I'm glad you guys invited me here because you're slumming it down with like the e -com millionaires again.
This is like a make -a -wish type of episode for us.
There's really two things that I need to talk to you about.
There's two reasons you're here.
Number one, I cannot believe that you sell hundreds of millions of dollars of this stupid little wallet this is unbelievable to me it's been blowing my mind ever since i found that out and now you're here finally to give us some answers and two um i think you're very opinionated when it comes to e -com you don't hold back you don't pull punches and so we like that we like spicy guests and i think you're you're gonna be able to have both of those things for us i think you should smack sean right now for con his stupid little wallet did you hear that stupid little wallet i'm just trying to get him
fired up i told you he gets he gets fiery he gets feisty so i wanted to you know stir the pot a little bit you better play nice i'll dox your your e -commerce brand oh that's true you know he's got he's got some uh he knows too much he's got some compromise on me dude i've been a uh i've been a ridge wallet owner since 2016 or 17 you know ridge uh sponsored the hustle well dude thank you for the support and you guys were super early for newsletter sponsorships like we probably run like a pretty big sponsorship like ecosystem now we sponsor like a ton of newsletters like you know youtubers obviously
you guys were like one of the first people selling that ad space so yeah and you know what i learned about your guys's industry well just any marketer who's savvy is people like you and sean you guys know how to find early interesting stuff and you take all of the risks and you and you just you understand the arbitrage like the underpriced opportunity and so we had a lot of smart people who would buy these ads with us and i'm like i can't believe they're doing this it's so unproven and then i realized that That's like the theme of a smart marketer, which is throw dollars at a variety of things
and then exhaust it once everyone else comes and finds it.
Yeah, it's ad arbitrage, right?
Like everything's attention.
So if I'm giving Facebook at this point, $15 per thousand views and if I can get a better price off of newsletters or influencer or YouTube, like it's all just an attention economy.
And it's so funny to watch that like pendulum swing back.
linear tv like the tv your parents probably watch is so cheap to run ads on because nobody's buying it so like you know i'll probably spend what's like the cpm of linear tv a dollar like oh wow it's like because there's all these channels right there's been like you know thousands of channels that have come out that like have 800 people who watch them so like you just buy like big blocks of random ad space that are just very male male targeted um and like yeah Literally a dollar to reach a thousand people.
Do you know what our best performing ad channel is?
Our marketing channel for my brand?
Postcards. You would not believe it.
Postcards. It's not super scalable.
You can't just spend to infinity on it.
But you put a dollar in, you'll get eight or $9 out of revenue.
It's amazing. That's great.
You use Postpilot? Postpilot.
Yeah. Nice. Okay. So Sean, we should start at the start.
What's cool about y 'all's story is you sell a simple product.
It wasn't like some Mark Zuckerberg, you know, innovation or anything like that.
And you've scaled it up.
You built it brick by brick.
But you said you started in sort of a sweaty services business.
You didn't start the company and you didn't start off in the product game.
So can we just do your story for a little bit?
And then I want to brainstorm other DTC ideas with you afterwards.
But first, let's do your story.
Sure. Yeah, you got that right.
The show is my first million.
So I made my first million dollars off of an ad agency.
So, you know, Facebook ads came out in 2012.
That was like when it was probably like an open beta anybody could join.
And I learned how to do Facebook ads.
I worked at an agency with my CMO Connor and the agency sucked.
Like, you know, it was 200, 200 people working there, probably 500 clients.
You were an employee.
Yeah. Yeah. I was just an employee.
And then I was like, oh, I should do this.
I could do a better job of this.
The ad agency I worked at, the average client was around for four months.
So imagine that sales cycle.
Like it takes 60 days to onboard them.
They get 30 days worth of work and they're like, this sucks.
And then 30 days to off board.
The average client was four months, right?
And I'm like, imagine if I just did this, but I kept them for a year.
I'm like, I'll make so much money, right?
So I started an ad agency.
I have 10 clients. So you're saying this like it's simple.
So you're working at an ad agency.
How old are you roughly at this time?
I was 22. You're 22 years old.
You're not like a marketing expert yet, right?
You're like, you know, you're learning on the job, I would assume.
Yeah, yeah. But like, it was.
It's kind of like TikTok shop is today.
Like nobody's an expert, right?
Like it's a brand new thing that came out.
Like I was probably two and a half years in the Facebook ads.
People still thought Instagram followers were the most important metric.
And they're like wanting to run campaigns to get followers, right?
Right. And was your agency super bullish on Facebook as a channel or it was kind of like this new thing that, you know, you got really interested in because it was new, but was the whole agency like, hey, this is going to be a really big deal?
Yeah, it was like a cookie cutter D2C agency, like in the heyday.
This is probably like 2015.
Right. So Facebook what Facebook and email was the services we were providing.
Like there was no other services.
Maybe there was one guy doing Google ads.
Right. But it was really all in on Facebook as like this brand new channel.
and if I could go back in time I would have been even deeper into Facebook like the biggest challenge with Ridge we're skipping a couple years in the future but we try to diversify too fast like I was doing newsletter sponsorship and like they worked I should have put all of my dollars into Facebook back then up until like 2020 I would have just been better off putting as much money to that as possible and Ridge was one of your clients, were they an early client?
Yeah so I had 10, so I'm at an agency.
It sucks. I think I can do a better job.
Me and my CMO, Connor, we ended up starting an agency together.
We take 10 clients with us.
Eight of them you have never heard of, okay?
Like they've just gone extinct.
One of them was Ridge.
And then one of them was actually Mudwater, which has actually gone on to crush it.
Like we did their Google ads at some point like in 2016 or whatever.
But yeah, so we end up taking Ridge over.
father son best friend they start this business they get to like five million dollars a year in sales and they are you know like the dad was a special ed teacher like you know daniel was going to go to be an accountant and this thing just kind of caught fire and he really didn't want to be an accountant so like their expectations for the brand when they got to five million dollars a year they're like this is the best thing that's ever happened right and me and connor being hella young and i'm like i think we can get to 15 million dollars a year i think we can get this to $30 million a year.
I remember telling Connor, I'm like, I think we can do $100 million a year selling this wallet.
And he looks me down the face and he's like, there is no fucking way in hell we're going to do that, right?
This was like 2017, but they didn't really want to run it all that much anymore, right?
Like they didn't want to manage people.
So I'm like, cool, we'll do everything else.
So my agency kind of gets built around running Ridge Wallet.
We do their customer service, we do their product importation, we do all of their marketing, we do their web dev.
And then I'm charging them like $200 ,000 a month.
Like all of the money is coming from Ridge Wallet.
They end up being like 60 % of all agency billables for my tiny agency.
And at a certain point they're like, hey, we should just merge, right?
So me and Connor take an equity stake.
Everyone in my agency just goes in -house to Ridge.
I ended up selling off the agency to one of the people who was running it.
And that was probably 2018.
And since then, Ridge has gone from, you know, $30 million a year to over $200.
That's amazing. What I love about that story is that it sounds like when you were running the agency, like almost like nobody would in a business school would recommend, hey, you're running this marketing agency.
