Right About Now with Ryan Alford - The E-commerce Success Blueprint with Alex Urban

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to The Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of The Radcast. I'm Ryan Alford, your host. We say if it's radical, cover it we're covering it today my friends i've got a young guy but he makes a lot of waves in the marketing e-com space i had so many friends go you need to talk to alex urban ryan i'm serious there's a guy named alex urban

Starting point is 00:00:40 you need to talk to him i'm like okay yes okay, yes, I did. I started looking up your stuff a few months ago, digesting. I'm like, shit, this guy's pretty fucking smart. Alex Urban, welcome to the show, brother. Yeah. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate you having me on and can't wait to share everything and spill everything out for your audience, man. I appreciate you having me here and always a pleasure to talk with you and catch up with you. The Arena is his coaching group. Pele is his e-commerce brand. You can find them at it'salexurban.com. We're going to dig into it. Alex, man, there's a lot to uncover, unpack with your shit. I'm like, I don't even know where to start with this guy.

Starting point is 00:01:18 If you guys, anyone listening, have you heard of Lions Not Sheep? Alex was a big part of growing that brand that's still out there and still making waves and probably still feeling the effects of Alex's impact there. We'll get to that, Alex. I know. Just wanted to drop that because I know that's a popular brand, one of your biggest, maybe not even biggest accomplishments, but just the biggest name that a lot of people have with Sean Whalen and stuff. But damn, Alex, where did this marketing all start? Where did the Alex Urban brain develop into the guru that you are?

Starting point is 00:01:50 Funny enough, it actually started a few years after high school. So I got into mortgages shortly after I barely graduated high school, got like a 1.4 GPA. And I was like, all right, we barely passed high school. Let's go on and make some money. I'm going to try and summarize as quick as possible

Starting point is 00:02:04 because it is a long story. But I was working at a bakery. I was working at a bakery. And barely passed high school. Let's go on and make some money. I'm going to try and summarize as quick as possible because it is a long story. But I was working at a bakery. I was working at a bakery. And I remember my boss coming up to me one day and he says, hey, Alex, I got you a raise. You're doing such a good job. And he showed me a paycheck with a raise on it. And he gave me 25 cents more an hour. And immediately my brain went to work and it said, hey, 25 cents by 40 hours a week.

Starting point is 00:02:20 That's an extra $10 a week or $40 a month. I'm starting to like, I'm young. I'm starting to add up in my head how much my new car stereo is going to cost me and how long it's going to cost me to save up and i'm like the same for me dog so quit as a good immature decision i actually went out my friend of vegas who spent all of our money and then i got back home and i'm like i need a job now so my mom knew someone who worked in hr at a mortgage company i didn't even know what more bridges were got into an interview talk shit with the owner he's hey you want to start monday i'm like sure i didn't even know what mortgages were. Got into an interview, talked shit with the owner. He's like, hey, you want to start Monday? I'm like, sure. I didn't even know what I was doing, but he's going to be an assistant. I'm like, awesome. Got in there.

Starting point is 00:02:50 He started paying me an hourly rate plus a commission to help close loans under a loan officer. And then I started really figuring out like, hey, if I'm in the right position in life, the harder that I work, the more money that I can make because I was very heavily weighted pay for me on a commission side of things. And so eventually, I kind of figured out what mortgages were how to process loans, all that good stuff. And then I figured out what the guys are making being loan officers. And this is back in, I'd say 2013 14, where we did a lot of VA home loans where like you were able to get a 2.75% fixed rate on a VA streamline, these loan officers are just cranking in like hundreds of 1000s of dollars a month. And I'm sitting here going, oh shit, like this is something I want to get into.

Starting point is 00:03:27 After that, I got licensed as a loan officer, started doing loans myself, started working my way up the ladder there. And then unfortunately, after I made a good amount of money, I made my first six figures by 19 years old in mortgages. At that point, then the rate started climbing, getting higher and higher. And instead of doing a very easy VA streamlined loan, which is the easiest refinance you can do if you're in the mortgage industry, we started to get into like purchases and like full cash out refinances. And I just like I wasn't enjoying the money not coming in as quick. And it was a longer, harder process. But I remember things just started dying slowly and slowly. And I got to the office one day. And I remember just like sitting in my cubicle and like just looking at the gray fabric wall and I'm like there's more to life than this man like my girlfriend's sitting here

Starting point is 00:04:09 she's wanting to or my ex-girlfriend I apologize but she's like wanting to go to Europe and go travel the world and I'm like sitting here fuck dude like I just literally am staring at this like gray fabric cubicle wall listen the phones ring and I'm like this isn't it but at the time what was really interesting is like I started becoming a very lazy salesperson in a very unique way. So back then, I didn't really know about all the rules and everything regarding like mass emailing compliance, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I was like, hey, everybody's sitting here cold calling and outbound calling all these 1000s of numbers. And I'm like, doing the math in my head. I'm like, I can only call X amount of people per hour, these this many people are going to answer this many people are going to talk and not be interested, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, what's

Starting point is 00:04:52 a way that I could actually have people call me. And so what I started doing is I started mass emailing all the lists at the mortgage companies. And I was the only loan officer in the building who had people like dialing into and my phone is ringing. Other people are having to call out. So I was like, Oh, I'm starting to figure out that there's a better way to work around this. And that's kind of where my brain started working in the internet, like kind of internet marketing spaces. I was like, this is cool. I don't even have to talk to people and I can get people to come to me to close deals. Shortly after that, I stumbled upon funny enough, Tai Lopez, he had a course talking about social media marketing and Hey, you can do social media marketing for local businesses and travel the world and make 10k a month. And I was like,

