What do you do when you grow 25% YoY but realize you’re losing money?
How do you adjust when what has always worked in the past stops working?
What steps do you take when your cost to acquire a new customer is skyrocketing, and nothing is bringing it down?
If you’re like some brand owners, you keep doing the same stuff but try to do it better.
Sometimes, you need a larger shift that starts with asking better questions and understanding what problem you’re trying to solve.
This interview with Anthony Mink, CEO and Co-Founder of Live Bearded, was super fun and energizing to record.
Live Bearded is an 8-figure brand that experienced something pretty dramatic but also not uncommon in eCommerce. Their new customer acquisition ads stopped working across ALL ad platforms.
We know the brand well; we’ve been running Google and YouTube ads for them for years. Seeing their CPA skyrocket across all channels (Facebook, IG, YouTube) and then helping it come down to the lowest it’s ever been was inspiring and insightful. Especially while spending more than ever on top-of-funnel efforts.
Ultimately, they discovered they had a fundamental positioning and messaging problem. Their offer was good (basically a free sample), but the way they positioned their product had taken them as far as possible. They needed to reposition!
In this episode, we uncover that journey, and it’s PACKED with valuable lessons.
Here’s a quick look at some of what we cover:
- How you first have to clearly define the problem before you can solve it. (This is a step entrepreneurs usually want to skip.)
- How positioning is likely the most powerful lever you can pull in your business.
- The power of Stories, States, and Identities in your marketing
- The power of Brand and how Nike has it, but Hyatt doesn’t.
- The concept of Better Your Best (and NOT Better Your Meh).
- The messaging that cut Live Bearded’s CPAs in half.
- Plus more!
Mentioned In This Episode:
Transcript:
Anthony:
I know in our business, and this is I think one of the things that we want to talk about today is like oftentimes the most difficult thing is actually solving the right problem. And there's a lot of surface level problems that come up in business that don't actually address the underlying problem. That's what you actually need to solve for. And I know for us so far this year, we're up 25, 26% year over year, which candidly is down for us.
Brett:
Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and I am so excited about the podcast episode today. My guest is a legend. This topic is going to be insightful, inspirational, it's going to be really, really good. And so I just want to dive right in. And my guest today is the co-founder and CEO of Live Bearded. He's one of the most fit guys in the business, one of the best beards in the business, and just really a genuine guy. He knows business, he knows people, he knows leadership. You're going to love learning from him. And we go way back. Anthony Mink is my guest. So Anthony, welcome to the show. And how's it going, man?
Anthony:
Thanks for the intro, man. I'll try to live up to that one. I appreciate the kind words. Things are going really well. We were talking just before we hit go live. It's November 8th. We're two and a half weeks away from Black Friday, so we're just right in the middle of all of it, but really, really excited. The team's doing amazing and just feel like the e-commerce world has been crazy over the last 12 to 24 months, if you will, with the highs and then kind of like the drop off and the turbulence. And I just feel very fortunate. Our team has done an incredible job and we're still having a lot of fun and enjoying the process.
Brett:
That's amazing, man. And I get to see your team a lot, obviously get to see you at least a couple times a year, blue Ribbon and other events. And then you get to see your team too. And you mentioned that they have fun and they genuinely do. I see your team, they're smart, they're engaged, collaborative, but they're also, you guys are having fun, having fun doing this, which really, if we're not having fun, then why do it? Right? Why not do something?
Anthony:
Yeah, I mean, I started my first business because I didn't want to work for a stuffy boss and I didn't want to work in a shitty office, and I wanted to be able to kind of do things my own way. And when we go through the interview process, one of the things I say is we have a very politically non correct environment. I'm going to say fuck a lot and we're just going to be ourselves and have fun. And if you're not comfortable in that environment, that's totally okay. But I wanted to create the environment that I wanted for my company or for myself within my company. And so to that degree, we respect each other, we try to challenge each other to get a lot of work done, but also we just give each other the grace to be flexible and do what they got to do. So we've tried to find that good balance between kicking ass and driving results and then also giving people the space to still do what they need to do in their personal lives and professionally. And so far it's worked out well.
Brett:
Yeah, I really tip my hat to you guys the way you've struck that balance of getting after it, but also caring and having fun is really admirable and it's working and that's amazing. And also thanks for joining me right now because as you said, as we record this, we're all prepping for Black Friday. And so when I invite my e-commerce merchant buddies to come on the show or friends to come on the show, I don't expect 'em to come on this time of year, but you're like, I'll do it. I'm in. So thank you for doing that. And yeah, I just want to kind of dive in, and I think this would be a good segue into how would you view the state of e-commerce? Yeah, we had the highest of highs, maybe not the lowest of lows. We had the highest of highs, and then all kinds of craziness. Yeah, has ensued after that, but how would you describe the state of e-comm?
