Ecommerce Product Launch Strategies with Ezra Firestone

Claiming Your Value in Marketing

0:00You have to claim your own value in marketing. Nobody's going to do it for you. We're the world's first, so you got to figure out what value you can claim, what benefit statements you can claim, what affirmation statements you have.

The Power of Merchandising

0:09Run a countdown to New Year's sale. With merchandising, the more products you have, so if you launch products, I've sold $200 million of my cosmetics. I have 40 SKUs. People come to me for one product. Everything else I have is an upsell and a cross-sell on the back end. I sell one product on the front end. All my ads, all my sales funnels, all my customer testimonials are designed to sell one thing, but I have 40 products.

0:28Why? Because the more products you have, the better you will do. Cuz people will come and they will buy from you. But your merchandising cannot just be get 10% off, buy one get one, sitewide discount, free gift with purchase, limited time bundle discount, live shopping discounts, deal of the day, new item launches, extending the sale by a day. Hey, the sale's over. Wait a minute, we're open it one more day. You've got to do complex merchandising.

0:49The better your merchandising, the better that you will do.

Engaging the Audience

0:56Total lot of us. You guys know his content. Ezra Firestone, come share some stuff with us. >> Come on, stand up. Commerce round table. Y'all looking like some great glazed donuts. Get up. Everybody up. Up. Put your hands on your hips. Chicken wing. And just kind of rub elbows with the person next to you. All right, you go ahead sit down. Listen. The best thing that you will get out of this event is a relationship with another person.

1:24I got some cool tell you about that's going to help you in your business. But more than that, if you could meet somebody, relate with somebody, make a connection, it's a wonderful thing. It's a beautiful thing and it's going to support you in your business career. So, I just gave you permission to touch somebody.

Building Relationships and Networking

1:39That was it. That was one time. Now you're back in your personal space bubble. You can't touch nobody anymore, okay? But make a friend. Where are you from, man? Right here, Hawaiian shirt. Where are you from? Rhode Island. All right, you look kind of Rhode Islandish. Welcome to the party. Yo, make yourselves comfortable. This is my dad right here at the hotel we came from. Up there is Give it up for my pops right there in the corner.

2:02Listen. My dad was getting dressed yesterday. I had never seen this. This is like some 70s gangster And I have seen somebody wear a collared shirt with a overshirt. That's two collars. This man had a collared shirt with a collared overshirt with a collared jacket. Triple collar. You haven't seen that since 1976 in Alabama. It was dope. He only He went We went one collar with the sweater. See it right there? He's rocking the the sweater. Yeah, get Yeah, okay. That was an unenthusiastic a round of applause for my dad, but that's all right.

2:40We're going to keep moving. Listen, I started e-commerce in 2005. For those of you that don't know me, I was America's number one mullet wig, Afro wig, Elvis wig, finger wave fluff, troll wig, clown wig retailer on the internet from '07 to '10. I sold that business in 2012. I looked like that by the time I sold it. I was Shopify's number one first professor at their e-commerce university. I still teach for them today. I got 180 team members across

Personal Journey and Business Success

3:05five different Well, way more than that now, but five brands that I actively manage. We did about 72 million in our own businesses, not the ones that I'm invested in, just the ones that I own out last year. And I'm not showing you this to brag. Like this is These are some of my brands. I just bought into this company. There's the boys right there. Safe Sleeve, give it up. Hey, did you know that your cell phone has radiation on it? It's a whole thing.

3:27Carrying like you guys stand up for me? Talk to these Give it up for Come on, give him a round of applause, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. They were They They sold me some of their company. It's a wonderful brand. I got Smart Marketer. I got Zipify. I just bought into this company. We do about 100 million a year. And in Check this out. Pow. Yo. Did Gary V have this? I don't think so. Watch this.

3:49Bam. He didn't have that? I got that for you. I sold about 70% of one of my brands for just over 50 million. This is my sweat lodge, a little tambo I built. And look, I'm not sharing you this with you to brag. The way that you talk about what you know in this industry is you talk about what you've done. I am some bum out of a hippie commune who didn't make it out of high school, no formal education, no financial backing. But what I have done is I've showed up every day with a positive attitude and taken the next step that I can take in the direction of my goal. This was my house in high school. That's where I lived, in that tree. So like, you can do this. If I can do this, you could do this. That's why I'm showing you this. And look, in life, you don't know what the You don't know what's coming your way.

4:31I've had some pretty traumatic events in my life in the last couple years. My business partner suddenly died. She was the face of our brand and she was like a second mom to me in a certain way. In 2022, I spent 95% of my my year inside the neonatal intensive care unit with my sweet little baby who passed away about a year and a half ago. So like, you can't control what life is going to throw at you. And you're probably going to be faced with some intense, dark, and traumatic in your journey.

4:58But what you can control is how you show up every day. The attitude that you bring to your world. How are you going to respond? What kind of intention and presence and deliberacy are you going to bring? Cuz that's your choice. And I will say, just by showing up here today, I have a a charity called Love Runneth Over in honor of my daughter, Audra. And just by you coming here, you're helping out little babies in the neonatal intensive care unit across New York state who are starting at a disadvantage in life. And the families tend to be on the lower end of the economic spectrum. And these people running this thing gave me a bunch of money for this charity. 100% of it goes to babies and families. So, take your hand, put it up. Yeah, I mean, thank you. Clap for that. But do me a favor, put your hand up in the air.

5:42Come on, y'all, what are we doing? Put your hand You came here. Put your hand up. Turn it towards yourselves. And pat yourself right on the back. There you go. Listen. It's a rough moment in business. And you know what? They gave me a laser pointer. And if you're not paying attention, I'mma get you with it. This dude back here, hey. Pay attention, man. We're We're We're doing something up here. All right. What's your name, brother? I can't hear you anyways, but hello. Thanks for being here. Rock and roll. Yeah, the two of you dudes back there. looking like Miami Vice.

6:12You guys are looking good. So listen, it's crazy time right now. There's all kinds of problems going on. Money is scared. You got wars happening. You got social not working as well. You got everything costing more. It's chaos. So what are we going to do about it? I think the first step is understanding what are we actually doing? What are we doing? Well, you might say, "Oh, we're here to optimize our businesses so that they generate more profit." And it's like, yeah, that is one level. But there's a level deeper. And the level deeper is that we're playing a game. And the game is resource generation.