And then for one client, you're going to start doing customer service, logistic support, all, all these other things.
It sounds like wrong to do that.
it's like how one customer is going to make up 60 % of your billables from a business school perspective, that would be like a bad move.
But Dharmesh said something once on the podcast.
He goes with my first business, he goes, I got, I got mixed up later.
He goes, just cause I was ignorant.
Doesn't mean I was wrong.
Meaning I didn't know the right way to do it, but my instincts actually were leading me in the right direction.
It's just wasn't, uh, you know, I didn't have like some sophisticated game plan and maybe it wasn't typical, but it was my instincts were correct.
And it sounds like your instincts were correct that you should just keep leaning into the ridge thing, even though it was like, maybe not what a normal agent, normal marketing agency ever would have done?
Most clients suck. Like if you guys have ever done client work, like most clients fight with you.
They don't pay you.
Like there's always trying to fire you.
Right. And Ridge as a business was ran by really cool guys who didn't want to take any like reins away from us.
They were very happy with the $5 million a year business.
And they're like, we could always go back to shipping the orders ourselves, right?
Like, I mean, the guys are like, you know, Buddhists, like raised, raised Buddhists their whole lives.
I think that's part of it, but they were very much like, Hey, this is a good thing.
These guys are growing this business.
Let's give them more responsibility.
And, you know, you can't really exit agency businesses for all that much.
Right. One reason why we went all in on Ridge and did the merger is like an agency is probably worth maybe 1x client contracts and like maybe at the peak it was 2x client contracts right so like if your clients you know if you have a guaranteed million dollars in revenue you might be able to sell it for a million or two where ridge at the time were like fucking 10 billion dollar a year business right here we're gonna grow this thing to the fucking moon uh so it just made sense to put all our chips in that basket what was the metric that you saw that gave you the aha moment where you were like
all right they're doing 5 million now but this could be 30 this could be 100 was there one or two metrics or was it just a guess what what was that research process like it just it just seemed like they could always put another dollar into facebook and it could work right like the limiting factor wasn't like marketing or awareness it was like the operations of the business right we ended up like we had a year where we didn't have any wallets we couldn't keep them in stock so like we went from 15 million to 18 million one year and that was just because we couldn't make enough of the fucking product
and i'm like you know so often demand is the thing that stops these brands like you can only get to so big of a tam and that wasn't the case here uh you know we we did like a wearable and it was so hard to get people to buy the wearable like the cac on facebook was 400 back then okay it was like so fucking hard to get people to buy these wearables where the wallet it was like a six dollar cac like we just put up a new ad and they were just static images and they were just selling so that was the metric, man.
That's like an interesting process because a lot of people, myself included, will say, focus, focus, focus.
Get it right. Make it great.
It's going to take a decade plus.
But your story is more so like, I tried this.
I tried this. I tried this.
None of it worked. This thing was clearly the winner.
I should go all in on this.
Is that what your recommendation is?
Well, my recommendation as a person trying to make it is you should make the best decision at the time so whatever the facts are when the facts change make a different decision right uh strong beliefs held held loosely so like i'm like i'm at an agency i could have just like did that grind and be like i'm gonna be a vp at this agency when i'm 26 i'll make like 200 grand a year but i was like no these people suck i think the best decision for me is to just do what they're doing better right and then from the agency to ridge i'm like running an agency business i'm like running an agency sucks the ridge
thing seems to be going better so i should just do that instead i should find a way to to incrench myself inside of this business and then at ridge it was just like i mean for so long we did not launch any other products for eight years it was just selling more of the wallet because that's what was working as soon as it started to get a little hard then we pivoted to everything else which is funny because i would have thought early on i would have the uh a paralysis of analysis would have been like well there's not that many wallet like you're like if you told me 200 million dollars a year in revenue
i would say well you've you've sold every man in america a wallet like there are no more wallet buyers you know what i mean that's like one of my uneducated self -limiting belief a little bit would have been on that if you said 200 million a year i'm like well there are no well there are no no more people who need a wallet dude it's a weirdly big tam like the reason why like we in you know in retrospect i could tell you all the reasons why ridge wallet worked it's a 10 billion dollar a year tam okay and like most of that is luxury brands.
LVMH sells like $4 billion a year in men's wallets, like Curing, they own Gucci.
They sell a ton of men's wallets.
But then Tapestry, which owns Coach, Coach does a billion dollar a year in men's sales.
So that's men's accessories.
No men are buying those products.
They're all gifts that are given to them.
And nobody's ever excited about getting those products.
So the reason why I'm very public that I think Rich can get to a billion dollars in revenue is because tapestry has a men's business doing a billion dollars a year in revenue with nobody loyal or passionate about that so i'm just going to make whatever they make uh in all of our cool colors and our cool materials and you know i think it's been so sexy to be talking about tech and ai these past 10 years right or you know tech for 10 years ai for 10 months but i was at like the All -In Summit and I'm looking at those guys and like the products they're talking about exist inside their phones, right?
Like they exist inside some server somewhere, but they're all wearing fucking cool suits and watches and leather belts.
And I'm like, okay, I'll just sell them all that shit.
Right. Like I'm just going to sell like all the, like the most practical thing ever, because also smart people don't enter the space.
Right. The reason why Ridgewell was able to be so successful is because we're the only people running Facebook ads for wallets.
Like then there's been a bunch of other like people who've started up and like and I've tried they've all ended up going out of business because it's really difficult to get right right like there is no repeat business you can't like believe that the LTV will come save you later it's very much like can you tactically acquire customers profitably every single day hey uh hey brown sean white sean's got that immigrant energy that I love he's got you know what I mean like he's got the what do you call it the korean restaurant i call it a korean korean convenience store owner energy you know it's just
like there's not like too too much overthinking it was like well you guys are all wearing this i'll just sell that right you know like yeah and i think you'll keep wearing this so you know uh munger has these great quotes where he's like his main thing is like instead of trying to be brilliant just avoid stupidity or he'll be like you know the best thing in the world is stupid competition.
And we just have not much and stupid competition.
It sounds like that's part of what in retrospect made Ridge work was you were like, Hey, look, we took the simple idea and, um, there's not a lot of other really smart, you know, DTC marketers that were doing this.
And so we were able to, to make hay.
Yeah, totally, man.
I mean, and to this day, the best DTC marketers are working on stuff like, you know, AG one, right?
Like they're selling supplements.
And it's because it's a better business.
Like undoubtedly, if there's an LTV tied to your business, like it's going to be better, it's going to be more valuable.
It's going to trade at a higher multiple.
But the other thing is like the best marketers have more or less left the industry, right?
Like in 2021, running an econ brand was incredibly cool.
It has gotten less cool every single year.
So there's less people doing it.
There's less voices.
There's less people talking about it.
And it's because it's fucking hard.
Like I'm unjokingly called the blue collar work.
It's like, you know, everyone wants to be shipping cool AIA products or everybody wants to be shipping, you know, something that isn't physical boxes to people's doors of products you actually have to like make.
