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Chris Brewer is an agency veteran, marketing expert, and former golf pro. Not to mention my business partner and OMG Commerce’s co-founder.
Each year, Chris has the privilege of talking with hundreds of DTC brands, both big and small. He hears about their goals, struggles, plans, and more. As a strategist, I also consult with large-scaling eComm brands. Through our perspectives, we’d like to highlight ways in which great brands get in their own way and offer some candid advice when it comes to working with agencies.
We love the brands we talk to and the clients we serve. But, like anyone else, brands can sometimes overlook how they inadvertently hinder their own growth. Here are a few topics we cover that we hope you’ll find helpful:
- Having goals that aren’t battle-tested.
- Still thinking like it’s 2020 in some areas of your business.
- Prioritizing automation and tools over strategy.
- Shooting for perfect data and ignoring actionable data.
- Stopping short of getting results.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Transcript:
Brett:
Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG commerce. And today we have the man himself, the co-founder of OMG Commerce, a repeat guest on the podcast, although it has been too long, some might say since he's been on the podcast. But today I have my business partner, Chris Brewer, on the show. Chris, how's it going? And thanks for taking the time.
Chris:
Thank you, Brett. I was beginning to think that I was in the penalty box. I really was. I wasn't saying I wasn't pushing, and then the invitation came.
Brett:
Yeah, well, what have I done? Why am I getting the invite back to the podcast? We previous shows were so good, and actually you still may hold the record for one of, I think Ezra has the record record, but that's that. That's understandable. It's Ezra Firestone, but you've got one of the top downloaded shows in the history of this show.
Chris:
It's a good thing I spent $12 on that fiber guy.
Brett:
Exactly, exactly. So hey, today, I'm really excited about this episode one because I do enjoy chatting with you and fun stuff always happens when we're on a call together or chatting. And so I know this will be no different, but we're going to get into some straight talk here. We're going to hopefully be transparent, maybe a little bit blunt, but in a loving way, and talk about from our perspective how D2C brands sabotage their own success. So how might you, dear listener and friend and beloved D2C brand owner, how might you be sabotaging your own success? And we only share this out of love, compassion, because we want you to succeed because we have to look at these things from our own perspective. When we talk to other agencies and we talk to clients and we ask, Hey, how do agencies sabotage their success? How do we as an agency, how are we tripping over ourselves and making mistakes potentially? And so hopefully this will be helpful. Now, Chris has a unique perspective because he talks to DDC DDC brands day in and day out. So Chris, I want to get into your background too, for those that don't know you, but what do you do on a day in and day out basis at OMG Commerce
Chris:
Day in day, day out, it starts early here at the home office. Got to get some solid coffee in me could do a plug because I just finished up my big box of just went blank on the name.
Brett:
Sounds like you need another cup, I
Chris:
Need need another cup. But it's just like all natural pod coffee that we have from, so you're
Brett:
Rocking the keur
Chris:
Egg, I'm rocking the Keur egg and starting off there and then my day starting out with looking at meetings coming up. So because I think we recently totaled this up and we knew it was a low estimate, but I'm talking with at least 25 brands a month-ish over, well over 200 conversations a year with not just D toc, but occasionally CPG brands, occasionally B2B com brands, but obviously a prevalence in the, and
Brett:
That's just tracked calls through One Source. You're also going to trade shows and you're getting on impromptu calls which don't end up in the CRM and several other things. So yeah, that's a really low estimate. But yeah. Yeah, you're talking to a lot of people.
Chris:
Oh yeah. I'm talking to a lot of people and I'm also active in some forums, e-commerce Fuel and Blue Ribbon Mastermind. And so I'm always trying to keep my finger on the pulse of what brands are talking about, just staying on top of trends. So between keeping my hand on the finger of, or the pulse of those kind of things. And then the calls I get really, it's kind of a cool place because I hear about stuff that's coming before it really gets out there in articles and blogs and posts and things like that. And I also, for the topic of this pod podcast also have been experienced to how D2C brands can sabotage their own success. And sometimes that's how they arrive because that's happened and we try to repair and sometimes counsel.