Starting point is 00:05:28 hey, if I can leave Utah and make 10k a month, that's good to me, bro. Say less, we're good with 10k a month. So I started a internet marketing agency, I started with working with like local gyms and supplement companies and really offered my services for free at that time. So I could practice all my all my new newly acquired skills and techniques and everything started helping those companies grow. And then it got to a point where their ad budget just wasn't enough to where I could do what I truly wanted to help them build a business when they're like, Hey, here's $200 a month. I'm like, that's not really a lot to run ads and get clients in your door, homie. I love you. But that's not gonna work with what I'm trying

Starting point is 00:06:00 to do here. And then shortly after I stumbled upon, I just started diving deeper into Facebook groups with internet marketing and e-commerce. Then all of a sudden, I found out about this amazing thing called Shopify. And then I figured out this thing called dropshipping. And then I was like, okay, this is really cool. If I have my own money that I can put behind all these things that I'm learning and plug it into a business, I can actually create a business that I run. And now I don't have to be worrying about some other guys saying, Hey, only have $200 a month for ad spend. So I started my own, my very first e-commerce company actually started two of them at the time. One was called Jeepaholic because I noticed that a lot of my friends in Utah, they love jeeping. And there wasn't really a brand that was built around jeeps for people who are like passionate about jeeping. That was

Starting point is 00:06:41 like some print on demand t-shirts. We sold a sold a few here and there was a really good start to just get some traction rolling. And then I started a jewelry brand called my wine secret, which essentially sold wine pendant necklaces. And that did pretty well. After that, I started looking into different masterminds. And I found out about this company called techademics in Arizona that actually taught and sold e commerce marketing education. So I spent all the money that I had left in my bank account to go down there to a mastermind, went and met up with some people down there. And then long story short,

Starting point is 00:07:10 I ended up just walking in and told the guy, I want to get a job there completely unexpected and got a job there so I could be closer to people who were around me that knew what I wanted to know, got connected with some mentors down there, eventually quit that job after I worked my way to the very top of the ladder and their top salesperson very quickly selling Shopify stores way easier than selling mortgages. So I was just like, it was like shooting fish in a barrel,

Starting point is 00:07:31 started working for my first business partner named Jonathan, who at a time had a very large jewelry company doing a few hundred thousand dollars a month. We scaled that to a million dollar months very quickly. And he was just poking me in different areas of the business. Hey, Alex, I need our internet marketing, like tweaked and perfected. So I'd go spend a month in email marketing. And then hey, I need our back end systems and operations. More optimized, I'd go and plug in all these like shipping integrations, inventory integrations to teach me how to like purchase products and work with and negotiate with all these foreign suppliers. And then like how to run Facebook ads and how to run Google ads and emails and SMS and build out apps and all this stuff. And it was like such a great learning opportunity for me for

Starting point is 00:08:09 a few years to work under somebody who had a very big, large e-commerce operation to plug me in and teach me everything that I knew. After that, we decided, hey, he was very into tech things. So we decided that we're going to launch a cryptocurrency. We were all excited that we're going to all make so much money launching this cryptocurrency. It's actually a really good idea. I'm not going to lie to the tech behind it and everything. But the day that we went to launch Facebook ads on this cryptocurrency and really start blowing it up, literally Facebook came out the band hammer on crypto and said no more crypto ads. And so we're just like, shit. Okay, so we all worked on this project for months. And I was like, Hey, I'm going to get a few $100,000 or even like a million $2 million that I'm just going to

Starting point is 00:08:44 go be this young 25 year old dude just traveling the world, living off crypto money like this can be amazing. We released the coins IPO and it came out and like my millions of tokens were worth like eight grand, I think at most. And I was like, OK, that project's out. One of the business partners that I work with there, his name was Ben. Him and I started doing a bunch of marketing agency stuff and traveling the world. So we went we moved from Arizona to Florida to LA. Then we spent some months over in Europe. And then we went back to LA, went to Israel and lived there for a little bit. And then we came back to Scottsdale. And then after that point, we grew our own jewelry company. We kind of got to a

Starting point is 00:09:18 point where, Hey, we're slinging jewelry to old woman. Now it's not really our thing. We're not really feeling it anymore. And so we just closed that business business out which honestly i probably should have sold it like looking at multiples now i was like that would have been a crazy business to exit but you live and you learn right so after that i moved back to utah and that's where i'd been paying sean for coaching for quite a bit got in touch with him and he's have this apparel brand i want to grow do you want to help me with it and i'm like sure and that apparel brand is many of you listening no it's lines not cheap so he gave me a 90-day to help get Lions Not Sheep off the ground. It had done about $60,000 or so in sales from his organic social media posts for five years leading up to when I

Starting point is 00:09:53 started. So we pretty much say that we started zero at that day, first 90 days starting with him. I helped him grow the business from zero to 960,000. And then in the three years that I was with them, it was actually literally like three years in a week that I was with them in total, we ended up doing about $19.6 million in sales through that company. So I'll grow that pretty large and pretty big. And it got to a point where I'm like, Hey, I want to kind of do my own thing. Now I wasn't really feeling happy or fulfilled with that project anymore. Started like making some selfish decisions for me and my happiness, my mental health. And I was like, it's time to go build my own thing. So recently just started my own e-commerce brand back in the jewelry niche again.

Starting point is 00:10:28 A lot of people are like, Alex, why are you selling jewelry? And I'm like, I don't think you guys understand. I've sold just as much jewelry as I have apparel. The first time I ever sold apparel was with Lions Not Sheep. So I got to get back into the jewelry game and build something massive that aligns with my values with where I am in life now. So it's a long story short.