Everyone wants to build, you know, the services of whatever.
So anyway, yeah, over the past four years, it's gotten really uncool to do what I do.
Do you guys on 200 million in revenue?
Are you able to make a good cashflow and profit or, you know, I know so many friends who have these companies and their numbers are huge, but they cash is always an issue.
Are you able to manage this well?
And, or at that scale, do you still struggle?
I think the reason why you guys asked me to be here is to talk about the fact that you can in fact make a profit running e -commerce brands.
So, uh, Rich has never raised any money.
We have no debt. So every dollar in this business, every dollar on my balance sheet, his profit that has been reinvested uh i've been able to make millions of dollars a year for the past couple of years running this business so yeah it can definitely be done man like i i bought a house in la directly because of selling wallets on the internet give us a sense of the timeline so you said kind of like i don't know it was 2016 ish right when you when you guys merge or you took over the brand but can you just give us kind of like a year one five five million when you when you started working with them.
Then it went to 10, then it went to 22.
Then it, you know, give us a timeline.
Yeah. And I'm fucking horrible at timelines.
So I'll give it my best.
It's basically been, it's like a 50 % Kager since I started working with the business.
So I think they did a Kickstarter in 2013, the first year they do like a million in revenue in 2015, they probably do two or three.
When I meet them 2016, they do like 5 million bucks.
So I think it went from five to 10 to 15 to 18 and that's like the hardest year of the business when it went from 15 to 18 that was like we had no inventory with this massive fucking tax bill that sucked that was probably 2018 or 19 when that happened 2020 we do 50 million dollars so i might i must have been 2018 it must have been 30 so 18 to 30 to 50 and then we then 50 this the covid year so went from 50 to 100 and then it's been like yeah i mean last year was a i'll just say a multi -hundred million dollar year so let me let me let me let me recap that for the listener so you started in 15 i
didn't hear what you said but in 2016 5 million and then each year for that was 5 million 10 15 18 30 50 100 with last year being multi -hundred that's incredible growth Yeah.
Yeah. Something like that.
So it's been super fun, man.
You know, and Sam, you brought up, have I sold every wallet in America?
That was like one of your concerns, right?
So, like I said, it's a massive Tam, right?
And I always say that we're a great uncle gift.
Like you guys are going to go to Christmas or you guys are going to go to fucking a birthday or whatever.
And you have to buy some guy in your life a present and you don't know his size, right?
The Ridge wallet's a perfect price point.
You can get one on sale today for like 76 bucks and it is sizeless.
And like every guy in your life, you'd be like, hey, look, it has your favorite sports team on it or it has carbon fiber or whatever else, right?
So it's a perfect uncle gift.
And most of our products are probably sold as gifts, right?
Some woman in their life buying it for some guy in their life.
And the wallets are about half of revenue right now.
The other half of revenue is all the other stuff we've launched.
So the biggest unlock we've ever had was in 2022.
we started selling men's wedding bands.
And once again, this is a category where people thought I was so fucking dumb to sell men's wedding bands.
They're like, it is a commodity good.
Like who the hell is buying this?
The first year we do eight figures.
It is the highest margin, fastest growing part of my company is selling men's wedding bands on the internet.
So let's, let's talk about this.
Cause we're in this group chat that you, you have, which is like a bunch of, bunch of DTC brands.
I don't know, I don't know what the cutoff is.
i think i'm like below whatever the cutoff was supposed to be but you let me in which was nice of you you're in the uh like the charisma hire yeah exactly i'm the personality hire so so i um you you talked about like going into new categories and like the wedding band was obviously a smash success you've said the wearable thing maybe wasn't as big of a success and you had this kind of interesting way of looking at it because i just thought ridge wallets that kind of like the the sort of carbon fiber metal wallet company and you were talking about like Montblanc and you were talking about these
other almost like luxury accessory brands.
And that was the vision you had for the company.
When did that vision kick in?
Um, so like, when did you reframe what the company is?
Cause I think entrepreneurs, we hear stories where somebody already has the vision and they already have the right frame and it sounds beautiful and big and, and really appealing.
Um, but at the beginning, they don't always have that, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, there's a video of him on a couch somewhere.
And somebody's like, Are you going to expand past colleges?
He's like, no, that wouldn't be cool.
And now he's, like, got satellites above India giving people internet so they can use Facebook.
Like, you know, your vision expands as you grow.
When did your, the vision kind of change or when did you reframe it?
And secondly, how do you think about going into new categories?
Yeah, well, I'm a very paranoid person.
So, like, in 2018, I'm like, this is going to end.
We have to fucking find some other shit to sell.
So we got into backpacks and phone cases and all this stuff pretty early in 2018.
and we the first year we did like four million dollars in backpack sales or maybe it was three million it was like a big chunk of revenue and we canceled that program because i was too stupid to know that was like actually a good amount of backpacks i was like i'm like the wall is doing 20 million dollars how come we can't do 20 million dollars in backpacks in retrospect we've since relaunched backpacks so i was just too stupid right so we were always looking for new products to sell mostly because i was worried that i was going to sell every wallet to every man in america But as you learn more
about the industry, the very common thing is very large holdcos holding lots of accessory brands.
Like LVMH is just an accessory brand.
Everything inside their portfolio just sells accessories, mostly to women, but there are occasionally pop -ups of very strong men's accessory brands.
Mont Blanc is owned by Richmont.
They own Cartier. That is the strongest men's accessory brand.
And they do $500 million a year.
You think it's going to be pens.
Pens are like 18 % of revenue.
It's mostly just like small leather goods, right?
And it's across the world, people buying each other gifts, like wallets and backpacks and belts and everything else.
So there's a playbook here.
It's like, you have to find a group of customers who like you.
You have to continue to make products that they like and sell it into them.
And I am more ruthless with product expansion than I think a lot of brands are.
And I think more people should just try.
They're really worried about hurting brand.
And I'm like, your customers never fucking think about you.
Like you're lucky if somebody is mad you launch something.
Like, you know, I always go to – like Bic is one of my favorite brands.
Like they make lighters and they make pens and they make razors, right?
And we buy all of those products independently, and they're best in class.
I didn't even think of the – I didn't even think of those three.
Yeah. You saying that, I'm like, oh, it's the same.
Yeah, yeah, and they're the best in class in all three of those.
If you want a disposable razor or a cheap pen or a lighter, that's the only one.
They own those markets.
And it's just because the guy had a plastic factory and he's like – it's a French company.
And they're actually – they got into tattoo removal now, right?
Like they're making like – they just bought a bunch of tattoo companies because they're like, yeah, whatever takes plastic, we're just going to do those things, right?
And it doesn't violate anything in your brain because you just – like that's just the way it's always been.
So I think it's more elastic than a lot of people want to admit.
And brands die by being too rigid by that.
Like all birds should have got into fucking betting or like all these type of things, but they didn't.
So now they're just a fucking dead shoe company, right?
You should just be so ruthless with that product expansion.
You're a very charismatic guy.
You have a lot of interesting parts of your personality that I enjoy.