Anthony:
Yeah, I think it's highly industry dependent based on all the different people that we know from Blue Ribbon. You talk to some guys and they're doing very well. Other guys, they're struggling. I think when we were at the last Blue ribbon a couple of weeks ago, I gave some stats and one of the things that was really shocking to me is the quarter over quarter growth rate in e-commerce is the lowest it's been since they've been tracking it from 2010, 2011, they tracked quarter over quarter e-commerce growth rates, and it was double digits 12, 14, 15, 20, and it was just consistent year over year. And then during Covid, there was a quarter that was 50, 60% quarter over quarter growth rates. And so we had this tremendous wave that we've been riding for the last 12 years and over the last four quarters we're in the single digits for the first time ever.
What's also very interesting about that correlation is during the whole covid kind of lockdown stuff, the number of e-commerce stores doubled. So you've got twice the amount of competition, the slowest amount of growth rate that's been possible, pair that with inflation and credit card debt has reached a trillion dollars for the first time in the history of our country. So also advertising rates and CPMs, as you guys know at OMG, are as high as they've ever been. So you have all of these factors that honestly don't create a good environment for e-commerce. And I think a lot of people are feeling that. But at the end of the day, one of the things that we talk a lot about is it's just the ordinary things practiced consistently. One of my favorite coaches of all time is John Wooden, and he's famous for the fundamentals. You're going to do form shots every day.
You're going to do dribble drills, you're going to do passing drills. And I think there's fundamentals in e-commerce that if we stick to them, we're going to have more success. And honestly, I think the fundamentals are the most difficult thing to do, but they're the most basic and that's why they're the most difficult because people want to try to find the new whizzbang thing or the new strategy that they can use to really take things to the next level. And oftentimes it's just great email marketing, great ad creative, great customer, great follow up. There's just a few core channels that if we just do very well at, we can build a very defensible business. And for us, our plan through tough times is to just do everything we can to personalize the experience to customers, make sure they know that we truly care about them and we're here to support them.
And if that means that they're going through tough times and they can't buy, that's totally fine. We're going to be here when they do have some flexibility and when they can. And in the meantime, we're still going to try to provide content that's going to support and meet them where they are. So for us, I think in any environment, there's an opportunity to maximize the current state. Right now, I think we're seeing a lot of people that maybe they didn't build a business based on fundamentals and it was tactics or strategies that were working in the time covid wave, the excitement, whatever, and just right
Brett:
In the wave
Anthony:
For sure. Now the wave is gone and those businesses start to fall away as well. And so I think on the other side of that, if you practice good fundamentals, you build a business on strong financial optics and good metrics, then I think on the other side of this is going to be a tremendous growth wave, and that's definitely what we're focusing on.
Brett:
Yeah, it's so good. And I'm a huge John Wooden fan. I love basketball, college basketball especially. And he was famous for when a new class of freshmen would join UCLA and they won 10 national championships in 11 years or whatever the crazy stat was. And he would begin practice by showing players how to put their socks and shoes on. Players were like, yeah, I'm playing division one basketball coach, I don't need to. But he was like, no, no. This is how you don't get blisters and we don't want your shoe to come untied during a key moment in the game just really thinking about, and it's almost more of a mindset thing than anything. We're going to focus on the little things and get really good at the little things so that they don't trip us up literally, literally or figuratively. And what's also interesting too, you talk about the state of e-commerce and really some kind of scary numbers.
The covid wave has gone and costs up and all this stuff, but then there's also just some weird mixed data too, right? I just saw the Q3 earnings reports came out from Amazon and they were pretty good. Amazon's ad business is off the charts good. Facebook's Q3 was good. Google's was a little more kind of middle of the road, but it was okay. Shopify did pretty good. But yeah, there's a lot of e-comm businesses that are, some are up, some are down, some are sideways. It's just kind of a confusing time as well. But I think that's another reason to go back to the fundamentals because they will not change. And if we get really, really good at that, we can weather whatever storm is ahead.
Anthony:
Yeah, I think the most critical thing to do is to really dissect what problems you need to solve or what fundamentals do you need to focus on. I think I know in our business, and this is I think one of the things that we want to talk about today is oftentimes the most difficult thing is actually solving the right problem. And there's a lot of surface level problems that come up in business that don't actually address the underlying problem. That's what you actually need to solve for. And I know for us so far this year, we're up 25, 20 6% year over year, which candidly is down for us. We've been growing somewhere around like 35 to 40% year over year for the last five years. All things considered. We feel great about where we're at throughout the year, but that being said, our profitability is down.
We've ran into some efficiency issues in our marketing, and we actually lost about a hundred thousand dollars in June and July. So we went through a really interesting summer stretch for us, which it's usually a little slower in the beard market. There's just less search volume, there's less people online guys like to grow their beards out in the winter. So we've had a little bit of seasonality, but we had to take a step back from that moment and be like, okay, this is the most money we've ever lost. We've literally never had a down couple months like this. Our marketing's way out of whack. Where are we missing the mark here? And are we solving the right problem or are we not? And we just went through this process to dissect why our advertising wasn't working, we were how we were languaging things, how we were positioning ourselves.
