8-Figure Founders Predict 2025 Trends

8-Figure Founders Predict 2025 Trends Speaker 1: 2025 is going to be that innovation year where companies need to come out with things that aren't out there. Speaker 3: I think founders need to get more involved in building in public and building an audience because if you're just relying on paid, it's going to be very, very difficult. And I think paid is also getting to the part where paid is really for this like middle of the funnel, warm audience. Like I said in the beginning, see an ad for a protein, you're going to see six others. How are you introducing more people to your funnel? And it's going to come from having that owned audience. Speaker 2: Welcome back to another episode of Chew on This. Today you have a founder special again where we're going to be breaking down what's going on in the DTC world in 2025. What trends we're seeing, how brands are looking at evolution, and also how are we diversifying from the age-old days of Meta, or are we really? So let's actually get started with what are we seeing in 2025. And I think it'd be awesome to get each person's perspective on maybe what you're seeing from different brands, even from our own brand. And I can kick some things off right here. I feel like, you know, when you look at the world of where we were in this post-COVID era, I feel like The talk about post-COVID now is finally like, all right, COVID was a long time ago. We don't have to talk about it as post-COVID. But post-COVID, I think that the big piece that everyone has had to struggle with is looking at Meta and looking at the different changes that are coming to how you can acquire customers. And I think it's starting to make brands Think about how they're even going to start their brand differently, right? For example, I'm looking at even, let's say, consumable companies, whether it's protein snacks or RTD drinks, etc. And I think even brands like that where you usually get sales through retail, not so much DTC, even the way they're thinking about how that's going to happen, whether it's Making sure that they're getting thousands of bars ready to just give to people for free so that they get, you know, early exposure or making sure that, you know, the product size is Is that a size which is much more convenient and consumable? I think it's been really cool to see a trend of just people making products that are uber convenient to the customer. And I think like even for us, we're starting to think that way about how we develop our products and whatnot. So I think convenience is at an all-time high and I feel like that's one trend I'm seeing across new brands, existing brands, and even our own brand. Speaker 3: Yeah, I think seeing the involvement from the other side of the world, when you look at these things like Timu and some of these sellers even getting on Amazon, I feel like for brands that are selling commodities, like especially for us, it's almost like a race to the bottom now. And so to be able to compete, it's not about just like Alright, let's get a formula out there, stick a logo on it and run some ads. I think the way that marketing is changing, especially with Meta, if you look up a protein company, the next six, seven ads are going to be from other protein companies. How do you distinguish yourself from everybody else, right? And I know it's a conversation that we've had internally where it's like, yeah, we have products, we have cool products, but having cool products means being different from every single person out there and getting out of that race to the bottom, right? Even like earlier today, I was just looking at top trending supplements on Amazon. Magnesium, $8 bottle of magnesium selling on Amazon. How do you compete with that? If you're trying to sell a magnesium supplement, you're not competing with that, right? And then you take a look at us with our experience in Walmart. We're looking for ways to bring the price down, right? And at a certain point, especially for like DTC, you have to go the other way. So how do you come up with new products that you can sell for more And the only way you can sell for more is by bringing added value. And I think brands need to figure that out and honestly start investing into R&D pretty heavily. Speaker 1: Yeah, completely aligned. I think the days where you could just market dirt in a bottle are over. And that lasted for a long time. But I think Just stuff I've seen, you know, in different threads, Twitter, LinkedIn, you see the newness and like the uniqueness of products coming out right now. And those are the products that I feel like can be marketed. There's a lot of products that Can't be marketed anymore. And a lot of those products lie in the supplement space. There's just too much saturation. People have seen kind of everything. And even if you're trying to innovate, beyond a pill and a powder, like within a pill and a powder, there's not much you can do. If you're being completely honest, there's not much you can do there. So uniqueness and product features is a big thing. I just, I saw a company the other day, it's called, it's a wake up pill. You take it and it doesn't release for 10 hours. For the 10 hours, it releases caffeine. Like that's new. That's not out yet and people haven't been doing it. It's proprietary. I think a lot of what's going to happen in 2025 is people are going to start looking for those proprietary things and it costs money. So