Brett:
Yeah, yep, exactly. And so yeah, you've got a unique perspective. One of the best ways to learn is to have your ear to the ground to talk to actual customers and clients because things just come out the fears, concerns, hopes, dreams, all that comes out when you're on these calls. And so we're going to dive in and hopefully provide some insight into what are ways you can better set yourself up for success, whether you're working with an agency or an in-house team or whatever the case may be. But how can you D2C brand really succeed and accelerate growth this year and beyond? So before we dive into that topic though, Chris, give folks like the 6 30, 60, 90 second background. Who is Chris Brewer? What did you do pre OMG and lay that on us.
Chris:
Wow, I got to go back 14 years to go pre omg. It's been a long time. But before that I was a multi-time entrepreneur. I had a direct mail company doing postcards and mass mailings in a localized area. Prior to that I was actually in digital me or in the digital printing field for billboards and an agency for outdoor advertising placement. So I've been on the traditional side of media with direct mail and out outdoor. And then I've also had jobs, I've had real jobs with companies of VP of marketing for a franchise group for a short and somewhat painful period. And then also was in national sales, helped lots of trade publication in the golf maintenance industry of all places. So a real interesting background, but obviously for the last 14 years I've been eating, drinking, sleeping, bleeding, and digital media.
Brett:
I think it's 13, but it's close. It probably feels like 14. How would you Yeah, because it's 2010. Anyway, it doesn't matter. 13, 14,
Chris:
That's when we officially started when we went to the event I thought was 2009.
Brett:
Oh, that could have been, you could be right. I'm thinking of incorporation. Anyway,
Chris:
When we actually started the, Hey, let's try Google Maps for local businesses
Brett:
Conversation. I think that may have been 2009. That is a good, really good point. Now you threw this out there really quickly, but I want to key in on it just for a second. You mentioned golf. What's your background of golf? Because I know we had some golfers listen to the show, they'd be fascinated to know your background with the sport of golf.
Chris:
I played high school golf, I played college golf and I went after my senior year of college. My parents were thrilled to hear that I was not going to go get a job. Instead, I was going to go try playing the mini tours. I played the mini tours in Texas and Florida for a couple of years where my favorite joke, I was the leading money spender. So even though I was quite good, I was not good enough and also just really didn't like the life on the road. So after that, I played amateur golf for obviously been playing amateur golf since then. And now I'm just a hack, just like anybody else can go out some days and shoot a nice little 74 and other days it could be an 85. And I'm burying my head in my sorrows and my wife hates those days. But I still love it. And I still rate golf courses for Golf Week magazine. So I travel, I'm headed to California and I'm taking my clubs next week and I'm going to try to find in between a couple of shows, some nice golf courses I can go rate for the magazine. So that's what I do to stay connected.
Brett:
It's amazing. It's just a reminder. There are different levels of good because if you were to go out and golf with any normal person, they'd be like, whoa, this guy's amazing. And you are, you're good. But then there's certain levels even of world class. So kudos to you for being on the tour for keeping the passion up. Yeah. So let's dive in man. So let's talk about D2C brands. How do they sabotage success? I've got several tactical things I'm going to share and I'm going to kind of chime in as you share some thoughts, but we'll just go in no particular order here. We'll just share based on your perspective, several hundred conversations a year. Where do D2C brand owners trip over themselves or sabotage their own success?
Chris:
Yeah, I think one of the ones, I'll kind of skip around on my list cause I kind of went just random thinking. But one of the things that I think is a good place to start is what I wrote down. They don't battle test their goals. And what I mean by that is one of the questions we ask, because I say this 10 times a week, it seems we're a low volume agency. We're very picky about who we bring on board. So we need to understand if our goals are in alignment. So I'll ask, what does success look for you in the next six months? Be as clear as you can in terms of your metrics. And so I'll give you an example from 25 minutes ago, I had a Shark Tank brand, I won't mention who it was, but they said we want to double sales in 2023 with a five to one marketing efficiency ratio.
