#18 The "Pied Piper" of DTC EComm, Rabah Rahil, CMO, FERMÀT

Welcome to another edition of the Always Be Testing podcast with your host, Ty De Grange. Get a guided tour of the world of growth, performance marketing, customer acquisition, paid media, and affiliate marketing. We talk with industry experts and discuss experiments and their learnings in growth, marketing, and life. Time to nerd out, check your biases at the door, and have some fun talking about data driven growth and lessons learned.

What is up? How is it going? Welcome to another episode of the Always Be Testing podcast. I'm your host, Ty DeGrange, and super excited for Roba today. What's up, man? We did it. I did it. You were, incredibly

gracious in your schedule flexibility. And then, we're a beautiful office here downtown. There's a vibe going on in here. There's a big party downstairs. Start of the week. Vibes are high. Weather's perfect. Head to LA tomorrow. We're doing it, baby. I hope you're welcome. Got the power stash on. I wasn't ready. You got you got to, like, prep me for that thing, but Next time. Yeah. Next time. Next time. I'll give you I'll give you a little more sense. Tag or something. I think it's dangerous. I

love it. Yeah. Like Rob has said, we're live at the Capital Factory. We got a great crew here, and, we're ready to dive into it. I think this might be you might be talking to the Pied Piper of d two c e com. I don't know. What do you think? It landed. It landed. It landed. With a soft landing. It landed. It's sticking. It landed. It's good. It's good. It's okay. Tell us how you got into this weird,

wild world of d two c e com. Yeah, man. I've been I've been in the marketing game for a minute. So I'm I'm old. I'm thirty eight, and I graduated. I actually wanted to be an investment banker. At one point in time, my life was really into finance. Shout out some investment bankers. Was like, that's definitely not it. So I end up going to school for economics, and then I got really nerdy. So I got into photography. I got into,

website building. So I was really deep in, like, dub AWS, WordPress. And then I wanna start actually making money, and so I realized that creating a cash register was actually a worse idea than making other people money. When you could make other people money, you could ask for more money. So because I was making websites that were beautiful and functional and incredible, and people were like, hey. Why isn't this thing working? I go, it is working. You just your business sucks.

And so I took that photography, and then one of my really good friends at the time, his wife was a a pretty big yogi on Instagram. So, like, Half a million followers kind of thing. Not like massive, but pretty big for at the time. Yeah. Yeah. It's meaningful. Yeah. And the the followers are really engaged. Anyways, we decided to do an ebook together. Yeah. She was her shtick at the time was like, she was a handstand queen, incredible handstands. She had just moved to

Costa Rica. So I went out there, shot all the photos for the book. She wrote all the all the copy and things like that, and then I designed the book. And it was actually really interesting life lesson for me because I can get lost sometimes in kinda where we're talking about form over function where, oh, I need this tool or I need that thing or and I did the whole thing. It was, like, a hundred and twenty page book. I did the whole thing in Canva, and it was pushing

Canva to the limits. Like, it was breaking all time, all this stuff. And, we ended up doing four more books, I think, together. Yeah. I think we did five in total. And I taught after that, I taught myself, InDesign, which is, Adobe's actual, like, proper print product where you're kind of it's what professionals use kind of thing. Yeah. The first even though I did the all the other one, more professional, etcetera, etcetera, the first one did by

far the most money. And so it's just such an interesting juxtaposition of action breeds information and just do it. Like Yeah. A lot of times those last percentage points of getting something from eighty five percent to ninety percent or ninety two percent to ninety five percent perfection might not be worth the squeeze. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it was there is definitely a good enough and there's definitely

a and I'm not against using great tools. I just think that or at least from my experience, I use it to obfuscate my ability to create. I'm like, oh, I need to find the right tool then then because of a structural thing like a tool impediment or something like that, hundred percent then get the thing, but, like, don't not do the thing because you don't have the

thing. Bias for action. Yes. So a book. And I give I give props to you because I had no idea how multi talented you are as you as we do get to learn about you. I've had multiple lives. So Me too. Me too. How did things kind of evolve into from there into the world of direct to consumer e com Yeah. In that bridge? How did Yeah. More about it? So once we had the book created, this was during the time of I would

almost call it, like, the golden age of Facebook ads. And so we would put a dollar in and six would spit

out. Twenty Or in two Yeah. So this is yeah. We're I wrap out that kind of peak where Instagram was really peak. And so this was kind of pre feeds their, real stuff. This is still like main feed stuff. And so she would post on Instagram and then we'd run some retargeting ads and just see all this in real money. You know what I mean? Like the money was in we are on WooCommerce because I was building

on, WordPress at the time. And so that was like, oh, so that was kind of my first meaningful foray into, like I mean, what like, in absolute terms now, it's not at the scale of anything impressive. But for me, I was like, oh my gosh. Like, there's, like, I Is there anything more addicting and validating seeing those initials It's so good. Performance coming in from It's so good. It's so interesting too because you get like, I haven't

run a proper ad account in probably, like, two yeah. I guess, two, two and a half years because I was doing a little bit of the triple l paid at the beginning. But, yeah, there's this weird interesting addiction and accomplishment of, like, testings, shipping, and then seeing that that it was a I've definitely because I used to run an agency, and I've definitely done

been down the rabbit hole of, like, you know, you're checking dashboards multiple times a day. It can be challenging sometimes to extract your identity from your performance. Like, hence, you know, the OG, you're not your ROAS. But, man, when something hits and it was at that time too. It was, like because we she was hosting events as well and stuff like that. And that that was one of the biggest mistakes I've made, which I don't really regret because she's a a dear