And through that process, I think one of the things we uncovered is the way that we position our brand may just be, or individual products or individual sales funnels. It's likely one of the greatest leverage points that we have. And through going through a process, we were able to take our CPA from it Rose is high as 30, $35. And to give the audience some context, we have a sample offer funnel that we use to basically get our different fragrances in the hands of potential consumers. We found in our buying process, one of the biggest challenges was understanding what fragrance they wanted and what products they needed. So we put 'em all together in a sample pack, we sell it for 10 bucks, we lose money on the first purchase. We go pretty negative on it, but the theory is if the product is good enough and we deliver the desired end result, then they'll come back and we know our repeat purchase rate.
The funnel is optimized, it works great for us, but at that rate, we can only afford to spend about $20 on a CPA, anything more than that. We start to lose too much. It takes too long to get the cash back, et cetera. In the summer, our CPA got like 32, 30 $5 and we were getting our ass kicked. That's part of the reason why we lost so much money over the summer. And so we took a step back and we're like, okay, all the ad creative we're throwing up is not working. We are just really regurgitating a lot of the same copy, a lot of the same messaging, trying to repackage it if you will, but the underlying kind of hook angle positioning, it was all the same.
Brett:
And one thing I want to kind of underscore there, Anthony, because a few things that CPA, some people may hear that and think, wow, that's really low, or that's really high depending on someone's perspective. But this was for a free sample offer and live bearded. It's a consumable. You guys have very loyal customers once they kind of get started on a product 10, they stick. And so that sample offer makes a lot of sense for you. But yeah, when you're going in the hole on that first order, you can have a really high CPA. So just to put a little more context there. And then, yeah, you guys, when did you start noticing CPAs rising around what time?
Anthony:
Yeah, I would say May, June, maybe even as early as April. But May and June, they started to get really bad and we started testing more to try to optimize, find new winning creative. And it was like the more that we spent the higher our CPA went, and there was this perfect correlation between spend and CPA just going in the wrong direction. And so it was an indicator that we were solving for the wrong problem. And so we took a step back and just with my creative team and my marketing team, we tried to dissect what problem are we really solving here? And there's a lot of great training out there on how to solve problems and benefits, solutions, desires, problems, et cetera. One of the things I really love is in StoryBrand, they talk about people buy external problems for internal solutions or internal challenges.
And so we were just thinking what the external problem is, like beard issue. They don't like the way it looks grooming, et cetera, but why are guys really buying products in the first place? And so we really just started to dig into this and we actually came up with entirely new hooks, entirely new angles. We're able to do some kind of testing and surveying of our customer base to prove some of those angles were working and relaunched a whole new creative set and dropped our CPA from $35 down to as low as 12 to $15,
Brett:
Which is just insane. And it's awesome. And so there's really two sides of this, and you guys kind nailed both of them. One, they're solving your business problem, and then there's the angle of what problem am I solving for my customer? And I think from the overall business perspective, this is difficult. We run into issues where we're not as profitable as we used to be. And we ran, had two quarters at OMG Q4 of last year, Q1 of this year where we still made money, but our lowest profitability ever. And so you look at that and you're like, we got to fix it. We got to fix profitability. But then you really have to understand, but what's the problem? What is the problem? And I remember hearing a buddy of mine talk about this story. He was doing a college, it was a college project, and he had this professor, and so they were working through this project and they were stuck.
And so they went to the professor for help, and the professor just kept asking, what's the problem? And so they'd go through the whole thing, well, we got this and we got that, we got, and he's like, no, no, no. What's the problem? Eventually started getting animated and throwing stuff and saying, what's the problem? And then ultimately it was they had a variable cost issue that they had to solve, but they were not defining the problem. And if you don't define the problem, you can't solve it. And so for you guys, it was understanding, hey, the CPA is way off and it's off because you don't have the right offer. You're not using the right offer, the right ads, and they're not connecting.
Anthony:
Yeah, I think I did this creative thinking. It was like a creative strategy mastermind or masterclass with our buddy Will Hughes if love Will Hughes.
Brett:
Hughes, yeah, liquid Mind, really good stuff.
Anthony:
He has this masterclass and I went through it and in one of the trainings there is a picture of a train track and it goes like the train tracks go into a tunnel and you can't see on the other side of the tunnel. And his question was simply, where do the train tracks lead? And I was like, to the train station. And he's like, he's like, well, maybe they do. Yeah, that's like a logical answer. That's a surface level answer, but what's deeper than that? And then he's like, I knew at that point what he was signaling for me to do. He is like, what's beyond the train station? I was on the other side of this tunnel. It opens up and there's this miraculous vista of mountains and snowcap peaks and eagle soaring and herds of animals. And he's like, yes, that's what you want.
