Is Meta Dying?

Is Meta Dying? Speaker 1: At least with the health and wellness changes that were happening within Meta, we wanted to move towards products with a little bit more softer claims. A lot of these companies that were marketing Ozempic and all, you know, the pharmaceutical stuff, Facebook got into some trouble, right? They're making the changes because of it. And I think it's trickling down to some of the businesses that are maybe even in supplements, right? Now, in order for us to move away from this like weight loss audience that we've been going after for the last few years, the tactical side of how you actually do that is very important. Speaker 2: Welcome back to another episode of Chew on This. Today we kick off Season 5 and we're kicking it off with no other way but talking about Meta and what's going on in Q1. For those of you who have been facing some of the challenges, especially going into Q1 when it comes to channel diversification, how Meta is performing, How to make your funnels work better. That's what this episode is going to break down. We're going to get into some of the tactics of things we've been trying, testing, optimizing when it comes from our funnels, to our designs, to our ads, to especially our platform diversification. So without further ado, let us maybe just give you a little bit of the lay of the land. You know, a month and a half in to the quarter. Ash, from your side, from the marketing end, what are you seeing? And I think it'd be really cool for each of us to give our perspectives because we're seeing it from different lenses. I'm sure you're seeing it from a brand and a design What's your interpretation of how things can change? I'm seeing it from the brands that I talk to and what they're feeling, but from your end, from a day-to-day behind the engine of Obvi, what are you seeing and is Meta dying? Speaker 1: Meta is changing, as they always do every few years, right? A few years ago was the iOS update. We all had to adjust the way we carried out marketing, right? New creative strategies, focusing on testing landing pages, offers. The iOS update forced marketers to become real marketers, and it's happening again. I think with Meta's recent algo update, which happened in December, they changed the way that creative is being delivered to the users. Which is why a few people that I've spoken to, and you might even have seen this in your own ad account, where you've had ads that were ripping all year long, overnight just not performing. And I think the algorithm change, it changed the game in terms of how you go about creative once again, right? AI is becoming such a massive push for meta. And anytime Meta changes the algorithm, there's going to be bumps in the road. We are unfortunately the guinea pigs anytime they launch anything new. And so until they get a bunch of data back, the system won't get better. So it's one of those things where you just have to survive. And once you make it out on the other side of the tunnel, one, you're probably a better marketer for it. Two, you'll probably see better results because hopefully they know what they're doing and AI will make performance better because that's all they're touting is that AI will make Your performance better, all the media buying stuff, you don't even have to worry about it. Just make us good creative and we'll send it to the right person. Problem, like I said, is this won't work right away. And so with the changes that are happening to Reels, they're pushing that in everybody's faces, right? They want to be the next TikTok. They're going to come out with their own commerce platform. So the way that I've seen it over the last few years is that the way that content is being consumed is really that trend is being dictated by what's happening on TikTok. What you see is content is being created on TikTok now and then distributed on Instagram and Facebook. People aren't making content for Facebook or for Instagram anymore. It's just another platform to distribute. So when you see the trends, of what content is being produced. On TikTok, they're pushing TikTok shop. Every other video you scroll through is a TikTok shop video. And when you see what style of video that is, it's literally somebody in their car talking about a product or somebody in their kitchen talking about a product. It's real life customer testimonials. And it's shifted away from this UGC style content, which has been like skits, edited videos, polished videos, which is what the content was on TikTok for a little bit, and now it's completely transitioned into Really organic looking, like review focus, testimonial focus. It's kind of like a, yes, it's like fake UGC. It's a little bit better UGC without, you know, getting to your customers almost. And so if that's the content that's being consumed a ton on TikTok, that is gonna be the content that should be consumed on Facebook and Instagram. So for all of us that have been trying like this high production value content or like static ads and things like that, That's not going to work anymore. And from the brands that I've spoken to, this is going to be a major push into creator generated content. And you kind of going back and forth on this over the last couple of years where it's like, well, we want customers to showcase our content, but we're going to start using creators to tell the stories for consumers. So being able to whitelist is going to be the number one thing that I think brands should really get into because Static ads, the