friend of mine. But she was like, do you just want to I'll just give you a percentage of whatever kind of stuff you bring in. I was like, you know, just pay me five k flat or whatever. I forgot what it was. And we ended up driving, like, sixty thousand or some absurd amount of money for her in, like, two or three days. Wow. It's like, oh my gosh. Definitely not. Me, but it was it was Yeah. I was the way I was her oil rig on her land kind of thing. Like, I was able to extract that value for

her. Great analogy. Yeah. So, anyway, so from there, I went to a luxury real estate firm that we're talking about. And then from that, I did all the paid media at Whole Foods for the recruitment vertical. So I did the whole I I was full Austin. I was on a boosted board. I had a man bun. I was working at Whole Foods in the the zero drop, like, New Balance shoes. Like, I mean, full total full hipster Austin. So that was cool. Whole Foods trip today is pretty good too. Yeah. It's

it's elevated. It's it's more, not so on the nose. There's a CMO vibe, kinda like relaxed vibe. Yeah. Yeah. It is. I went through like, that big phase of kind of like peacocky, you know, when you're younger where it's just like, it's, it's the, you've accomplished a lot. Pick on Yeah. It's true. It's the Arab Mexican coming out of me where it's just like this this dual forces of, like, I need fancy some sort of animal skin on me, bright colors.

But, yes, after Whole Foods that I did agency life, an agency out in New York called Flat Iron, and that was probably the first time I spent real time. I was still in Austin. No. No. I was still in Austin. So I've been in Austin thirteen years now. Everything's been out of Austin. Very cool. And then the agency life is really cool. That's when I I really saw scale. And it was awesome

too because this was kind of the peak VC time as well. So it was right, yeah, a year and a half before COVID kind of thing where they're, like, the markets are just everything is cocaine and champagne. And so we were getting, we're on percent of spend. Oh, wow. And we were working with all these not your back companies. And so we're working with, like, WAG, Clutter, Deepak Chopra, Jackpocket, like Awesome. Proper size companies with a bunch of money. We've worked with a bunch of scooter

companies that was obviously, like, you saw how everything worked out. Yeah. It was it was peak scooters, everything. I forget the one we were working with, but yeah. And the money they had, they raised, and it was it was pretty incredible, honestly. But, like, I was pretty well versed in economics,

business models, etcetera, because I so went to school for it. I'm just looking at these numbers, and you're just like, dude, we're acquiring people for five hundred bucks. Like, nobody's ever spent more than five hundred dollars with you ever. Like, how does this work? And it's just It was it was just because I think there's a certain aspect of what's the goal. And their goal was, like, we're gonna raise more

money, so I need the hockey stick up into the right. Whatever it costs, just as long as you can give me up into the right because I'm a growth story. I already Yeah. Time. But, anyways, the too long I didn't read there was that was awesome because there is just problems that you run into at scale that you just don't when you're, you know, you're spending five, ten thousand dollars a day versus you're deploying fifty, seventy thousand dollars across multiple channels.

Like, there's Facebook spend limits. There's things that happen. There's the other thing is this is why, and I'll say allegedly, but why percent of spend, I don't know if this is always the best arrangement for certain clients because we there was times where you could get in there and go, hey. You know, we have we're under paced. We're hitting our performance targets, but we have clearance to spend, you know, five hundred k this month,

and there's still buck thirty five to spend over the week. I and it's like Yeah. Even though you know that might not be the most efficient spend, like, as an agency, you're like, dude, I was cleared this. They want to spend five hundred k and, like, it's our job to help them deploy that capital. Yeah. That's amazing. That was interesting. Like real estate is almost the same way. It's really weird where it's like, if you get a worse deal for me, you

make more money even though you're representing me. You know? So, anyways, that's not I don't hate percentage spend. It was just really interesting to Mhmm. Understand the Yeah. The reality sometimes on the ground and stuff like that. So Yeah. And then did my own

agency That's awesome. Which was awesome. I called it agency, but it was really more like a boutique, almost like fractional CFO or or CMO where I was I was partnering pretty deeply with these people where I was just on high retainers and then either fill in any gaps they had or oversee that at the strategic layer reporting, etcetera, etcetera, and then triple. That's awesome. You know, it comes as long wander random walk down Wall Street,

random walk down Robert Street. But Yeah. Yeah. It was great, man. It was in the in a weird way, there was this kind of unique, I guess, like, sign wave of I think generalists don't necessarily get paid as much, but they have a higher ceiling because usually the best leaders are generalists, but specialists get paid more quicker because they're and and candidly, they just get paid more in certain areas. Again, lower ceiling, but I have a friend that he's in

a I'm super nerdy. He's like king nerd, and he codes in this very kind of archaic language that only certain people use, etcetera, etcetera. But he's the, like, guy. He's definitely king nerd. It is king nerd. Like, I'm talking about super esoteric language, like, only certain kinda like cobalt kind of shit. But, like, he's that guy. So whenever anybody but he's charged, like, two thousand dollars an hour kind of stuff because, like, it's

so important and it's ingrained to this business, and it's like, we're not gonna change our whole code base. We just have to pay somebody to fix this or do that. So there's definitely a specialist. But, again, like, most leaders are generalists. There might be some, like, engineering people that are technical then also switch off to be a leader. But Yeah. When you're a leader, you're not

you can't be an IC. Like, there there that just doesn't work. I gotta dive into some really good stuff because you dropped some awesome things in there back to Flatiron experience. Obviously, those years were very different than what we're experiencing now. Yeah. But what are some things that you would say are good learnings that you got from those

years that are applicable now? Yeah. I think the biggest thing that I took away from that, and I I think it also solidified my understanding of how to run a successful agency is the majority of my time was spent on data gathering and narrative building. Like, so give me the data. What's the narrative I can build around the data? And that was really the majority of the time. And then the whole goal of the meeting was to have them excited about the next