What attributes would you say are most responsible for the rigid success, you think?
One, it's a very trust -forward organization.
It's a very transparent organization.
When I say trust forward, six of us own it.
You know, three of them are father, son, best friend, like literally would die for each other.
And then me and my CMO Connor, I lived with him for fucking five years.
Like the guy, we, I was talking last night, there was a time when we were running the agency where we did not have a thousand dollars.
Like we would have to take, his dad gave him a car and it was like a 1997 Honda Civic that smelled and like paint was peeling, windows didn't work.
We would take it to meetings.
we would have to park it behind buildings so people didn't see us get out of this fucking junky car.
And, you know, tying it to that, it's like not being, not being scared to go back to zero.
Right. Like I'm from like a very poor, bad area where kids died of fentanyl overdoses.
And like, I lived in a flophouse with like, like there was like 14 guys living in bunk beds when I moved to LA.
And so I'm like, dude, not scared to go back there.
So just more, more willing to take risk things are never that bad also being willing to eat shit i'm like bro if i have to fucking be a waiter i will figure it out right um yeah so i yeah that fortitude like not being like so ego tied to whatever the fuck you're doing if i if i have to pack boxes i'm gonna pack boxes right what are the ways people get uh e -comm wrong so we've you talked about all birds right it was a a product that was hot and now the stock is you know dead there's you know a bunch of other kind of famous examples of that.
And then there's companies like yours, which is keep scaling profitably, you know, never took a dollar a debt, never took a dollar of investment and made it work.
What are the kind of, give us like your, your version of the do's and don'ts.
And maybe just start with the don'ts, like the dumb shit that people do, the bad decisions that people make or the, the common traps you see people fall into.
Cause I'm sure, you know, that's your network is E -com.
So you see the full spectrum, people who totally flop, people who grind away for years and get nothing out of it and people who excel and succeed?
Yeah. So you can't, you can't out muscle a TAM.
So like, understand what you're selling and how the market actually is.
I see amazing operators waste time with horrible opportunities, right?
Like, like the TAM is what the TAM is.
And if you're like the number one fucking garlic press seller, like that's kind of a meme in the community.
Like, dude, I'm like, and you're executing ruthlessly to be the number one garlic press seller.
That is worse than being the 12th best creatine gummy, right?
Because that market is exponentially growing.
There's LTB tied to it.
So many people just waste energy and time on these horrible fucking product categories.
So you can't beat a TAM.
You're not better than the trend.
So bone broth, there was companies that exploded, got to $80 million in revenue.
It was like, dude, this is the new way people are going to consume calories, bone broth.
That is now at a 30 -year low because that's not the cool thing anymore, right?
Same with keto stuff.
Yeah, exactly. So there's a guy from IQ Bar, his name's Will, he's incredibly smart.
He talks about his trend surface area.
So it's like, look, people talk about their luck surface area.
He's like, I make products to have as much trend surface area as possible.
So if keto's hot, I'll be keto.
If gluten -free's hot, I'll be gluten -free.
If it's sugar that's cool or non -sugar or like whatever I'll I'll make those products to just hit whatever the trend is and I'll just change my packaging so I'm always top of trend and you're not better than the trend right so that's the point I'm trying to make is you can write it up but as soon as it crashes you'll crash with it and then my third one the most controversial one is that LTV isn't real like lifetime value only works if you're alive so most brands die waiting for LTV right and what you mean by that is you got to be profitable early on on that customer you acquired if you acquire
the customer for $200 and he only made you know $20 and you're saying oh the i the ltv it'll all pay off that's kind of what you're talking about right versus the way you guys do it is you're trying to be profitable either first purchase or are you guys profitable first purchase or is it like you know a month or two later what where you guys at dude i have to be profitable in the first purchase you think people are coming back to buy a second wallet in a month It's like, I'm like, dude, the LTV from wallet customers is like maybe in 90 days I get 10%.
So like it's very much I have to be, I have to turn not a contribution margin, like actual true paying for all my fixed costs every time I sell a wallet to somebody.
Can we play a game called Change My Opinion?
And this is for both of you guys.
I have a bone to pick with your industry.
I think Sean's heard me with this spiel before.
What frustrates me sometimes, not exactly you guys, but I'm going to use you as an example, but people who all they worry about is the CAC and the LTV and the TAM of these industries, and they don't spend any time actually thinking, is this product awesome?
Is this the best? Is this truly solving a problem?
And it bothers me sometimes that it's more of an arbitrage, not exactly thinking about can I create a widget that makes a customer's life better and is of high quality I wish that more people in this industry sort of talked about that a bit more do you think that's a fair criticism or where am I wrong on this I mean I think it's a fair criticism my industry's been washed out though so like the people you're talking about probably have all left it's there's so few people left in e -comm like like sean brought up like the group chat maybe two people respond every single day and one of them's me tab
like it's it's like we're at we're at like a multi a multi -year low of interest in the industry so like yeah all those people have left the people who are still here and shipping dude i bring up hex glad you guys want to talk about like amazing um yeah so like i'm very you tweet about them all the time and like they inspired me because you said they like worked for three years finding the perfect pan okay so when i met danny it was 2020 they they didn't have a website he says they did but like you couldn't check out on the fucking website okay they they were fucking selling pans at trade shows
and like county fairs cooking up eggs themselves right in costco roadshow so not even in costco they had to pay to show up at Costco and fucking cook up these eggs.
And they, from 2020, they'll do, I mean, it's documented at this point over a half a billion dollars a year.
They got to hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in annual turnover with a hundred million plus in profit.
Danny will fucking shoot me for saying all this stuff, but I think it's all pretty rare public.
Gordon joined the brand.
They have Fox as an investor now.
Pre all that, they were doing nine figures in ibra a year okay didn't gordon ramsey like write a huge check he didn't just like sort of join the brand he like invested a pretty sizable amount or what was he part of around or was it him personally investing in it that's all public there's like there's like a thing he came in with fox on some on something and like you know because fox it's like a three -way deal fox wants to give him money to make shows and he wants to get more equity in hex clad so it's like a big three -way gotcha gotcha dude i have like 12 hex clad pants in my are they awesome
sean they're great you know i don't know if they're the best pans because i don't try 100 pans but they're way better than the pans i had before and to the point where i bought a second set of them because i was like these are great i'm happy with these pans yeah and they put years into that product development like they actually like they care about their customers what it comes down to is respecting your customers if you're just like that's why i don't like info products like if you don't respect your customers if you're just like trying to arb them or like you know we have a customer name uh
so our customer is everyday dad we call him ed and i'm like almost every meeting i'm like are we respecting ed are we delivering value to ed right everyone has an ed in their life think about like your guys's brothers or your dads he's just like a guy he likes widgets and like he loves fishing and like he loves nfl like that's fucking ed and i'm like look ed has ed has paid for everything in my entire life we need to take care of Ed.
We want to make sure Ed gets like the best, coolest shit possible, that we give him great value and great deals.
And that's what Hexclad did.
And like, we're talking about like, I think this industry, it's a bad rap because so many people have entered it.