direct response type of looking stuff is getting passed by. I mean, if you know us, like I've gone so heavy on static ads over the last years. And our click through rate has dropped tremendously. And it's because it's a shift to a different style of content. So if you're struggling right now, it's one, there's changes that Meta is making that you can't control. Two, what you can control is getting better content. And if you can start working with creators, figuring out a way to whitelist that content, If you don't need anything fancy, just have somebody tell an authentic story. Some of the tips I would say is, hey, look through your reviews, look through your post-purchase surveys. If you can't get your customers to get on video, taking those stories that your customers are talking about, kind of drafting up scripts, making briefs and sending them to creators to create content. There's a fine line of lying through ads and, you know, having a creator just say like, oh, they use a product when they don't. This is why like seeding is very important and saying like, hey, use the product. Tell us how you feel about certain things. If you like the product, cool, we'll guide you in the direction of the style of content we expect from you. But don't just like script up something you saw on Reddit and like send it to creator and pay them to do it because Consumers have this bullshit meter and it's on high right now and so I would tread carefully but see how close to the line you can get in terms of this type of content feeling actually like authentic and real and double points if you can start whitelisting. Speaker 2: That's awesome. Okay, what are you seeing from like a brand perspective and even if you've seen certain brands shift how they've been looking at content and design? Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, I mean, I think every time the algorithm changes, you kind of just question everything. So everything from your ads to your landing pages, like you don't know how far Meta is looking into your funnel. Which is scary because, you know, you almost have to test everything again. And it almost feels like you've wasted, you know, years of testing. And then we found, you know, a kind of a blueprint that works. And we were rolling with that for the past year. And things were great. You know, landing pages, they were what they were. The creative was what it was. And, you know, we just kept repurposing it, creating variations. And right now we don't know what to repurpose. So I think it is just, it is, like you said, a lot of creative testing. You know, I do agree with the type of content that I think is going to eventually work. But then there's things like, could our landing pages look better? Is there a quality score now that Meta is looking at? And I'm not saying there is or there isn't. I don't think anybody knows. So it's one of those things it's like I almost want to just find whether I believe that's the way you're supposed to you know market your brand or you're not. I want to create what Meta is going to react to and be receptive towards. So I think right now we are just doing a lot of landing page iterations, creative testing. I know you know statics haven't been hitting but maybe it's It's the style of static that's not hitting anymore. So, you know, you want to test different styles of statics and different ways to go about it. I know before we were kind of throwing out creatives that were Static but super obnoxious, almost like infomercial type creatives, things you'd see in like the late 80s or early 90s. But it was very, you know, almost something you'd find in a phone book and it was working. It worked for the longest time and I don't know if it's because the consumer was receptive towards it or was it because Meta just loved to serve that style of ad and you were literally just getting a bigger pool of people. And so all these things you start questioning. So right now I'm currently working on, okay, so if we were doing that obnoxious style before, maybe let's do a really buttoned up, tight, editorial, trendy, minimalist style. Not saying that that is gonna work because that is very brand marketing. It's not direct response, but maybe that's what Meta is leaning towards and they don't want all that You know, the hodgepodge all over their feed. And again, I don't think any of us have the answers right now. It's too early. But it's interesting. I think, you know, we forget how much testing we did originally to find what worked. And we just, you know, you got to do it again. And like you said, survive until The data comes out and you're able to find something that works. Speaker 2: I think your guys' lens is obviously much deeper into the day-to-day of the mechanics of what to test and what to try at Obvi. I think some of the conversations I've had that have been really interesting have been with Even just software companies that we're all using, right? So you look at like an open border or you look at like a Proxima or an AfterSell and these are all tools that, or even a PDQ, these are all tools that we're all using in some capacity or testing and trying. And I think the narrative that I've been hearing from them too is like GMV for January and February are way down. And I think when you hear something like that, I think it kind of shows the magnitude of how this is impacting not just health and wellness or just supplements, but the fact that it is probably impacting multiple categories. And I think this is probably the