meeting. And so you tell them, hey, here's where you were. Here's where you are. Here's where you're going. Those were kind of the three macro points that I always wanna do them. And I I remember at the time too, because there is, we were working with a publicly traded company out of Australia. That was a big, we did a lot of

app install Mhmm. Ads. And I still remember there was just, it was almost felt like you're going up on the horns because they would bring in their whole marketing team and we're and we're kind of another just little small digression. There was a certain aspect of, like, once you charge a cert over a certain ceiling of monthly billings, like, agnostic or performance, you're getting fired. And so once we start to get into that seventy five to a hundred k range of billings, they're just like,

dude, we just paid you that much for the month. Like, we can hire an internal team, you know, for this. And so that was little ancillary thing. If you're running a big agency and you have these big clients, if you want to keep them, figure out some sort of stop gap or ceiling that they like, you won't ever charge them. It's not great because you're gonna give up that money, but it's also like we almost

always got fired and we were killing it. Like, it wasn't a performance issue. It was just like, dude, I'm not gonna give you fucking seventy five thousand dollars or a month. You know what I mean? Like, I can literally build a whole internal despite what people say. And we it doesn't matter how how much you're killing it for me because there's just

a certain aspect of, like, I I'm just gonna be able to get more out of that. But yeah. So I mean, the the biggest things that I learned was understanding the narrative and the

data. And then the last thing I would give you is nobody's mad about things breaking. People are mad if they found out something broke. And so if there was any sort of Transparency. Thing that's or just getting in front of it. Like, you never wanna be like, oh, man. I did this thing. You actually do where it's just like, hey. We saw the the sites broke or we saw there's a typo in the ad or, like, whatever. We're fixing it right now. Here's what we're

doing it. Blah blah blah. No action items. You're part. Just an FYI to have that client feel like you care and you're in control. Like, there's nothing worse than getting, like, hey. Have you seen this ad? Or, like, why is there a typo? Or what's this? What's that? And then I think the last thing that stuck with me was you wanna treat it like it's your money, but at the end of the day, it's their money. So there was we just ran into the

stereotypical, like, hey. This isn't on brand. And so it's like, hey, there there is a certain aspect of, like, do you wanna be right or do you wanna make money? And there are some brands that want to be right, whereas it's like, hey, I know this is performing for us, but it's just not on brand and, like and then I had another client where we had a Black Friday Cyber Monday ad or actually, like, an October ad just to kill it. And there was a pumpkin emoji in the subject

line. And now you start to get in a December or January like, hey, this isn't really aligned with there. Is this cool? You know, is it making money? Cool. Send it. Yeah. But at the end of the day, that was, you know, it's it's their money and your job to shepherd it and give them guidance and advice on how they want to deploy the capital. But at the end of the day, it's their capital to deploy and if they want to, you know, put in a bathtub and light them on fire. Yeah. Exactly.

It's their decision to do it. Yep. I love what you said about narrative building. I think that's something that is not done particularly well and is such a big opportunity. Is that something you feel you've brought into your other work post agency life? Triple Whale, Vermont now. I mean Your life in general? At its core, I think people experience the world in stories.

And so giving people and being able to create the story, whether that's for yourself, whether that is for your business, whether that's for your partner, like, I just think that people the mind pours a vacuum in coincidence and, like, it's just really hard for people sometimes to accept it is, where it's just like, dude, it just

well, of large numbers, like, that's just where it landed. The 9AM wars of vacuum. That sounds like a maybe, like, a a legit quote from a great book you read on your European adventure. There you go. Is that true? Possibly. I probably got it from a book. There's, a great book called On Intelligence, which is like brain 01:01. And they did an experiment in there where so you you actually have a blind spot in both your eyes, but they're in different

spots. And so that's why you see that you don't see the blind spot. And so they flashed the picture of, I think it was like a banana or something like that to let's see. Because it's crossed. So to the the left eye, which would go to the right side of the brain, which doesn't have any executive function, so you can see it, but you can't articulate it. And what would happen is people would pick out the same picture when asked, like, what are you thinking

about right now? And they go bananas. Why are you thinking about banana? Oh, because I had a banana because I like banana, but it was actually because of the priming from that picture. And that's just how our mind works and I don't think it's like a good or a bad thing. It's just an is, but it's just really hard and so again, with great power comes great responsibility where you don't want to mislead people. Like I think

a lot of the most impactful stories are sincere and value for value. But, yeah, that's where I just realized, like, the narrative building, if you think of so the kind of two pillar thesis, people experience the world in stories, and everybody, if they're not the owner, the only thing they care about is making their boss happy. And so when you marry those two, then you realize, oh, man, like, my job to be done that this person's hiring

me is to make them look smarter, better, more awesome to their boss. So what are the stories and data that I can give them and be like, hey, look at how smart you are because you hired us. Here's the things that we're doing. And the more you can wrap up that story in a gift box, the easier it is to give to their boss and then life gets good. When their

boss is happy, they're happy. When they're happy, you're happy. And a dirty little secret is if people like you, you have a lot more, like, leeway and performance. And, like like, you can't just suck all the time. There's a certain aspect of like, all right, hey, I love you, Robert, but dude, I'm not paying you to be my friend. I'm paying you to perform. But when you have this nice rapport and people think you care, people think you care because you do

care is kind of the point. Yeah. It just worked into and again, I don't know if it's the economically optimized thing, but the other thing that I kind of as I got older was just like, I like to win beautifully. And so very much kind of like Brazil with football or soccer where it's the beautiful game where they wanna win in a certain And like I I'm not a win at all cost guy. Like, I wanna win beautifully and I think that that that unlocks a lot of doors but

also lowers some ceilings and earning potential. But at the end of the day, I think I love that. Figure out

where your freak flag is and fly it. Yeah. I love that. I I doubled down on a number of comments often, but winning beautifully feels like it's, might be coming out of the title of this one. And and, like, it's such an epic line. Like, what share more about that because that's that's pretty powerful. Yeah. And to be fair, this might be why I'm poor. Now I just there's a certain aspect of at the end of the day I can identify shit. Exactly. There's a certain You really do.