So now what I don't know from that and what we actually didn't explore in the call, cause I ran out of time, but is like how did you come up with that number? How is that battle tested? How is that viable? And actually in our team's field, I tell people that we're going to take what you give me and we're going to look in your account. And that's always fun is sometimes you get, hey, we got to have a five to one return on ad spin and we want to grow three x in the next two years. We look in their account that may have some history. They have never hit that number, never, not even close. So they haven't battle tested their goals, but they have an idea or a wish or a pipe dream that if they got on with, I could just say any, A lot of other agencies, they're just going to say, sure, we'd love your business. Yeah, we'll
Brett:
Give it a shot. We'll give it a shot, we'll give it a it a
Chris:
Go. And then that's why, that's where then we see later in forums that I'm attending, agencies suck. They're terrible. And a lot of times it's just like they started out completely misaligned whether they knew it or not.
Brett:
Yeah, I do like that thought a lot. If you're got a goal and we all need to have goals, you need to know what direction are you headed. And this something we talk about a lot as an agency is that goals help set direction, but it's like the habits and the daily practices and your daily routines and what you do consistently, that's what actually brings results, not goals, but if you're shooting for something that is unattainable or unreasonable, you are setting yourself up for failure. Yeah. And the five to one merges for those listening to unpack that a little bit, that's where you're looking at spending 25% of your total revenue on marketing basically, or 20%, sorry, where you want to get a five to one return on your marketing dollars. And that's looking at total revenue, total ad spend, that type of thing. When you're looking at RO ads, that's when you're looking at return on ad spend in platform.
So what is Facebook or Google or TikTok or what are they reporting in terms of sales generated from your ad spend? And yeah, it's a really valid point, Chris, that if your goal is something that you've never hit before and never even gotten close, then it begs the question, what makes you think you can get there? And agents, some agencies are good, our team is really good. We know some other agencies that are rock solid, but we're not miracle workers. You need to know, hey, who is your market and what are your landing pages and things like that. And so yeah, battle testing your goals. I like that.
Chris:
And piggybacking on that a bit, which leads into another topic is sometimes what's happened is just in the last, let's call it three, four years of the D2C C boom including the covid boom, is that some brands are still wearing their masks figuratively because they're living in, well hey, we did this in 2020, how can we get back to that? And a lot of times I'm finding which I is regrettable in some ways, it's great when I can talk to a brand that's been around since 2010 or 2012 or 2014, we can go back and see the progression and where things were. Whereas a lot of brands launched 28, late 20 18, 20 19, they don't have reality. And also before a lot of the data changed and things that allowed really rapid scale on meta and other platforms. So I think that's why it's so important to have really great advisors, whether it's a consultant or an agency or another brand that you trust that can help break through some of those things to find what is the real truth here.
Brett:
I like it. And just kind of piggyback on that, what are some of the things that maybe brand owners don't understand or just aren't admitting about the current environment that are potentially tripping them up?
Chris:
Well, the current environment right now is just on a call with 12 individuals late last night, 9, 9, 10 o'clock. One of them works with large VC funded brands, people with 5,000, 150 million in the bank. He said they're not spending the money completely pulled back
Brett:
In terms of new investments, new acquisitions, things like that,
Chris:
Right? And so with that, what I see is just they stop taking risks in the current environment. And so there's this pullback, there's this foxhole that hey, we're going to wait this out, we're going to reduce spend. And I dunno if that's in answering your question, but it's related to the same topic in terms of not paying attention to the macro environment and just having blinders to that,
Brett:
Right? Yeah. It's easy to still take that 2020 mindset of e-commerce is on fire and growing like crazy. And certainly we've had a few reality checks since then or some big shifts since then in terms of supply chain issues and then inflation and slow down and e-com, stuff like that. But it's easy still to get in that previous mindset. But yeah, there's a shift happening now. I think most people have felt it, and I think we're all concerned about where things are headed, but I think we have to sometimes double check. But is my thinking related to this channel or this goal or this platform, is that still rooted in 2020 or is that based on what I'm seeing today? Cool. Well
Chris:
That's I, I'll give you a compliment. I think you've done a really great job from a CEO and leader perspective, leader perspective in the e-commerce space is really champion championing third party data and tools and where is your source of truth? That's a one question you told me to ask and it's been a great question, which is, and I think that's a good sabotage that I didn't write down. I don't know that you did either, was just what is your source of truth? It may be good to spend a little bit of time because there may be really folks also on the podcast going third party attribution. What do you mean?