Starting point is 00:10:43 That's the adventure, man. Dude, a lot to unpack there. So my mind's swirling on the marketing side and then the personal questions in between, but maybe I'll stick with, stick on the marketing to start, go the clinical route, and then we'll talk some of the personal journey stuff. But it's fascinating to me. OK, so quick story for me. I came up in the world of building big brands, Verizon, Apple, Samsung, Motorola, worked on Madison Avenue, unlimited budget. So playing that big game. Then internet marketing comes around. This is 2005, 6, 7, 8, 9, into the early 2010s and all that when it was like shooting barrel on Facebook or whatever. But that comes around.

Starting point is 00:11:40 Suddenly you just open a store, turn it on, use these internet tools, and you're selling shit. You don't even have to have a brand. But it's fascinating to me listening to you. I came up on that. I now know it's a balance of both of those. We both do. But for someone like you that's seemingly done both, it sounds like,

Starting point is 00:11:58 you've hocked a lot of product that probably had no real brand behind it, and then you stepped into lns and sean had spent he maybe had not known what the hell he was doing with ecom but had spent six years building a brand and living a brand and being badass and it was like it needed a brain behind the ecom but it had a brand built that was ready to explode a bit. And I'm not diminishing anything that you did because you brought the science and the art together. But it's fascinating to me listening to someone like you of where you truly fall now having done both of brand versus demand versus product. Do we need, is brand just unnecessary? Or what's the Alex Urban feeling on brand versus product at all of these levers?

Starting point is 00:12:48 Yeah. So honestly, I think we've come to a point right now where there's a good balance between you need a very strong brand and you need a very strong product. Unfortunately, there's a lot of these people who did really take full opportunity on monetizing the whole internet marketing space and they've slung every single product you can find on AliExpress, Alibaba. They've burned a lot of people on Facebook. You know what I mean? They've burned a lot of the audience that you can run ads to because, hey, I can make some good, cheap, quick money. But then they drop ship a product that takes 45, 60 days to get there. And they're like, hey, I'm never going to come back, buy from this brand again. I'm not going to trust them. The product quality is shit. And so even your audience, and the reason I go to

Starting point is 00:13:22 Facebook is it's the most, it's kind of like on the highest priority on the ladder to run ads. So it's the easiest ad platform to run. It's the easiest to get traction on, et cetera. So that's why I referenced Facebook so much. But on Facebook, it's like a lot of the audience there, they're very aware of these little scammy dropshipping type businesses now. So it's like, they still get caught off guard every now and then when a new and unique product comes out. But to truly build a brand and something that's sustainable long-term and not just a cash grab, you need to have a brand. And on top of that, now you need to have a third component, which is now also a personal brand that's tied to that.

Starting point is 00:13:53 So people are like wanting, people are very tribal. They want to be a part of something. They want to support companies that they believe in, especially now more than ever. Like people want to be involved with brands that support core values and beliefs that align with their core core values and belief systems. And so I personally believe it's like you need to have a very strong brand, you need to really plant your flag in the sand and say, Hey, here's who we are, here's what we stand for, here's what our brand is. And if you

Starting point is 00:14:17 want to rep one of our shirts or our products, just know that's an expression of you to a degree. And then also you need quality products. Because if you're selling people a t shirt, that's an expression of you to a degree. And then also you need quality products because if you're selling people a t-shirt, that's some big boxy cardboard ass, like Haynes t-shirt, it's like, you're going to put it on and wear it once and be like, you know what? I love this brand, but I don't, I hate their shirts. They're uncomfy. They don't fit. They're scratchy. They make me look like fat as hell. They don't, they're not showing off the gains that we've been working so hard for. So you need to have a good quality product for sure. And then lastly is people want to be like very transparent with brands. What I think and what I teach a lot of my students in my coaching group is that like your personal brand is more important than ever.

Starting point is 00:14:52 And you need to put such an emphasis on growing your personal brand because people connect with people. They don't connect with brands. And so when you have a very good personal brand that you've built online, no matter if that brand has 300 followers or 300,000 followers, when you're able to connect with people authentically through social media, they'll buy whatever that you put your name behind because they truly believe in you and your mission and they know who you are as a person and what you stand for. So for me, it's I started jewelry brand and it's like I'm slinging jewelry to my audience. You know what I mean? We're going to have a candle soon. I'm going to be selling candles to my audience. I'm sure I push a lot of product out for lines that sheep to my audience. I push coaching out to my audience,

Starting point is 00:15:28 like all these little businesses that I'm building, whether it's like a side project or kind of a main project that I'm working on, because of the connection that I have with my audience, they believe in me so much that they're willing to buy whatever it is that I put out to the marketplace because they see me, they believe in me, they trust me because I've shared my story, my truth for so long, that it's like, they just want to support you. And obviously, there's a limit there as to how much product you can sell to your personal audience, depending on the size. But there's nothing more important than somebody that is your customer being able to buy a product from you. And it's I think right now that transparency is really cool, where they're like, hey, I can just message the owner that my my bracelet got

Starting point is 00:16:02 mixed up, or I got the wrong size. And it's I know I'm always going to take care of my customers, everybody in my DMs. And it's I feel like that mixture of those three things, a very strong brand, a very good product, and then a very strong lead for a personal brand. It's like that's what will make any brand take off. But if you're missing any one of those components, you're just going to fall short. You're not going to be able to scale to a point where you truly can. So I think that's if you're starting from the ground up, that's what you need to have. And if you don't have those components, like it's going to be a very rough and rocky start for sure. Yeah. It's funny. I didn't think about it the way you

Starting point is 00:16:33 described it, but that's six years ago. I spent all this time in Madison Avenue, did all these ads and brands you've heard of, but I came out of it and no one knew who the hell I was. Like I'd done all this shit and I'd get on Instagram and the, the Instagram Ninja or the marketing Ninja would pop on my feet. I'm like, who's a Ninja? I'm a fucking Ninja. But no one knew who I was because I had done nothing. And then so when I started Radical, the Radcast Radical and my personal branding all started six years ago and they're all on the same plane of time and growth.