And so few people have left with any amount of money or like the people who did leave with money.
Like it was like a greater fool theory.
They were just tricking somebody to give them money and then they bailed out.
But then there's companies like Hexclad where there'll be a 50 year brand.
There'll be a generational brand and they're fucking crushing it.
So it's possible. They're buying Super Bowl ads.
Like, I mean, this is, you know, they were bootstrapped up until like two years ago, like a bootstrap brand getting that done.
It's fucking amazing.
Yeah, I think Sam, what you said is true that marketing skill is the core competency for most of the winners in this space.
Most. There's a couple who just really nailed product or community, right?
And then they just, they built slowly brick by brick over, over the, over a decade.
But for the most part, the people you'll hear about and the people you'll meet, they're great because they are great at doing Facebook ads and Google ads or now TikTok content.
And so that's true.
But at the same time, you're like, oh, I hate that.
It's this CAC to LTV thing.
Well, it's like, guess what?
When you sit down with your team, you're like, how do we raise LTV?
Right? Like, there's some natural gravity, like Sean saying, like you buy a wallet every seven years.
You're not really going to change that.
But like for my product, you do buy it way more often.
You know, in the first six months, we double our, double the amount that they paid us on the first order, right?
So it's really, it's a movable number, right?
We can actually affect that.
And then you're like, all right, well, how do we increase LTV?
It's like, yeah, you could spam them with emails.
You can spam them with text messages.
But guess what? The better way to do it is to make an amazing product that they're gonna want to buy again and like lower the return rate.
How do you lower the return rate to get more profit, right?
It's like make a better quality product.
And so I think that for anybody who's actually going to try to win, you will have to make an amazing product.
Otherwise, you won't be able to do the ad arbitrage you're trying to do because how else could you increase the LTV if everyone hates your product or it's not doing anything for them?
And so I think the people who stick around and actually win in the long run are the ones who do what you – Yeah, I think those are good answers to the question.
I think that when I see someone making a boost your testosterone thing, I'm like, dude, I don't know if any of this works or if they're just really good at making a label that's appealing.
And so I start to lose confidence in the industry as a whole.
Oh, totally. I'm actually curious if you guys have any of these DTC brands where you're like, this product is amazing.
And so it's actually really good to hear that HexCloud is one of them.
Do you guys have any other favorites?
Well, going back to the supplement side, a lot of it is like, I mean, a lot of this work is being done for the co -manufacturers, right?
Like there's co -packers that actually do all the formulation.
So a lot of times people are just showing up and buying stuff off the shelf.
So if you're getting any sort of supplement, like it's probably the same supplement white labeled a hundred times.
And that's just like the way the industry works.
So, you know, I would put hard goods in a special category and like, we talk about DTC brands.
I mean, all of my favorite fashion brands are small and independently owned, right?
Like, does that count?
Like, this is Buck Mason, these pants are James purse, right?
Like, I just got a suit from Billy Reed.
Like, these are all small independently owned companies, right?
That are, that are running.
They have Shopify websites.
Does that count as DTC, right?
It's, it's very much like there's there's a a black box of bad wrap products and i think a lot of supplements that come from commands right or anything to do in the health and wellness space like that is like typically where there's a bunch of shit but if you buy a ridge wallet you're gonna get what is on the package you know what i mean like right or one of our phone cases or whatever it's like a fucking phone case man like it's pretty good what um who else is crushing it so what are some ddc brands that we wouldn't know or we wouldn't really realize how how well they're doing um just because we're
not in the space we're not paying attention yeah the other reason you guys called me here to talk about the woobles okay the woobles is fucking crushing it uh the woobles okay so what are what are the woobles so yeah we are we are three young adult men we're not the core customer right it is a uh crocheting product so it is like you make little characters and they have licensing and like there's little education it's like basically like either it's you know young people doing it to have less screen time or it's you're doing with your kids so they have less screen time and that's awesome yeah dude
when i met them they might be they might have been doing 10 million dollars a year like they in two years they've gone from 10 to probably 150 million dollars in revenue like no no capital raised they are still and i really i like them and i respect them they will not fucking launch subscription boxes they're like yeah we don't think it's that important i'm like jesus fucking christ like if i could shoot these people i would because they won't do subscription it's like the perfect product like it is this educational it's fun it's connecting with your family like it's this movement against screen
time which is like a big trend that they can take advantage of there's every month they can have new characters they could just show up in your door you do them there's a little community aspect it's the single best brand and execution that i've ever seen like this will be a billion dollar exit because they're so fucking good at it there's never risen any goddamn money just like it's two people just putting it together in north carolina how did they even think of this like well how did this get on their were they big crocheters what is the origin story of this yeah so i think it's a it's a husband and wife
team I think she was just crocheting and she's like yeah I would love to have little guides and there was like an Etsy community of people like selling crochet guides and she's like she would buy them and then she'd be like okay I'm gonna make my own and then she would you know release them and then it's like oh maybe I should just sell the my my little crochet kits and bam fucking explodes dude so like if you're listening to this and you're thinking like okay I want I'm I'm not washed out I want to try e -commerce I highly recommend getting into services first okay like You should learn how to
make money on the internet via services.
And if the show's called My First Million, you'll make your first million dollars delivering good value to people like me or like Woobles, whoever else.
Then find a trend that's very fast emerging, right?
Like I think no screen time.
I think creatine, those are the two biggest ones for the next two or three years.
Like if you can do a no screen time creatine crochet kit, something fucking, you'll figure it out, right?
Dude, I've spent so much money on Legos lately for that no screen time.
uh trend what are other no screen time i feel like um i feel like the microplastics is another another trend right like an air quality yeah dude yeah so like just glass everything glass bottles glass containers whatever just like imagine if you could just buy a backpack and they're like we guarantee there's no plastic in it fucking awesome just wrap it in paper ship to people that's another trend i think it's gonna be fast emerging um yeah no screen time just more physical tactical toys right like bringing back the fidget spinner but as like a focus tool right like i think there's a bunch of shit
you could do in there um but anyway those are fast emerging trends right now protein was a trend that's basically probably dead right pre -protein was collagen there's always these just like pockets of success you'll find and that's the beauty of the space it's like you know what it is right now in that space um what's the what's the early boob milk uh what's that called colostrum yeah oh my god i'm getting so many ads for colostrum yeah you know the other one will be like i think raw honey it had like a small moment i'm sure it's going to come back right there's like a bunch of new zealand honey
companies and if you if you were a founder where would you kind of look for these do you are you are you a proponent of look in your own life what are you doing or what is your wife doing that seems unusual but actually there's a passionate community?
Are you like, I scour Etsy and Reddit.
Is that where you would look?
How would you do this if you didn't know which trend to start with?
Right. So you should look in your own life because you probably don't have the skills to actually go out there and like, you know, or I'm assuming you have no resources to actually pick a trend and double down and actually deliver on those promises, right?
So you should find something in your own life that you actually know and are passionate about.
If you're a more seasoned professional, I think you can find those things, right?