You want to go to the next level deeper than the most basic surface level thing. And I think when solving a problem, the first answer that we come to is typically the easiest one, which is why it's the worst one, or it's like it's the symptom, not the actual problem, if you will. And so just using us as an example, we were like, our CPA's broken. Okay, new ad creative, new ad creative. Let's find a new character to play this role. Let's rewrite the script. But our positioning of the offering and of the product was the same the entire time. It was just repackaging it, repackaging it. Fast forward six, seven months, we couldn't make any progress. And it felt like we were spinning our wheels. We were running in a million different directions, but we were producing no results. And that's when I realized, okay, we're solving the surface level issue of ad creative, not the actual problem of messaging, of positioning.
And so then we brought everybody together and we started to really ask, why do our guys buy products? What are they trying to create or accomplish? Not the surface level, like, oh, well, they need to groom their beards or they have beard itch or all of these different things they wanted to grow better. Those are all the surface level things. And then there's this moment where I was like, someone was like, well, we want to give people confidence. What does a guy really want? He wants to feel confident. It's like, okay, but how do you make a guy feel confident? You put a hot girl in an ad, say you buy this and you're going to get the girl or whatever. And oftentimes, I really believe that questions are the answer. So whenever we're solving a problem, we just need to ask better questions. And oftentimes,
Brett:
What a better solution. You got to ask better questions. Absolutely.
Anthony:
Yeah. I will literally at times go through a journaling process, but all I'm doing is asking myself different variations of the same question, and I'm trying to come up with a question that when I write it, I'm like, oh, I know how to answer that. And you're almost trying to find that thread for you to just take. And so I was like, well, how do we create confidence? And I didn't know. And so we kind of brainstormed about it, and then I asked the opposite question, well, what makes guys lack confidence or feel embarrassed? And I was like, I know the answer to this one, right? It's like having a beard that you don't, not liking the way you look in the mirror, not feeling good about the way that you look. And then ultimately, we went down that road and came up with this concept of my beard sucks.
I feel embarrassed by my beard. And the solution to that is better grooming routines, trying the sample pack, et cetera, et cetera. And we definitely hit on the pain point of guys feeling embarrassed. And what we uncovered through this process of asking better questions, we uncovered that one of the challenges that our consumer has is feeling embarrassed by their beard or being dissatisfied with it or wishing that it looked better. And so rather than saying, Hey, we're going to give you this sample pack that's amazing, that didn't work, saying, Hey, we're going to make you look and feel your best. That didn't work either. We said, if your beard sucks, then do this, this, and this, and we'll take care of it. And we did that in a funny playful way where we had a scene of three guys sitting at a bar and one guy's like, oh, my beard sucks.
And the other guy backhand him and is like, your beard doesn't suck. You just suck at taking care of it. But it delivers the point of, Hey, if you don't feel like your beard looks good or it doesn't look the way you want it to, then maybe you just aren't good at doing something and oh, by the way, we can help you. So to relate this back to the consumer, I think ultimately finding what that unlock is, I mean, there's a saying in marketing that's as old as marketing itself. It's like if you can enter the conversation that the customer's already having in their mind and you can demonstrate that the problem as good or better than they can, they're automatically going to trust you. And so what we uncovered is the conversation that guys were having was they felt embarrassed by their beard. They didn't want to say it out loud, but when you brought it up to them, they're like, oh yeah, I resonate with that in this example.
So finding what that real emotional hot button was for them or what that conversation they were having with themself was and being able to tap into that, that cut our CPA in half, and it literally did it in the matter of three days once we launched that new ad. And here we are three, four months later, and our CPA's still extremely good on Facebook, Instagram, it's doing very well where we are acquiring more customers a day than we ever has as a company, and we're spending more at the top of funnel than we ever have. And we've been doing this for seven years. So the positioning for us was a major unlock. And now it's like I know that whenever we have marketing and efficiencies, we need to really go back to visiting how we're positioning ourselves or what problems we're speaking to specifically with our customers.
Brett:
And just thinking about, I was reading this David Ogilvy quote the other day, Ogilvy on advertising and just one of the legends in the space, he was the guy behind Dove soap and Rolls Royce and Hathaway shirts and lots of other iconic brands. And he said, all good ads are fueled by a big idea, not just a discount or something, but a big idea. But all those big are pretty simple, not complicated. We always want to make things complicated about that. Fundamentals. Fundamentals. But going back to this and understanding, okay, why does someone buy beard products? They don't want their beard ditch. Sure, they want it to be moisturizer to smell good. Sure. But that's all surface level stuff. That's not a big idea. The big idea is I want to feel great about my beard, I want to have confidence, and then in relationship to the conversation taking place in the customer's head, my beard sucks. That's like the language that would be going on in someone's head. Not my beard needs to be better, but my beard sucks. And so you guys really tapped into that, which was cool. And so yeah, walk us through. You talked about that process of, okay, they want to feel confident. That's kind of harder to define, but we know when they don't feel confident. So let's define that then. How did you kind get to the creative application of guys in a bar kind of playing that out or any other insights into the creative process?
