The E-commerce Success Blueprint with Alex Urban

 I've never felt like this before, it's like you just get me.
 I feel like my true self with you, does that sound crazy?
 And it doesn't hurt that you're gorgeous.
 Okay, that's it, I'm taking you home with me.
 I mean, you can't find shoes this good, just anywhere.
 Find a shoe for every you, from brands you love, like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas, and
 more at your DSW store or DSW.com.
 Today, my friends, I 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.
 She's a guy named Alex Urban, you need to talk to him.
 I'm like, 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 I 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, Paley, is his e-commerce brand.
 You can find him at it's Alexurban.com, we're going to dig into it.
 Alex, man, there's a lot down in cover, I'm packed with your shit.
 I'm like, I don't even know where to start with this guy.
 If you guys, anyone listening, if you heard a lion's not cheap, Alex was a big part
 of growing that brand that's still out there and still making waves and probably still
 filling 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 you have was Sean Whalen
 and stuff.
 But, damn, Alex, where did this marketing all start?
 Where did the Alexurban brain develop into the guru that you are?
 Money 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 to 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, 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 with my friend, a Vegas, he 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 mortgages were.
 Got into an interview, talked shit with the owner and he's like, hey, I want to start
 Monday.
 I'm like, sure, I didn't even know what I was doing because you're going to be an assistant
 like awesome.
 Got in there.
 He started painting an hourly rate plus a commission to help close loans under a loan
 officer and then I started really like 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, hate 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 were 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 were just cranking in like hundreds of thousands of dollars a month
 and I was sitting here going, oh shit, like this is something I want to get into.
 After that, I got licenses, a loan officer started doing loads 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 years
 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 streamline loan, which is the easiest refinance you
 can do if you're in the mortgage industry, we started to get into 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.
 And I remember a thing, 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 great fabric wall.
 And I'm like, there's more to life than this man.
 Like my girlfriend's sitting here, she's wanting to, or my ex girlfriend, I apologize,
 she's like wanting to go to Europe and go travel the world and I'm like, sin here.
 Fuck dude, like I just literally am staring at this like gray fabric cubicle wall, listen
 to 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 sales
 person 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.
 But I was like, hey, everybody's sitting here cold calling and outbound calling all these
 thousands of numbers.
 And I'm like, doing it 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 the 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 then the 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, hey, if I can leave Utah and make 10K a month, that's good to me, bros.
 Say less, we're giving 10K a month.
 So I started a internet marketing agency.
 I started working with local gyms and supplement companies and really offered my services
 for free at that time so I could practice all my new, newly acquired skills and techniques
 and everything.
 I 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, how many I love you, but that's not going to work with
 what I'm trying 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, like 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, I only have $200 a month for ads then.
 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 like some print on demand t-shirts.
 Me 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 Tecademics in Arizona that actually taught and sold e-commerce marketing education.
 So I spent all the money that I had left my bank account to go down there to mastermind,
 went and met up with some people down there and the long story short 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 work my way to the very top
 of the ladder and their talk sells first and very quickly selling shop price stores way
 easier than some mortgages so I was just like shooting fish in a barrel.
 Started working for my first business partner named Jonathan who had a time, had a very
 large jewelry company doing a few hundred thousand dollars a month.
 We scaled that to a million dollars a month 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 backend systems and operations more
 optimized.
 I'd go and plug in all these shipping integrations, inventory integrations to teach me how to
 purchase products and negotiate with all these foreign suppliers and then 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 such a great learning opportunity for me for 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 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.
 He'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 started blowing it up literally
 Facebook came out the ban 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
 hundred thousand dollars or even like a million two million dollars that I'm just going
 to go be this young 25 year old dude just traveling the world living off crypto money like
 this is going to be amazing.