Brett:
Yeah, yeah, that's a really good one. I did write down something related to attribution and getting the right data, but yeah, understanding what is your source of truth going to be? And we talk to very sophisticated d TOC brands that have all kinds of custom tracking and they've marked up different Google analytics reports and they've got backend tracking and they've got their CR CRM connected to Shopify and they're doing complex stuff where other people, the people that just mainly manage what they're seeing inside of Facebook and inside of Google. And there's not really a right or wrong, but the key is what is your source of truth going to be? So what do you believe the most, and really the most important thing there is what metrics are you measuring that lead to the right business and financial outcome? This is something that I talked about with Robert Ray Hill from Triple Whale and talked about this with others and we talk about it internally is that you can't just obsess over return on ad spend, right?
Return on ad spend is important, but it's only important if it's impacting your business metrics. It's only important if it's helping actually grow sales and grow profits and make you a more valuable company. You can't take row ads to the bank. And so it is understanding, okay, what is our source of truth? What do we believe the most? What is the most accurate, knowing that nothing is 100% accurate when it comes to attribution and performance tracking, and then what lines up with our business goals. And so one of the things that I wrote down is I think there's some brands that are obsessing over perfect or they're obsessing over getting it right instead of obsessing over actionable, let's get data that's actionable, at least directionally accurate so we can make good decisions, know where to spend more money, where to spend less money rather than obsessing over being perfect.
Chris:
Boy, that is a big one, and I actually, I had took one of my takeaways from the Harvard Business Review and actually that was one of the other elements in the Harvard Business Review about just why businesses and general sabotage their success. And that is a focus on perfection rather than allowing some of the things that, especially in e-commerce sales are going to be coming into play. And I hear that some of the potential partners that we gently decline are those individuals where I'm picking up vibes on the call that there's not going to be much room on either side of the line and that's going to lead to a bad outcome usually.
Brett:
For sure, for sure. Cool. What are some of the other things that you've noticed where brands get in their own way?
Chris:
One is kind of keeping your eye off the ball on your inventory. I could pivot just real quick to the Amazon space because this was another one that came up today. Brand was having an incredible traction and they had a big lift in sales that was caused by some external factors. They hadn't thought that through and they hadn't ordered enough stock and they went out of stock and going out of stock on Amazon, it's like it's the last thing, want to, it's one of the last things you want to have happen. And so they were talking about how long is it going to take us to recover this and what are we going to need to do? But out allowing things, keeping your eye off the ball, whether it's your inventory or your basics or if you're a brand leader that you've got other people on your team making sure there's a reporting cadence where they can come to you with these executive summary types of things in the business like that maybe you don't, aren't able to keep your eye on this, but make sure somebody is and that you're looking at those things.
Brett:
Yeah, it's really good. While we're on the topic of Amazon, I've got one to share here that I think has come up a lot. We've noticed this trend happened starting several years ago. We do a lot with Amazon advertising and the trend has definitely been for both agencies and brands to adopt automation, to use tools that automate bids, take some of the manual labor out of managing your ads, and it's not all bad. I think in the early days of those tools, we would've argued and we had the data to back it up that you could do better doing manual adjustments, but nobody really wants to do manual adjustments. But here, here's the mistake that I see people making. I think there's some brands out there that value automation over strategy. They believe that if we can just automate some of these little things, that's all we need.
And so let's pay less money for that. Let's go affordable, we'll just automate and we'll move on when really strategy is what moves the needle, not the automation piece or not the little bidding up and bidding down. And so that's what we have been preaching on the Amazon side, but also in the DDC space for Shopify stores. And with Google is that the overall strategy you take, whether it's with your Shopify store, big commerce or whatever, or on Amazon, that's what matters. And really some of the other things are just to support your strategy. But that's where I think agencies and smart marketing directors and people with just a good marketing mind will always be valuable regardless of what happens with AI and automation and things like that. You need the strategy piece. And so you've got to prioritize that, I believe over automation. So utilize ai, utilize automation, but prioritize strategy and utilizing platforms to reach your goals.