Like, I I I've done some, you know, affiliate stuff back in the day. More like not even like not tainted affiliate. This is like black alley. You know, you're making money. There's there's there's No. Yeah. There's no, like, No offense to that. No honor in that money that I was making there. And it's I just didn't feel good about it. And so, like, that kind of led me to that. And so, you know, I just I've done things for the money in the past, and it just

never really netted out for me. And and the other thing is, like, I am a huge capitalist. Don't get me wrong. But I think of money, I'm really into meditation. A friend of mine, his dad's, ordained Buddhist monk and just a really chill dude. Mhmm. And I asked him because I really enjoy Buddhism. There's a lot of, conflicting ideals, I guess, if you will, with with pure hardcore capitalism. Right? And so I asked him, well, how do you

think of money? Because he was actually, fairly wealthy. And he was like, I think of it as energy. And so that had always stuck with me where it's like the more energy you can put out because it doesn't put a stigma on it. Right? Like, you can put energy into good things. You can put energy into bad things. But it's not, like, something you internalize. And so that has been kind of yeah.

So maybe I'm not gonna be, like, the three comma club, but, you know, hopefully, getting the tens of millions or something like that. But, yeah, I think at the end of the day for me, it's That's cool. Being introspective on where your kind of non negotiables are and then build systems and goals around that. Where it's like some people might not care or it's just like, dude, I'll slide into you. I'll I'll rip the candy out of the Yeah. Hand of the baby. I just want the candy. Yeah.

No judgment on that. It's just wasn't aligned to my truth. I think. Yeah. And I think there's nothing wrong with, you know, be yourself and do you. Yeah. I love the thought of, very Austin too, by the way. Very Austin. Keep Austin. Respect that. I feel like there's something interesting about the money is energy piece because in some ways there's neutrality in that. That's what I love about there's no judgment on it. There's no it however you wanna deploy it and

however much you have, it's so well put. Very eloquent. Yes. Couldn't agree more. What an amazing departure. Maybe back to, like, the concrete of, like, you know, you have evolved into, you know, pretty central piece of building up, you know, Triple Whale being a very prominent figure on DTC e comm and Twitter. And and I think a big part of the Austin d two c e comm community and likewise other other spots. How would you maybe categorize for people who

are not as familiar with d two c e comms community. Yeah. And how would you kind of describe it to folks in the audience? I said, think it's one of the better communities. I was very, very resistant to Twitter early on just because it's such a active network, not only in engagement, but also, in, like, setting it up. Right? Like, you have to follow the right people. You have to and right being not,

like, right or wrong, but right for, like, what interests you. Yeah. Like, the the things that make you make things interesting. Yeah. But once I I like, Facebook started to be kinda the the joke of, like, Twitter is or Facebook are the friends you the friends you

went to high school with and then Twitter are the people you wish you went to high school with, kind of thing. And so, yeah, I just started finding way more meaningful activity and engagement on Twitter and it was there's there's just so much free game on there, kind of what we're talking about offline of item killers where somebody was like I mean, I remember at hey Alex p and she had, like, seventeen, not seventeen, but fifty or egregiously low followers where she's finally now, like,

getting the accolades she deserves. But there's just some really brilliant people that will engage with you in a a meaningful and respectful way. So I think that's really unique where finance Twitter can get a little cringey. There there's some there's some cringe corners where I think d two c,

for the most part, does a really good job and everybody's really welcoming. And I think that the kind of candidly the coolest people, that's where I really like the confluence of b to b SaaS and b to c because b to b SaaS is like daddy money where I have incredible economics and d to c are, like, the coolest kids to hang out with. And so it's always been this awesome thing. But yeah. I mean, It's a combo. Yeah. Too long didn't read. If you are in the d to c space, like, d to c

Twitter is great, man. I I mean, obviously, there's definitely some rough edges here and there, but I think, on the whole, it's a really nice, meaningful Yeah. Everybody's really supportive and engaging. And I think there's a nice, like, community policing of it as well where it's kind of like a party that's there's some there's some fun kind of liberties taken. But like if there's a fight happens and then you let the fight happen and then

you break it apart, there's not like this jump rage into where people are getting proper hurt. Yeah. I think there's a, like, a lot of nice guardrails on it and, that's awesome. So I

know. I know. I I really Yeah. What's your take? I kinda like the community too. It feels to me, it feels similar to I think affiliate has an interesting kind of You guys are asking. Communities. It's so pig It's tight knit in a different way even though and it has different generations. Yeah. It's been around for twenty years in some capacity, probably ten real estate. That's a really interesting take. I didn't think of

the the age difference. But but it also has that, like, they're the people you wanna hang and party and socialize with, But then there's become it's kind of grown up, and there's brands that are, you know, putting their stamp on it and saying, hey. I believe in this. And it's a part of my media mix. So it has legitimacy. So I I really love where your head's at with that. I

feel like there's some similarities between affiliate and DDC. But back to DDC, I feel like it is generally fairly welcoming, very and, like, academic conversations can be had, and people can truly learn things where it's not just, like, okay. We're in this click and you're not invited. There's certainly some clickishness as you referenced, but but I encourage people to to jump in the water and and learn and and

observe and listen. And and I think there's a lot to be had from it, and in real life too, you know, there's I think that We talked about that at one of the events here in Austin where it's like Austin, New York, LA. Yeah. Great freaking epicenters of DUC. Yeah. I couldn't agree with you more. And I I think that that I think also is what accelerates the awesomeness of the online is the offline. We're like, oh, cool. And there just be so many