 We released the coins IPO and it came out and like my millions of tokens were worth like
 eight grand I think it most and I was like okay if that projects out one of the business
 partners that I worked 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 point where okay 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 out which honestly I probably should have sold it
 like looking at the multiples now I was like that would have been a crazy business 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 had this
 apparel brand I want to grow I do want to help me with it and I'm like sure and that apparel
 brand is many be listening notes lines that cheap so he gave me a 90 day trial thought
 to help get lines not cheap 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 started so we pretty
 much say that we started zero with 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 a three years in the week that I was with them in total
 we ended up doing about 19.6 million dollars in sales through that company so help 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 happier fulfilled with that project
 anymore started like making some selfless decisions for me and my happiness my mental
 health and I was like that's time to go build my own thing so recently just started my
 own ecommerce brand back in the jewelry niche again a lot of people are like Alex why
 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 ever sold apparel was with lines not cheap
 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 long story short that's the adventure man
 haha dude a lot to impact there so my mind 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 fasting to me
 okay so quick story for me I came up in the world of building big brands for eyes and apples
 Samsung Motorola worked on Madison Avenue unlimited budgets growing brand and growing awareness
 got to have reach and frequency reach and frequency because you're battling other brands that
 have unlimited budget so playing that big game then internet marketing comes around this is
 two two thousand five six seven eight nine into the early twenty tens and all that when it was
 like shooting barrel on Facebook or whatever but like that comes around 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 having I came up on that I now know that's a balance
 of both of those we both do but for someone like you that seemingly done both it sounds like
 you've just you've hocked a lot of product that probably had no real brand behind it and then
 you stepped into LNS and Sean it's been he may be have not known what the hell he was doing with
 Ecom but had spit 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 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 Ali Express Ali Baba they burned a lot of people on Facebook you know to mean
 they burned a lot of the audience that you can run ads to because okay 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 by 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 Facebook is it's the most
 it's kind of like on the highest priority on the latter to run ads so it's the easiest ad platform
 to run it's the easiest to get traction on etc 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 drop
 shipping 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 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 to say hey here's who we are here's what we stand for here is what our brand
 is and if you want to rip 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 some big boxy cardboard-ass like Haynes t-shirt it's like you're going to put it on and
 where it wants to 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 you know 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 you a lot of my students and my coaching group is that like your personal brand
 is more important than ever and you put such a 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 I mean we're gonna have the candles soon I'm
 gonna be selling candles to my audience I'm sure I pushed a lot of product out for lines not
 sheep to my audience I've pushed coaching out to my audience 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 truths for so long that it's like they just
 want to support you and obviously there's a limit there is 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 or they're like hey I can just message the owner that my bracelet got mixed up
 where I got the wrong size and it's I know I'm always gonna take care of my customers already 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 gonna fall short and you're
 not gonna be able to scale to do a point where you truly can so I think that's if you're starting
 in the ground up that's what you need to have and if you don't have those components like it's
 gonna be a very rough and rocky start for sure yeah that's funny I didn't think about it the way
 you 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 that was like I done all this
 shit I'd get on Instagram and the the Instagram ninja or the marketing ninja would pop on my feet
 I'm like who's up ninja I'm a fucking ninja but no one knew I was because I had done nothing and
 then so what I started radical the rat cash radical and my personal branding all started six years
 ago and they're all on the same plane of time and growth it's crazy it knows of the thing singing
 the rat casting ways of product the agency's kind of my services and then the personal
 brand but it all works the other bro it's all those things and we coached leaders all the time
 that they have to get behind the from out from behind the desk now that it's only it will only
 re-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 did personal branding because people hate that word people
 oh they either cringe or they hate it I'm like what's up I guess 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
 has really pushed out Instagram like you have those people that were the main influencers of 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 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 what I'm going to do business with period like
 a lot of my employees like I met them online I met them because they're providing value I buy
 with them I dig with them you know what I mean I die 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
 meaning 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 a line in vibe with the same kind of
 core values and belief system that I have going on because like when you like combine all 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 run an ad and they're
 like no but I know that the Facebook I'm like bro you don't know shit about a Facebook algorithm
 until you run an ad trust me I just had to plug in a new tracking software into my ads and I had
 apparently they re-optimized when I plugged into a UTM code and all my ads are crashing I was like
 you can't tell me that adding a UTM code after an ad was already launched an ad with slurming
 phase what fucking crash completely because you've never ran an ad you know 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 a 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 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 like 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
 my day so today we're a POV challenge I pull out my phone I take picture of us going to podcast
 and I'd write a post about it or any day that I had a lesson come up that I thought be good to
 share with my audience I'd take a random picture of my car the office 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
 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 ways of emotion and I don't want people to ever look at my social
 media feed and be like hey his life's perfect mind sucks I'm gonna go down this rabbit hole and
 feel like I'm alone my entire life it's 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 like throwing 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've used to be on a shootcake I like literally
 I think about like 80 pairs of Jordans almost every day I'm like hey new shoe arrived people guy
 with that but your life online story and you're the main character and so you need to entertain
 people through storyline and after you do enough regular posting you're gonna hear what what that