Starting point is 00:17:06 It's crazy. And those are the things, seeing them, the Radcast in a way is a product. The agency is kind of my services and then the personal brand. But it all works together, bro. It's all those things. And we coach leaders all the time that they have to get out from behind the desk now. That it will only reap benefits if they do it. But it's so hard for people to get over it. And I've been looking for three years for a different word

Starting point is 00:17:30 than personal branding because people hate that word. People, they either cringe or they hate it. I'm like, what's up? I've yet to come up with one. Yeah, exactly. And a lot of people, it's funny because a lot of people are like scared to post, man. They're scared to be online. I remember very distinctly, like years and years ago, when Facebook is really pushing out Instagram, like you have those people that were the main influencers at that time. And Gary V was obviously one of them. Everybody here knows exactly who Gary V was. But I distinctly remember a video that he posted. And he goes, your personal brand and your online brand will be more important than any resume you could possibly put together. And he nailed that one so perfectly, because at this point in time, dude, I don't care who you are, I don't care what you've built, like, I'm going to connect with you online. And that's

Starting point is 00:18:14 who I'm going to do business with period, like, a lot of my employees, like I met him online, I met him because they're providing value, I vibe with them, I dig with them, you know what I mean, I jive with them. And it's like, they might not be the best person in the world, like skill wise, but you're someone I want to work with every day. You know what I mean? And when I'm building a company, it's like, I need people that like drive together, that vibe together. And it's like, you can train absolute killers. I can teach you how to be a better graphic designer. I can teach you how to be a better copywriter. I can teach you how to be a better media buyer, but it's, I want these like killers around me that like align and vibe with the same kind of core values and belief system that I have going on. Because like when you like combine all

Starting point is 00:18:49 those energies together, that's when something truly magical happens. But if you were to come to me with a Harvard degree and say, Hey, I've done marketing. And I'm like, Okay, have you ever ran an ad? And they're like, No, but I know that the Facebook bulb, I'm like, bro, you don't know shit about a Facebook algorithm until you've ran an ad. Trust me. I just had to plug in a new tracking software into my ads. And I had to apparently they re-optimize when I plugged in a UTM code and all my ads are crashing. I was like, you couldn't tell me that adding a UTM code after an ad was already launched

Starting point is 00:19:15 and out of its learning phase would fucking crash completely because you've never ran an ad. You know what I mean? But here's homeboy who just got out of prison. He's running some ads for me and he knows everything that's going on. So it doesn't matter to me anymore, man. It's like, you got to post, you got to put yourself out there. I know exactly. How would you describe the Alex Urban brand? Like what are the key attributes of your own brand? What are those

Starting point is 00:19:35 core principles? To me, that's a hard question because to be honest, to help grow my personal brand and to really dial in my messaging and figure out who I am, over the last almost two years, I did something called the POV Challenge, where I essentially posted, I believe it was 600 days in a row. Every single day, I posted a POV was a point of view of my day. So it's today we're a POV Challenge. I'd pull out my phone, I'd take a picture of us in a podcast, and I'd write a post about it. Or any day that I had a lesson come up that I thought would be good to share with my audience, I'd take a random picture of my car, the office,

Starting point is 00:20:11 a selfie of me, whatever. And I'd post and I'd share the lesson with people. And what I figured out over that 600 days of posting consistently was that I found my messaging and who I was. And so for me, it's I just, I feel like my core values and that is I like sharing a lot of things about mental health. I think that's a topic not a lot of people talk about. I'll talk on there about anxiety, depression, suicide, any of these things like very openly, because I know, I'm not the only person like thinking about these things are going through these sways of emotion. And I don't want people to ever look at my social media feed and be like, Hey, his life's perfect. Mine sucks. I'm going to go down this rabbit hole and feel like I'm alone my entire life. No, we all go through the same shit. That's very important to express that. So mental health is one personal growth is another and I

Starting point is 00:20:48 like thrown in marketing stuff in there. Now that I'm running my own brand, and I can like fully transparently share what I want to share about it. I feel like I'm sharing a lot about the growth of the brand and kind of tips and tricks that are helping to build the brand growth. So yeah, I guess it's just that it's personal development, mental health and marketing. And then of course, you got to throw some entertainment in there. I love cars. I post a lot about my cars. I used to be on a shoe kick. I like literally, I think about like 80 pairs of Jordans almost every day. I'm like, Hey, new shoe arrived. People vibe with that, but your life online story and you're the main character. And so you need to entertain people through a storyline. And after you do enough regular

Starting point is 00:21:19 posting, you're going to hear what, what that is for you. What's I love adding value to the audience. I've heard some key things. You nailed them. You talked about some of them, but let's give some of the, someone's starting e-comm, they're in e-comm, maybe they're an executive, maybe they're just starting. I don't know. What's in the Alex Urban playbook for, obviously we talked about the three, the hierarchy, great product, great personal brand and leader really helps. And of course the brand itself, all those things help. I heard email in there. That sounds like I've had a guess that's like in the top of the list, but what's in the

Starting point is 00:21:57 Alex Urban must have secret playbook for brand growth and just sales. Yeah. So by far at the top of the ladder down, number one is going to be all of your digital assets. You need to have photography that spot on. You need to have video that spot on. You need to have like good creative direction for your brand because it's like when people are coming to your brand that don't know about you, right? Do they trust you enough to transact with you?