people where it's like, oh, I know you from Twitter. Like, oh, yeah. Oh my gosh. Oh, I know you. And like Yeah. That's a really cool like, I think it'll be interesting to see what happens with the ecosystem with because Geek Out was, like, the thing. And with that being gone, it'll be interesting to see kind of where what happens or steps in because I I agree with you. And the other thing is, like, events are hard. Like, in real life events are hard. I've thrown a

ton of them at at scale, and they're they're just really hard. Gosh. When you do them well, man, you can make fans for life where, like, there was a lot of events where we threw that either somebody met a romantic partner, somebody got a business deal, somebody had a new idea and had zero value add to Triple Whale. But like the value generation, it's almost like a karmic balance of

value. Or it's like if you one of the things that you need to do is get like top of funnel awareness, like, being able to generate value for people without any reciprocity is a hell of a drug, man, where they're gonna refer people to you. They're gonna talk really highly. I mean, they're gonna we had a guy that was, he was so awesome. He was, like, the proper triple wells super fan. And

he was just I think it was, like, Finhub or something. He's like, like, I can't even use this. I just wanna buy it because I wanna support you guys. And you're just like, that's not great for business because it was like zombie kinds, but that just goes to show you the power of building, like, sincere relationships that generate value for people. Like, Pete Triplett fucked, man. People were at the company right to run through

the wall for them people. And not to say that's not doing well now. It's just for for me, there was just this there's a certain aspect and there was, I think it was Marissa Mayer at Google where they were kind of just at the cusp of blowing up. And she was like, look around now. This is the best that it's ever gonna get, which is kinda depressing. But now I see her point where it was like me, Tommy, Alexa, Colin, Kevin. We had the dopest

office set up. We had a podcast studio. We had budget to do things. The company's screaming. Like, it was I don't know. There's just this unique windows in business life because, you know, eventually, you need to grow up. You need to get a finance bridge. You need to get HR. You need to get all this. But there's this this unique window of almost like Yeah. That early 20s vibe in your life where it's like you're naive, but you also kind of start to get resources.

You start to have deep connections with humans you care about. You stop doing kind of dumb shit, but you still have a little bit of fun in you. Like, you're you know, you're not like my age where it's like, dude, Netflix and chill. Let me turn on the TV and 10PM kind of stuff. And it was just It is good after forty two. Don't worry. Okay. I just need to I need I

need to get over this damn hump at thirty eight. But it was just a really cool feeling to have the whole team aligned, be able to be performing, and we're performing like, everything was just there it was it was it was the seventy six Dolphins. Like, it it was just it was something that, obviously, I would like to try and repeat, but I don't even know if it was just such a perfect storm of everything of, like, because everybody like Tommy,

Alexa, Kevin, Colin, all these people are under market. You know what I mean? Yeah. Eventually, I got them to a

good place. But when I at that point, it was startup, dude. Like, you're selling you're selling the dream and the Yeah. Like, you're gonna get some stamps in your passport and, like, some cheap beer, and we're gonna go hunt. Yeah. Like, there isn't and so, I mean, I remember Alexa, like, I was courting her for months. Tommy was and so it was just this, again, perfect mix of, like, talent Yeah. And culture

and personality vibe. Yeah. I don't know. It was great. Well, I think we joke about football and sports and music and other analogies, but I think there's something similar football where it's like, hey, you got someone on a rookie contract. My goodness, that's a really exciting window. And guess what? Folks are gonna be earning more and more as they progress in their career, and there's a reality to that. And, bringing in different financial rigor or different investor influence or different

different things. Things change quickly. So I think we've all seen that in our careers, but it's awesome to to hear the formula that you witnessed and were part of and you built and you, you know, you were working in the trenches and kinda saw that magic live. You were part of that creation, so it's pretty rad. Yeah. It was the my my biggest and probably my only regret outside, yeah, is not enjoying it. I was so fixated on performance and, like,

getting where's my next stage of growth coming from? Where how do I get more? How do I get more? Because we were just at one point in time, Triple Whale was the fastest growing company ever. It was just crazy to think about. Yeah. It was wild. And so I did so many cool things. I got to go to so many cool places, and I was never present. Cause it was just always like low key CMO at early stage startup is possibly one of the worst positions ever. CMOS hard. It's no matter how you slice

it. Yeah. Exactly. It's the fastest turnover of C suite even in the Fortune five hundred kind of or even Fortune one hundred. It's the line that would always go around is, like, if things are going well, it's not because of marketing. Because of marketing. You know what I mean? And so you just never not that you never got your due, but it was just kind of this almost like insurance policy of, like, okay. Marketing is obviously gonna crush it. So, like

and so, yeah, I regret that. So if you guys do get into that place of, like, hyper success, definitely look at the mile marker, maybe even pull over, have a peanut butter and jelly and look at the mountains for a little bit. You can't stay there, but I I do regret not enjoying it as much as I could because I was just so caught up in the performance and the pressure of, like Yeah. Hey, man. Like, you know, this is I think this is

a special situation. Do you think some of that is inevitable? And how much of that do you feel like, if if, say, that happened again in some maybe different variant Yeah. Quite the same level of magic. But do you feel like you would have a little bit more of, appreciation for if while you're in it? Yes. I definitely think so, but I also think that I now have some natural internal gyros to not get there again because I I can't believe that I was just redlining. Like, I was I was making

content. I was traveling. I was throwing events. I was going to events. I was speaking. I was like, there was a place where I was it wasn't long term sustainable. And so I don't know. Like, again, I think it would do I regret it? No. Outside of not being present, but I don't know if I would try and set that situation up again because it was so, like, a Yeah. It was it was a lot, man. It was it was something that was not and, like, I was the only

person on the marketing team for the first four or five months. And then my first hire was a community Kevin. So I really didn't have, like, a team. So six Yeah. Six, eight months in, and Wow. I was only there for, you know, a little over two years. And so, yeah, it was a if I got there again, I would definitely enjoy it, but I would also be like, Fuck. Yeah. We left this place. Yeah. Yeah. Why did we come back to Detroit in the winter? I said that again.