6:46Pow. Generate resources. I didn't come from resource. And I saw that people who had access to it had a little easier time. And I wanted that access. So it's generate resource and then use those resources towards causes in the world that you find noble. Taking care of your family, taking care of your community, things that are meaningful to you. That's the game. And it turns out, unfortunately, cash flow businesses, jobs, they're not going to generate you wealth. The money that you make from your job, the cash flow from your business, that is not how you get wealthy.

7:20It's a wonderful thing. It's a beautiful thing. You should do it. I support you. The way that you get wealthy is by liquidating assets. Asset liquidation is what creates true wealth. Private equity, right? You buy into an asset like Safe Sleeve. You support that asset in growing. And then you sell it. And when you sell it is when you make all the money. So, everything that I'm going to be talking to you about today is how do we create the most valuable asset possible. My dad was a hippie. He joined the commune. He was in the free love movement, man. It was a party. Pre-AIDS, post-penicillin.

7:53It's a good time, apparently. Anyhow, listen. That generation, the baby boomers, they took their money from their 401(k)s. They invested it in real estate. That was their asset. The asset went up over time. They sold that asset. That's where their wealth came from. If you make a million dollars in your e-commerce business at a 15% profit margin, you got 150 grand in profit. But then you got to use it to buy inventory. Maybe you could pull 50k for yourself. When you sell that thing, you can have 6, 700,000 in profit. So, what I want to give you is some quick wins that you could implement. Things that like, look, I'm not saying this is the right way to do it. This is the way I do it. And it's working for me. So take it. Use what you want. Don't use what you don't want. But these are some quick wins that you could implement right now into your business. If you just do one of these things, you will do better than if you did none of them. And

8:41it turns out at an event like this,

Quick Wins for Business Growth

8:43two goals. Make a friend, number one. I can trace back every major leap forward in my business to somebody I met at an event. Some strategy I learned. Make a friend. Pick one thing you're going to do. If you left here with that, that was it. That's all you need. So, quick wins for 2025. This is Navage. We do about 100 million a year in this company. We're mostly retail, about half retail, half online. So if you are going to make it in today's world, here's 10 quick things you can do. Number one, use case-based and avatar-based presales and ads. It used to be back in the day, you could just run an ad like, "Yo, this is who we are." And you could send it to one page.

9:22Facebook, Instagram, Google, they got dumber in figuring out who your customers were. Now what you have to do is who and why marketing, followed by what and benefit marketing. Who is the person? Why are they interested? What is

Effective Ad Strategies

9:34the product? What is the benefit to them? And you need a few different avatars. And when you do this, you have to have multiple landing pages, ideally at least three, that you're sending to. So you've got your product page, got your home page, and ideally you have at least one other page. I'm going to give you a bunch of examples in a second. These are just some examples of my own pages, right? That we're sending traffic to. But look, here's how this can apply to you, right?

9:58How many of you brush your teeth this morning? Statistically some of y'all are lying. Just stats would say. But I believe you. I believe you have fresh and wonderful and beautiful mouths. But don't get them close to people without their consent. But listen, 100 years ago didn't brush their teeth. It just wasn't a thing people did. Right now, nobody cleans their nose. And that's what Navage does. And there's a lot of science that says that when you have a clean nasal cavity, you're less likely to get viruses and get sick and stuff.

10:28Okay, that's one use case. But what about people who have lawns, who take care of their lawns? This is a lady being like, "Yo, I I clean my lawn, I mow my lawn, and then I use the Navage." This is a girlfriend being like, "Yo, my boyfriend takes care of the house, I make him clean up his his whole self so he's not snoring afterwards." So, this is a particular use case that isn't about sickness that I can use for my product and have a particular avatar talking about their experience. This one is wonderful, my boyfriend is gross. If you you We are so fascinated by relationship dynamics. If you could get a partner to talk about their partner, about anything, about your product, it works for you. In our case, women are more than happy to tell us that they think their boyfriends are kind of gross with their snot and snoring and stuff. So, that one works well for us. But like, you could use this one. Figure out a way that somebody

11:18could have your product relevant to their partner and talk about it. For us, firefighters, right? Authority figures who also are going into places that have bad stuff that they need to clean out. Stop doing this, start doing that. These are all ones you can steal. These These are ad formulas. I'm going to give you more ad formulas in a second. Hey, stop getting ready for cold and flu season by pulling a bunch of old nasty Dimetapp out of your cabinet and start using Navage.

11:44City living. I used to live in New York City for 10 years. And gross. It's nasty. Cities are nasty. They're wonderful and beautiful and electric and good vibes and they're also really kind of gross. So, we're like, "Yo, if you live in a city, you might want to clean your head out at the end of the day cuz all the smog." This one you could do. Everybody could do this one. It's a old-school traditional customer testimonial. But it's like, "Yo, I love this product. My friend has never tried it. Watch me film them trying it.

12:12And then I'm going to watch it and I'm going to react." This one for your influencers and ambassadors works really well. Any person of authority with a product demonstration. There's four things in marketing I want you to know about. Incentive, deadline, anticipation, and ownership benefit. If you master those four things, you will be a better marketer than about 99% of people in the game. Right now I'm going to talk to you about owner- ownership benefit, but I'm going to talk to you about incentive, deadline, and anticipation in a little bit. Ownership benefit. Any video you make, any landing page you have, any email you write, you have one job.

12:46Communicate the ownership benefit. What is the benefit of owning this product? What will I be perceived as? What will I feel? What will I become? How will people think of me? What How will I benefit from owning this product? Person of authority. We're in retail, so we use that as authority. So, those are some ideas for videos that you could make that are related to specific people's experiences who are using your product cuz not everybody's having the same experience. 10 to 20% of your total budget should be on influencer and ambassador marketing. 10 to 20%.

13:21It's way more than you're spending currently. And it still works. I've been doing this since like 2016, and it still works. You're under-spending on influencer and ambassador marketing. Couple quick ad formulas. Yo, how you guys doing? Hey. People over here, y'all with the hats and stuff. You with me or you doing something else? Hey, 1 second, 1 second, 1 second. Everybody in the back. Everybody in the back. Everybody in the back standing and looking at me right now.