first time that, you know, post-iOS changes. That's probably felt like, oh wow, it's happening. Something's happening again. This time we just don't have the label of it. You know, before it was like iOS, iOS 14 is coming. I was like, you knew what it was going to be bucketed under. And I think this time it's kind of like everyone has their own way to categorize this. But what's, I think the biggest piece is like something, some large change is coming, which takes away the ability to be as efficient As we work through the processes we had, so now it's like how do you find new efficiencies through different processes? And it's always hard to change two levers, right? You wanna try and be efficient and just have to change processes, but now it's like you're changing stuff on the ad account structure. You may be changing stuff on the audience, the way you're getting creative, the way you're designing creative, the way we're testing funnels, what products, what bundles. And like, it feels I think sometimes probably overwhelming, especially for you guys to be able to look at that and say, where do I start? Where do I go next? And I think it'd be really cool if we dive into whether or not, and we can call out if the test worked or not, but maybe if we can just go into a couple of things we've tried this year, and we'll pull it up to reference it, but I know from a landing page point of view, right, there's definitely been a couple of bigger changes you've tried and tested, and we can kind of talk through it, and you guys will see it up here, so in case you want to reference it, we can do that. Speaker 1: At least with the health and wellness changes that were happening within Meta, we wanted to move towards products with a little bit more softer claims, kind of moving away from the weight loss stuff because a lot of these companies that were, you know, marketing Ozempic and all, you know, the pharmaceutical stuff. Speaker 3: Facebook got into some trouble, right? Speaker 1: They're making the changes because of it and I think it's trickling down to some of the businesses that are maybe even in supplements, right? So, kind of moving away from our beauty weight loss, you know, messaging and going into some of the softer products like maybe a hydration, a greens, a colostrum and maybe going like anti-aging and maybe focusing just on beauty. Now, in order for us to move away from this weight loss audience that we've been going after for the last few years, speaking to other brands that have tested different funnels, the tactical side of how you actually do that is very important because if you're training your ad account, you're training your pixel, you're telling Meta, this is the audience I want to Be served to and if you're spending millions of dollars on that audience, it's going to be very tough for better to break away, right? So some of the tactical stuff that we've been doing is launching landing pages for the new funnels on completely different had accounts utilizing different pixels. Utilizing different Facebook pages and then also different domains, right? Now, the reason we're doing that is one, the pixel and that account, obviously, that's where the data is being stored and we don't want to use the same data for weight loss audience for somebody who's looking for hydration, right? Sure, there'll be overlap, but it's going to be tough to kind of find your bearings there. Ad account, new pixel, that kind of gets you out of your current audience. Facebook page, new Instagram account, that cuts the warm retargeting that's happening. So if somebody engages with your weight loss ad, they may not see an ad for hydration and that's what we want. Whereas if you were running ads from the same page, they're gonna see everything, right? And then a separate domain, allows you to be able to use a separate pixel, right? Whether it's a new domain or a new subdomain. That's what we've been testing to give us a chance of saying, you know what, we're completely starting from scratch. We're not utilizing any of our previous data. Because if you use, you know, your same ad account, your same pixels, everything, there's always a what if of, well, am I just showing ads for a new funnel to a warm audience that has been primed for a different benefit, right? So that's probably one of the biggest things. I think even like, I think Meta... Speaker 2: Is the setup of that, by the way, like there's probably a lot of people who don't default to thinking about different pixel, different ad account because we're so again routine to think like the first setup is the last setup. What is, can you can go into a little bit more of like When you start to think about these types of changes, these are different and like, feel like they could be a heavy lift. Are they a heavy lift? Are there simpler ways to do it? And maybe you can go into a little bit detail of that. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's gonna be people that listen to this and think like, oh, it's so unnecessary. But listen, at scale, What's happening with Meta is Meta is going after the low-hanging fruit. With ASC, you've seen it. They're constantly retargeting. So even if you try to force spend and exclusions, your main funnel ads, those ads that are driving those people are gonna see everything else. And you don't wanna cause that confusion because then you'll have too many options that you're showing to a consumer. There's gonna be some level of confusion and you don't want that, right? The other side of it is it is easy to set up, right? It's literally going in and creating a new ad account, creating a new pixel, a new data set, new Facebook page, new Instagram page, right? You don't need to like do anything crazy. What we do is if you look at our Instagram page for some of our subsidiary products, Unki just makes a beautiful grid that kind of highlights the product benefits, the offer, so it's almost like a mini landing page, you know? If you see an ad and you want to click on the profile, It opens it up where it's just a grid where it's like, okay, I understand what the product is. I'll click the link in the bio if I need to. And then we also have a CTA. It's like, well, if you want to follow our original page, go to at Avi, right? So those are the things that you don't have to, you can start from zero. It's okay for your Facebook page or Instagram page to start from zero. And then when you, you know, even talking to some of these bigger brands like, you know, Sean from Ridge or, you know, some of these big supplement brands like Innosupps, these guys are running multiple funnels. They're not doing it in the same ad account. And especially at scale, you want to be able to separate it as much as you can. So I think literally setting up a new ad account is easy. Setting up a new, you know, Facebook, Instagram page. There's apps out there that can set up different funnels which will host your pixel without having multiple pixels in one place. So we're using Checkout Champs for that right now where we're setting up a landing page, we have a subdomain, and that subdomain all the way through to the checkout has one pixel. So we're not commingling data, this and that, we're keeping it separate altogether. It's worth it if you're trying to test different products and different funnels and keep the audiences separate. But yeah, I mean, if your main funnel is struggling and maybe you have some complementary products, this may just be for health and wellness brands, but try different ways to acquire a customer and make sure you can separate it out. Speaker 2: Chew on This is sponsored by. If you want to build a profitable e-com brand these days, then you need retention. Lifetime value is the lifeblood of your brand, especially when tax keep going up. Being first purchase profitable is great, but you only really start to print money when that customer comes back over and over and over again. It's why subscriptions are such a big piece of our strategy here at Opti. There's a big reason brands, no matter the size, are using a tool like Recharge. What we like is that they're not just adding a subscribe button on your site, they're a complete subscription engine, helping you convert buyers to subscribers, preventing cancellations, winning back churn customers, and they're even driving more revenue through smart upsells. That's why big brands such as Dr. Squash and even Vital Proteins are using Recharge. So if you're looking for a powerful, all-in-one subscription platform, head over to Get Recharged today to see how you can pump up your LTV for your brand. Now, let's get back to the episode. From the angle of like what we're trying to do with our product catalog too, right? I mean, I think one piece is we've been focusing on burn and our weight loss products. We've talked about this where, you know, there is sometimes maybe a confusion of like from an ad for one product and then they see a bunch of other things that can get confusing. I think there's a route of like, hey, well, let's just limit it down to just one. Or you've also, I think you guys are also starting to build an experience around a bundle. So maybe you want to talk through that, building that bundle and the kind of resurrection of that, because we've always had the ability to do it, but why is that a test that feels like it could have more fruition? Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, when you look at what the competition is doing right now, if you're, let's just look at the weight loss category in general, right? If you are looking at a product for weight loss, whether it's a collagen supplement that does fat burning or you're getting ads for like GLP or Zempik, right? There's really two routes you can go. It's either you take a supplement, you take a needle, and there's some stuff in between, right? I think the bundle aspect here is something that's refreshing. And it's like, okay, well, I may not believe that this one pill can do everything for me. But if there's a system that I can follow, it feels a little bit more tailored to My day and it feels a little bit tailored towards my goals, right? There's a reason why I like proactive, right? They have like this like five, six, seven step process to hit your goals. It almost feels like, okay, well, I'm doing this for this specific reason. I'm going to take this for this specific reason. I'm going to take this for this specific reason. Consumers are skeptical. If your product says it does five different things, they're probably not going to believe it, right? So with the bundle that we're doing, it's a three-step bundle. It's our collagen burn, which is our original product, which is meant to give you that energy, right? It's meant to kind of kickstart your metabolism and get you going for the day. Then layering on top of that is our burn fast, right, which is meant to mimic the effects of intermittent fasting, right? So, you know, at that afternoon, you know, timing, you're hungry, this is going to kind of suppress your appetite and keep you mentally locked in. And then you have one for the evening, which will help you kind of get to sleep and then also boost your metabolism as you're going through the night. Imagine a system that says, well, we have something for every part of your day versus go take this and this will do everything. I think you have to appeal to the consumer a little bit better now. And I think bundles are probably the best way. To do it and I think we have a really good strategy on how to like even activate influencers as well. So I think, okay, if you want to talk a little bit about that. Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, first of all, with bundles, everything you said is spot on, but I think that the tough part is when you, when we rely so heavily on landing pages and you have a three-step system, I think we're in the process of figuring out how do you convey All of that information in a single landing page. And it's a lot because, you know, we had pretty long landers for one product and it took that much information for them to convert with that one SKU. And now you're selling them. A bundle with three SKUs, there's definitely ways to do it because, you know, just like you said, Proactive does such a good job. If you want to look at bundling or creating a system, just look at skincare brands. Those are probably the best versions of funnels that you could look at. They've been doing it since the 90s. My mom would buy 10 things in one bundle and I'm like, how the hell did they sell you this? It was before the internet. That's probably the way we're going to be able to increase our AOV and combat some of those issues on Facebook with the insane CPMs and whatnot is kind of unlocking that bundle piece. And I think a lot of DTC folks can probably relate to that where they just can't turn a profit on Facebook right now. The way to do it is simply just raising that AOV and creating some sort of system. And I think You know, you don't have to be in health and wellness. You can create a system around cleaning supplies or whatever. I think how we end up conveying that and if somebody has a really good bundle landing page, let us know because we've been trying to crack that code for a while and we have the products to do it, so I don't see why we can't do it. I just don't think we've really tested that as much as we could. Speaker 2: Yeah, and we'll pop up the experience here too of what we've ...created from an influencer box for this burn bundle to also, you know, imagery and how that looks so you guys can get a sense of like... Products we had in our catalog, how we're actually creating an experience around it. And sometimes you're actually just like one really nice experience or one kit or one box or one insert away from just tying things together. Again, we'll see how the test goes and I'm sure we'll be back on this episode to break down how it worked. But I think in terms of Sometimes it feels like this is going to take a lot of work, but when you actually boil it down, I mean, I remember like two weeks ago when you just got into the office and you built the bundles to send out to influencers too, like at the end of the day, get gritty with the things that even though you may feel like, oh, well, at this point in my company, some of these things should feel automated or I'm not going to do them. But I don't think that's necessarily the case. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you can also tell, like, even when we decided, okay, let's test this bundle, we don't have a lot of content around it. So it's like, all right, well, let's go and get, you know, hit up our creators that have done, you know, posts for us. And we said, hey, we have something special for you. And so we literally, I think we ran out of boxes and I had to go to the store and get, but literally just packing, sending them out. And what was really good to see is that The people that are reposting. Yeah, that content looks good. There's more people reposting it. Or there's more people actually posting it versus like, oh, we're just sending them one bottle and just, you know, a standard. So people are excited about it. And that goes back to what I was talking about before, which is like, If the creators have a good experience and they themselves want to use a product, then their reaction to your product, to your brand is authentic. And that's the content that's going to work well. You can't fake it anymore. And you can't just like send a script and hope all is well. So I think make the experience as As good as you possibly can. Yeah, it definitely costs money. But think about the response rate that you'll get, the posting rate that you'll get, spend a little bit more to get a little bit more. Those are the areas where you can't afford to cut corners anymore. Speaker 2: Yeah. We've talked a little bit about creators, this personalized experience. I think what would be really cool to touch on, and we'll pop it up here again, is the breakdown of taking a creator that you work closely with and building a really cool experience around them. What we have at our fingertips, as many categories and many brands do now, is you have the ability to get products at a lower MOQ because manufacturers are a lot more We're flexible with their processes and we're able to create one SKU now at less than 1,000 units, which for us, there was a time where that was impossible. So I think it would be cool to break down is we have a creator that we really love, a Facebook creator, and