Ryan and Robbie talk Super Bowl Ads & Rented versus Owned Channels for Ecommerce

 Hey guys, on this episode of the Radical Company Podcast, Robbie and I break down
 the Super Bowl ads. Some of our favorites, some of the fails, was it worth
 five million dollars. We talk about brand and the consideration that goes into
 marketing at this level and we really loved some of the commercials and really
 pan the others. Also, the meat of this episode is on Rented Versus Owned, where
 you sell your products. You sell where you're sort of renting time, i.e. Amazon,
 or on your direct to consumer channels. It's a complicated answer depending on
 where you are, but some really great insights. Hope you'll enjoy this and do us a
 favor if you're enjoying the episode or any of the episodes. Please leave us a
 review on Apple, Google, wherever you're listening. We really appreciate it.
 Find more at Radical.com. Hope you enjoy this episode. Hey guys, welcome to the
 latest episode of the Radical Company Podcast, joined by Robbie Hitzwater.
 Robbie, good to have you today. It's good to be back. I know. Been fun getting into
 rhythm of these. I love it. We're gonna break down a few different topics
 today. We're in a time period as far as marketers go. It feels relevant to talk
 about a little bit. The Super Bowl was just a few days ago. I think we'd be
 remiss to not mention at least some of our favorites and takeaways from the
 event. Turn our backs and ignore it. But I've got to call out the best
 takeaway from the event, though, as somebody from Kansas City. It was great.
 Everything about the Super Bowl was fantastic. I wouldn't call it a curse, but the
 weight is over, you know, it's been 50 years and lots and lots of heartbreak.
 I was wearing a jersey that I've had since I think I was like seven watching this
 game in a youth extra-large jersey. It had been covered in sad tears and suddenly
 it was covered in hams. Did that make it a medium or was it? If I
 raised my hands, it went to my nipples. It was great, but it was normally
 covered in sad tears in the playoffs, but this year it was covered in a
 happy tears. So it was a good thing. Congratulations on the victory. I was a good
 game, though. It was a great game. And in classic chiefs fashion, they made you
 sweat like every game of the playoffs. We were down 10 points or more and then
 suddenly this glory has come back and 21 points in the fourth quarter, wasn't it?
 It was amazing. And like teams seem to really click, things seem to work well
 together. And then suddenly I think, yeah, Kansas City probably blew up that
 night. So yeah, there's a lot of like pent up emotion. Is it like what
 Virginia does when they went as it was it counts as on fire? It's just like
 people jamming to friends in low places and having a good time. Like it's not
 quite catches on fire, but well, they're maybe one or two catches. I mean, it's
 midwest. You have to do what you gotta do. I love it. So we'll do a little
 lightning round as far as the ads go, which is a marketing event. Probably the
 largest universal ad event as far as mainstream public goes in evaluating our
 industry. I mean, how many millions of dollars do you put into a an ad that
 goes into the super bowl? Like the ad buy is just astronomical and plus the
 creative and the distribution around it on the front end and the back end too.
 You've got to really be ready to go if you're if you can afford that. And that's
 really what I look at now is the integration of the campaign. I don't you can't
 convince me. I look, I know it's reaching frequency. I've been preaching brand
 lately and the importance of that and that's over time. And so, but I'm going to
 talk about the other side of my mouth like us marketers like to do. And if you
 don't have an integrated campaign, that 5.6 million for 30 seconds is not
 wasted most certainly. The reach and the reach alone is there's no other
 opportunity like it. But you know, the integration across elements, either
 peppering it at the front end with like what planners did with Mr. peanut
 dying and then coming back to life and then you know, kind of all the all the
 segues. If you leverage it, you got to have a halo. You got to have a wall of
 sound. I think beyond just the spot, which becomes the crescendo of the
 whole event. Yeah. And like you're almost leading up to that big unveil at
 that point too. It's like the you tease it out as much as you can. And then you
 want it to either continue or ideally be able to drive it to another place. And
 I play ping pong with the other channels. Yeah. And it's kind of cool to see
 some of the different brands do that in different ways this year too. One of
 the biggest things that stood out to me probably was the PNG side of things
 where they they brought all of their all of the major brands a lot a few of the
 major brands under their big brand umbrella together. Yeah. Under one one
 individual ad, which was kind of different and interesting. But it seemed like
 there was a lot of kind of co-opitation within those larger brand umbrellas.
 Yeah. And seeing them kind of put Mr. Clean, the bounty man, the whatever
 Charmin, the Charmin Bears, all together. It was kind of funny to see. And it
 seemed like there was that across a few other ads this year too. Yeah,
 definitely noticed some co-branding across things. And you know, I think we
 talked a little bit pretty segment about our favorites. I'm going to ask yours.