the companies that are going to be able to do it are not going to be, you know, the companies right out of the gate who don't have any funding and backing. So it's going to be a lot harder. The barrier of entry is going to be tough. But I agree. I think 2025 is going to be that innovation year where companies need to come out with things that aren't out there. Speaker 2: Yeah, the last few companies even I spoke to, whether it was on NitroPass or even at, you know, even just through networking on Twitter or LinkedIn, I think the one thing that I've seen common now is like whenever someone's talking about innovation, the first thing that sparks almost instantly is like, How much is this gonna cost me to gift it? Mm-hmm like our products eat it and like You're kind of starting to see people are like reverse engineering that formula instead of like, hey, here's our product. Now let's figure out can we effectively gift this? Can we effectively seed it? And I don't think that world works anymore. Like you can't come out with a product that has a cost of goods of 10, 12 bucks and then hopefully, you know, go and seed that to a few thousand people. And I think that's where like you're starting to see people change their mind because of Obviously you have the Amazon haul, you have TikTok shops and you have so many different networks that are pushing the, hey, get it to influencers, get it to creators and let them lead. And I think it really shows, like everyone kept saying the creator economy is coming and like, it's going to be, I think it's like here. And I almost think like you have to have that piece. And I mean, we also spend so much time, especially like trying to figure that piece out. Speaker 3: I feel like the channels are dictating consumer trends and the way that the channels are reacting for marketers. So where, let me break that down a little bit better, which is like, if you can't advertise on Meta, you have to find a way to do that. And a lot of the ways of doing that is improving margins. And so if you have a product that's not like 70 to 90% margins, It's going to be impossible for you to advertise. And if it's impossible for you to advertise, you're going to find cheaper things to start marketing. So the quality of products are going to go down, right? But then if everybody's putting out lower quality products, they're most likely putting out the same stuff. And then it adds more to that competition. And then it becomes this like terrible cycle of just putting out crap. And for the brands that actually want to put out like legitimate stuff, like you're talking about, you know, maybe the Jolies of the world, the Hexclads, those are the brands that you can't go and reverse engineer seeding, right? Those are $400, $500 AOVs. It costs a lot, right? So I think to your point of the creator economy, I think brands need to look outside of just meta. I think they need to own their audiences. They need to cultivate an audience and own it. So with that being said, it's hiring creators for the brand. Build an audience on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. I think founders need to get more involved in building in public and building an audience. Because if you're just relying on paid, it's going to be very, very difficult. And I think paid is also getting to the part where paid is really for this like middle of the funnel, warm audience. And like I said in the beginning, see an ad for a protein, you're going to see six others. How are you introducing more people to your funnel? And it's going to come from having that owned audience, right? There's a few brands out there. Mini, Katana, what's his name? Isaac, right? He's built an audience on YouTube, right? For Mini Katana and then transitioned to Candy. And he's built an audience. He doesn't need to rely on like Meta to kind of push the message out there. So I think if you're gonna go and bring out new products to the market, having an audience that you can own is very important, but it's also very difficult to do. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the prerequisites for coming out with a product have just gotten a lot deeper. Price, newness, uniqueness, proprietary, like it's a lot of things now. Whereas before you could kind of just release whatever. You could figure out the price point later. You could reverse engineer everything later. But it's not like that anymore. You have to have a clear-cut plan when you go into it. And those are the people who will win. Yeah. Speaker 2: I think it's interesting what you said. Like now you see an ad of like protein and then you see six more. And I think you even mentioned it yesterday. I think you're like, You almost now are required to convert the customer on the first click. Otherwise, it's gotten like tremendously harder. And I think like I have like my own personal example of this and maybe this is just me because I'm cheap, but like I just started to get into skiing. And I'm, you know, trying to go every weekend. So I was like, all right, I need to invest in ski goggles. So when I was looking up ski goggles, I saw these pair of like these Tom Ford ones, okay? They're $440. I'm like, all right, I'm not gonna buy those, but those look beautiful. So then obviously I started getting ads on TikTok and they were $39.97 for ski goggles and they look beautiful just like Tom Ford without the logo. And then I'm like, you know what? Let me just go on Amazon and