 is for you what's I love adding value to the audience I've heard I heard some key things you nailed
 them you talked about some of them but let's give some of the someone's starting e-commerce or
 any calm maybe they're an executive maybe they're just start 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 of the leader really helps and of course the brand itself all those things help
 I heard email in there that sounds like so I had to guess that's like in the top of the list but
 what's in the Alex urban must have secret playbook for brand growth and just sales yeah so I far
 at the top of the ladder down number one is gonna 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 and so if your brand from the coming out
 of the gates looks like it was 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 gonna
 trust you anywhere to buy that there is this like weird gross feeling about some people's website
 break go on there and it's this is a 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 in an all-time low
 and when you're building a brand from the ground up like the thing that I can't stress you 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 gonna go anywhere period so I cannot recommend enough get a good photographer
 getting good videographer I started getting into photography when my ex started wanting 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 light room 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 out fiber 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 without being able to talk to somebody that's incredibly important so
 that's gonna be like number one because if you don't have that kind of the rest it really doesn't
 matter secondly 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
 know let's go and 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 gonna 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 an SMS list 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 hey if you spend 50 dollars you get a free t-shirt
 if you spend a hundred dollars 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 spending less by
 saying hey we're having a 50 percent 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 paylay 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 gonna 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 no crazy
 things I literally set up the ad set as it is default by Facebook and literally within the first
 two dollars I already started getting purchases on my funnel and so it's like that's a kind of
 offer that you need to really get traction with your brand and if you're if you can't get traction
 running a wide open ad to Facebook through with your offer you don't have the right offer so go
 back to the whiteboard try that try 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 read in the
 motion game or you're in the money game and you need to figure out which one that is and sometimes
 it's gonna 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 motion game or money game and adjust and pivot
 from there so that's kind of my starting brand 101 the things that you need 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 and I like to play the hard game man I'm co-founder of a CBD company you can't run
 fucking ads I try to make a real hard on myself yeah we're on a build of the old fashioned way
 true branding influencers all that stuff yeah you probably smart enough to stay out of that business
 I tell you like it's I love it because it's rewarding and I believe in it and so that passion but
 shit when you just can't run you can't just okay we got great piece of content you can't run
 fucking ads yeah 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 the matter if you're 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 and exchange for
 some video content I got a ton of DMs got some products out to these girls and now it's like
 now 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 know how our products hey by the way I just
 got this bracelet box from paylay here's what it contains well blah blah blah very good to
 organically push very good to run ads to and as people like see other people using a product
 it's gonna amplify your sales by the way instead of sometimes looking at like hey after running
 out on Facebook go here product out to 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 quicks 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 such a fire brand
 himself and maybe one thing you learned from Sean and one thing just learning being there for all
 like good batter and different it you can take that any way you want yeah I mean there's there's
 a lot of different 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 a 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 what on one
 time with him where he helped me with so much 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 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 going to you're like it's
 going to 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
 taking care of if my physical health isn't taking care of if my relationships aren't taking 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 really try now to make an emphasis on like my mental health my physical health
 my relationships with everybody family friends girls I'm dating talking to etc so it's that
 is 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
 being having your Facebook and Instagram ads like really dialed in so many people are just 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 grow-ass so it's like we were looking at hey we needed two x on
 Facebook and we needed four x on Google we needed one x 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 is that
 overall row-ass and you 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
 nut is senior 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 like a pain because there's a lot of things to do online
 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 like a subscription box like
 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 I mean I've ticked up whatever that is
 so it's like you need the crumbs you need to know the numbers if you don't know that's hard
 place to be so create yourself a spreadsheet you figure out like what are my 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 break even point to cover my employee my payroll my rent
 my et cetera 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 board need to be running it at two and a half for us for example
 and so it's you truly know those numbers you can dial them in it's very 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 your bank counts going up tells you
 something bank counts going down selling 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
 no it's good man I'm soaking an in I know the audiences and 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 we both we know this I know this but I want to know like you say you look
 at that ROS but like I don't buy something the first time I see a Facebook ad and yesterday's
 retargeting and yes if everything happened in a vacuum which it doesn't where I see a video about
 your jewelry I know 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 I'm aware but I'm not buying yet I'll go the website then you retarget being I know
 you will you follow me on the internet but Susie Smith goes Alex urban yeah his jewelry is so great
 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 too and all these attribution models and everything else and I know you you
 can get lost in the sauce on all that but it's we know that one impression doesn't sell something
 95% of the time I mean it does sometimes you hit right press right time in Facebook in 2013 yeah
 you did because it was so good because yeah you had an audience that wasn't used to getting ads
 that way combined with knowing everything about them before the whole data the data crunch but
 so 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 yeah honestly man like attribution is the most
 frustrating thing from any marketers so if your brand new to marketing let's just take setback
 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