Starting point is 00:22:24 And so if your brand from the coming out of the gates looks like it was a website that was stitched together by some 14 year old who's trying to scam you out on some print on demand shirt or some drop shipping product, people aren't going to trust you anymore to buy that. There is this like weird, gross feeling about some people's websites where you go on there. And it's this is the website from 2009 when Facebook just launched, and you're trying to just make a quick buck out of me. So like people, their trust is like an all time low. And when you're building a brand from the ground up, like the thing that I

Starting point is 00:22:53 can't stress enough is your brand. When I go to your website, when I go to your socials, you need to have a brand that looks like it's a million dollar brand from day one, even if you've not sold a product. If you do not have that you're not going to go anywhere period. So I cannot recommend enough get a good photographer getting good videographer. I started getting into photography when my ex started want me to take pictures of her and now I'm really good at photography. And it's like you can go buy yourself a nice camera and take some good pictures and put a

Starting point is 00:23:19 Lightroom preset on it and it makes your website look so much better. So that video is really good. You need a solid graphic designer, not just one you find off Fiverr, a good graphic designer who truly understands branding, like fonts, colorways, who's able to build out a brand Bible that like really gives your brand that like feeling that you're trying to portray

Starting point is 00:23:36 without being able to talk to somebody. That's incredibly important. So that's going to be like number one, because if you don't have that kind of the rest, it really doesn't matter. Secondly, is you need to understand is that when you're starting, you need to have a lot of different products to test and you need to have a lot of different offers to test because you don't

Starting point is 00:23:53 know what's going to create your stride for you and your brand. So it's like you need a good product, you need a good unique offer, especially as you're starting to run paid ads is that you need something that's going to stand out to the marketplace. When I start brands, a lot of the time I do a free plus shipping offer. Those have worked extremely well for me, especially being able to build an email list very quickly and SMS lists very quickly and to get some customer data in the door. It also helps train all your pixels. And that's a good way to start. Also, like other value based promos have been very good for me, where it's okay, if you spend $50, you get a free t shirt, if you spend $100, you get a free hat, you spend 150, you get a free sticker pack, giving people more for their money and incentivizing them to spend more instead of

Starting point is 00:24:32 spending less by saying, Hey, we're having a 50% off sale that really works. But that's really it, man. It's if your brand looks like a million dollar brand, and you have an irresistible offer, and you push ads out, it's gonna work. Like the brand that I'm creating now, Pele, I created this offer, this free plus shipping offer in this funnel that's like absolutely crushing it. But it's like I launched a Facebook ad and I knew the offer is going to work well when I launch an ad with wide open targeting, meaning I target every single person in the US. No age restriction, no interest, no crazy things.

Starting point is 00:25:02 I literally set up the ad set as it is default by Facebook. And literally within the first $2, I already started getting purchases on my funnel. And so it's like, that's the kind of offer that you need to really get traction with your brand. And if you can't get traction running a wide open ad to Facebook with your offer, you don't have the right offer.

Starting point is 00:25:18 So go back to the whiteboard, try that, try it from scratch. And you don't know, is it gonna be this product, that product, the other product? Don't emotionally get attached to your products. You're either in the emotion game or you're in the money game and you need to figure out which one that is. And sometimes it's going to make your brand evolve outside of a box that you originally wanted to constrain it to and form your brand into a whole new entire business that you didn't think it would from the ground up. But you got to figure out again, if you're in the emotion game or money game and

Starting point is 00:25:41 adjust and pivot from there. So that's kind of my starting brand one-on-one. The few things that you need to have. I like it. A lot of action items there. So be taking notes. If you didn't hit rewind, that's what, that's what it's for. You can always circle back.

Starting point is 00:25:53 And I like to play the hard game, man. I'm co-founder of a CBD company. You can't run fucking ads. I tried to make it real hard on myself. Yeah. We're going to build it the old fashioned way. True branding, influencers, all that stuff.

Starting point is 00:26:09 You're probably smart enough to stay out of that business. I'll tell you. I love it because it's rewarding and I believe in it. And so I have passion, but shit, you just can't run. You can't just, okay, we got a great piece of content. You can't run a fucking ad. Yeah. And with that, there's another, that's another kind of tip i can give to people too is user generated content is a key no matter if you're

Starting point is 00:26:28 in a business where you can run ads or you can't run ads get go online go on your social media and i kid you not go post i posted the other day hey i need 20 different girls who want to get a free product in exchange for some video content i got a ton of dms and got some products out to these girls and now it's like i'm gonna have all these girls who I personally chose, which are good, like representation of the avatar I'm trying to target for our brand. They now have our products. Hey, by the way, I just got this bracelet box from Pele. Here's what it contains, blah, blah, blah, blah. Very good to organically push. Very good to run ads too. And as people like see other people using a product, it's going to amplify your sales, by the way, instead of sometimes looking at like,

Starting point is 00:27:04 Hey, I have to run an ad on Facebook, go get your product out to a marketplace because you need testimonials, you need reviews, and you need real people using your products. So that's another tip I can give is exchange some products for some video content. It's probably one of the quickest ways to get some good digital assets for your brand. What was the biggest thing you learned at LNS? Lion's not sheep. What was like, you spent three years there in a week and it's an incredible brand. Sean's such a fire brand himself. And maybe one thing you learned from Sean and one thing just learning being there for all like good, bad, or indifferent. You can take that any way you want. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's a lot of different,