13:45Everybody in the back. Everybody in the back. Right here. I'm walking right towards you. >> Hey, we're going to boot y'all out of here. >> 1 second, 1 second, 1 second. I need all you guys right here. All these conversations happening right here. Hey, look at this real quick. Hey hey hey guys, close your ears. Passport. Passport. Passport. I need all you guys move back. Y'all move back like 50 yards. >> Thank you. Thank you. Great conversation.

14:04>> you're listening, or you're doing something else. I'm not forcing you to listen. I do have some good to tell you. Thank you. Give it up for Nick Shackelford, ladies and gentlemen. Sorry, guys. Sorry. All right. I appreciate it. I only got 26 minutes left, and I got some stuff I want to share with you. Let me give you a couple quick ad formulas, and then we're going to get into some more fun stuff. So, look, com- Conversion is communication.

14:26Whoever can communicate You know what You know in marketing, the best product doesn't win. The best promise wins. Who makes the best promise? Now, your product has to live up to the promise that you made. But whoever makes the best promise wins, not the best product in the marketplace. How do you make a good promise? Well, you figure out who you're talking to and what's interesting to them, and then you have good ad copy, a social proof story. Hey, this is my experience with this product. Ownership benefit statement. This is how I've benefited from it. Call to action. And then I'm using a P-COP layout. Person, product, color, overlay, border. I developed this layout for image ads back in 2016. It's now become industry standard. Every image ad should have a person, a product, a colored backdrop, text overlay, and a border.

15:09Avatar callout. This is a Safe Sleep ad. The avatar is a parent with kids, right? Hey, this is how I protect my kids. So, I'm calling out who the avatar is, and we're targeting that avatar. And And it's a parent talking about it. Why should you listen? In this case, you you want to tell people why they should listen to. Hey, you should be afraid of this problem that exists in relationship to your kids. Here's the solution. This is an affirmation statement. A brand identity affirmation statement is something that you believe that your customers also believe. So, in my case for my makeup brand, like women who are over 55 who are sold this bill of goods that their value is declining over time, and everyone's telling them they're experiencing their their hormones changing, their skin changing, their hair silvering, and everyone being like, "Anti-age, anti-wrinkle, tighten it, tuck it up." And it's like your life's pretty good until about, you know, 35. And it's a bunch of Let's start there.

16:01But But aside from that, they're what they report to us is, "Hey, we don't want 50 cosmetics in our makeup bag anymore. We want to simplify it." So, a brand identity affirmation statement that we hold is less is more when it comes to cosmetics. We know they believe that, too. So, you want to have identity statements that your customers believe that you stand for on their behalf, right? Affirmation statement, less is more. Controversial statement. If you can stir up some controversy, powder magnifies wrinkles, right?

16:27Powder-based cosmetics. We took a stand against those. Anything that you can take a stand against that you actually believe works really well. Social proof. Nobody cares what you think about yourself, they care what other people think about you. Ownership benefit statement. Notice we edit into our videos an additional headline at the top. We That's That's in the video. But we get extra ad copy. Mobile video. Big giant captions cuz people can't read. And then an ownership benefit statement at the bottom. All you need is these three simple sticks.

16:55Value claim. Nick Shackelford was claiming value on my behalf. If he hadn't, I would have done that. I said, "Yo, in 2014, all these gurus I like the last time I spoke after Gary V was like 13 years ago here in San Diego. So, I've been doing it. And all these gurus that are teaching today, they came through my stuff, which is wonderful. And then they did their own thing, and they made their own careers. But you have to claim your own value in marketing. Nobody's going to do it for you.

17:19We're the world's first. So, you got to figure out what value you can claim, what benefit statements you can claim, what affirmation statements you have. And then you can have a question in the CTA. Okay, a little bit about ads. We got to touch on ads a little bit. I'll give you these slides, y'all. You'll get them. Us versus them marketing. I don't like to invite conflict into my world, usually. But this just works too well, and you can do it in a way that isn't douchey. But you got to like like Navage, right? Neti pot. Anybody use a neti pot? Yeah, it's kind of like the Vaseline or the Band-Aid or the Q-tip of that category, where basically when you buy a Band-Aid at Target, you still call it a Band-Aid even though it's not Band-Aid brand. That's neti pot. So, we're like, "Yo, here's why we're better than them." They're a particular, you know, they're the category. Well, and I kind of was worried about it, and I should have known cuz karma's a

18:07Because then my main competitors did a us versus them ad against me, and it's their best ad. But look, these guys were actually students of mine before they started this brand. They They've got us versus them against me, and then they go to a landing page about why they're better than us. This is a perfect example of a particular specific avatar use case callout. In this case, here's why we're better than the competition to a page that talks about that. This ad, they're spending so much money on this ad. I was I was speaking on a stage in Las Vegas, and I was talking about us versus them.

18:40Anybody know Cheech & Chong? Yeah, man. I Yeah, Cheech & Chong. So, they think I am a good customer of their marijuana edibles cuz they follow me around with ads all crazy. And look, I do enjoy an edible here and there, but I'm not buying on the internet. But anyhow, I went to their landing page, and they had the best us versus them I have ever seen. It was so funny. So, I put them inside of my deck cuz I was doing an us versus them presentation, and I did this presentation. Afterwards, I got a I got a LinkedIn message like, "Hey, man, thanks for the shoutout." And I was like, "Damn, I didn't shout anybody out. Who is it?" I looked at the byline, and it was like, "Responsibility is heavy responsibility, man." And I was like, "It's Cheech & Chong." So, I reached out to the dude, and now we're doing Cheech & Chong marketing, which is like one of my greatest achievements in marketing life. it all started from us versus them. This Safe Sleep us

19:28versus them. This Athletic Greens. Everyone's doing it now. this is Grooons coming up against Athletic Greens. Here's a brand I was working with. They sell diapers to babies. Well, they sell diapers to parents of babies. And they got us versus them that then leads to a particular landing page about a mommy blog. So, that works really well. So, you got to be doing us versus them. And us versus them is a flavor of before and after, as you can see. That's before and after. It's the same flavor, but it works really well.