Anthony:
Yeah, candidly, my team handles most of that. We've got a couple of great guys on our team that kind of just sat down. They've went through a lot of training courses and have gotten pretty good at doing script writing. And then we hired someone who has done a lot of hero style videos. So I've got four full-time creatives in-house, plus two marketing guys that are great at script writing and copy. So internally, we've really optimized to build creative like this and to be able to do it efficiently, we knew that this was an unlock for us. So to answer the question specifically, I think the writing team sat down and to your point said, okay, if people are embarrassed by their beard or if they're dissatisfied or unhappy, that's not the language that they're going to use in their head. What do they actually say to themselves?
And you're a hundred percent right. They're going to say, damn, my beard sucks. Right? Then we wanted to come up with a fun environment where bros would be having a conversation and it's like, well, where do guys meet and hang out and have a conversation? What's relatable to our audience having a happy hour meet for a drink at a bar, et cetera. So we just found a local location that we could rent out for the day and put 'em in a bar setting and record it, and the rest is history, just stuck to the script and did the things there. But I think for us, what we always try to do is write creative and come up with sets and locations that we believe are most aligned and congruent to who our customer is
Brett:
Most authentic.
Anthony:
Yeah, exactly. To us as a brand too, our brand positioning is very much, we're just regular guys. I started live bearded with one of my best friends seven years ago. We started it in my living room for the first four or five years. It was just him on camera, him and I on camera, and we were just really trying to create this brotherly ball busting, have a good time vibe. And so that's always just been the culture and the ethos of live bearded. So with all of our creative, we really try to make that be consistent.
Brett:
That's awesome. So I want to go back to the problem solving question and kind of look at how you decided to start with the ad creative, right? Because the CPAs go up and there's several things you can consider there. Well, it's just ad costs going up or my ads ineffective or do my landing pages need to be fixed? And ultimately, I think you guys have made improvements all along that journey, right? You guys did CRO work as well, landing page work, which has worked very, very well. But how did you land on ad creative? That's the piece we need to fix right now.
Anthony:
Well, to your point, I have spent a year and a half optimizing our funnel post click. So our landing page is super dialed in, converts at 12, 13% on cold traffic, so we're good there. Our email funnel, everything backend is optimized. Our repurchase rate on the offer is upwards of 35% when everything is dialed in and working correctly. So I knew everything post-click was dialed in because none of those metrics had changed. The only thing that had changed was our front end CPA, our cost to acquire. And it wasn't just on one platform, but it was on YouTube working with you guys at OMG. It was on Facebook, it was on TikTok. Every ad we are running, it was going up. And so I've been running ads and doing this thing full time for 12 years now. I remember setting up my first Facebook ads in 2011.
So we've been at this a long time, and I think when you're at it a long time, you just get a general sense of things. You kind have an intuition that's maybe the part of business and marketing that's not necessarily teachable. You just get it after playing the game for long enough. And I just have this theory that's like we're just one ad away, one sales funnel away, one funnel away, one optimization away from the next level of growth. And since everything downstream was optimized, I was like, well, I think the only place we have left to try to optimize is creative. And you always hear these crazy stories of like, oh my gosh, our buddy jock at Raindrop, oh, Dr. Squatch came to us at 3 million and we were able to get him to 300 million with different ads in the Super Bowl and the most YouTube spend ever. You hear these crazy stories and I think a lot of times they're very hard to believe. Even I doubt it in times in my business like, man, we've never really had that one ad that just was a moonshot. We've just always hit base hits. And again, it's allowed us to grow at 35, 40% year over year for five years in a row now. So we've never been the company that's tried to hockey stick growth partially, we couldn't afford it. We just were self-funded and we like the slow and steady approach.
But with that, it's like I know creative always fatigues. Again, everything post click was optimized. So for me it was like, well, maybe this is just where our new CPA is going to live, maybe everything else downstream, maybe we have to change the dynamics of the business. And I think at times there's inflection points where what we were working fundamentally changes, and we do have to re-engineer our business, change our approach, and if we weren't able to get our CPA down with this particular sample offer, we would've had to look at maybe acquiring customers in a new way. But I just believe in the process of bettering your best. That's what I tell my team all the time. It's like our goal, once we get a new winning ad, our immediate goal is to beat it, and we try to create a fun competition and we tease each other about it, but I really just live by the idea of bettering your best.
And that's really what it just came down to. And if I'm honest, bro, there was a period there where we were in it multiple months in a row with no winners and no breakthroughs, and I thought to myself, I don't fucking know if this is going to turn around. Maybe this just is what our ad costs are going to be and maybe the economy and some of the, maybe there's just a lot of factors here and I'm not going to be able to break through, but that doesn't mean that I don't consistently show up every day and do everything that I can that's in my control. And I guess I just believe that if we continue to show up, continue to take action, continue to work to solve the right problems, ultimately we're going to find an unlock somewhere along the way and that's going to lead to that next level of opportunity.