Like, it's I think that would be something where I would be very hesitant. But I also think there's a lot of learnings that could have put a lot more guardrails on things where Yeah. I think there's probably a a certain internal expectation that was never gonna be met. And so being able to modulate that in more meaningful way versus, like yeah. Yeah. Were you out of curiosity, were you meditating at that time? Everything felt like it was it it doesn't seem

like you meditate in line. It was well, yeah. Because you self correct. Yeah. Where you can so the the whole point of meditation or not point, but one of the the things that you can get when you start to sit so I'm I'm just crazy, and so I know I need to temper that craziness, but a lot of that craziness can be directed in some meaningful output. But what happens is the the

way my my dad's friend described as you wanna live in the gap. So you'll never get rid of your reactions. Like, you're human. Yeah. Yeah. But what you can do is start to push a gap between your reaction and your reactions to your reactions. And so, for example, like, somebody cuts you off in traffic, like, you yell at it, oh my god, that a hole cut me off, etcetera, etcetera. And then that negativity just permeates throughout your day versus, like, oh my god, that person

cut me off. Oh my gosh. What is why am I mad? Like and so and then you can start to back out of it and you get rid of it quicker. And so that is super helpful. But the other thing too is just travel's hard, man. Like, travel's a young man's game. And I was traveling One twos or two and a half weeks of the month. And the other thing is, like, sometimes I would land on weekends and

stuff. And so, like, you're you start to lose weekends and you're back in it. And we don't Yeah. I had a friend of mine that worked for Regal and thought this is a really cool policy, was if you end up traveling or working on a weekend, you just get the next weekday off, which I thought was pretty cool. But yeah. I mean, this isn't it. You know, we're a bunch of kill

killer be killed at at that point of the growth stage startup. So that's not something that maybe it'd be interesting to kinda pull it back to, like, the nerdy, always be testing themes. I mean, with Triple Whale, there's so much learning insight. You could kinda you had the kind of the dashboard of the, pulse on the performance. Yeah. Maybe, for for those in the audience who are curious, like, what are some

maybe interesting learnings that you could share that are not proprietary? That's like, hey. This is some of the cool trends I was witnessing or may you know, things that are interesting or notable. Yeah. I mean, we saw a few things. A couple of them are kinda does and then a couple of them are quasi interesting. One of the biggest ones was people that had good to great economics, just one. Like, you definitely need a product, but, like, if you have a product that

says for Attribution. Yeah. And so there was it sort of I just had more gas in my car. I could go get to a more profitable place. Instead of having to stop at this gas station, I could actually go to this one where it it just changes everything that you could do. And so the the way I would describe it to people is they say you can't outwork you can't outwork out that diet. It's the same kind of concept in business where you just can't out market bad unit economics. It just is what it is. You're

actually succeeding. You're creating making it worse. Yeah. You know, I'm succeeding. I'm losing I'm losing you money. That's like a perfect so definitely make sure that your economics are intact. A kind of corollary to that is not all products are made for paid media. And so make sure that you're only advertising your

and and, again, this is predicated on the goal is profitability and revenue generation. Like, if there's other goals at mind where it's like, oh, I just need to move this inventory and do that. But assuming that you wanna make the most money at the highest profit, like, you need to be high margin, high velocity

products. And so, even when I was at running accounts with the brands, sometimes they might have 10:20 SKUs, and only two of them would be pushed with paid media because it's just, like, going back to, like, I'm winning but I'm losing. Like, the other thing is you wanna make sure that that first interaction because d two c usually doesn't have a retail presence is amazing. And so the more you can make somebody feel successful and awesome, the closer to

the first touch point, like, you're golden. And so even if the magnitude of success is way higher, if it's farther away from that origin, it's not as impactful. So people that would have the flagship really awesome products, and then the community was actually something that was really interesting. People that had community plays were, like so, Avi, there's some other people that had some really interesting, community

plays. Yeah. And this is gonna sound silly, but, like, people that planned, like really looked at they weren't thinking like month to month, but they were like, Okay, cool. And not to say that you need things like carved in stone, but they had, here's the purchasing moments we're gonna create. We see some dips in revenue here. Can we launch a product? Can we do a promotion? Can

we do a special holiday? And being able to generate those purchasing moments and think of things annually or at worst quarterly to understand where they're trending with something that was really interesting and meaningful. And then, honestly, like, it sounds again silly, but the the people that were focused on performance and not sophistication won. And so people that had not only simplified accounts but, like, depending on the scale, you only needed one to two

or maybe three channels. Like, very rarely did we have we had stores up to half a billion dollars a year, and they were still on four or five channels. And Yeah. The majority of their revenue was still aggregated to the top two kinda thing, and these were more so, like, again, going back to those percentage points at the end where it's like, you're a Olympic sprinter. Like, you do need to add on some other of these things because you're maxing out these other big channels. And so

yeah. So I guess not super meaningful, but the the one thing that I did see in the data that was really interesting and now I maybe I'll ping Alan and see if I can get access to data again was we saw TikTok shop or TikTok ad ad spend Yeah. Just absolutely skyrocket. There was a point in time I remember that a friend of mine got who's big spending, they got to parody almost with Facebook, and it was outspending Google. And they were and they were spending sixty, seventy

k a day. It's like real money. And then that just kinda blew up, which I thought was really interesting. Yeah. So on my way out, like, I don't know anybody that TikTok was a big spending channel. Now it looks like it's interesting, but now seems like it's off the back of organic social and shops more so than actual paid spend. I've seen a lot of that. Yeah. So That's interesting, but that was something that shocked me because I thought it