19:53That's win number two. Win number three, product launches and sale events. If you just do one of these things, that's all you need. Product launches and sale events, you're not launching products, you're not running enough sales. I am on my weekly calls with the Safe Sleep boys, we get into some tight spots the only we don't get into tight spots, but when we do run up against any level of friction, it's because I want to do more promoting. I want to sell more. And look, when you run these sale events, three emails day one on your first day and last day and day in the middle. If it's a three-day sale, then it's all three days. If it's a five-day sale, it's day one, day three and day five.

20:27Three emails, two SMSs and double the ad spend. Look at what happens on your peak days of your of your promotional events. By the way, what you see right here, you see that at the end there? This right here and here, that's December 26th and December 31st. If you do nothing else, take your Black Friday Cyber Monday merchandising, run a countdown to New Year's sale with the same merchandising. That is deadline. You'll have people who've seen your ads for two months, who've gotten hundreds of emails and SMSs, but because there's a real deadline now, last chance this year, they will buy from you. Run a countdown to New Year's sale. With merchandising, the more products you have, so if you launch products I have one I I've sold $200 million of my cosmetics. People I have 40 SKUs.

21:11People come to me for one product. Everything else I have is an upsell and a cross-sell on the back end. I sell one product on the front end. All my ads, all my sales funnels, all my customer testimonials are designed to sell one thing. But I have 40 products. Why? Because the more products you have, the more the better you will do. Because people will come and they will buy from you. But your merchandising cannot just be get 10% off, buy one get one, sitewide discount, free gift with purchase, limited time bundle discount, live shopping discounts, deal of the day, new item launches, extending the sale by a day. Hey, this sale's over.

21:44Wait a minute, we're open it one more day. You've got to do complex merchandising. The better your merchandising, the better that you will do. You guys are getting a little bored with me. You guys know about shaking? Anybody know about shaking? Shaking the energy out. Can you demonstrate for us real quick in the glasses? Yeah, get up real quick. Yeah. Can you demonstrate a little shake? There you go. Yeah, that's beautiful. That's it. All right. And nobody wanted to clap for you, but I am clapping for you on the inside.

22:12She's clapping for herself. Can you guys just energetically shake it off real quick like the milkshake has brought the boys to the yard or whatever? There we go. All right, thank you. You know what it was? All the ladies. All the men are like, we are uncomfortable expressing our emotion. And the ladies are like, yeah, dude. all right. Traditional content marketing, you can't just sell You've got to market to people with content. Look, what your business does is it communicates with a group of people who are sharing a collective experience. Women over the age of 50 who are having the aging experience and everybody finding them wrong for it.

22:46Entrepreneurs who want to grow their business. Your job is to relate to them about the experiences that they're having through content, add value to

Content Marketing and Merchandising

22:53their life, and then offer solutions to the problems they face, which are your products. Live shopping, you know, we do Facebook lives, we do ambassadors, new product launches, tips, listicles. You've got to do content, education, but pair it with consistent merchandising. And if you are not doing listicles, there is something about a list of tips. I cannot tell you how well listicles work. Just do one. You know, 95% of my paid traffic at this moment goes to listicles.

23:21Like lists of tips. It's well, not this new company I bought into, but we're working our way up to it. It will be. So, you got to do listicles with your content. Win number five, basket builders. Yo, I got this company Navage, right? I am not interested in adding more single-use virgin resin plastic to the world. We have enough of that But this product existed. And I don't really understand it because it's like, you could set your Navage on the counter, or you could elevate it on a piece of plastic.

23:51There's love this thing, dude. And it's

Basket Builders and Upsells

23:54all it is is a piece of plastic that elevates your product off to make it I don't know, look pretty or something. But listen, it's a high margin, high EBITDA margin product. Same with our cleaning kit. And then with your basket builders, anybody here dye their hair to express themselves, cover their grays, turn it red, yellow, blue, give them yeah, whatever. There's a lot of ways you could dye your hair. So, we sell hair color, fantasy hair color for like fun and expression. And when you do that, you need to help you out. These products are relevant to every product we have. We bundle our basket builders together. And then we and then we offer that as a upsell cross-sell through Zipify one-click upsell. That's my team right there. Give it up for EJ and Brittany, ladies and gentlemen.

24:38Zipify one-click upsell, pre-purchase, post-purchase, all that. We do upsells and cross-sells. By the way, when you're sending your emails, use Omnisend. I'm going to tell you about Omnisend in a little bit. but yeah, basket builders have high profit margin and they're relevant to everything and you can manufacture them really easily. Why am I putting product pages and sales videos on here? Because you will build a product page and a sales video and never look at it again. And a sales video is not a ambassador demonstration. A sales video is a problem agitation solution. That's the best one. I got 10 or 15 sales video frameworks on my blog that I can give you. The best one that you could possibly do is problem agitation solution.

25:21Anyone know Everlane? Everlane's like a $100 million, couple hundred million dollar clothing company and they did the best I'm going to send you a link the best problem agitation solution sales video for a product launch in the last 10 years for their denim. They were like, yo, did you know that the denim that you're wearing is killing all the fish in the oceans? ing up all these underdeveloped countries water systems? I was like, no. That's the problem. They introduced the problem. And then they agitated the problem. You're for all these reasons you didn't even know about. It's like, damn, I need to stop with this denim.

25:50But we have a solution. So, problem agitation solution, wonderful framework. You need at least one of those in the carousel on your product page. You know, only 50% of people come to your your product page only see this? They don't scroll down. 50% don't scroll. If you don't got a a sales video in your product carousel page, and if you're not testing, I'm going to give you some product page stuff in a minute, then you're losing out. Upsells, cross-sells on the PDP.

26:13Buy more stuff while you're here. You got three ways to grow a business. There's only three ways. Look, I had to simplify stuff. I didn't make it out of high school. Like I'm not highly educated. So, I had to simplify things down so I could do them. Three things you can do. You get more new customers. You can get people to spend more with

Maximizing Upsells and Cross-Sells

26:31you while they are shopping. I built a whole company on that one. That's one-click upsell. You can get them to purchase more frequently. That is it. There is nothing

Three Ways to Grow Your Business

26:39else. Get more new people, get them to spend more while they're shopping, get them to repeat more frequently. End of story. Everything I am telling you is in the direction of one of those three things. People build out their autoresponders in Omnisend and then they never touch them again. You know what? Every month I'm testing my autoresponders out. I'm testing new emails. I'm seeing where people drop off. I'm consistently Look, I didn't When you didn't grow up with money and you had to work a full-time job and build your business at night, like I'm not above any hard work. I don't think I am I think as humans we are all of equivalent value. I might be higher than you in the organizational structure.