Chris:
Yeah, that's great.
Brett:
Awesome. What are some other things that you notice that pop up, whether it's related to actual tactical marketing stuff or just the way people show up or the way they think or communicate? What are you saying?
Chris:
One quick one that I just think is a great reminder because things come in waves and things, even in e-commerce, they get repopulated and they fade. One thing that to me has faded and I think it's possible that it faded because there was so much attention on it for so many years and we harped on it and we tested every single brand that came through and said, you got to fix this. But it's starting now to see some feedback from our strategists when we're reviewing brands like, Hey, your page speed sucks. Yeah, so there was this focus because just on the Google side, for instance, having good quality score on your ads, for instance, page plays into that. If you've got a slow rendering mobile site or a slow rendering desktop site, that that's also slow rendering on the ads and it's just going to provide a bad experience overall. And so also the page tools that just Google has have been, it used to be junk, but it's improved a lot over the last several years. So one of the things I would do, and just because you're a Shopify store, you may think, oh, I got no control because Shopify, there's a lot that you can optimize with page speed on Shopify. Sometimes it's as simple as the kind of font that you're using and what's loading. So that's just a one little quick take is page speed.
Brett:
Yeah, and what's interesting about that is I think because that was a hot topic years ago, we talked about page speed a lot it seems like four or five years ago, I think now a lot of people just assume that their website is fast. To your point, I'm on Shopify, it's fine, I got it taken care of. You need to look. You still need to check because, and Google's got some tools that they use for page speed and it's basically the same tool they use when they're analyzing your landing page and determining will this be a good user experience or not. And that will impact your ad performance. So page speed still valuable, you still got to pay attention to it. So another thing that I want to kind of highlight, and this will kind of tie into some tactical stuff, is mistake that we see people making.
Cause we audit dozens and dozens of Google ads accounts and Amazon ad accounts and seller central accounts on a yearly basis, some months, dozens in a single month is a lot of people are stopping short of getting a conversion. And I'll throw a couple words out there. We're all running remarketing ads, we're all trying to get people to buy. Again, we're all running email and stuff like that, but as we dig a little deeper and pull back the curtains or look under the hood or whatever metaphor you want to use, we found that most people just aren't doing this very well. I get to speak at D2CX retain an event that gorgeous put together in LA last year, and one of the points that I made was like remarketing is one of those things that everybody is doing and almost everybody sucks at.
And that's not to be mean the way it is. We look at it, we're like, oh yeah, I've got a remarketing campaign, I'm all good. But really what we need is if we're running any kind of top of funnel traffic, Facebook, YouTube, whatever, how are we engaging with people that just viewed that they were interested enough to just watch the ad, but that's all they did. How are we building audiences there and trying to market those people again, how are we finding people that all they did was click on one lander, they did nothing else? How are we continuing to share a message with them and move them further down the purchased funnel and maybe share with them a unique offer or unique perspective or give them more of what they need to make a decision? What about people that add to cart or what about someone that's purchased one time, but that's it, right?
I think one of the mistakes that people make, and I hear people talk about this or they want to shift their strategies that makes me think this. We assume that because somebody bought one time they'll buy again, or we assume that because they purchased that we don't have to market to them again, which is absolutely not true. People are not thinking about your brand nearly as much as you think they are. You're an afterthought. We're an afterthought to a lot of people. So you've got to be reminding, recommending cross-selling, upselling, but you've got to do it in a strategic way because the other thing we see is that there's a ton of waste when it comes to remarketing people remarketing to huge windows of audiences. People that have been around for 360 days and stuff like that are treating those people the same as someone who was just on your site a day or two ago. And so I see a lot of people either stopping short of getting a conversion or just not executing that playbook effectively where they're not getting those conversions they need to be getting.