she's been working with us for four years. And I think we took kind of this step where we took it up a notch and said, yes, this creator is great, brings great revenue. What's the next step in our way to work with them instead of just running ads and making sure that they, you know, drive traffic to us? I think it'd be really cool to break down how we created a really custom experience for the creator. Who is I think she's like literally on the toes of waiting to post about this. Created a custom product around it. Custom landing page. And I believe we'll probably have an incredible launch, which we're doing tomorrow, and that's going to bring in incredible, not just top-line revenue, but really cool customers, because these are people that are going to be tied to this customer experience. So maybe let's just chat through that. And I'll kick off with the product, and you can talk through the experience build-outs after that. You know, we have this really cool Facebook creator who we've been working with and she's driven, you know, hundreds of thousands of revenue for us. And obviously she's our top creator, top partner. What we went and did was we took a product that her customers always seemingly ask about, which is the pre-workout. And we said, well, can we actually maybe make a signature edition of this? And I think, OK, you went and started just working on a label. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: Which I think was really cool where we actually showed her signature. We showed her photo on the label. And so now it's this pre-workout that has her signature name. Her photo, and it almost looks like it's a limited edition for her customers. Anything you want to touch on the packaging or that process on why we think personalization is going to be a big impact here? Speaker 3: It's really cool because when you brought up this idea to me, You know, I've always wanted to create, you know, I've always wanted big influencers and then create, you know, personalized products for them. But you'd never think about doing that for your creators just because the MOQs wouldn't work. Well, now we're in 2025 and we can order 10 things of a product. But yeah, it was cool. When she said pre-workout, I was like, okay, I'm surprised about this one because I didn't think that her audience would be into a pre-workout. But then when she told us about all the messages she got about that pre-workout, I was like, okay, I'm excited. So pretty much what we did is, you know, we asked her, hey, what's a flavor of pre-workout you want to make? I sent her a bunch of approved flavors that we hadn't released yet. And she picked blood orange. And I was kind of psyched that she picked blood orange because I think that was probably one of our better tasting ones. All I did was I mocked up a caricature of her and then we added her signature, made it look nice and pretty. And then it looks like, you know, a custom Juanilda Diaries pre-workout limited edition flavor. And I think, I mean, it looks just like any other influencer product out there. Speaker 2: It really does. And I think that's the part that makes it really cool is like, you can literally make these creators feel like they're a celebrity. Like, you've always grown up looking at athletes coming out with shoes and custom things that they are, you know, endorsed for. I think we're bringing that experience for the first time to a creator. And so Ash, if you want to just touch on like, from that point of once the product was done and she's stoked on creating this, I think it's really cool on the step you're taking on like, How personalized you're getting with even the experience, what you're planning to do with ads and whitelisting. So touch on that and then we'll definitely report back on this. Speaker 1: So this is going to be an experience that we want to keep entirely separate from the rest of the website. And the reason being is that with some of these creators that do have a A high level of engagement and influence. You might feel like these customers are buying almost anything that this influencer kind of sells to, right? And especially in this case where we have a signature flavor that is her product, right? Technically, her audience is going to buy it no matter what. Now, if you remove the influencer from all of this, are those people that are going to buy truly who our customers are on a day to day basis? The answer is probably not. And so if you have to think about this strategically, because if you do find success here, And we've seen this happen to our account where if you have this flood of customers that are not really your target customers, it can mess up your other stuff. So this is why I'm saying keep the experience completely separate, right? Again, this is a new ad account. This is running ads through her page alone, new pixel and a new funnel that's set up on a subdomain. Check out everything on a separate environment. Speaker 2: It's almost like starting a new company. Speaker 1: It's almost like starting a new company, but it's separating things out. And I think with the way that Meta's AI is going right now, it's like you really have to force it to do what you want it to do until it can actually do what it's meant to. So that's going to be the biggest thing. Right, Ankit Design and Lanny Page, we have that ready to go. Honestly, like, I think she's big enough to just sell us out without even me having to run ads. But it will be really cool to start seeing that if it does sell