The Importance of Testing and Iteration

27:12That doesn't mean that what I have to say is more valuable than what you have to say. One of my team members like, man, why aren't we testing our our autoresponders? Like, I don't know. Let's do it. So, we're testing those every month, getting more value out of it. Omnisend helps with it. When you call in on my phone, we got women over 65 as our core consumer and they like to chat, dude. I had to cap my customer service reps at 8 minutes. I'm like, yo, 8 minutes, we got to stop cuz we got other people.

27:35So, we got a little phone thing that comes in and it's like, yo, we're going to connect you up to somebody. It sounds more professional than this. We're going to connect you up to somebody, but

Effective Customer Interaction Strategies

27:43before we do, I want you to know we got 13% off our wonderful moisturizer today. Talk to your person about it. Do you know how many people are asking us about that now? We just put a little sales pitch in there. Shop Pay. Yo, who's got the Amazon app on top of their phone? The Am You don't got the Amazon app on your phone? You guys are just like fully fully checked out, but that's all right. I'm going to get you back. I'm going to win you back over, okay?

28:06You f- Amazon app on your phone. I don't know why I asked you. I asked you a question I already knew the answer to. I'm wasting your time, dude. So, the Amazon app, you could buy from all your customers, all the Amazon merchants in

Leveraging Shopify and Zipify for Sales

28:17one place at one time. Shopify now has that with the Shop app. In the Shop app, they got these campaigns in the back end of Shopify, you flip them on. You build out your Shop app. Shopify is incentivizing all their users to purchase inside of the Shop app by giving cash back. They're putting untold sums, nine figures, into this app. Zipify one-click upsell is the only application that allows you to do upsells and cross-sells in there. We built this with Shopify. Shopify doesn't want people shopping on your store where they could check out with PayPal, where they could check out with Amex or with Apple Pay.

28:50Amazon Pay? No, Shopify wants them in the Shop app where they check out on Shop Pay. In three to five years, 20% of your business is going to be in this app. You could be a early mover. Right now, it's 2% to 5% if you're an early mover. They'll push you over Black Friday Cyber Monday. Yo, peep these Instagram story circles at the top of my website. That's category image navigation. Look at my best sellers when I open up the the menu. Add those two things, your cold traffic conversion rate will go up considerably.

29:18Notice that when you when you come to my my product page, I don't say, "This is the name of the product." I say, "Do you want this ownership benefit? Do you want to sleep better and feel better?" I have ownership benefit copy to open my product page. You need to have that, too. It works better. You will sell more. Oh, yo, check this out. Pow. You never had that. Nobody had that today, did they? You didn't see no flames. Gary Vee didn't have no flames.

29:46Bam. All right, listen. 40 million in sales, 13 million in ad spend. My viewpoint is they're a perfect ratio of top line spend to sales. So, basically, you got to be spending 20 to 35% of your total revenue on marketing. If you're not spending enough, you're going to you're not fueling the business to go forward. It's kind of like a diet or a workout program. Anybody ever I've grown some if you know what I'm saying. Anybody grown anything in here? You gardened?

30:15Yeah, a couple people. Look, you you water you water this you plant a seed you water it. Nothing happens. You water it. Nothing happens. You water it. Nothing happens. You're like, "Ah, nothing's happening." And you abandon it. And that's what happens with ads. But below the soil, the seed had

Advertising and Consistent Investment

30:29started to sprout. It was traveling up through the darkness. It hadn't broken seal yet and you quit. Advertising is like that. You have to do it every day. There's a reason why businesses hit eight figures in year four, five, and six because there's a year-over-year halo effect. You got to consistently invest every year. People start when their money business starts making money they start pulling money out of it. Balling out on Instagram, wearing ripped jeans, wearing fedoras, renting Lambos.

30:53It's like, "No, dude. Put the money I mean hey, if that's how you want to party." I'm the guy who thinks you're right the way you are. Party however you want to party. But if the goal is wealth creation, you got to let the snowball build, you know? What you need is a truly good product. You don't need a unique product. There were things that washed your butt before Tushy. There were weird pillows before Purple mattress. There was toothbrushes before Quip. You need a good enough product. And then you need to make the best promise in the marketplace and you keep making your product better. Formulas, couple formulas for video.

31:25These are all done in the voice of the

Creating Value and Improving Products

31:27customer from the customer's point of view. I'm getting X value with X brand name. This is what it is and what it does. Here's why it's good the USPs. Here's how it works. These are the main objections you might have. In this case, will it work for my hair type? More unique selling propositions, end with customer testimonials and before and afters and a call to action. >> Today, I am dyeing my hair for the first

Video Marketing Strategies

31:46time with overtone. It's a semi-permanent color depositing conditioner. It's a vegan. It's moisturizing. So, look, you take that video. You find the most compelling part. You chop it onto the front. I knew when this lady went I was like, "Yo, that's my opening." Watch. Listen to her. That's it. I was like, "That's going to work." This is so bright. It doesn't really matter what your hair type is. >> Just cut up differently. >> going to work for you no matter what.

32:11All right, last last quick video formula. I'll give you more of these later. Product name, social proof statement, ownership benefit statement, value claim, social proof statement, call to action. >> Boomstick trio. Boomstick trio. Boomstick trio. Glimmer, color, and glow. >> It's absolutely perfect. I don't need any other cosmetics. Best spontaneous purchase ever. >> I love this stuff. I get giddy. That's the Boom Beauty Glow. If you watch this back, you're going to see every one of those elements stacked together. And you can get this content from influencers and ambassadors really easily. Value creation plans, if you're not doing this, you must start. This is how you grow a business. A value creation plan is you take every three to six months, you sit down and you say, "What are some ideas that we're not currently doing that could grow the business?" And you come up with 10 of them. And then you rank them. How long are they going to take? How much are they going to cost? How much potential value would they have?