Chris:
Yeah, we see that. It's always amazing to me that we get, I've seen it occasionally, even with 10 figure brands, it seems like it's more with seven figure brands that I see this. And so if you're a seven figure brand, go check this. And that is just not utilizing all of those audiences that Brett just talked about it. It's low hanging fruit in a lot of instances. The other one, Brett, that we see a lot, and this is fairly recent, but I still find a lot of brand owners are surprised when I say, did you know you can hook Clavio up to Google ads? Did you know that you can keep that fresh list of customer data for similar audiences? Retargeting all synced up. There used to be a time where we would just have to remind brands every 90 days or 60 days or so, depending on their velocity to upload a fresh customer list to Google ads. And again, we find no connection or a list. This was a guy had a hundred thousand clavio list a couple weeks ago and the last time it was updated was September of last year. So that's another thing that, I wouldn't say that that's sabotage necessarily, but it's definitely one of those eyes off the ball type of things.
Brett:
Totally. And there are different levels here. You could be sabotaging or you could just be not leveraging your success. And it's one of those things where you're running ads, you're investing dollars in your efforts, but there's just a few things that are off that are really making some of that money wasted or just allowing, not allowing you to get the full impact of those ad dollars. Cool. What else did you write down in your notes on ways D to C brands sabotage their success?
Chris:
Well, I think this is the part in the podcast, Brett, where I've got to, oh, I've got to back the chair out. Oh, and I've got to stand on my soapbox, which is right
Brett:
Behind me.
Chris:
So forgive me in advance. I know that there are those of you who are wounded and may need therapy from what I'm about to say. And so here's the area
Brett:
I'm curious myself where this is going quite, this is quite
Chris:
Set up. Every I here you get worried and rightfully, but that is brands will lump all agencies in the same box. That's the first segment of this. And the second segment is they don't treat their agency. I'll include freelance. They don't treat their agency or freelance partners like true partners or an in-house team. Where I see in my 14 years of experience here,
Brett:
You've got way more than that.
Chris:
And I've seen it, I've been in marketing 25 years. What I see this over and over again is they've got an individual running things. That individual is doing a good job, but one day that individual comes into work late, they have a talk with that individual, they start coming in on time. Then later that individual messes up with some campaign structure, fails to upload an audience something again, has a conversation. But then everything's great for a long time and they continue working. They stopped, had a conversation, identified the problem, found a solution, and they rectified it. What I see happen so many times with brands that hire agencies is the first time a human being drops the ball or makes a minor mistake, all trust is lost or major trust is lost. How could you guys do that? And yet the brands that we work with that have the conversation, Hey, I noticed this or I noticed that.
And sometimes noticing something or even having another agency call out something, there's actually a reason the agency did not implement that. And so I've seen brands leave agencies over things that were part of the strategy and they never gave the agency a chance to talk it out or discuss why. What are the reasons we do that? I've seen agents, I've seen brands leave agencies over copy that was written for an Amazon storefront that was taken off the Shopify site with, and they were all upset because they thought for sure it wasn't English first content. They're
Brett:
Like, we hate this content, we
Chris:
Hate this content. This is terrible. Some foreign person wrote this overseas person actually that's on your Shopify site. But those are the kinds of things that I would just encourage brands out there, and I even tell people this on discovery calls before we work together at the first hint of mistrust, misalignment, if you're having water cooler conversations with your co-founder at your brand about who you're working with, you are sabotaging your own success by not calling it out and determining an improvement plan to correct the course of action. Because it is just like it's costly when you hire an in-house person, you have to let them go and go and recruit and find someone else and train them up. It is, I could argue it is equally expensive. It is to replace an agency. And what happens sometimes is we're seeing this now in, I've seen this in every recession before every recession that comes, people pull back, I'm going to bring this in house because my brother-in-law's sister's husband used to run Google ads back when he worked for the plumbing company. That's extreme. But they know somebody that's going to run their ads for them and they pull away without asking what else is going on here? Well actually we had four people involved in the account and these kind of things. So I would just say there is malpractice. There are reasons when agencies should,
Brett:
There are bad agencies out there or lazy agencies. There are for
Chris:
Sure there are. But you really do yourself a disservice when you lump everybody together. Because I posted today in an e-commerce forum that I'm in, there is a $1 million brand that was saying, I can never recommend agencies for these reasons. I had this bad experience. And what I tried to gently point out was there are multiple service providers involved in this forum that could point to multi-year multi amounts of clients that have been with them for years. But what we forget sometimes is just the old, I don't know, the adage or proverb or it's not a proverb, it's an adage, probably is an upset client that it's not resolved, will tell so many more people than a happy one. And so many times it's kind of funny too cause I had an Amazon brand tell me one time, there's this big Facebook group with multimillion dollar sellers that I don't have access to. It's a private group. And I was talking about, man, so I hear that everybody's trashing this kind of ad type. It's is actually DSP advertising. Everybody's trashing it. And I just wish the brands had success would support it. And he's like, I'm not going to support it. Yeah. He's like, why would I support, I've got competitors in that group.