out, doing a restock and actually starting to run ads for this. Speaker 3: Well then, let's say this does well, right? The whole creating a custom product and then custom landing page for a creator. Would you be able to replicate that for a bunch of creators? Like what if we wanted to do custom products for 20 creators? Then that becomes a whole almost business model. In itself, I think obviously it's about finding the creators that are able to convert for you. Speaker 1: Yeah, I just don't, 100% yes. I think that's definitely something that we need to go down because you've seen these like creator-led brands that are doing super well, right? And it's typically the creators that are really good at creating content, right? It's not just your typical like, oh, I got 10,000 followers. I go to the gym and I post about it, right? It's the people that can Keep a captive audience. It's the creators that can go live and talk for a half an hour and still have viewers from start to finish. Those are the people that I think we should lean into. And listen, not a lot of brands can do this, right? I think we're at the stage where we can. There's a reason why it's working time and time again, right? Speaker 3: Mr. Speaker 1: Beast Dobrik like all these guys like they're they're coming out with stuff because they have a captive audience and so I literally walked into Sephora with my wife the other day and I'm seeing Selena Gomez and I'm seeing Rihanna and I'm seeing all these like Celebrities and those are the ones that are being pushed up front, right? And the reason is is that they already have an organic audience. So I agree. I think it'll be easy to do. I think figuring out how to tie it into the brand that we've built is gonna be difficult. I'll leave that to you. Speaker 3: I think it would be definitely a side quest that helps us kind of combat Some of those inefficiencies on Meta make our P&L look a little bit better, but we'll go down that road when it comes. Speaker 1: Well, I do have a question for you, right? Just being that like if that does happen, right? We do have, you know, board members. We do have people that have invested and we've sold them on this like brand that we've built thus far. How do you feel about, okay, let's just say we're at this point in our journey pivoting entirely. What does that, like, have you thought about that at all? Speaker 2: I think it's tough. It's like, I think the pivot, if it Has validity around like some level of data to say, hey, we have this level of confidence on it. I think you can sell that story with a lot more confidence. But I think The part that is tough is when you choose to pivot to something, it's usually because something else is more challenging, so you're moving away. And if what's more challenging has far more data and far more years of saying, hey, well, Just because it's challenging, there's still 10 other ways that you are able to get through challenges. I think when you pivot, the question becomes like, how sure are you that you're not gonna hit a challenge here, right? And I think those are the questions that become tougher. The idea of doing it, I think, is very easy to digest and people usually get on board with trusting you as a founder and operator, and that's who they're invested in. But I think the challenge becomes when You don't know what's going to be the challenge in this, right? Like in my mind, like just thinking out loud, if a creator sees that they're literally selling out a product, okay? And from their lens, what you did for them was create a product, order 500 units and build the website. I think there is this fine line between when selfishness and greed strikes everybody because it's human nature, right? So I think the challenge with creator-led brands is like loyalty, right? Because we're making a lot more money than they would. But we're also giving them the platform ability doing all the work. The trade-off becomes when the money being made through them is far more than the value of work we're doing. And I think that's the cap of when you have to turn these creators then into like, wait, let me bring you part of my company, right? I mean, you look at what Rich did with MKB, right? I'm sure there was a whole thing of like, hey, I'm going to bring a lot more value to you than you can do to me. Let me integrate you better, equity, etc. So I think like the pivots are easier to like manage but I think it's very hard to sometimes answer these unknowns and That's the part that makes it tough where it's like I actually don't know what we've happened in that scenario if this creator we're gonna work with on this if on the next run where we order 2,000 units and she's now generated close to 300 K for us at that point like Is the work we're doing as valuable for her to not potentially go and figure out how to do this on her own? And I think those are the questions that come up. Speaker 3: Isn't that though why you get like 50 of these creators? Because it would just be kind of product per product. They're not necessarily on the brand. I agree. I agree with everything you said. Speaker 2: Yeah. The question becomes like these creators that you're working with, I think For us, the one we've found that we're going to work with, we haven't found hundreds of her. We have found maybe 10 or less of her. And I think that's the other piece in this is like the discovery piece is such an important factor because you're leaving discovery right now to either if we stumble upon something, something comes