was looking at the preliminary data, it was a runaway train. Snaps was pretty much a defunct platform, pretty much useless. I didn't know anybody that spent on that. And then the ASC and the Google performance actually, really I think that in combination with the targeting or especially in specific Facebook just started to they started to figure out kind of the iOS updates and how to just get back to the the closer to the glory days of, like, the ads are delivering, the tracking's better, the

targeting's better. I'm supposed to use AI where they did it because they can't books really They're not allowed to, you know, actually pass the data. And so they were just using that data to then put it through AI and they spun up like that was, I guess, the counterweight to spinning down the metaverse was that's where they put all that money was in the huge AI team that just started helping with targeting, tracking,

analytics, stuff like that. And candidly has been way better. I mean, definitely from the the iOS fourteen stage to now. Yeah. It's only, what, like, a year and a half ago, and it's it's night and day. But Yeah. Those are the lot of people. That's that's super helpful. That's a lot in there to Yeah. Those are the big ones that, you know, have a great product is number one. Make sure your economics work. Be able to, you you know, generate value for your community.

Usually, too, around either consumption or ancillary things to, like, create at, they do the creatine gummies. Yeah. He's doing all these kinda, like, ancillary add on products. So people that were doing these things of, like, going back to that job to be done and then building, can you help this person get this job to be done better? Yeah. Whether that's with your product, whether that's with an add on product. Yeah. That's so

cool. Tell us about the new gig. Tell us what you're pumped about. Wanna share it. Yeah. Really excited to, end up going on full time at vermat, vermatcommerce dot com, f e r mat commerce dot com. Yeah. So we do, essentially, like, experimentation on steroids through landing pages at scale. So, right now, we're working with bigger to big big brands. Yeah. And so it's been great. It's been really cool to see kind of that. And then just the evolution of the product has been incredible.

So right now, our experimentation kind of feature is gated to kind of the super, super high end enterprise customers, but we'll be kinda rolling that out probably early q one. We'll be doing some cool events. So, obviously, the event the event gotta have the events. Yeah. We'll be doing some cool stuff around community. Kind of very similar to the the o g triple o playbook. The one thing that's definitely different is right now we're

servicing I don't know what to call them, like, Shopify enterprise client. You know what I mean? Where they're not, like, Target, but they're not these kind of, you know, thirty, fifty million dollar a year stores where Was it Was a hundred million kind of the Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Like, for me,

it gets to kinda, like, you know, fifty to 07:50 almost where it's like that's yeah. I mean, maybe 07:50 gets quasi enterprise, but, again, like, the seven hundred fifty is, I don't know, like like, d to c should be there. D to c enterprise or something. Yeah. It's like this because it's a it's a business. It's a real business. Don't get me wrong. But, again, it's not a Home Depot. It's not a Target, Best Buy, you know, where you're Yeah. Walmart's of the world where that's proper enterprise.

But anyways, yeah. So if you wanna go do some cool experimentation, we do a bunch of cool CRO stuff and then being able to deploy kind of your ad creative to maybe four different destinations, whether it's a quiz, advertorial, some gift guide, things of that nature. You can spin it up real quick and then test it out, see how you make your money. Love it. Are how are you thinking about kind of building out resourcing and supporting them and and growing

them? Is there certain needs that you have now or or folks that you're kind of looking to Yeah. Bring on board in the next, you know, twelve months? Or Yeah. Is a fantastic question. Right now, I'll probably build out kind of that four or five person squad. And that that's really where I like to operate. Like, I don't like to manage. I like to lead. Like, give me just give me some killers and let

me run. And then if we need more hands, they can hire them. And I don't I don't need to not that I don't need to deal with them. Like, I'm too affluent, but, like Sure. They can manage their own people. Like, that's an extension. Yeah. I just wanna deal with the lieutenants. And then if we need more people, we can hire them and Yeah. Yeah. So we're doing probably a community person, content person, brand person, product marketing,

probably be the Awesome. The squad and then, you know, fill in some holes here and there with contracting. Very cool. And yeah. But I'm I'm excited. It's a the the cofounders are amazing. The product's great, and the the value we're generating is real. So it's it's really nice to be in kind of post PMF. Yeah.

You know, it's like, okay. Cool. Let's got a lot there to work with. Yeah. The product the product is it's kind of a little bit of a marketer's wet dream where the the product is amazing and the marketing, there's there's a lot of opportunities to grow. I love it. I love it. You kinda reference the theme of leadership, you know, throughout your career and what you've done and in referencing to the team that you're looking to create. What's some advice you give to leaders out there? There

may be new leaders or leaders that are looking to improve. You've you've obviously done it well. What would you counsel people on? I would say one the first thing which is super, super important is understand the most effective communication style, one on one. And so for me, I'm kinda gregarious, rough around the edges, loud, and I can be overwhelming to introverts. And they won't either say what they mean or they'll they'll just kinda cow. And not like a judgmental way. It's just

that's just their personality. And so what I found with people that are more introverted was giving them time to go work on their own and think of their messaging. So they did really well with, like, written messaging where it's like, hey. Cool. Here's what we need from you. Here's what I'm thinking. Take this home, you know, figure it out and just answer, fill in this Notion doc, and we'll chat about

it tomorrow and stuff like that. So that was super helpful understanding people's communication style and how they take feedback, and that's also a function of hiring where I actually prefer people with scars versus a pretty face. Because if you haven't like, even if you're super talented, if you haven't dealt with failure, I don't know how you're gonna react in, like, the fog of war and some people who haven't failed before. It's just not that it's right or wrong, it just doesn't fit my