Starting point is 00:27:42 I guess, areas and where I could answer that question for sure. From Sean, because I hired him as a coach originally, before I even worked for him, it's like, I really got to spend a lot of time with him that not a lot of people would ever get the chance to where I got to learn a lot of what he teaches, what he studies, what he shares with his people, but also like a lot of one on one time with him where he helped me with so much of my own personal growth, that it really helped reflect and the growth of the business. So from him, I can say like the biggest lesson that I learned from him is that if you're not truly evolving as yourself as a person personally outside your business is going to be very limited to where you can scale that to. And it doesn't matter what area

Starting point is 00:28:16 of life that is. And for him, it's power, passion, purpose, production. For some, it's health, wealth, love, happiness. Everybody kind of has their little four core values of what life is, right. And so it's like, when you have relationship issues, your business is gonna, you're like, it's gonna directly reflect in your business. If you're having your health is bad, it's going to directly correlate into like bad business growth. So for me, it's Hey, if my mental health isn't taken care of, if my physical health isn't taken care of, if my relationships aren't taken care of, I'm not able to help this brand grow and thrive. And that's something that he really helped instill in me. So I've really tried now to make an emphasis on like my mental health, my physical health, my relationships with everybody, family,

Starting point is 00:28:53 friends, girls I'm dating, talking to, etc. So it's that was probably one of the biggest things that I learned from Sean as far as business. Now, if we're talking like more back end strategic side of building a brand and building a business is that there's so many pieces of like crumbs left over in a business that most people don't even think about that you need to be picking up and growing, right. So what I mean by that is not a lot of people understand, but it's like, by simply a making sure that you're running email campaigns frequently enough, that's huge, making sure you're split testing, making sure you're running your SMS campaigns, making sure that you have retargeting set up on Pinterest, on Twitter, on TikTok, on Bing, having your Facebook and Instagram ads like really dialed in. So many people are just,

Starting point is 00:29:33 they put all their eggs in one basket and they say, Hey, I'm going to run my business solely off of Facebook. It doesn't work that way. It's you need to have an omnipresent brand. And at the end of the day, it's like when we were looking at our ad spend and our return on ad spend, it's like we were no longer looking on a platform specific ROAS. So it's like we were looking at, hey, we need a 2x on Facebook and we need a 4x on Google and we need a 1x on Pinterest. What we ended up looking at that large of a scale is we looked at like how much total was our ad spend from every platform? What were certain key metrics that we dissected into later on to optimize things? And then what was our total revenue that we generated? And sometimes what you need to figure out is what

Starting point is 00:30:08 is that overall ROAS I need to get from every single platform in order to scale this business? And lastly, it's like you need to truly know your numbers. If you don't know your numbers, you're completely fucked. If you don't know what your true cost of goods is, if you don't know what your true like monthly net is in your daily operation costs, like you have no idea where you need to be. So know your numbers and pick up the crumbs everywhere. I know it's a pain because there's a lot of things to do online.

Starting point is 00:30:30 We're not even talking about sending out physical mailers. We're not talking about ambassador groups. We're not talking about running your own app. We're not talking about a subscription box. Those are all things that need to be plugged in to truly make a business profitable and thrive. And a lot of people overlook it. So just like Facebook or, you know what I mean? TikTok, whatever that is. So it's like,

Starting point is 00:30:47 you need the crumbs, you need to know the numbers. If you don't know, that's a hard place to be. So create yourself a spreadsheet, figure out like, what's my monthly expenses? Break that down on a daily period and say, hey, I know to grow my business, I need to make, for example, $500 net profit every day. That's my breakeven point to cover my employee, my payroll, my rent, my etc. And then you really have to figure out okay, to get $500 profit a day, that means I have to do two grand in sales a day at a 25% net profit, I can't spend more than x on ads, which equates out to an overall all my ads across the board need to be running at a two and a half for us, for example. And so if you truly know those numbers, you can dial them in, it's very

Starting point is 00:31:23 easy to scale and make decisions that way. So I like looking at things in numbers. Numbers don't lie ever. It's like numbers will tell you everything transparently through your business. So if your bank account's going up, it tells you something. Bank account's going down, it's telling you something. Numbers never lie. You just got to dive deep enough into them. Yeah, there's a lot that I learned, but trying to keep it as high level for you as possible.

Starting point is 00:31:41 No, it's good, man. I'm soaking it in. I know the audience is. But it does lead me to this. Attribution models are fucking tough, really hard. And you know this, but I want to know someone like yourself who I consider like a pillar, new school, digital marketer, leader. And so the attribution models, you know this, I know this, but I want to know, like you said, you look at the ROAs, but like I don't buy something the first time I see a Facebook ad.

Starting point is 00:32:12 And yes, there's retargeting. And yes, if everything happened in a vacuum, which it doesn't, where I see a video about your jewelry, I go, that's interesting. So you get me the top of the funnel. I'm aware. I might have a little intent, but I'm aware. Classic funnel. Awareness, consideration, intent, purchase. I'm considering.

Starting point is 00:32:34 I'm aware, but I'm not buying yet. I go to the website. Then you retarget me. I know you will. You follow me on the internet. But Susie Smith goes, Alex Urban. Yeah. His jewelry is so great.

Starting point is 00:32:50 Oh, God, I'm buying it. Who gets credit? And so how do you like that's the never ending game, I think, for marketers to and all these attribution models and everything else. And I know you can get lost in the sauce on all that. and all these attribution models and everything else. And I know we can get lost in the sauce on all that, but we know that one impression doesn't sell something 95% of the time. I mean, it does sometimes.