Value Creation Plans

33:03Do we need any outside investment? Time, cost, potential value, and then what and what are the KPIs that you're going to track that are associated with them. There's one other one that's on our VCP. But and I'll I'll give you my VCP layout. But look, then every quarter you come you come back and you say, "How do we do? Do we want to drop this one on? Do we want to add this one on?" You're constantly held accountable. It's as if you had a board. If you don't have a board, you need VCPs. If you have a board, your board will be running a VCP for you. How are we creating value for the brand consistently every quarter and measuring it? And then arranging you only need three or four of them a quarter. We're doing this at Safe Sleep. It's working well for us. So, you've got to do value creation plans. At the highest level, double down on paid. Add additional channels. Add video. Add articles. Spend more. Optimize your ads and funnel.

33:50Expand your product line. Improve the product line. Move on to Amazon. Go on to YouTube. Add more and better content. Tell better stories. Up level your packaging. Make sure your messaging and visuals are in alignment. Invest in your team. How are you to work for? Someone's like, "Oh, I hired someone and they sucked." I'm like, "Dude, you How did you invest? Like when I hire someone, I'm like, "Yo, within three years I want you to be the best social media manager in the world. Here's how we're going to get you there. You're going to read these these six blogs are going to populate into a Slack channel.

34:20You're going to read them. You're going to take notes. We're going to meet once a week. You're going to go through these courses. You're going to attend these

Investing in Your Team

34:24events. And then you're going to come every week and tell us what we should be doing for the business." You've got to give them a way to grow. You got to give them agency. Are you micromanaging them and bulldogging them and swinging your belly around on them? It's like, "How are you to work for? Do you give good benefits? Do you have a good work environment? Do you give them autonomy and freedom?" Turns out in business, the game is coalesce a group of people together over time towards a goal.

34:47It's not like if you have high turnover, you're not going to make it. So, can you bring the amount of value you can get from one person is amazing. So, invest in more people. Are you kicking me off? I got six minutes. All right. Postmortems. Optimization of process. If you see something, say something. This is the part where you're not the most valuable person in the org. You know who is? Usually the people in support at the lowest level of the of the hierarchy cuz they're talking to the customers. So, when someone joins my team, I'm like, "Yo, if you see a way that we could be making our products better, that we that you could be enjoying your life better or your work life or if we could be

Postmortems and Process Optimization

35:20serving our customers better, let me know. I want your feedback. You're never going to be in trouble for giving feedback. You think this meeting on Monday is stupid and unuseful? Let me know. Let somebody know. If you see something, say something. And then for you as a CEO or founder, you can't be driving the car all the time. You got to navigate the ship. One day a week, top level Tuesday where you're navigating not driving. Watch your numbers. Most people don't look at their monthly P&L. Most people don't have KPIs they're looking at. Most people don't have VCPs, quarterly reviews, quarterly planning. This is how you run a business.

35:49I had to learn all this the hard way. Not pay my taxes, mess everything up. But I luckily I did it when I didn't have any money. There wasn't Nick Shackelford. There wasn't Jimmy Kim. There wasn't Commerce Roundtable 20 years ago when I got into the game. So, I had to learn it all the hard way. I already told you what your brand does. You know that everyone is so worried about what they put into their body.

36:10You know? Everyone's and the reason is cuz people can sell you like that. They can sell you diet programs, workout programs. They're selling you that. What about what you put into your mind? What about when you open Instagram and people are getting shot in the face and falling out of buildings and it's like you could be deliberate about what you put into your mind. What you think determines how you act which results in what you get.

36:29It's more important. I mean, the mind and body are connected. They are one. But if you're not being deliberate about what you consume, then you're going to be Turns out these

Mindful Consumption and Happiness

36:39algorithms have figured out that Gary said this. Whoever has the attention wins. And you know what they figured out is that they piss you off and scare you. They keep attention. So, that So, you go online, it is designed to anger you and freak you out so that you'll stay connected to it. You got to be deliberate about what you consume. I got a couple group chats with friends where I open that know it's going to be crazy.

36:59Otherwise, it's like bonsai trees and jujitsu, you know? It's like I I've curated my feed that I'm interested in. If you are not happy here and now, you won't be happy there and then. There is no amount of money you will make. There is no amount of There is nothing that will do it for you. I can tell you from going from the lowest end of the economic spectrum to now being one of the more wealthy people I know. Well, money's a wonderful thing. It can buy you some comfort. It's great. But if you can't have presence and joy and gratitude and fun and intention and love and romance here and now, you won't get it. It's not coming for you. You have got to figure out how to enjoy your life. Whatever that means for you. It is a inside job. And money's not going to do it. Money's a wonderful thing. I I hope you use to make some of it. But it turns out that gratitude and generosity in my experience are really good indicators of

37:46happiness and success. And consistency is what this game is about. How is a bum like me in the spot I am in? I just showed up with a positive attitude, wasn't too proud to ask for help when I needed and stayed at it. And you had guys burning out, you know? It's like just got to stay with it. Check this out. It's not about how much you make. Listen to this. Turn the volume up. Oh my gosh. Turn up. what's been Where's all your money gone, Donnie?

38:13Taxes. 9 10 11 Let me fix my houses. But it's okay. It's part of the game. >> not the fun part. It's not fun to what? It's the worst part of the game. >> Oh, it's what? Taxes. Taxes. Listen. You get out of your business what you put into it. The question is not what can I get out? It's what more can I invest? What can I contribute? Who can I get to help me? How can I put more in?

38:45That's the question to ask. I don't care what happens to you this year, next year, three years from now, five to 10 years. That's what I when I when I convinced well, we kind of did a deal together Safe Sleep to let me join their company, it was, "Guys, I'm looking I don't need any money from this. Five to 10 years. That's the goal. Where you are in five to 10 years can It's like it's a short period of time, actually. I want I want that for you. I don't I mean yes, I want you to be successful now, but like I want you to understand that this is a long game. It is a marathon, not a sprint. This mother This is the most popular American president back in the day. And he had to say in the '60s and nobody was listening to him.