And really what it would be is, I think Reddit's dead.
I think Etsy's dead.
Like that's AI slop basically at this point.
The initiative of the internet has happened to those two websites.
I would look at literally what's happening inside of Irwan.
Like I would just move to LA and go to Irwan every single day because those are the best people at catching trends.
Like they were anti -vax in fucking 1997, right?
Like they are very, very early on those things.
um and if you're if you're not going to do that then it's like you just you have to follow the girlies on tiktok right like the other one i bring up is pilates like pilates was a thing in 2000 it's having a massive resurgence right now and like once again we're three young men how are we gonna fucking make a pilates brand but pilates for guys probably could be another trend just needs a new name yeah totally well laplaz i think is what the actual name is uh oh no lagree something like that.
My wife knows. Yoga is a very much a downward trend, right?
And like this yoga was just a synonym for health and wellness and like, you know, non, just Jackdudes waitlisting.
I think that's actually changing and it'll be something else like Pilates or something else.
All right. I got a public service announcement for all the tech founders that are listening to this.
Listen, job number one for you is to get customers.
And ideally the bigger the customers, the better.
And I know when I was trying to do that, we would get somebody interested.
Oh man, there's a big fortune 500 company, or it's a, it's a company that's raised hundreds of millions of dollars.
They want to work with us.
This is so exciting.
And then we hit the wall and the wall was the security and compliance team.
And all of a sudden we could not land our biggest customers just because we were shooting ourselves in the foot by not being security ready and compliant.
And so if you want to solve this, use Vanta.
Vanta is an all -in -one solution.
It helps you get audit ready.
And it's quick. It's painless.
It's easy. They're the number one guys doing this.
There are 8 ,000 companies that use them.
YC companies use them.
We use them. And so if you want Vanta to help simplify your security and compliance program, to help you streamline anything, take all those manual security tasks and automate them, you should use Vanta.
If you listen to this, you actually get $1 ,000 off Vanta too.
So we got a deal for you.
Go to Vanta .com slash million that's v -a -n -t -a dot com slash million use vanta that's what all the cool kids are doing what are some other uh going up and going down give me like a topic or a trend and tell me is this a buy or sell moment well look this is not a hot take this is not scott galloway fucking but all all big box department stores like it's very very much like we just saw joyne's fabric go down we just saw container store go down we just saw party city like that's gonna accelerate like there's we are over commercial real estate there's too many big box stores like even target is having
a really fucking hard time and my biggest wholesaler is best buy i crush it been best buy.
Um, but all of that shit is probably the, the FUD isn't real enough.
It should be even more real like Nordstrom's Macy's.
Like I think small independent, uh, brick and mortar shops really do work.
Like if you're in LA, you go to century city, like, but the, I was walking around Bloomingdale's and you know, like 10 years ago it was, or even 20 years ago, probably it was like the like the the number one place to buy women's fashion like women contemporary fashion it was the coolest thing ever i'm walking around they got blouses that are eight hundred dollars and it's dead on a saturday like nobody's fucking shopping there at the at the best mall in la so i think the fud isn't even you should we should we should be even more scared that there's going to be more collapses and any any sort of commercial
real estate that's like 10 000 square feet plus that is like selling physical goods um the other one is probably better for you candy like uh there's like vcs have really backed this like better for you artificial sugar like you go to a fucking target like there's all of these like weird artificial sugar brands i think it's going to come out that that causes cancer and rfk is going to be pretty against it so anyway i'm probably not launching anything in there probably probably launching real sugar and that's a very hot tape that could add age really bad that like real sugar is going to make a massive
resurgence. What do you think about, like, you know, these, like, other people who do the same model you did?
Services to products.
So, for example, I think the guys behind Bres, which is that, I think it's a, I don't know what it is, like a mushroom drink or it's, like, an adaptogenic drink.
It's basically, it's like, it gives you a high, but it's not alcohol.
It's like mushrooms or weed or something.
Their website says Brez is micro -dosed cannabis and mushrooms in a can.
It's a weed drink. Okay, great.
It's a weed drink. Those guys were agency people, right?
I begged to be the first check in Brez.
There's screenshots where they said they were working on it.
I'm like, let me be the first check because Aaron is incredibly smart.
He was the first person to figure out how to work with Meta to have controlled substances be advertised.
So like he, that's like his specialty.
Like if you had a cannabis company, you had to go through him and his agency called We or Lucid to actually do the cannabis advertising on Meta, right?
He found a compliant way to do it.
So he's incredibly smart.
Nick's an amazing operator, ran a great agency.
That's the best model.
The other person is Zach from Homestead.
He has a company called Hollow Socks.
Like, I don't know how much time we have, but to unpack the history of e -commerce, e -commerce 1 .0, selling random shit on the internet, okay?
Like, whatever, pets .com.
E -commerce 2 .0 was marketplaces.
It was eBay versus Amazon versus everything else.
E -commerce 3 .0 is what we consider DTC 1 .0, which was like the first brands coming online, the Allbirds, whatever else.
Then you get DTC 2 .0, which was the COVID hotness, the peak, everything exploding, right?
We are now in DTC 3 .0, which is small service providers pivoting to brands with very lean teams and CreateGummies, HoloSox, Brez, the three best examples.
CreateGummies has a team of eight people.
I think we'll do $40 million this year, right?
HoloSox is a team of five people.
They'll do $30 million this year selling socks, most of them had ads, right?
And then Brez, they're public with their numbers.
Follow Aaron on LinkedIn, and I think they did $5 million last month in revenue, okay?
In beverage, in a controlled substance, that's fucking insane.
That company's worth $300 million today, right?
And I think their team's incredibly small, maybe 20 people at this point.
So yeah, that is the best bull case for e -commerce right now.
Service operators who have seen the rise and fall of all these different brands, have learned from them, have spent their money to get good at ads, right?
Launching targeted, hyper -specific brands.
And the three I named are the best.
Sean, you should go to drinkbrez .com.
Do you see their website?
That's the prettiest website I've ever seen in my life.
Yeah, that's usually not a good thing.
The prettiest websites are not usually the ones that work the best.
I hear you and I am on board with that.
This is one of the exceptions.
Look at this. But I think what happens is you see the front.
The front of the house is not always where the traffic is going.
So the front of the house is kind of the hero.
It's the brand. It's the aspirational.
But you run your ads and maybe you're running straight to a PDP or to a TikTok shop or to different things like that.
I think they're very heavy into TikTok, right?
Like their model is the TikTok blueprint, which we just did an episode with Rob from Rob the Bank about like the TikTok blueprint that a bunch of the brands are using right now.
And I think Brez is doing that where it's organic.
It's kind of the TikTok affiliate slash organic model where you're getting really cheap CPMs because TikTok videos can just pop off and you're putting out thousands of pieces of content a month, but, uh, and it's driving sales on, unlike the way, you know, I've been doing it or you've been doing it, Sean, which is like a lot of, um, you know, Facebook, Google ads, you know, you put a dollar in it's attributed exactly how much that, that ad generated in revenue.
And you just sort of optimize from there.