Brett:
Totally.
Chris:
Why would I chime in and talk about how awesome this is working for me? And I was like, oh, I get it. But that's what I would caution so many things as people get their KPIs from forums, people get what their goals should be from forums. People get what agent they do your own work. Yeah, figure it out. Okay, yeah, I'm
Brett:
Going to step, get influence, get inspiration, get feedback. You want to know what other people are doing, but don't take that as absolute truth. And a couple interesting things that I'll point out there. I'm
Chris:
Stepping off the soapbox now. I'm back.
Brett:
Oh, you're stepping. Okay. Soapbox right now. Got it. We'll meditate later. And I think, Hey, I love the agency business. I had an agency prior to omg. I really enjoy this type of work. So I'm pro agency, but I believe there's some brands out there that you'll be happier, you'll do better. You'll love life more if you don't work with an agency. Yep, yep. You will do better hiring an in-house team. And in fact, I'll, I'll point out Peter Goodwin, our good friend who started a Groove life silicone wedding ring company. We worked with them for quite a while. We helped them launch on YouTube and on Google. But Peter told me from the beginning, he's like, Hey man, I want to build an in-house team, but I do want to work with you guys that right now cause I know you're the best. And all this became good friends.
We had an awesome client relationship, but he was going to be happier and he wanted to build that in-house team. And he did. We know other brands like p and g as an example, there are other really large groups that they're just built to work with agencies. That's how they function. And we've had a multi-year successful relationship with a large p and g brand. And so you know, get this expertise with an agency that you often can't hire or can't find. But the one thing I'll mention, and then we'll get off your soapbox, you started this is sometimes where people are like, and you've probably heard this comment too, where I just can't find good help, I just can't find it. Good employees, employees are the worst. I remember hearing that a lot at for whatever reason, the old Dan Kennedy super conferences, which I love Dan Kennedy. But everybody at those events, just my perspective back in the day were like, oh, employ you don't want employees. Employees are the worst. So that that's about as intelligent as saying all agencies are bad, not true. Where would we be? Our most valuable resource is our team is our employees and agencies can be valuable too. So awesome. Now that we've moved past that, now that people are sufficiently convinced that agencies are okay, what would you share next? Chris?
Chris:
Really, I mean the last thought I had, this is one I'll source the Harvard Business Review so I can give credit where credit is due. I thought this was really great, that teamwork can be frustrating for very smart people
And that's where they find it sometimes difficult to truly delegate because they got a sense that I can do it better. Regardless of whether or not that's true, especially likely for those, like we were saying earlier, those have a perfectionist streak. So one of the things that we look for when we're evaluating a brand relationship is if we've got an owner, and sometimes these can be multi-million dollar brands, but the owner still got his hands on Google ads because they learned it and that's what they do. And now they realize they got to gather up the baby and they got to pass it over to this other. And what happens, and we've seen this, we saw this a lot during smart shopping years of Google Smart Shopping where we knew that that campaign needed those, I don't know, Brett, four or five days to let the algorithm determine what was going on.
Brett:
Yeah. After you make a change, need to let it do its thing, experiment a little bit before you make the next round of changes.
Chris:
And so this extremely smart, extremely well educated individual who hired us because of what he heard about our expertise on smart shopping, sees the early data on the campaign and before saying anything goes in and pauses it. And we had that happen multiple times. Even though we have in our agreements only we are going to be in the account, all of those things they just can't help themselves. And those are things that then we had to start those things all over and it just causes a lot. Now it's not just keeping your hands off your campaigns and things like that, but it's also just being kind of self-compassionate about your own internal reactions and understand where those come from and generally appreciate what diverse minds bring to a team. That's a quote from the Harvard Business Review. And I think that is a real key.