see like how much are they over there? And they were like $13.97. And then I'm like, let me just go one more step further. And I went to Teemu and I got it for $6.97. And I ordered them on Teemu. Speaker 1: Those are not safe. Speaker 2: Yeah, they're probably garbage. And that's the point. But the thing is, the way the brain is now powered is like, There's so much optionality to where if your product skews more commoditized, you're going to have to fight against all of these options. And I think that's where evolution is. I think all of the points you guys made is you have to make your product worth it now. And then if you're not going to make your product worth it, then you have to have the power to convert them nearly instantly. Otherwise, once they go out into the wilderness, That whole, like, let me get them back in, it's very hard. Speaker 3: Years ago, but when we were, like, not selling on any discount, not even running any offers, and we were still, like, making a ton of money and selling through the product, it was purely based on this, like, USP of we're flavored, we're the first to market this product. Fast forward three, four years from now, everybody else is coming out with it. Now, how do you differentiate? It's who has the best discount, who has the best offer, who has the best free gifts that you can get. And it's like, as a customer, it's like, well, you tell me what you can give me so that I can give you my money. And so it becomes way more difficult now until you have like a unique product and you're first to market. And I think. Speaker 1: That's what we're trying to do in 25. I think also it's gonna force people to do that. It's not gonna be a choice at a certain point. You have to have a unique product and that's just gonna, and it'll take some time, probably in a year or two, you'll see the quality of products just getting a hundred times better when people realize this race to the bottom thing is a race to bankruptcy. Speaker 3: Do you guys feel like this? I feel like if I am looking for a product, and it's very similar to the story that you just told, I feel like if I am looking for a product, I don't know where to go anymore because everywhere there's a creator selling you on something. A blog on Google that you know that somebody's selling you. Everything around you is just marketing. I don't know where to truly buy anymore, who to trust. I just don't want it anymore. I don't even want it anymore. I don't even know if I'm getting something legit. Speaker 1: Sometimes I buy both. Speaker 3: I just have to try it now. It really does go back to Influencer and creator, like unless you really truly trust somebody, I'm not listening to these random creators on TikTok that are selling Collagen powders because I know for a fact none of you people are taking it. I think TikTok Shop ruined the creator bubble for a little bit and then it's gonna kind of go back to like the main influencers, the people that you can actually trust, that put out the content, that take the time to actually educate. Speaker 1: It's crazy. I got hit with an ad the other day, this guy Benny Johnson. Everybody knows him. He's like this crazy biohacking guy like he's gonna live to 200 years. He looks great for his age, but he came out with a supplement and it's a powder. And it's to promote longevity. So you're supposed to live longer. And now my buddy Sham, he's been taking it for some time now. And I looked at the ingredient list and it's just like terribly underdosed, basic, basic ingredients. And I'm like, wow, somebody like you who has a platform, Benny Johnson, I've tricked my friends into buying this. Speaker 3: That's the worst part. Because you should actually, like, if you do have a following... Speaker 1: Don't mess it up. Speaker 3: Don't mess it up. Yeah, like, you should, like, Gordon Ramsay, I think, put his whole, like, reputation behind HexCloud. And that made sense. Speaker 1: It's good stuff. Speaker 3: It's great stuff. But for somebody like this, you'd probably follow, watch the content to learn how to You know, enhance your life, and then they come out with like garbage. Speaker 2: Why? Speaker 1: Why'd you do that? Speaker 3: You have the money to trust for everybody. Speaker 2: It is. The founder of David Protein, Peter Rahal, who had started RX Bar, he's, I was talking to him about like how he like came up with like this protein bar that has 28 grams of protein, zero sugar, right? And I think what was interesting was like, he was like, if I do anything but this, which is like, his whole thing is like, this is the final bar. No one can beat this, right? That's what he wanted to create. He's like, if I don't create this and I create anything that's a variation of this, I'm going to be just one of many. And like, I think that's what I feel like the next stage of evolution is. I mean, we're talking about even our R&D right now, right? Of like some of the things we're doing is like, the next thing has to be something that's like, It almost feels like you can't compete. You can only copy. And I think if we keep setting that bar up, then I think that's what's going to keep moving the market forward. But it's crazy that it used to be like, oh, we can come out with a little bit better variation of this product and probably get really far with it. Now it's like it needs to be Pretty game-changing, right? And like I think that bar should hopefully weed out the people who used to