39:21And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your >> business >> can do for you, ask what you can do for your >> business. Listen. was saying that Nobody was listening. >> That's crazy. >> It's crazy. I know, dude. So, listen. Here's the Here's the deal, okay? Number one, have fun. Enjoy your life. That doesn't mean don't work hard. That means take care of yourself mentally, emotionally, spiritually, energetically, physically. So that when you show up to work, you can be enthusiastic. You can bring the party. People want to hang out with you, right? If you are overworked and and underslept and just a mess, you're going to be no good, no use to anybody.

40:00So do what it takes to be a fully you know, filled cup so that you can pour out into the people around you. Make good things that truly serve the world and never stop making it better. And be profitable at any scale. If you're if you made 50 grand and you had a good time, you enjoyed it cuz look, you could get hit by a bus, your kid could die. knows. So you had you had fun. You enjoyed it. You made something wonderful and you were profitable. You have won the game of business. You're better off than somebody I know who's got a $50 million business who's shackled and miserable and up all night eating Butterfingers on Red Bulls and it's like Hey, scale is a wonderful thing, but not at the expense of your good time.

40:41They say leave the place better than you found it. I believe in leaving the people better than I I found them and that's what I'm trying to do with you all here today. So that's my presentation. If you're interested in the stuff that I have to say, I got an agency where I can do ads and emails for you. You can go to zipify.com/growth if you want a free strategy session you're on Shopify Plus and I am a brand ambassador for Omnisend. I love this company and you can go to omnisend.com/ezra and get 30% off. I'm going to be at their booth at lunch. You want to come talk to me right at 12:30 at lunch at the Omnisend booth with these homies

Final Thoughts and Q&A

41:11right over here, Jenny and Adele and thank you so much for watching. I appreciate your time. They told me to stay on stage. I was going to like take my nice little >> He was about to walk off. I was like, "Nah, we got questions, homie." I'm going to go right here, right here. And then I'm going to go two, three. Can I get a water? Yeah. Agua. This thing's on? Yeah, you're good. Okay. So Ezra, I do not run any ads to listicles right now and you have like a big world about running running ads to listicles. Do you run ads? Yeah.

41:52>> Okay, then I'm happy. It all goes to PDP. I was wondering how you measure the listical performance versus landing on PDP cuz you can go, "Hey, conversion rate boosted cuz we ran this ad." How do you measure conversion rate boost on listicals? We measure we're not like so concerned with conversion rate. We're concerned with how much does it cost to acquire a customer and how many can we acquire and what we find for brands that have ads that are run to PDPs is it's horizontal scale. It's like keep your PDPs live.

42:22Turn the listicals on, you're going to reach a different demographic. You're going to reach people who want to read content. You're going to get new consumers that you're not currently reaching. And we're finding that our listicals for us are getting us cheaper customers at more scale than direct to PDPs. It depends on the market. It's not like like I said, I'm not telling you this is the only way to do it. I'm not telling you this is the right way to do it. I'm just saying this is how I do it and it works for me. Do whatever the you want, man. However it feels good to you.

42:46But I but I do stand on business about listicals. I mean, how long have we been doing them? Your whole career, bro. Yeah, this this has been year 10 years minimum minimum. Doing listicals? Listicals. Dude. Well, and it depended I mean some products might not like what is a product that might not need a listical? I mean very low So here's an interesting thing about a sales cycle you guys. I sell $100,000 items and $50 items. You know the only difference? The length of the sales cycle. When I sell a $100,000 item, I get someone on an email lead.

43:20They come to a webinar. I add value to them for a year. Then I sell it to them. When I sell them a $25 item, hey man, here's an ad, buy this thing. That lower end price point doesn't need as much selling. So it's like price point also dictates. Right here in the front. Hey Ezra, what's up, bro? >> Damn, you just just only the front row, dude? Did they pay extra, bro? No. >> I just It's okay. So with the avatar testing that you do, are you being more I guess like methodical with like testing avatars?

43:53Yeah. Yeah, we're thinking about who who could possibly be interested in this experience, right? Like in Safe Sleep, it's kind of interesting. It's like dudes who are tripped out on mushrooms, who are afraid of aliens, you know, who want to fight against the radiation. It's like the soccer mom. It's like the make America healthy again movement. It's like, you know, weird hippies who grew up with their moms being afraid of it, you know, it's like parents who don't want their kids like What is the who are the different people that might be interested in this and then how can I speak to them specifically? Okay, so follow-up question on that one. as a marketer I think about, okay, if we're doing avatar testing, are we scaling in CBOs with avatar ad sets or like how are we scaling those avatars?

44:35Yes. I mean you have to tell I mean look, there's there's a lot I shy away from telling you the right way to structure a campaign because I have like literally 15 different brands that I am watching on a regular basis that I own and they're all structured differently. And we've got some similarities, but it's like when you want to if you want to get into the weeds of campaign structure, you got to talk to Molly Pittman or Nick or somebody like that.

44:56I'm beyond that at this point in terms of mine own knowledge. I'm not in the game that level. It's a good it's a good thought, Ross, cuz there's just like how do we how do we make sure we're sending the similar message but so different based upon demographic? Yeah, you lasered him. What's that? >> Got him. I I got him, dude. I got him. What's up? >> is this thing on? Yes, sir. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to get you, lady there. I apologize.

45:18Cool. Hey Ezra, What's up, man? What's your name? Jonathan. Jonathan, where are you from? here. >> Is it is it Jonathan? Cuz I met a dude the other day he told me he told me it's Jonathon. >> there's there's a few of us. Jonathon, bro? I've been in this space for 20 years. I've never seen you talk actually, but it's amazing. First of all, nobody was zoned out. There's just so much information you're throwing at us. We're just like, okay, taking it all in, taking it all in, taking it all in. So yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's hard to tell when these big, you know, big one big rooms.

45:46especially when all these talking in the back. But yeah. Anyway, so listen, you got your fingers in a lot of pies. That's one way to put it, man. I wouldn't have quite said it that way myself, but okay. I think I heard that expression somewhere. Anyway, I'm curious how you structure your time on a weekly basis. Yeah. So so >> Here's your like cuz you're cuz you're like, you know, you're talking about listical stuff. You're deep in campaigns at least it seems to me. You're standing up there also involved with a lot of brands. So I just love to hear how you focus.