Brett:
And you said you believe in bettering your best, and I think some brands though try to better their meh, this is something that's not really working we'll just get a little bit better. Well, that doesn't work, right? Sometimes you need that breakthrough idea, and you guys went through that where these ads weren't working well, let's just try to do 'em a little bit better. Let's just try to do the same concept but a little bit better. And sometimes you just need that different positioning and that different angle altogether.
Anthony:
Yeah. I don't know where I read it. I actually think Spencer told me about it or someone on the team did. I think it was Nathan actually. They listened to a podcast and the podcast was like, it's easier to grow 10 times than it is 10%. And it was this very interesting kind of philosophical approach. And they said, because if you're going to grow 10% more, you basically just have to do what you're doing a little bit better. You just have to better the me, right? But if you're going to 10 times, you have to totally change your approach. You are. So we're in the eight figure range, and what we've done has gotten us here. If we want to go to nine figures, we have to totally change what we're going to do. What gets you to where you are isn't going to take you to where you want to go.
And so that whole idea of, yeah, you can grow 10%, 10%, 10%, but if you want to go grow three times, five times, 10 times, you have to actually fundamentally change the way that you're approaching things and solve a totally different problem in a different way. And in some ways, that's kind of the approach that we took is like, Hey, we've been trying to solve the ad creative this whole time, but let's go a layer deeper in a layer deeper and solve for positioning, solve for emotion, what emotions do we really want to hit and what conversations can we have in a different way? And that allowed us to get to the next level
Brett:
Fundamentally, what is someone buying when they buy your product, and why are they choosing you over someone else? Because yeah, to look at the Dr. Squa example, going from 3 million a year to 300 million a year is just because better soap. I mean, that doesn't seem very likely better positioning what we feel something when we watch that doctor squat ad and we want what they offer, and we're willing to pay $12 a bar or whatever it is, more than we pay for something, a Walmart brand or something like that. And actually, I just saw we were traveling, driving through Oklahoma City to go to a football game and Dr. Squat and a truck stop, this whole section of Dr. Squat. I'm like, they made it, man. They're in a truck stop. So that should be your goal. Anthony Mink, I want to see a live bearded. There's a lot of
Anthony:
Bearded truckers
Brett:
Out there. There's a lot of bearded truckers out there for sure. But yeah, does come down to positioning and it does come down to brand. And sometimes we're missing the Mark A. Little bit. We've done okay, but we're bettering our meh instead of bettering our best. And that's where we need to shift,
Anthony:
I think said in a different way maybe to try to connect the dots maybe to those people that are like, okay, I get it, but how do I really drive this point? Home? People buy stories, states and identities. They don't buy products, right? And so if you're selling a product, if I'm selling you a bar of soap or a beard oil, okay, cool, maybe I'm interested if I actually need that in that moment. But if you sell a story or an emotional state confidence, the cool kid, the be a man, whatever, some of these ads sell or you sell an identity, right? There's a certain type of an identity that people are selling if they buy a certain car or if a woman buys a certain handbag or whatever. And I think, again, if we step back from the product and try to sit down with our customer and really get inside of their wants, their needs, their desires, what stories do they want to buy, what emotional states do they want to buy, and then what identities do they want to buy so they can signal who they are. And I think just that framework will help us, at least here with us. It helps me kind of dissect or not dissect, but step away from the actual tangible product. Because easy when you're just selling the same thing over and over. We've been selling men's grooming for seven years. You get in a vacuum, and so oftentimes you have to pull yourself out and get perspective. So I think stories, states and identities, that has really, really helped me get a different vantage point or try to find a different way to connect with the audience.
Brett:
Yeah, it's so good because stories really evoke a different set of emotions and really make something come to life and understanding what state are we trying to create? That's really important. I think most people don't think about that, but the deepest level or the highest level, whichever way you want to look at it, is that identity, right? Why do I buy Nike instead of Adidas? Or why do I want to drive this over that car? It's how I want to identify. I want to be a great athlete, I want to be associated with great athletes. Or for me, I first started liking Nike. I was a huge Michael Jordan fan, and so I grew up absolutely in the glory days of mj. And so I still like Nike the best today. And it's not like they got better shoes than Aida. I mean, it's totally subjective, but yeah, really likely they still
Anthony:
Have to screw it up for you at this point. They just don't have to screw up and they've got your business because the identity that they've created. And it's very interesting. I saw this graph a while back, and it was talking about influencer led brands and the importance of a brand having a forward facing founder or someone that they can basically connect with the brand as an identity. And it said basically the question was, how important is it for you to buy from a brand that the founders and the baby boomers, it was like nil, like 10, 20% of people were maybe like, oh, it's important, but when you go to Gen Z in the 18, 20, 25, 30 year olds in that range, it was like 60 70% of people said it was very important. And you pair that with just, I think I have this philosophy in life, and I think just because you don't like the messenger doesn't mean the message is any less valid. Totally,
Brett:
Totally.