just come into the market without a barrier to entry but also makes it super hard for businesses that have been around that haven't always invested a ton in R&D but now almost need to. So question for you guys since we're in like the spread of this happening potentially and I want like the honest answer. If TikTok Shop gets banned. Does your business potentially do better? And I say your business, Avi. Speaker 3: Yeah. So I think what would happen if TikTok Shop, if TikTok closes in the US, right? Can't open it up anymore. It's gone, right? Not that I think it's going to happen. I don't think it's going to happen. If it does happen, what will end up happening is that these other platforms, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, will come out with their own shopping platform. All of these creators will go back to Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. Daily active users will increase on those other platforms, mainly Instagram, then YouTube, then probably Facebook. I think primarily because a lot of our advertising dollars are already on Meta, I think we will probably see an improvement in performance for those who were overly leveraged on TikTok Shop, which is not a bad thing because it was a great place to be on. I think taking that information and that data and trying to move Or at least the customer list that you've kind of gotten from that, like kind of reactivating that, creating a community elsewhere to like maybe a Facebook group or whatever it is. But I think for us, for Avi, it would be a great thing. Selfishly, because we haven't cracked TikTok. But for other brands that lean the other way, it's probably a bump in the road. Speaker 1: So pretty much they would be kind of in our position where we were a little bit over leveraged on Facebook. And then we moved a little bit elsewhere. And now they're over-leveraged on TikTok and they have to activate elsewhere. Speaker 2: The only thing I feel like another platform can't replicate what TikTok does is TikTok wasn't meant to be for shopping. It was meant for entertainment. And they did such a great job of containing entertainment while then adding in shopping. And I feel like these other platforms, I've watched Reels. And I feel like I already watch it at such a limited amount that if you started to add shopping in it, I'd probably be off. But again, the market changes the person too. So maybe like people are going to go and look for this experience again. Speaker 3: I think Amazon will come out with a play, right? They already have live shopping. YouTube is already working on something, which I think we got beta access to. So it's like, all right, cool. How do we get on these platforms before anybody else and see what happens? But for a brand that's primarily Meta-focused, which I think a good amount, like 90% of the brands are out there, it would be a good thing. It would just suck because, I mean, I like TikTok. I could spend hours on it. Speaker 2: Chew on This is sponsored by, if you're juggling your marketing ops between different platforms, then listen up. Ash and I were in the same boat as you were not too long ago. We're using an email service provider and an external SMS provider to manage over 200,000 customers. With numerous email flows like post-purchase, abandoned cart, win-back, automation funnels, running these communications on several platforms was killing our potential impact because we just didn't know how to optimize the process on each channel. We needed a new approach, so we reached out to our community. The number one recommendation was SendLane, so we had to check it out. And let me tell you, it surprised us on every level. They took over the entire migration process, transferring data, forming up emails, and making sure that we didn't miss a beat. And now with their Move Now, Pay Later offer, it's easier than ever. You pay nothing upfront, no hidden fees and no unexpected bills. So if you're worried about the cost, the disruptions or the sheer amount of work it's going to take to migrate your current marketing ops, Sendlane takes care of everything and you don't pay until they're done. We highly recommend Sendlane. And since we've moved, we've seen incredible ways to optimize all our channel strategies in one place. Now, let's get back to the episode. One piece that I think has always been something that's hovered over us has been like the fact that we do spend a dominant amount of money on meta advertising, right? Facebook, Instagram, etc. And we've never really shook past that until I feel like this maybe a Q4, Q3, Q4, where you at least maybe I think for the first time started spending money Nowhere near Facebook Meta, but like definitely more than any other platform. That is maybe Google, but do you want to touch on maybe what those platforms have been? Speaker 3: The platform that's been the hottest topic since Q4 is Applovin. We got to beta test it. We got some free credit, tested it. It was probably the only channel. No, actually I take this back. It reminded me of TikTok. Three years ago. Speaker 2: Do you want to maybe explain to a few people what AppLovin is? Speaker 3: So AppLovin is a channel in which you can run ads on the mobile app network. So if you're playing a game like Candy Crush or you're reading news or whatever it is, those banner ads that come up or those rewards that you collect for watching a video or whatever it is, Those are the ads that you