46:14I had the fortune of having to do everything myself. So I learned everything. And then as I delegated, turns out the best thing you can do for your brand is buy help. You're That's how you frame it. I am buying help and the help that you buy gets better every week. The first person you know, when you when you hire somebody, the first 20 hours they work for you is about 1/5 as efficient as the 50th 20 hours they work for you. So I've gotten really good at delegation systems, organization. You know you know about Wayfair? I'mma get off your stage in just 2 seconds, Nick. You know about Wayfair? They're the biggest drop ship company in the world. Back when I was drop shipping wigs and adult novelties, if you know what those are, and dog supplies and gift baskets and bar stools. It was American drop shippers.

46:57China didn't exist. There was a company that was competing against me. And I was some, you know, I was some kid playing poker for a living, living in New York City, trying to make it off my couch selling some Fu Manchu mustaches, didn't know nothing about nothing and these dudes were 10 years ahead of me and they had been to business school and they understood systems, process. I'm going to answer your question. Systems, processes, delegation. And my drop ship businesses made me a couple million bucks. They were wonderful. I made a bunch of mistakes and I ended up selling out and getting into other stuff. They are Wayfair now. Like the biggest I don't know how billions and billions of dollars that company is. So what I do now is I talk to people about what they are doing. I don't actually do anything. I spend my time navigating in in vision mode, in support thinking.

47:46You know Jeff Bezos talks about wandering? Two days of the week he just wanders around thinking. I do a lot of thinking. I I own a big piece of land. I walk around by my river. I get on phone calls. I talk to my team. I still know what we're doing. I still have impact in what we're doing. I'm not writing any listicals. I'm not placing any ads. I'm not writing any emails. But I am in the strate I am strate I used to think it was a hard transition from driving to navigating cuz all of a sudden you don't do anything and you're like, "Wait a minute, I didn't check anything off the list." What I realize is like people need motivation. They need support. They need a sounding board. They need a little bit of fluffing.

48:20A little like, you know, not fluffing the way you're thinking about it. Like fluffing like holding them together, you know? So like that's what I do with my time. And for my during my daughter's life, I realized how invaluable I was in a certain sense because all my businesses thrived and I wasn't at all involved other than through Colleen in Boom. Let's give it up for Colleen Taylor, ladies and gentlemen. Legend. >> And when I came back after Audrey died and I was ready to do work again, I've been basically just like I meet with the Safe Sleep boys once or twice a week and we talk about what's going on. I'm I might join an Amazon call or a Facebook ads call and give my feedback. I meet with them about big picture strategic growth. So it's like high-level strategic guidance is what I actually do.

49:05I got one more for you. Thank you. One more. Last one in the back. Go ahead. >> Yo. Ezra, what's up, man? What's your name? My name's Liam. I'm the co-founder and CEO of the men's fragrance brand Guy Fox. We're actually based here just down the street. >> What can I name it? How's that mustache treating you, bro? What was that? >> How's the mustache treating you? I noticed a lot of the young >> a new thing for me, bro. It's actually kind of sick.

49:23>> happens when you drink a latte, bro? Dude, it's weird. Yeah, you get >> in top of there? >> Yeah. Yeah, that's what I would wonder about if it got too big, but okay. Good looks. I'm a one-click upsell customer as well as a Navage customer You're a Navage customer? Yeah, dude. Dog, you need to You just buy it all Take you to lunch. I got you, bro. Anyway, so I you were one of the only founders in this whole space that I think as a CEO like we never talk about mindfulness, right? And like you're bringing up why the things that we do matter. Like dude, we're all selling widgets that people don't really need and we get caught up on the numbers and the metrics and the ROAS. But when you lead your team, what are the things that you do to be mindful when you're having a bad day? That's something that I'm leaning into When I'm personally having a bad day? Yeah.

50:05I mean, here's here's one viewpoint that I hold that I think is a freeing viewpoint if you are willing to take enough responsibility in your life to take it on, which is that I am not a victim of my emotional state. If I feel a particular emotional way, that does not then dictate how I act. And you know how we know this is true? Because somebody could be out of control with rage and then a bigger badder walks in the room and all of a sudden they shut up. So it's like you're not actually out of control with your emotions and once you are aware of your own personal responsibility for your behavior in any moment under any emotional circumstance, all of a sudden you're free because now you can feel whatever the emotion is and still choose deliberately to communicate with love and kindness and intention.

50:49And sometimes love and kindness and intention is telling them what it is. Tell them the truth. Maybe that's the most loving move is to be super stern. But it's like you're doing it deliberately. You're not doing it because you're emotionally reacting to it. It's not violence in emotional violent communication because you are worked up, it's because you're choosing to ramp up the intensity a little bit so that they will then hear you. Like you follow me? So you are not actually a victim of your bad day. You could be having a bad day and by the way, guess who is the arbiter? Guess who gets to decide whether something was good or bad? Guess who's the only person? You. You get to perceive something, which is a wonderful gift we have being alive. We get to choose what we perceive by where we put our attention. We then perceive the thing and then we get to decide was that good or was that bad? So all of a sudden you you know, real two seconds. You got it,

51:37dude. You go to a monastery, okay? And these will hand you a pair of scissors and say cut the grass with scissors. You're like cut okay, cutting the grass, you know, cutting it and then all of a sudden you see a grasshopper and you feel the wind on your back and you hear the birds and you take a breath in and you feel your body and you're like you realize that and this is what the lesson is supposed to be that the amount of intention intention and attention that you bring to a given moment directly associates with how much you are able to derive, how much value you get to derive from that moment. So if you are having a bad day, you have decided to judge your experience as bad and then not and then be unwilling to perceive any good in your universe. And if you just looked around and said, hey, there's a little baby over there with a tube in their neck.

52:30You know, you might have a little grace for yourself and compassion and then find something that you could be approving of and then move on. So I think it's an inside job. I think if you're having a bad time it shouldn't affect your team and you should handle that as the leader and be a good example of what it is to be a leader, which is somebody who handles and shows up and with a goal of contributing. And if you can't, if something was to I'm not saying don't feel your negative emotional experiences. Sometimes you're in a place where you just can't. It was too intense, whatever happened. You you be a big enough person to take a break.

53:01Create some distance. Say guys, I need the day. I need a minute. Let's come back to this. And you don't have progress be more important than how it feels amongst the group and how you feel because your progress will be sabotaged if you try to take it when you're all up.