And sometimes if you find that you're having trouble scaling outside of macroeconomic factors and maybe you look in your rear view mirror and you've had a lot of team members come and go, you've worked with a lot of good agencies that you thought were good agencies but didn't work out, maybe the next stop is the mirror to a self-identify. Like where have I prevented our own success here? And get some expertise, some outside help. Like, Hey, tell me what I should know here. Where am I? Where are my blinders? Be open. That's one of the things I love about our team at OMG is anybody can come to me, the co-founder and say, Hey, I've noticed this about you. I think this is something maybe you could work on. Or, I get frustrated when you do this and there's no power trip over that. Totally. And so l look, sometimes stop and think about, hey, what other factors could be in place here that is preventing my brand from reaching the levels that I believe and others have told me that it could reach.
Brett:
Yeah, really good. I heard another agency owner talk about, I think he called it talented founder syndrome, where as founders we're pretty smart and we're pretty confident and we're willing to push through obstacles and we're generally right about a lot of things. Certainly not everything but right about a lot of things. That's how we've become successful. And so then it becomes difficult to delegate and let loose of some things, but ultimately you have to or you're going to get, get stuck. And so really good insights. Chris, thanks for coming on. Thanks for sharing. I know we could keep going, but we are up against the clock. So for those that are interested and they're like, man, I'd like to talk to Chris Brewer, I'd like to talk to Chris about my business, how can they get in touch with you?
Chris:
The easiest way is to go to our website, omg commerce.com. We've got a strategy session button there. Click that, fill out some brief information. My coworker, Caitlin will review that, will ask me maybe some additional questions. We'll send out a follow up, can fill out some additional foot stuff. It saves us about an hour of that if we feel there's a fit, if we don't feel there's a fit, I know Brett and I both know amazing other freelancers, agencies that we can refer to. So I'd say, Hey, don't hesitate to reach out if you think you're too small or what have you. I'm happy to spend even 15 minutes. I do a lot of little 15 minute calls just like, Hey, what's your challenge? Let's figure it out and let me point you in this direction or this course you could buy or this person you could hire. But that's how you can reach is just that free strategy session on our site. And I'd be happy to set up either a short call or if it's more appropriate, a more in depth kind of exploratory conversation.
Brett:
And I've been on a lot of those calls with you, Chris, over the years and very helpful, very insightful. People leave those calls feeling good about themselves and good about their business and they feel like they've gotten some good direction
Chris:
Pitch. We have no pitch on the
Brett:
First call. And so if you're looking at Google ads, help you get performance max questions, YouTube questions, you want to grow your email and SMS marketing or anything related to Amazon, reach out. We'd love to chat with you. And just out of a quote a minute ago that we'll kind of, we'll end this on getting outside perspectives, getting outside help, not a sign of weakness, sign of wisdom. And I really like that. So Chris, any final words or recommendations or things you want to point out before we sign off?
Chris:
No, I would just say do your research, do your homework. Put as much effort into hiring those that work from an outside perspective in your business as you do in hiring your own team members. That would be my final thing is I don't know if omg, I think we got six rounds. I think it's like five or six rounds before someone can actually start working for us.
Brett:
Yeah, several. It's at least at least four.
Chris:
And so don't hire your first freelancer because of recommendation or an agency. Really do your homework and it things will turn out a lot better for you.
Brett:
Love it. Chris, thank you so much. It's been another good one. And we will make round whatever the next one is. Hey, much shorter. That's
Chris:
Fine than fine. I'll, I'll hear from you in a couple years. Thank you for so much
Brett:
For the opportu opportunity. Okay, thanks Chris. And as always, thank you for tuning in. We could not do this show or Lisa wouldn't be fun to do this show without you, so we'd love your feedback. What would you like to hear more of on the show? If you have any guest recommendations or burning questions, fire them our way. I am active on Twitter at Brett Curry, active on LinkedIn, the Brett Curry, and hey, I'm just starting on TikTok, so check it out, see what you think there. Would love to connect with you on the socials until, and with that, until next time. Thank you for listening.
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