can run on those placements. And the difference with AppLovin is that they actually have a solid algorithm to showcase the right person with the right ad at the right time. Very similar to how Meta is, right? This isn't new by any means, like display marketing has been a thing. People can run, you know, programmatic ads, but it's the algorithm behind it. It's who the ad is shown to, which is what I think Apple Oven has done a really good job at. And they're a public company. They just opened up advertising to e-commerce brands. And so when we first launched, it took some time for it to kind of dial in, but the algorithm got to a point where we were actually seeing first order profitability on, you know, direct clicks from the app to the landing page to actually checking out. And then you had a good amount of people recording in our post-purchase surveys that, hey, like I found you through a mobile game. I was playing Candy Crush and I found you, right? And so when you start to see that, You start to think, okay, well, maybe I can take away some marketing dollars from Facebook and leverage it elsewhere and find a different channel, right? What ended up happening, and this is more of a personal and what the brand, what we saw, it reminded me of TikTok two, three years ago, where fresh, fresh social channel. We haven't advertised anywhere on there. The algorithm isn't as smart as Meta, right? And Meta has, I don't even know, the amount of data that they have around people is that you can continuously scale on that platform. With AppLovin, we found that it did really, really well. Plateaued and then kind of like dipped a little bit. And what ended up happening was, if you have a business where returning revenue is pretty prominent, some limitations, you can't really exclude customers. So we started serving ads to customers. And so you start to think, okay, well, is this incremental revenue, right? Then you start to look at, and you should be doing this for any channel, is actually seeing what channels are driving the most net new visitors to your website. And what we notice is that that number started to fall. So it becomes this like, lack of better terms, glorified retargeting channel where if you were to just turn this off, would you pick up those people from on SMS or email or Facebook or Google, right? And so this is where running multiple channels becomes challenging because you also need to understand Are you driving incrementality? And we still don't know the best way of doing this unless we actually run these lift tests, is doing these holdouts. We most recently, unfortunately, had our ad account go down on Meta. And so I had to supplement it with spend on Applovin. That in itself is the greatest holdout test you can run. And again, same thing, right? It's not driving as much net new traffic as you want it to, net new customers and things like that. So I think a lot of the predictions that were out there was Applovin will grow, budget will kind of move there, and then kind of fall down to where Maybe like your TikTok budget is or your Google budget. And that's exactly what happened with TikTok too. So until some of these channels can figure out how to introduce net new people to the ecosystem that is your business, I don't think anything is taking away from Meta. Speaker 2: On that same note, I'd probably ask you a reverse question of like, if there's a channel or platform that you've been watching from the outside looking in that we maybe haven't tested yet, What's the channel you're bullish on from just like a perspective of like consumption or just from an idea of like, you know, what it looks like from the outside, but we haven't really kind of scratched the surface on diversifying. Speaker 1: During one of our Chew on This events, I was talking to somebody who built their entire company on Pinterest. And I forgot what the product or the brand was, but it was something wholesome. Something probably recipe or homemaking related. Maybe it's more of a product fit there, but if somebody could build their entire company on Pinterest and that's like where their biggest amount of spend is, then I'd say there is opportunity there. It might be a product thing, but I know we've never really touched the platform or maybe even if we have, it's been very minimal. So I'd like to see If that platform has any sort of legs at all. But yeah, that's probably where I'd go. Speaker 2: I feel like this is one channel that no one has a clear answer to. And it's TV. This connected TV thing. And I know we've flirted with testing it. I think that people have even thrown money at us to be like, hey, here's $10,000 to come and test it. We're just not like super like excited about it. One, because you know that you'd have to make a pretty serious investment in testing a piece of content, which is already like sounds crazy. And then secondly, it's just like, how can you possibly think someone is going to watch something and take an action from there, right? Like, I mean, and my son watches a ton of YouTube, right? So we see a ton of ads because I don't pay for the YouTube premium. So we see a ton of ads and I'm just like, it's always just skip, skip, skip. And even the first five to nine seconds that they force you to watch, I'm just like, there is no, and they're very interesting things sometimes and targeted things. It was like, there's no intent for action for me. And again, I'm curious on like where it does work for some people, you know, I'm sure like direct response where they're like, you know, call in to this phone number and like asking on TV type things. I just find it to be so bizarre and like way too close to a billboard than it is closer to Meta. Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the point of all of this is like when you tap out like Meta and Instagram or Meta and like get to a point where you start Circling the same people, I think the only ways to really introduce new people is going to be creators tapping into their audiences, influencers, and then stuff like this, connected TV or linear. Speaker 1: With stuff like connected TV, because it's so expensive, I feel like our kind of not wanting to do it thing is also because What product are you going to promote? And if you're not 100% confident that that product is that newness, is that unique, then that channel probably doesn't make any sense for you. I feel like, you know, going back to what we were talking about earlier, if we had something super, super patented, nobody's replicating it, super unique, You can only get it here. That's something I'd feel super confident about going into that with. I agree. I agree. Speaker 3: I think the lower hanging fruit for people to test would probably be like a YouTube, running YouTube ads instead of going full-fledged into like linear and connected. Lower cost investment. You can also use the same kind of content that you're using for, you know, Facebook and Instagram, but more on the social side. But to your point, like just the investment in getting an ad made, you're talking like five figures plus. I think for the brands that are doing it, you're talking about those nine figure brands that have nowhere else to put their money except for TV. Speaker 2: I do want to touch on one thing as we're talking about, you know, just advertising, diversifying. And I think one piece of news that's kind of unfolded into the top of this year, especially for, you know, it's impactful to our niche, And I know a lot of our viewers are in our niche, which is the health and wellness category, right? And I honestly don't have as much understanding of what's going on and I don't know if they've made it super clear, but there has been some talk around like Facebook wanting to tag health and wellness brands or like wanting to like somehow dehabilitate the ability to do the same things we're doing. Do you have more clarity on what that means or what it could mean? Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: And what they're trying to do. Speaker 3: So what happened was Meta was hit with a lawsuit. I don't know too much of the details of what Was in the lawsuit and why they're doing what they're doing, but the reason they're doing what they're doing is if you are a brand that's marketing very specific medical condition or marketing to people with specific medical conditions, right? So like for example, eczema, acne, if you're going after weight loss, but like talking about diabetes or like PCOS or things like that, It's a privacy concern, right? So I think that's what they're trying to avoid by saying, okay, well, if you are targeting these medical concerns, we can't We have that data, so we're not going to allow you to send us that data, right? And so what that means from a marketing perspective on, okay, I run ads on Meta, is you can't send those lower funnel conversion data points. So like if somebody's checked out on your website, typically you send back Facebook, their email, their phone number, their address. To say, hey, this person made a purchase, go and find more people like that. But now it becomes a privacy concern because it's medical related. They don't want that information. And if you send them that information, you can get in trouble. So they're just blanket opting people out of it. Now, if you are somebody who, for example, us, where, you know, collagen goes, you know, hair, skin, nails, very general, we have to be very careful at saying what specific skins concerns. So we can't go and say acne. We can't go and say eczema. We can go and say, like, maybe wrinkles or maybe, you know, blemishes or whatever it is, but specific medical terms, completely different bucket now. And so I don't know what's, what's going to happen. Cause a lot of brands are getting miscategorized. So like, if you fall under this bucket, you go through this appeal process, which could take months, but I mean, it's, it will be very, very challenging for these brands. And I feel for people, cause I mean, we felt it just the week that we were out of a rad account and what that really means on cashflow inventory, like everything. Can change overnight just based off of what you're doing and it sucks like I was talking to a brand who sells shoes That helps with a medical medical condition with like arthritis, and I was like you're a shoe company Why'd you get blocked? And he's like well for this it's arthritis people you know having issues walking and stuff like that. I'm like oh You would think that this is a product that would help so many people but now you can't even like market it to the right person so there's a reason why it's only happening in a meta right now and I think it's because of that lawsuit. I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't mean to get political but I don't know what's gonna happen when we have somebody else in power and I don't know what Things