Starting point is 00:33:14 You hit right person, right time in Facebook in 2013. Yeah, you did because it was so good because you had an audience that wasn't used to getting ads that way combined with knowing everything about them before the whole data crunch. But talk to me about your feelings about attribution and kind of that scenario just described and how you know for certain what's working and what's not. Yep. Honestly, man, like attribution is the most frustrating thing from any marketer. So if you're brand new to marketing, let's just take a step back. Attribution is like who claims the sale that we got? Like, for example, if we do run a Facebook ad, you click on it, come to our website, put your email in a pop up. And then three days later, you get an email saying, hey, here's a coupon to come

Starting point is 00:33:54 back and buy you buy Facebook will say, hey, that's my sale. And then email say, no, that's my sale. And what happens is if you look at like, the revenue, what's so funny, if you look at your Shopify revenue, for example, say it's 100,000. And you look at like the revenue, what's so funny, if you look at your Shopify revenue, for example, say it's 100,000 and you look at all the revenue reported by all the different ad platforms that you're running, it's going to show you made 150,000. There's so much that's called

Starting point is 00:34:12 like cross attribution, but everybody else is reporting it. So because of all the iOS privacy updates, because of the email privacy updates, like it's very hard to truly look and figure out like where your sales are coming from, right? So again, that's where I like to,

Starting point is 00:34:24 I like to plug in any kind of tools that I can to help me. There are ways to assist. So like right now I use Triple Whale as a tracking software. There's Triple Whale, there's Hyros. Those are two tracking softwares that can help. But again, they're not perfect. So really at the end of the day, like for me,

Starting point is 00:34:38 it's like I have to look at things on a week by week decision. I can no longer make decisions day to day like I used to on ad spend. And it's very hard because like, I'm not able to tell perfectly where ads are coming from. But when you're involved deeply enough in your business and your media buying, you can actually kind of start telling where they're coming from. So it's for example, if I launch an email campaign, and I see a spike in sales, all of a sudden, it's okay, that email revenue is probably directly

Starting point is 00:35:02 correlated to a lot of the a lot of the sales there. But at the same time, when I deploy an email or an SMS, my Facebook ROAS and purchases go through the roof. So I have to like mentally take a note, hey, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when I send out my blast, I'm going to have a higher return on ad spend on both these platforms because they're going to attribute them. So that's where, again, I like to look at things that are overall weekly spend and say, hey, I spent $1,000 on Facebook, I spent $1,000 on email, I spent $1,000 on SMS, just keeping it round numbers, right? And my company made $9,000. So my overall ROAS for the week was a 3x return. And it's very hard because it's like, you need to

Starting point is 00:35:37 start looking at least how I look at things at a higher level is what is my overall return on spend on all platforms return on all platforms? What does that number look like? And then I like to dive into the submetrics to figure out where I think the attribution is coming. I look at all the CPMs on Facebook. I look at CTRs. I look at CPCs.

Starting point is 00:35:56 Those are the three metrics that I really look at and dial in and focus. And I can say, hey, if this ad, for example, is getting a 2% click-through rate, this one's getting a 6% click through rate, the 6% does have more weighted conversions on Facebook, that's probably the ad that's generating the majority of money coming in. So it's like you have to have a little bit of

Starting point is 00:36:15 intuition when you're running these ads be involved, like deeper on it. So I know like when I turn off an ad, and I'm like, Hey, for some reason, all sales stop coming in. And then all of a sudden, a week later, I look and it's Facebook's Oh, by the way, that ad set got 10 conversions on it. So again, the more deeply involved you can be in your business and media buying, the better decisions you're going to make. But looking at it on a week to week basis instead of a day to day basis, that's really the only way to control your sanity with the attribution going on right now. Yeah, it's complex. I know like we're getting into the nitty gritty. I love it. I know people

Starting point is 00:36:44 are taking notes, but it's always blow your mind. The guy that I follow is an old school guy like me. I guess I'm old school. I feel young, but old school brain guy. And he took it a step further. He was, they were doing some big analysis with a ton of data, like large brands. And they were like the best ads you can run on Facebook right now, if you have a good product and a semi-established brand, is awareness. Because optimizing for clicks, something like that, it's getting the wrong, people that are clicking, that doesn't mean they're purchasers, like it's something crazy. Like it was like flew in the face of what you think, but then I read between the lines of the data and I'm like, it's made sense. Cause it it's like they got a broader, you brought in a broader target base because it was awareness. So anyway. Exactly. Yeah, there's so many different strategies that you can run. There's so many different things that like go against the norm of what you're doing. surgical decisions on your ads. I recommend using a platform like triple well or high roast that do

Starting point is 00:37:45 install like additional pixels and scripts on your store, which do help you make better decisions on your ads. But also to if you're if you have products, you have an established brand like Facebook right now, I know their attribution is almost 100%. If you're running ads to a Facebook shop, because they go from Facebook to Facebook shop to Facebook checkout. And so it's all controlled by Facebook. So that can help, but you can't build out full landing pages and funnels on Facebook shops. It's very hard to run that.

Starting point is 00:38:10 Hopefully one of these days, it's like, I'm guessing, I predict that Apple is going to come out with some advertising platform because they understand the power of the data that they have. And if Apple releases an ad platform, that's going to change the entire game because they control the data. So look out for that.

Starting point is 00:38:25 That's coming, brother. I got the look out for that. That's coming, brother. I have the inside scoop on that. That's coming. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And Hyros is what we use. And I 100% agree. You got to have that extra layer because you can't get all the data you need.

Starting point is 00:38:39 Alex, where's it all headed, brother? Where's Pele going? Where's Alex going? You're in Maui today. Who knows where tomorrow? Where are we headed, brother? Where's Pele going? Where's Alex going? You're in Maui today. Who knows where tomorrow? Where are we headed, brother? That's a good question, man. Honestly, I'm really excited building out this jewelry brand.