 a email saying hey here's a coupon to come 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 with
 so funny if you look here Shopify revenue for example say it's a hundred thousand 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 a hundred fifty thousand there's so much that's called 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 I like to plug in any kind of tools that I can't to help me there are
 ways to assist so like right now I use triple whales the tracking software there's triple whale there's
 high-roses or two tracking software that can help but again they're not perfect so really at the end
 of the day like for me 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 a UC 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 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 row ass and purchases go through the roofs 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
 right again I like to look at things that are overall weekly spend and say hey I spend a thousand
 dollars on Facebook I spend a thousand dollars on email I spend a thousand dollars on SMS just
 keeping it round numbers right and my company made nine thousand dollars so my overall
 row ass for the week was a three x return and it's very hard because it's like you need to start
 looking at least how I look at things at a higher level is what is my overall recurrent on
 spend on all platforms return on all platforms like what does that number look like and then I like
 to dive into the sub metrics and to figure out like where I think the attribution is coming like I
 look at all the cpm's on Facebook I look at CTR's I look at CPC's like those are the three metrics that
 I really look at and like dial in and focus and I can say hey if this ad for example is getting a
 two percent clicks rate this one's getting a six percent clicks rate the six percent does have more
 weighted congregions 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 a little bit of intuition when you're running these ads
 be involved like deeper on it so I know like when I turn off an ad and all this kind of like hey for
 somebody's all sales stuff coming in and then all of a sudden a week later I look in its Facebook's
 oh by the way that ad said got 10 conversions on it so again the more people 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 new
 greedy I love it I know people are taking notes but it's all you blew 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 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 ad 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 does it it's getting the wrong this people that are clicking that doesn't mean their
 purchasers like it's something crazy like there's like flu in the face of what you think but
 that right between the day lines the data and I'm like it's made sense because it's like they got
 a broader you brought in a broader target base because it was awareness so anyway 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 but if the if you want to increase your chances of making good
 statistical surgical decisions on your ads I recommend using a platform like triple oil or
 hyros that do install like additional pixels and scripts on your store which do help you make better
 decisions on your ads but also too if you're if you have products you have an established brand like
 Facebook right now I know their attribution is almost a hundred percent if you're running ads to
 Facebook shop because they go from Facebook to Facebook shop to Facebook check out 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 yeah 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 like 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 that's coming brother
 yeah I have the inside scoop on that that's coming yeah exactly it's the way yeah and
 hyros is what we use that I a hundred percent agree you got to have that extra layer because you
 can't get all the data you need Alex where's it all headed brother where's pay leg on where's
 Alex going you're in Maui today who knows where tomorrow where we headed brother that's a good
 question man honestly like I'm really excited building out this jewelry brand but for me it's I
 want to 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've already know the I already understand the
 numbers and 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 leave the subscription boxes for this company because once I can grow this to a point
 where the subscription boxes are ten twenty thousand it's like investors will come and pay heavy
 heavy money for that especially when they know there's a six and twelve month retention on there so
 that's where that's headed I'm actually really excited too because like we want to talk about funnels
 getting into gritty it's hard to 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 free product
 that behavior shipping and then it upsells them through funnel into our subscription box and right
 now it's really cool we have a 40% take rate on the upsell into the subscription box or subscribers
 are like growing very quickly so I already have the numbers geared out in the next 30 60 days once
 you start to see more verifiable numbers I'm just going to go poor a healthy 10 20 30 40 50 grand
 into ads and just grow that and this may be a three year exit it may be two year exit but it's
 more definitely on to something so I'm excited about that and 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 he owns a company called industry thread works and we're 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
 you 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 up sheep is the only thing keeping me in
 Utah so I have this thought that next year I love to try this I'm trying to figure out if it's
 what I truly want to do again but I want to pick out 12 places I've always wanted to live around
 the world both foreign and sorry 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 where do I what do I
 don't like what do I vibe with what kind of lifestyle do I want 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 I have
 income coming in I have a business that I can run from anywhere around the world I am a coaching
 business which I can run anywhere so it's I let me feel like now is the first time 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 cars ship them around the world
 wherever I go and 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
 inverse is sending messages to me 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 if you're right
 takes me I love it brother I'm a little vicariously through you as a very happily married man with four
 boys and living to dream myself but I'm going to watch the journey and if you need some connections
 in Nashville I'm well connected there I get you on the couch music artist seeing if you
 anybody want to go with I'll shoot you my number after this and we'll stay in touch Alex has been
 a pleasure brother a lot of knowledge I know we could talk for twice this long maybe there'll be
 a part two where we're talking about paylays halfway to exit or something yeah see what 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 I love health and others and whenever I can do to help serving your audience
 man I'm always here for you I appreciate it you did it talk to me about where I can keep up with you
 you're 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 you are 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 name
 some girl gave me in high school and the user name was available but Alex Irby on pretty much
 every platform the Instagram I'm most active on so it's the best way there you go to find him
 Alex Irby on Instagram a good follow great photographer as well as he mentioned he's very good
 he's humble but it's amazing I love it you know to find this folks the radcast dot com search
 for Alex Irby and you'll find all the highlight clips the full episode and everything we've got from
 today's full an amazing added value episode you never find me I'm at Ryan offered 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
 other ad cast to listen or watch full episodes visit us on the web at the radcast dot com or
 follow us on social media at our Instagram account v dot rad dot pass or at Ryan offered stay radical
 you