will happen as you see Zuck kind of changing things recently. Speaker 1: His wardrobe. Speaker 3: The wardrobe and I don't know if you guys saw, so instead of like fact-checkers, which again not trying to be political, I don't know how biased some of these fact-checkers were, going community notes at least allows the actual user base to you know kind of fact-check Sources itself. So if he's going down that route and putting, you know, certain people on his board, I don't know what will happen. So let's see. But as of right now, they have to get strict. Speaker 2: Yeah, I really love this one line. I think someone commented it. It was like, it's sad that these platforms opted to go to started to become far more about being safe than useful. And like, it's so true, right? Meta's policies and everything just were always so tightened up because it's like, let's be safe here. Let's be safe here. Let's not say this. Let's not say this. But like, what if what you're trying to clog up is what's being useful for somebody to make a decision for themselves? And I think like, again, with this change, it allows them to probably get closer back to being useful and not just focus on safety, safety, safety. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're just going to see a lot of freedom of expression, like Who is meta to tell anybody anything about medical advice or like shut anything down there? Like we don't know if you're right or they're right or like let the people decide what information they preclude is right. I think it's going to move in that way. Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you can see with x right, I mean with Ilan, adding community notes, the Twitter crowd is a little bit different than like the Facebook crowd, but you can kind of see like that the conversations that are happening. If a conversation goes the wrong way and you have those community notes, you're like, okay, well, yeah, I don't trust it as much anymore. Whereas as Facebook, it's like, it just gets removed entirely. And then the conversation can't be happening, right? Speaker 1: But even with those community notes, there's a nice conversation under that happening where people are having an actual conversation and then people can look into that. Speaker 3: So as a user, you can make up your own mind. You can form your own opinions based off of actual conversations that are happening. I do think that Facebook being that I don't know about you guys like I don't use it at all other than like I put a profile pick up the other day Yeah, so like I like maybe a handful right if you go and ask like you're like a family guy Yeah, like I would say maybe you're in that like 10% of people maybe still use it I do think people will come back though. I do think it might become a platform where people... And it's great for marketers because more people on the platform, more inventory, ads and this and that. But I do think this year will be a lot better if you can Go through the advice we just gave you this whole episode, which is stand out, stick to the basics, and just put out a really good product and market it. Speaker 1: Find something unique. Speaker 2: And probably also just don't like... Overly prize AI. Like I feel like there's just so much like this, this like fake dependency of like, Oh my God, like ChatGPT is here. So like everything has to be through that. Or like, I got to get an AI bot for my website now. And I got to do use AI here. And I, I feel like I, like, sometimes I have conversations with people and it's like, you can literally almost sense people are force fitting AI just to make sure that they don't get behind. And it's like, AI is going to take time to develop, to be useful. And although it's useful for different people in different ways, it's still very much not ready to be a front-facing, standalone service. And I think that's one piece. Even we found out, we used to have an AI chatbot. And it's like, wait, this is kind of causing more work than it's helping. And I think it's important to Not also just over glorify some of these things. Speaker 3: Like I'll get like cold DMs of like hey we're using AI to do this and it's like I don't even want to finish reading. Speaker 1: I hate the dot AI. Speaker 3: Yeah whatever you were about to tell me I stopped reading like yeah I will say like ChatGPT as like a personal tool just to like speed up my work processes has been good, right? If somebody sends me like a contract, all right, cool, summarize this for me. Is there any like glaring things in here that I need to be worried about? Yes, no, standard contract. Or if I need to, I'm somebody who's, there's a lot going on here and I don't know how to make it come out of here. So I'll just brain dump on ChatGPT and be like, all right, organize my thoughts and allow me to send that in whatever email or whatever. So I like it personally for that usage of just managing daily tasks, but it doesn't need to be a chatbot on your website. Speaker 1: Yeah, GPT is great. Remember I used to have to ask you for copy for everything? I'm making my own. Speaker 3: Crazy as last night, so on ChatGPT on your phone you can actually have a conversation With the bot. Speaker 1: Do you ever thank the bot? Yeah, sometimes. Speaker 3: Thanks, bro. Speaker 1: Thank you. Now for this section. Speaker 3: But it was crazy because I was just talking to my phone and I was like, OK, well, here's my idea, blah, blah, blah, blah, like summarize it for me. And then my wife's like, who the fuck are you talking to? I'm like, ChatGPT. So I think it's cool. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: No, I think on that piece it is. I think the one other thing that I think would be interesting to also just touch on in that point is like if we look at, you know, the evolution of product and then also side-by-side the accessibility to knowledge, right? I do believe the average consumer has become a lot smarter Today than three years ago. And I even started at home, like even my wife, right? Like she was always kind of like, had little bits of pieces of information about different things. And I feel like now she has a lot more information on those same things. And I think it's because the access to information has become easier. The ability to summarize things, right, is like, there's a site called like microlearning. And I was like, Just been checking it out and like basically in like three minutes, we'll summarize a whole book for you. And it's basically they have this whole theory that you should micro learn. And then basically in 10 minutes, you can learn the same amount you can learn in an hour. And so I checked it out and I was like, wow, like I just got the knowledge of like the most important pieces you would think is in, let's say a book, which I don't know how to fact check. I didn't read the book, but it's like, wow, I can actually become very much more generally smarter, right? Like I can't, like usually whenever someone brings up books, I just like shut down. I haven't read a book since I read Holes in fourth grade, right? And like, I haven't read a book since then. So it's like, What I think of like some of these things that are coming about, it's like, wow, we all have the ability to get very smart. So then does the definition of smart, it's just going to evolutionize like crazy. Speaker 1: I wish I was a kid right now. With all that free time, I just learn every day. Speaker 3: Playing Fortnite. Speaker 1: I didn't have any friends. Speaker 2: As we wrap up this episode, I think one piece that's like important going into kicking off an episode into the new year is like just talking about where mindsets are, how you guys are feeling, and like what's one thing maybe you're changing going into this year. Because I think besides running brands, we're all humans too. So let's start with you, Ankit. What's one thing that this year is like, hey, I'm going to change this or I'm adding this to my mindset? Speaker 1: Yeah. I think in previous years when things went wrong or you saw revenue dipping a little bit, that's when I start kind of panicking. But now that we've kind of been Through this rodeo a couple times, you also realize this stuff is cyclical and you know, November, December, it's going to dip a little bit and you have to understand that. So at no point, even right now, no point our ad account gets taken out. I'm trying to not let that affect my go, go, go mode where I'm still trying to get everything done. I think in the past, I used to let it wear on me, so I'd start working a little bit slower. I'd be less motivated, like, oh, is this actually going to turn around? Now it's like, I know it's going to turn around. Just keep going. And that's kind of my mindset going into 2025. Speaker 2: I think for me, it's been a lot around like, I think really getting better at more skill sets. I feel like in the last two years has been the least amount that I've learned. Like I think like in 2019 to 2022, I could probably confidently, slightly in a cocky way also say like, I'm the best at what I do. And I can probably go toe-to-toe in conversations, say that I'm best at my skill and my craft. And then I think like in the last couple of years that started to fade. This year, I want to get sharp again and start to get back to a level where if I have to pick up new skill sets, fine. If I have to go and learn again, fine. If I have to go to school again, fine. If I have to go and just step out more and meet more people, whatever I have to do to give up and sacrifice the ability to learn again, And get sharper again, I have to do that. Speaker 3: Yeah, I think mine is similar to yours where I think we've been doing this long enough where inherently you feel like you're the only one who can really do this, right? I think last year was the first time I kind of like gave the reins to the rest of the team and let them kind of handle things where yeah, I'm still like steering the ship and still like Leading the strategy, but I don't have to be the one to do everything. I don't have to be the one that really fills in the gaps where you have like a team that's able to do that and bring their ideas forward and think of things that maybe you didn't think about or whatever it is. So I think last year was a good year for me to figure out delegation. I think this year probably going to lean more on that so that I can get out of the weeds. And figure out, okay, well, we got the brand up into here. How do we go from here to here now? And if I don't have to focus on just this everyday stuff, then I can learn the other stuff. And so, similar to yours, but I think just the actual action of it is giving up my day-to-day so that I can go and learn. Speaker 1: Chew on that. Speaker 3: If you want more from us, follow us on Twitter, follow us on Instagram, follow us on TikTok, and check out the website chewonthis.io.