Starting point is 00:38:52 But for me, I want to build it to a certain point. And I want to have my first exit of a company. So I want that to be an easy mid-eight-figure exit. And I already understand the numbers, the multipliers, everything that I need to do. How long to get there? How long to get there? You build subscription boxes, man, if you can build a good subscription model business with good retention, good products and high margins, it's actually surprisingly easy to have a good eight figure exit on a on a subscription based company. So that's where it's like all of our funnels at the end of the day, they all lead to subscription boxes for this

Starting point is 00:39:24 company. Because once I can grow this to a point where the subscription boxes are 10, 20,000, it's like investors will come and pay heavy, heavy money for that, especially when they know there's a six to 12 month retention on there. So that's where that's headed. And I'm actually really excited, too, because like we want to talk about funnels getting nitty gritty. It's part of what I'm doing right now is I'm actually launching what's really cool. I have a free plus shipping funnel that literally is getting someone a free product that pay for shipping and then upsells them through a funnel into our subscription box. And right now it's really cool as we have a 40% take rate on the upsell into the subscription box. So our subscribers are like growing very quickly. So I already have the numbers figured out in the next 30, 60 days. Once we start to see more verifiable numbers, I'm just going to go pour a healthy 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 grand into ads and just grow that. And this may be a three-year exit. It may

Starting point is 00:40:10 be a two-year exit, but we're definitely onto something. So I'm excited about that. Me personally, man, to be honest, I don't know what it is that I want. I don't know where it is I want to go. I don't know where I want to live. I don't really know much to be honest with you, but I spent some time with my good friend, Ryan Williams over in California, california he owns a company called industry threadworks and we were talking he's if you don't know what you want the best thing to do is figure out what you don't want i have a calling from the universe right now that it's like next year i don't like being in utah i grew up there and i just like i'm bored of it now lines not cheap is the only thing keeping me in utah so i have this thought that next year i'd love to try this i'm trying to figure out if it's what i truly

Starting point is 00:40:44 want to do again. But I want to pick out 12 places I've always wanted to live around the world, both foreign and domestic and international, and go live in a place for 30 days at a time for 12 months straight. So let's go to Nashville, go to Dubai, go to Amsterdam, go to San Diego, come out here to Maui, just literally try 12 different places and figure out what do I don't like? What do I vibe with? What kind of lifestyle do I want?

Starting point is 00:41:06 Do I want slow and isolated on an island? Do I want the craziness of like downtown Nashville? Do I want San Diego where it's a little bit of mixable? Do I want to be somewhere where there's like a lot of money? Do I want to be somewhere where there's old money? Do I want to be somewhere where there's community? What is it that I want? Because like right now, like this is kind of the first time in my life where I have options.

Starting point is 00:41:24 I have income coming in. I have a business that I can run from anywhere around the world. I have my coaching business, which I can run anywhere. So it's, I literally feel like now's the first time in my entire life that I have no life overhead. I have no girlfriend, no dogs, not no kids, nothing to take care of. And it's like, why not full center, man? What is it like to live in Germany? What is it like to live in Dubai? What is it like to be a little bachelor in Nashville? I'll just go take my car, ship them around the world, wherever I go. I'm like, let's explore, let's have fun. Let's figure out what I want, what I don't want. And from there, I guess we'll see, man. I don't know. I'm just on this journey where I'm like, the universe is sending messages to me

Starting point is 00:41:56 every day and directions where I want to go. And I'm like, I'm just going to listen. I'm just going to completely surrender and listen to it and see where it takes me. I love it, brother. I'm going to live vicariously through you as a very happily married man with four boys and living the dream myself, but I'm going to watch the journey. And if you need some connections in Nashville, I'm well connected there. I can get you on the country music artist scene. If you want, anybody you want to hook up with, I'll shoot you my number after this and we'll stay in touch.

Starting point is 00:42:23 Alex, it's been a pleasure, brother. A lot of knowledge. I know we could talk for twice as long. Maybe there'll be a part two where we're talking about Pele's halfway to exit or something. Yeah, let's do it, man. I greatly appreciate the opportunity on here. And thanks for letting me have a platform to share some value with your audience. And I hope they take some nuggets out of here and run with it, man. I love seeing good people win.

Starting point is 00:42:42 I love helping others. And whatever I can do to help serve you and your audience, man, I'm always here for you. I appreciate it. You did it. Talk to me about where everybody can keep up with you, your coaching, all that stuff. Drop some links or anything like that you got. Yeah. Instagram is really the biggest platform that I'm on right now. So it's at Alex Irby, U-R-B-I-E. Everybody gets confused because all my handles are at Alex Irby, but my last name is truly Urban. It was just a nickname some girl gave me in high school

Starting point is 00:43:08 and the username was available. But Alex Irby on pretty much every platform but Instagram I'm most active on. So that's the best way. There you go. Where to find him? Alex Irby on Instagram. A good follow.

Starting point is 00:43:19 Great photographer as well. As he mentioned, he's very good. He's humble, but it's amazing. I love it. You know where to find us, folks. The.com search for alex urban you'll find all the highlight clips the full episode and everything we've got from today's full and amazing added value episode you know to find me i'm at ryan alford on all the platforms there's a big blue check mark i had it before you could buy it we'll see you next time on the Radcast. To listen or watch full episodes, visit us on the web at theradcast.com

Starting point is 00:43:50 or follow us on social media at our Instagram account, the.rad.cast or at Ryan Alford. Stay radical.

Right About Now with Ryan Alford - The E-commerce Success Blueprint with Alex Urban

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