Anthony:
And I've trained myself to just observe. I think most people get caught in a reaction to different things, and I like to just observe. And so there's been some interesting observations in the business community with Target, with Bud Light, with several different brands where they have made a move and then the market has reacted in a certain way. And I bring that up because I think now more than ever, customers want to spend their money with brands who they like have similar values or ideals or identities. And so I think that final identity piece, when you really can speak to the identity of someone as a brand and it's authentic and it's genuine and it's who you are as a brand, I think that's one of the biggest unlocks that we can have. And I think now people are more intentional with voting with their dollars than ever before, or maybe at least ever in my lifetime as an adult, as a consumer, I see a lot of the different sways in commerce based on different moves, good or bad, that companies are making. So I just think it's a very timely time for everybody to sit down and dissect how are we positioning our brand? What stories are we telling? What emotions are we creating and what identities do we connect with or do we stand with? And I think a lot of the ads that we know so well in D two C, whether it's Squatty Potty or Poopourri or Dr. Squat, why did they do so well? They made someone feel something. They gave them an emotional state change. And I think,
Brett:
Yeah, and it wasn't just that they told great jokes, they did, but the jokes were relevant to those story states identities. And one thing I want to underscore there, I think that you've got a good brand when you can define those or talk about those, what stories you should be telling and your customers probably know what stories you should be telling, what states you're trying to create and your customers probably do too, and the identity that your customers want to have as it relates to you. I heard Seth Godin say this recently, and I thought it was brilliant. He said, if you take Nike, Nike's got a great brand. Obviously if Nike was going to build a hotel, we could probably guess what that hotel would be like. It would pay homage to great athletics and to sports. And we could probably even picture what that experience would be like if we've been in the Nike stores or whatever. But then you flip that and you say, but what if somebody like Hyatt started making products? You'd have no idea. What does Hyatt even mean? I don't know. It's a hotel. They have bed. I I get no mental picture. I get no story in my head when it comes to Hyatt, no state, no identity. It's just like, it's fine. Hyatt is fine. And so I think that's a really clear picture. Do I have a brand or am I just selling? Well,
Anthony:
Think about Virgin. Virgin has airlines, they have hotels, they have cruise ships. They're one of those rare brands who have transcended these crazy different industries and they've, you
Brett:
Get a picture in your mind when you think
Anthony:
Virgin, you know exactly what it is. It's going to be a freaking rocking good time. I mean, it's like, I think having the vision to invest into brand, especially when things are a little bit turbulent and a little bit uneasy. No doubt. I was actually recording a video earlier today with my team for a YouTube video that we're putting out kind of titled the number one investment you'll ever Make, and it's about investing into yourself. And we were talking about how there's just, I totally lost my train of thought. What the hell was I talking about?
Brett:
All good investing in yourself.
Anthony:
Yeah, there was a point that I was going to make about Virgin and about different brands, but I legitimately lost my train of thought, so we'll just keep it moving.
Brett:
Dude, I've done that so many times that I just ended up making something up. Yeah, I'd like to blame it on age, but you're younger than me, and so I don't know. That's amazing. So I do want to talk a little bit about your leadership content and where you're headed with that. So I got to hear you speak obviously at Blue Ribbon San Diego. The presentation was fantastic. Anybody listening to this I'm sure has that expectation that it'll be amazing, but had visuals and stuff, it was awesome. But you also had somebody kind of following you around with a camera and you're creating some content. And I know you're getting into personal developmental leadership, going to start a podcast called Entitled to Nothing, which I love that title. So talk to me about that. Why start podcasting? Why get into this self-improvement content and what's the goal?
Anthony:
Yeah, it's a very interesting question. I appreciate you asking it. I think for me, my only model of success is just going out and learning from people who are smarter than me and who kind of know the road ahead. I come from very humble beginnings. My dad was a logger. He literally cut trees down for a living. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. I had no reference point for success growing up. And I've got
Brett:
No entrepreneurs
Anthony:
In your family, no entrepreneurs. No, I mean, it was very humble beginnings. And because of all the financial difficulty and pain growing up, I knew that I never wanted to experience that. So I knew I needed to figure this thing out. And to make a long story short, I am a product of a lot of other people's knowledge information. I've been to so many conferences and books, and obviously that's how we met. So I think I've got to a place in my career where I feel like I've created some successful businesses. As I was getting ready for the podcast and I was trying to figure out how I was going to frame everything, I just did a quick calculation. And my companies over the last 12 years have done over 50 million in sales, which seems crazy to me. I don't know how it's that much, but I bonafide 50 million in sales.