management style. Like, I just don't deal with that well. And so all the people that I hired weren't were not only Vybe. So, like, there's a funny thought experiment of, like, if the plane got delayed and you two were both at the airport, like, would you be mad or not? So, like, I would hang like, we all all hung out together, actually, like, after work and stuff. So we had a really like, chemistry and team morale matters. And that's something that I I was in IC for most of

my career that I never believed. I was like, dude, my trust falls. Like, I don't care. Absolutely matters. So I would say communication style, understand kind of the personalities on a team, make sure, team morale and people rowing in the right direction, the incentives are there. And then I I think the last thing would be ultimately, like, goal setting and expectations. So I found that I'm very allergic to decision by

committee. I think people operate the best, especially killers, when they have their own silos or responsibility because you can start to not to get too economic y, but you get into a free rider problem and nobody really owns it. It's like this person, this person. So it's like, oh, there's shit in the restroom. Well, if it's a public restroom, I'm not gonna clean it up. And so but if that was like your

restroom, like, dude, gross. Somebody pooped in here, but I'm gonna clean it up. And so, there's one of my favorite David Ogilvy lines where go walk through the parks of in your city, you'll never see a statue for a committee. And so I was just very big on giving people responsibility and very clear output goals of, like, hey. This is what you're responsible for. This is what I needed to do. But I also had to make sure like,

Tommy was really hard on himself. Alexa, all like, my team was very hard on themselves, and so I had to get people out of the mindset of right and wrong or good and bad and more into a scientific method of, like, here's my thesis. Here's the bet I wanna make. Here's what I think is gonna happen. Here's what did happen. Here's why what I'm gonna do in the future. And I had no problem with bets that

missed. I had problem with bad bets. So if you couldn't explain to me, like, why did we spend that money or, like, what were you thinking behind this? I was like, oh, there there's a great book called Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke, and she calls it resulting where it's like, you get so fixated on the result where at the end of the day, building a

system with a high probability of output. Like, if you can build a system with an eighty, eighty percent success rate, ninety percent success rate, land in the ten or twenty percent, it's like, hey, that's it is what it is. It just happened. Don't throw the system out. You know? And so those would be the kind of things that I would get around and then Yeah. I would definitely meet with

your lieutenants, once a week. Love it. I did one one on ones every week and when I would travel and stuff like that and we didn't have them, you could fill, a gap. Yeah. I think that you could fill a gap. That's interesting. Yeah. There's definitely a place that you can get to with some mind melds where so at the beginning when I would hire my people, you ask them, hey, what do you think I would do in this situation? And then once the answer,

like, lines up with what you were thinking, hey. Go run, you know, shackles off. Go go cut your own week kind of thing. Yeah. But where you really get interesting is, and you're like, no. That's not what I was thinking. It's actually better than the answer I had. That's when you know you are well. Where you're like, that's fantastic. I didn't think of that, and that's even better than the answer I had. That's amazing. You you can hear it through

the thing. Very cool. Yeah. What do, what do a lot of people don't know about you that, that you wanna share? Maybe I'll go braggadocious. I used to be a really good runner. So it's a freshman of the year conference in division one. Wow. Yeah. I used to be I used to be pretty quick. What what event? This was cross country. Okay. So this was eight

k and then nationals are ten k and then That's amazing. Track and field with, yeah, mile mile to mile in high school and then thirty two hundred and five k, a track. Wow. What are you what are you doing now to Not running. Do your thing. Not running. No. It's hard as you get older. It's horrible for your body. Yeah. It was the when I look back on it, though, I think it was, really helpful because it's so mentally, good. Like, I think there's a certain aspect of getting to a place

of uncomfortableness and being able to, you know, like, hey. I know it's uncomfortable, but it's okay. You're not new to that. Like, being able to deal with that Yeah. Is very meaningful to build character. But now I'm just doing some some workout stuff. I pickleball pickleball a little bit. I used to be really into racquetball, and I'd go back into that. I used to do some slacklining.

Yeah. Alright. Now I'm just trying Can I get on my pickleball court, man? Who? Tried once. I didn't make it, but we'll we'll get out there. Have to. The, you know Tyler from Peachy Babies? Think so. Yeah. I think he has a good spot. I got a crib. He says, I need, Oh, he has a court. That's so nice. That's how Travis do it. I know. Well, because I was thinking too, the the community in town, dude, we could

get, like, a weekly just Oh my gosh. Standing date and have people come meet up and run through. And I went to have to wake surfed without him and I showed up. That's it. I told him to cancel. I told him it was a there was always No. He was like, best day. He's the F boat score. It was awesome. He's the best. No one was out. Yeah. He's the best. We'll get Pickleball going. Brava, Stud, Pied

Piper of d two c com. This has been an awesome conversation. This is great. It's the first time I've done the the look in the camera. I feel like I made it. I was, like, nervous. I this is this is, like, really advanced level, like, talk to the cam I feel like the, you know, the the TV people We do what you do with our hands. Yeah. Do do am I looking at the no. He's talking now, I gotta look at him or no. We need the

producer in there. Turn up the heat. Turn up the heat. Ask him about the The base. The base needs to be high. Yeah. Exactly. And, just wanna just wanna finish with this, you know, for folks who wanna find out more about Rava and all the cool things you're doing at Vermont, where can they find you? What's the Yeah. I'm on the Twitters at Robert Rayjo. I am on LinkedIn ish. Yeah. Just send me a DM. Candidly, I suck at DMs, but

shoot your shot. I suck at times. That's your chance. Yeah. Chance. If it's not like text, DM, or or text, WhatsApp, or Slack I might recommend it. An upcoming bug snake in a world. Real life event. Yes. That is That's the way to do it. That's the best way to get. I I love everybody at the event, so definitely get me there. But, yeah, unless you unless you get the text message, then I'm very convinced. You're the man. Alright. You're the best. Pleasure. So bad. See you, everybody. Did it.