 have probably should have fired myself if if that was if that was the case because it was a lot of time and a lot
1:27:54 of resources yeah i'll say this i mean if you're out there listening and you're like man facebook ads have been crappy
1:28:00 for me and i don't have enough money to keep putting in there or not enough to grow that the skill i want to grow i'd
1:28:05 say and you do have time as a resource and maybe if you don't you might have to make some um maybe that is something you
1:28:11 can start doing without having to just create content and post once a day i mean i think once a day four times a
1:28:16 week three times a week to start is something very reasonable i think josh says he posts four times a day i was like oh
1:28:23 that's crazy that's a lot that's too much for this guy yeah i'm not there yet um but i think yeah i think it's one of
1:28:29 those things where um just start um those are that's an organic way of growing and even if it takes a year
1:28:35 and start now then yes then you know next year and and and i know it's it's probably
1:28:40 been talked about everywhere so often everybody's probably sick of hearing it but the community piece is is still so
1:28:48 so so important you have to you have to build a community and um
1:28:54 it's something that has to happen sooner than later right like if you can if you're just starting off and
1:28:59 launching now like the community piece needs to be a part of your initial launch and if you don't have it you need
1:29:05 to focus on it because that that's so so key
1:29:10 and that's what we're getting because of the community these these videos have done well because there's the engagement
1:29:15 right these people um are engaging and commenting and liking
1:29:21 and and bringing up discussions and discussing with each other on on the comments so
1:29:26 figuring out that community piece is big not easy it's it's a it's a whole whole
1:29:32 task in itself well man we've got a lot of ground we've been here i think on air for about an
1:29:37 hour and a half here so this is good stuff i think what we'll do is we'll wrap up the um the podcast part of the
1:29:43 show and then we're gonna go into uh the q a round for the supporters are you done with that yeah i'm down okay well thanks
1:29:50 for doing this and for if you're supporting the show um yeah we're gonna head over to the q a
1:29:55 and ask john some questions you guys have submitted and if you're not and you'd like to be just head over to the subscription box show dot locals.com
1:30:03 thanks for doing this john yeah thanks for having me here good to see you [Music]