And so I was like, man, I know I have something to share. And I know I've overcome a lot of experiences from bankruptcy and broke to eight figure company, CEO, 50 million plus in sales. The greatest gift I've ever been given was knowledge and information and ideas from other people. And I feel like one of the best gifts that we can give is breathing life, breathing inspiration, breathing courage or compassion or confidence into other people. And I just, through the process of covid and through the process of all the craziness that's happened, I just honestly felt it on my heart that I needed to share some of my journey in the hopes that it inspires other people along the way. And it's an interesting process, man. We've had a couple recording sessions where at the end of the day, I'm like, just trash all of it. It sucks. I don't like any of it. And then having someone follow me around, it's
Brett:
Painful when you do that, but sometimes
Anthony:
Having someone follow me around with a camera seems so awkward and uncomfortable at times. But also I think anytime you learn how to do something for the first time, it's going to be awkward and uncomfortable. And I don't know what will come of it, but I just felt like in order to have the impact I want as an entrepreneur and just as an individual, I need to share more of my experiences and some of the lessons that I've learned. And I think one of the things that I've finally clicked for me is there are certain people that say things in a way that I really connect with. And then there's other people that say the same things in their own voice and it doesn't connect with me. I can't get into it. And for me, the guy has always been Tony Robbins. I love him. His content has always connected with me, his passion, his language, his curse words, it fires me up. And
Brett:
Strategic, by the way, I heard him talk about this one time he curses strategically and now maybe he couldn't shut it off even if he wanted to, but he's like, he believes it jolts you into paying attention. You remember better, you learn better when someone is swearing
Anthony:
And he says, your mom said, Hey, Brett, get in here. It would have one emotional response if she said, Hey, Brett, get your butt in here. It'd be like, okay, Brett, get your ass in here right now. It's just the different language evokes different emotions. So to make a long story short, I've got to a place in my career where I feel like I have something valuable to share, and I feel like it's my responsibility to share that because all of my knowledge is just accumulated from other people. And in a lot of ways, I just want to pay that forward to the next generation of people or to anybody who resonates with my message or my story or kind of my experiences.
Brett:
And I'm really glad you're doing it. I get to hear you speak on stage a few times and been on a podcast with you. You're very articulate and your story is going to resonate, and you've got a unique perspective and the way you've learned and grown and become an entrepreneur with really no family example. And I was kind of the same way. Nobody in my family was an entrepreneur. I just felt called to do it. Your message is going to resonate. And so I'm super excited, man, I can't wait for the pod. I'm going to consume it. Thank you. And I know it's going to touch some people and encourage some people, and it's going to be a lot of people.
Anthony:
Yeah, I think one of my biggest business failures happened because I started to kind of drink my own. I felt like I had had some success and I knew what I was doing, and I got a little bit complacent and a little bit entitled, and then I lost everything. And I just had this come to Jesus moment with myself where I was like, I'm entitled to nothing. And I started to realize that when we take complete responsibility for all of our results, that gives us the power to dictate the direction that we go. We're hardly ever in control of outside circumstances and things that are taking place, but we're always in control of how we react and respond to them. And that's where this whole idea,
Brett:
That's what really moved the
Anthony:
Needle. Yeah, this whole idea of I'm entitled to nothing and my life is my fault. And I actually think in some ways we're living in probably the most entitled time in history. There's an easy button and an app for everything, and people just want shit now. And so I just felt like this message of your life is your fault. You're entitled to nothing. I really felt like it was timely, and I felt like I was someone that could really lead the charge with it and share from experience, not just ideas or perspectives, if that makes
Brett:
Sense. That's awesome, man. And so depending on when someone's listening to this, that may not be out yet, but it's coming soon. So how can people,
Anthony:
January 1st is the goal. Awesome.
Brett:
How can people start to connect with you, follow you now so that they're ready? Whether the pod is launched at the time they're listening or not, how can they connect with you? Yeah,
Anthony:
The best way right now is just Anthony Mink on Instagram at Anthony Mink. You can search me and I would love to have you follow along. I'm posting content on a pretty frequent basis now. We're playing around with different videos and different ideas and getting ready to launch the podcast in January. So it would mean the world if someone came and followed along and shared their feedback. I would really appreciate it.
Brett:
That's awesome. And for the bearded brothers out there, or for anybody who's special, someone is bearded, how can they learn more about live bearded Entra, your amazing products? Yeah,
Anthony:
Live bearded.com. If you have any questions, we've got a team of customer service reps just in the room next door. You can reach out to us and let us know. But yeah, for any men's grooming stuff, we'd love to take care of you specifically for the
Brett:
Beards. That's awesome, man. And I can vouch for both the brand and for the team. We've had kind of a front row seat. We get to work with you guys now for years and years on the Google and YouTube side, and it's just been fun to watch you grow, man, love your team. Love the energy you bring, and love the products and so long live bearded. So good
Anthony:
Work. Thank you. I mean, it means a lot.
Brett:
Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on, Anthony. This was fantastic, and I can't wait for that pod.
Anthony:
Absolutely, brother. Thank you so much. I'll talk to you soon.
Brett:
Sounds good. And as always, thank you for tuning in. Love to hear from you. What would you like to hear more of on the show? Give us some ideas and Hey, I'm getting more active on the social, so primarily LinkedIn, but also on Instagram and YouTube and YouTube shorts. So check that out. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.
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