The TikTok game is a little bit different.
It's a bit of a spray and pray game for the most part.
Yeah. So I just sent you guys, this is from Aaron, from Brez.
They did $4 .6 million in revenue in month 21, January.
This is their LinkedIn post.
So this is all public information that they share.
TikTok shop was $37 ,000.
Amazon revenue was $342 ,000.
I'm not going to read this for the audience.
Maybe I'll just show it, but dude, they're fucking killing it.
Bryce is awesome. They post their P &L basically every month on, it's not an actual P &L, but like, you know, sort of a marketing P &L on Twitter and LinkedIn.
It's great. We could read this.
So total net revenue, 4 .5 million.
Let's see. That's in, you said month 21 now?
Yeah. Yeah. It's like literally.
Then their ads, they spent a million dollars on Facebook, 400 ,000 on Google on TikTok ads.
They spent zero, but I know that they must be spending on the affiliate part of TikTok because I, if I'm on TikTok, I see Brez stuff all the time.
And it's always an affiliate link, you know, swipe up and you can sort of buy it from there.
App Love and $472 ,000.
It really seems like one of the keys of this business, like, and this is not always the case, but it's picking the right idea.
The right idea and the right angle, it seems like there's no other way to explain how something can get to $4 million in monthly revenue in 21 months.
Yeah, I mean, and the reason they were able to be right is because they're both agency operators, right?
Like they, the right people to launch a product like this.
And also it's so hard.
The reason why they're willingly sharing their P &L is they have nothing to hide and they don't think you can beat them.
Right. And I think anybody listening to this can't beat them because.
Are they shutting down their agency or they're just going to keep trying to do both?
Like, why would you run your agency once this happens?
Yeah. I mean, you end up just like, you know, selling it off or hiring operators.
I mean, Nick Shackelford, which was the partner in Brez, I mean, he had, you know, an events business.
He had an agency business.
He had an email business.
I think you just you find partners to take that over and you just put more time into this.
But I mean, early on, I was like willing to bet on these fucking guys because they're the best.
Sam, I want you to Google Nick Shackelford tattoo.
And tell me if you want to compete with this guy.
Oh, my God. His whole body is covered.
Yeah. From the neck down to his toe, every inch of his body is covered in a tattoo.
He looks like a guy from Prison Break.
Yeah, he looks like a Japanese murderer.
like you know how they do like the yakuza they do like the whole that's insane including his dick i mean he actually got it done man he said it was so painful oh my god it looks horrible i mean it looks great but i don't want to do it it looks painful yeah that's what i mean uh that's insane uh what do you think ridge is worth right now oh man i mean the the the market for a brand like us is at an all -time low and like like look well what's the all -time low number uh we'd probably a market clearing price is probably 300 million like i could probably clear that at the market with our growth and everything
it's really hard to sell my business right now and like i'm not trying to sell my business right now right like i think we have like by the end of the decade we'll be doing like five or six hundred million dollars a year in annual revenue really driven by this big tech rollout so like we're really big in best buy already we're going to be an apple we're going to be in verizon selling power banks, phone cases, cables.
We already sell our wallets in a lot of those places.
So that's like the next evolution of the brand is just more product expansion.
But it's hard for me to sell my brand when Solo Stove is in a public company and I think they're worth maybe 100 million on the public market, right?
Like they peaked at $2 .1 billion and now they're probably the market cap today is 100 million.
And they have like 400 plus million in revenue.
They own Chubbies. like uh it's very hard for my brand to go to market when if you squint we kind of look like them and they are they just need to be taken private there's a lot of take private needs to happen and interest rates are still too high to take a lot of stuff private so we're just waiting waiting for all that what would you want to sell if you weren't doing ridge if you had to sell ridge today what would you what other product I mean you're not a guy who would stop what other product would you want to sell yeah my goal for ridge eventually I'm not the long -term shepherd of this brand.
Like if it's going to go public or whatever, or most likely get bought by one of the roll -ups, like in our industry, that's, that's the exit path.
There's 10 strategics that end up buying brands like ours.
Um, I would like to net a hundred million dollars.
And then I would like to start a portfolio of brands and services, basically like, you know, everyone wants to have their own little PE, their own little family office type thing.
So I would launch a bunch of weird little e -commerce brands that I think are going to be trend -relevant and hire service providers to run that as businesses.
I love that you know what you want.
You know, you've mapped this out of like what your ideal setup is.
I love that. I love people who call their shot.
Do you, you talk about trends like, but you know, bone broth, it's hot, then it's not.
Keto, it's hot, then it's not.
And so like why go after a trend if it's going to ultimately, you know, do what trends do.
Most trends don't last forever.
So is that like building your sandcastle, you know, uh, building your castle on quicksand or something like that?
Like why, why go after a trend when trends have this like shelf life?
Are you trying to time an exit or are you trying to, you're going to pop trends?
What's the plan? If you're going to build on top of a trend.
Yeah, dude, going back to whale from IQ bar trend surface area, like you create a product and a trend because that's the the best way to grow is in a growing market you can be average in a growing market and grow very very fast right I was an average operator when Facebook ads were growing and that's why my business grew now I can be a good operator because I have to be right but when a market's growing very fast you could just be average and then once once you get some sort of success it's it's pivoting so like if I was in the bone broth business I would have told them like, Hey, we have to do
fucking protein focused bone broths or bone bars.
Like I, I'm that guy coming in here, trying to like disrupt whatever fucking business I'm in.
I'm like, we, yeah, if I was at bone broth, I'd be like, look, that's fine.
We should do that. We're going to do bone bars and we're going to get whatever.
Some Jack guy talk about how they're great.
Then I'd be in the bars business.
Then it'd be like, we've got to do bone supplements.
We're going to be the only guys doing bone, whatever marrow pills.
Like that's the type should I be pitching to him?
So, uh, I love that.
That's your answer.
Cause it's like, that's the attitude you have to have to win in that game.
My takeaway is Van, what a horrible game to play.
Uh, like, you know, I was just doing a podcast yesterday with a guy and he goes, uh, you don't want to be in the fresh produce business.
He's like, um, you know, you know, he's like, you want to be YouTube, not a YouTuber, right?
Just as a simple example, he's like, you take the best YouTuber and they're in the fresh produce business.
They have to keep running as fast as they can on that treadmill.
And if the treadmill gets faster and faster every year, and if they stop, they fall behind and there's a thousand other people on that treadmill.
And so same thing, like if you're on a trend and a trend, you know, almost by definition is going to sort of peter out and then the new trends will emerge.
That just seems like a really hard way to win in business when there's other styles of businesses that don't have that problem, right?
But I think, but Sean, I think you're both could be right.
I think the right answer though is to whichever, whichever path you take should fit your skill set and interest and you should commit to it and be that.
We had Moise on, Moise Ali from Native Deodorant, and we said, why don't you do something easier?
He goes, because I'm a merchant.
This is what I do. Yeah, I think that stuff is silly, dude.
No, it's not silly.
I actually disagree.
I think committing to a path is significantly better than not.