inbound, or if our influencer outreach team finds somebody. And I think that's the other part in this is like, how can we better that? Speaker 1: Yeah, it'll be super difficult. I think the one thing also is like, when you look at the state of CPG and investments, right? And like, where's the cash coming from? You see a lot of these brands that are like falling off a cliff now, right? In your mind, maybe this is off topic, but in your mind, do you think these VCs or whoever's investing really cares about a cohesive brand story versus a company that can generate profit? Speaker 2: Yeah, it's tough. I feel like when we even talk to some of the people who have invested with us, and even if you look at some of their counterparts, I feel like right now, All of them have portfolios. And so much of a VC or when they raise a fund, it's about how this portfolio performs for their limited partners and general partners, right? Their LPs and GPs. So when you're looking at your fund and you're looking at your portfolio, and let's say you have 10 companies you've invested in, And eight of them are losing money, burning, no path to profitability, high tax and great product, but no real business model. And you have two that are just like doing well, profitable, growing, maybe not that much, but or whatnot. I feel like a VC you talk to that has that composition of portfolio is kind of going to be more like Just be profitable and do what you got to do, whatnot. And then you have funds like you have the VMGs or the Andreessens of the world where they were like, hey, I'm looking to get you to an exit as quick as possible, whether it's PE, IPO, whatever the route is going to be. And like for them, I feel like you look at the brands are churning out They're so fixated on how are you going to exit this in the next three to five years, hit these numbers, get this type of thing. And that's why they probably have a higher stomach to burn. So I think part of it is like, I mean, luckily, you know, the group we work with is. Speaker 1: So Q1, we're midway through. What would be... One piece of advice you guys would give to the viewers and listeners to implement today and hopefully finish off Q1 strong and hit Q2 a little bit stronger. Speaker 3: Creatively forget everything that happened prior to December and everything you've tested because that's that's all out the door. Retest everything, landing pages, ads, you know, whatever you got to do, question everything, because, you know, we're not going to find an answer unless you literally do that. Speaker 2: I think for me, if you are struggling, then there's varying levels of struggle, right? There's people who are like, damn, I can't even like, Make a single dollar to people who are like, hey, I just wish efficiency was better. Whatever scale you're at, if you're struggling at all, if you're not, then you probably don't need to listen to this full episode. But if you are struggling and have a varying difference there, I think one thing to do is to always recognize that cash is king. And I think this is a time to where, like, you don't want to start to try to button up things when things get worse or bad or whatnot, because we don't know what the state's going to be. But I think just making sure that you have really tight processes, like, we went and talked to our fulfillment partner and said, hey, listen, like, we need to move from net 14 to net 28 now, because over this next three month period, we are finding some larger difficulties in turns. And so We want to make sure that you're, as a partner, you're able to understand that. And we had a really cool conversation with them and they're like, yeah, no problem. Let us know. Maybe in Q2, we can revisit going back on the terms. And we're like, absolutely. Similar with our manufacturing partner. We're at net 75 with them. We said, Hey, for the next few runs, we're going to be at net 90 because we have to still continue to fulfill our retail surge. But we also want to make sure that we're able to support our DTC and growth where it is. And they're totally understanding on that. Again, I think there's ways to not be those people that just ignore and don't pay and start to create those type of troubles, but starting to prepare your business to understand like, again, similar to when the weather channel says a storm's coming, you board up your house, you put salt on the driveway, you do certain things to make sure that you can weather different storms. So whatever storm you're going through, just make sure that you're preparing your business for that hit. Speaker 1: Love that. On my side, I would say focus a little bit more on what content is being consumed on a daily basis, right? When you're in bed at night, doom-swirling on TikTok or Instagram, see what is going viral. See what people are engaging with and see what ideas you can take from that and recreate for your brand, right? There's a reason why some brands are doing these podcast-style ads. Because I feel native. There's a reason why people are doing like street interviews for the brands. Because that is the content that's going viral and that's the content people are consuming. So if you don't have TikTok, Get it and see what's being consumed because that's where I think trends are starting versus the other side of like Facebook and Instagram. So consume more content and create content that feels native and is going viral right now. Speaker 3: Chew on that. Speaker 1: 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.