And if Sean Frank is committing to this trend thing, then he, yeah, it's exhausting for you because that's not your interest.
Yeah, but you can commit to a better path.
That's not true. What are you talking about?
How much better path can it be?
He's got a 10 -year -old company that's doing $200 billion a year in revenue.
That sounds like a good path.
I'm not saying what he's doing is bad.
I'm saying he's an outlier winner.
And even he's like, yeah, there's a company that's like us that does $400 million a year and is worth $100 million on the public markets, right?
Or we have to continually hop from one category to the next.
And he's in a better one.
It's more enduring.
But let's say you're on the bone broth type of thing where it's a wellness trend.
And the wellness trends or the diet trends, they change very rapidly.
Right. It's like, that's a hard game to play compared to like, you know, look at the other, look at the possible set of businesses you could go into.
That's, that's definitely on the hard side, dude.
Like e -com is definitely on the hard side and e -com on top of a trend is, is the hard version of the hard version.
Oh dude, look, I, I understand completely, but the reason why I'm in it is because it's permissionless.
When I was 22, nobody would let me build fucking Nvidia servers or whatever like you know a more robust infrastructure -led business right like if i was going to provide i don't know fucking routing cable services some random shit like that like maybe now you know i could get into that but e -commerce is permissionless and that's why i like it agencies are permissionless it's like the reason why we sold on shopify is because nobody would give us a uh nordstrom's po right like there's there's a level of there's a lot of SaaS is permissionless, communities are permissionless, there's a lot of things that are permission,
newsletters are permissionless, whatever, there's a lot of things that are permissionless.
The agency one is actually more permissionless than e -com because, you know, for e -com you have to buy inventory, right?
There is a capital requirement.
The agency one is different, right?
That's just, I'm going to hustle my skills and I'll get cashflow.
Then what you did was use that cashflow to then, you know, invest and continue to grow the brand, right?
But for most people, they get, I know a lot of people that got excited about e -com and didn't realize like how scaling works with e -com where yeah it's the it's like it people squint and think it's sass that's not it's like it's like your bit your problems get harder the bigger you get right like it's bigger po's it's more management it's everything else where you know if you're sass it's like you know if it's if it's if it's 10 zeros or a thousand zeros being processed through your thing who the fuck cares um hey sean you you've gotten more you're you're a great follow on Twitter because you're
hilarious but you're this perfect combination of being hilarious but also I think you're right because you've been there done that but has being as opinionated as you have been and willingness to call people out and this willingness to like say what you think has that ever held you back and do you regret doing that or do you think that like going all in on being a strong personality has benefited you I mean the only tangible negatives of being a public personality on the internet is is if and when you get sued because you will be sued right everyone gets sued and it's the cost of doing business
they will read your tweets in depositions so just like that is the reality right i think a lot of people like don't want to like offend you're like that's embarrassing or what like what did you mean by saying you want to shoot the wobble family dude no like i mean i was i got to pose why i told someone i was going to drop a nuclear bomb on them and they read that i ought to explain like i don't have access to nuclear weapons um but like i mean you should you should be yourself and authentic and uh my twitter has sold like 300 000 with the wallet so definitely it's a net positive and and your podcast
right so your personality and being public about what you guys how well you guys are doing with rage and being funny and opinionated led to you guys doing this e -com podcast.
And the e -com podcast pays you a bunch of money, right?
Like you guys are doing really, really well off that.
So that's paid off in a different way, right?
You want to talk about that?
Yeah, yeah. So I only have like four minutes.
I got to go to a call and do my real job.
Maybe something you guys don't know anything about, but...
Yeah, what are you talking about?
Huh? I take naps after this.
Yeah, so look, the reason why I got public on the internet is because in 2022, all of my friends moved across the whole world because of COVID and I didn't hang out with anybody.
And it sucked for everybody, 2021, 2022.
Like I used to have a community of people who talk about e -commerce and then they've all moved.
So I was just by myself and I'm like, let me just get on Twitter and start talking about e -commerce.
Um, and through that, I made a bunch of great friends, uh, because it's a very lonely thing running a big business.
Like, Like, you know, my best friends from high school, one of them goes to like crime scenes and cleans up like when somebody kills themselves or whatever.
And the other one does garage doors.
So like imagine trying to tell them being like, yeah, man, like, you know, I spent eight million dollars on meta, but I probably should have spent like they told me to shut the fuck up.
So you want to find friends who, you know, can, can, you know, have some sort of sympathy for what you're building.
So I got on Twitter, found those people.
um they're all like you know jason from hex clads on there mike beckham from uh simple modern he was like 200 million dollars selling fucking water bottles matt from peel a case we started a podcast yeah dude what's it called it's called operators so it's a it's a niche e -commerce podcast we have spin -offs we have marketing operators dude i think it'll bill at least two million dollars to sponsors but it might bill like four million dollars to sponsors and it's just us talking about e -commerce probably one tenth the listenership i mean I mean, way less, maybe 100 % of the listenership you guys
get. But because it's so niche, it's like way more of an actual community, right?
And I think people want to be you guys because you guys are like an entertainment show, right?
You guys are like a big show, massive reach, entertaining people.
But if you listen to this and you're an expert at something, do an incredibly niche YouTube channel because the sponsor integrations are just so much deeper.
Like our sponsors fulfill the ERP, right?
And, like, you guys don't know what that is, but if you're an e -commerce merchant, you need an ERP, and the annual contracts are $150 ,000 a year, and we've probably sold 100 of them, right?
So it's like they'll give us $600 ,000 a year because we're the only marketing channel for them, right?
Anyway, yeah, so we do a podcast.
I think that's great advice.
All right. We'll let you go.
We know you got to go sell wallets and rings and other great things.
uh shout out your twitter shout out your uh your url where do you want people to go okay go to ridge .com slash uh sean and buy a wallet that's the best way to support me right now in this moment of time never stop selling guys um we appreciate you man thanks for doing this all right that's the pod i feel like i can rule the world i know i could be what i want to i put my all in it like my days off on the road let's travel never looking back hey sean here a quick break to tell you an ev williams story he started twitter and before that he sold a company to google for 100 million dollars and somebody
asked him he said what's the secret man how do you create these huge businesses billion dollar businesses and he says well i think the answer is that you take a human desire preferably one that's been around for thousands of years.
And then you just use modern technology to take out steps, just remove the friction that exists between people getting what they want.
And that is what my partner Mercury does.
They took one of the most basic needs any entrepreneur has managing your money and being able to do your finance or operations.
And they've removed all the friction that has existed for decades.
No more clunky interfaces, no more 10 tabs to get something done.
No more having to drive to a bank, get out of your car, just to send a wire transfer.
They made it fast. They made it easy.
you can actually just get back to running your business.
You don't have to worry about the rest of it.
I use it for not one, not two, but six of my companies right now.
And it's used by also 200 ,000 other ambitious founders.
So if you want to be like me, head to mercury .com, open up an account in minutes.
And remember, mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank.
Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank and Trust members, FDIC.
All right, back to the episode.