 I told you mine at the beginning. We'll break it down to the audience. But it was
 the most I may be a sucker for emotion. I was sitting there with my wife and
 I were watching it. My kids were somewhat paying attention. And you know,
 maybe the emotional side and no matter how you feel about technology. But I
 feel like it covered a lot of basis for me. There's a lot of a bad talk, bad
 thoughts, bad feelings for technology. When in fact, it does solve a lot of
 problems and does offer a lot of good in that. And I thought Google really
 hit a home run with the memory spot and the Google assistant and the old
 man, you know, reminding getting, setting the reminders for his what would be
 assumed deceased wife and ways to remember her. I mean, and I just, you know,
 my wife and our sitting there, you know, you know, you're in that moment.
 And I'm like, number one, the production costs were next to nothing. And I'm
 sure they spent something with their large ads. He charged them 100 times too
 much. But, you know, showing the Google line and then showing slideshows,
 there was, and you know, a great voiceover, you know, the production value was
 super low, memorable, memorable though emotional. Some people argued, well,
 oh, you're bringing, you know, you know, it wasn't the raunchy humor of
 everything else. But I will say the next day, it was still the spot that stuck
 with me the most. I mean, it was, yeah, they've done a good job.
 Those are powerful. Like there's not a lot of, it's like, it has to be so well
 done. It was so well done and so real powerful that you can fit it inside
 this small box. It's not like a monkey jumping, like jumping out of a plane,
 spelling out, like skywriting something in the air. It's not like shock and
 all, but it was really like heart wrenching emotionally. It was really, yeah,
 I remember that was one of my favorites too. And I think it ranked number three.
 There was a, the unofficial Super Bowl rankings, but it was like number three.
 I did like several of the spots, some of them just, sometimes they have a good
 concept. And it's, I know it's, maybe they go with a 60 or something, and I
 feel like it like chills it. You know, it's like I'm like waiting for the punchline
 or like what, you know, like kind of wanting it to a little bit too long,
 a little bit too long, a little bit too far. But I thought Groundhog Day with Bill
 Murray and Jeep. I mean, yeah, that's great. Classic. Well, well produced,
 well thought out and clever. I feel like that speaks to so many different
 audiences too. Groundhog Day is kind of a movie that does kind of cross a lot
 of different age groups. Yeah. And Bill Murray. No, there's not a personal
 life doesn't just love Bill Murray. Exactly. Nobody's going to walk down
 street like, I hate that bill. That Bill Murray guy. I can't stand him.
 Exactly. It's Bill Murray. So, yeah, it was pretty good. And even if you don't
 have not seen the movie, something about Bill Murray's demeanor and
 personality, it's almost kind of like classic Chevy Chase, maybe not current
 form cherry chase, but it just makes you smile a little bit. But seeing him,
 like getting out of, if you had never even seen the movie, I think there was a
 little bit of humor just seeing him repeat those things. You kind of got the
 concept of either way, but obviously the tie-in and, and you know, the
 non-conformity message that they're trying to say with the newest vehicle
 commandos. Is it the truck? I mean, you know, like GenXers were losing their
 minds across the country. It's the ugliest car ever. It's not attractive,
 but I mean, it worked for them. And like, that was, it was good on them,
 like, taking a little bit of rugged brand and having some fun with it.
 Because that's, I mean, get a show off what it, like, you talk, you talk about
 the benefit, the features and benefits in some ways, while still having fun
 with it. And kind of showing the emotional side of it. And so, yeah, I always
 asked myself having worked with some of the largest brands in the world that
 in New York done the big ad game. I asked myself now, if a client was
 consulting with me, would I recommend them if they had the budget to run
 on the Super Bowl? And I'm, I'm evenly, like, like, split down the middle.
 Like, I, I firmly know it is still the media event. And the attention that
 people pay to the commercials versus what my wife and I do, what we're watching
 TV, which is in our phone and, yeah, our head, attention's gone. And I'm not
 saying TV is advertising is dead. I'm not going to go that far. But attention
 on TV advertising is way, way less than it used to be.
 I mean, television advertising, like, I, like, we, they're trying to reach
 somebody through, through traditional means, doesn't really exist anymore.
 Like, television advertising, when do you watch live TV? Never.
 It's sports. Sports is about the only time. And news are sports.
 And like, we don't have cable in that we've never thought twice about it.
 But it's like sport live sports are like kind of the last bastion of a lot of
 that a lot of those ad dollars that used to be spin up on relevant
 advice. But even if you do have it now, you're taking out your phone as soon as
 like commercials come on or your, or you're switching to another channel.
 If you even have cable, which more and more people don't, but the Super Bowl,
 like, you're 10, you're 10, you're paying it. They're an event. Yeah.
 And my wife was like, couldn't I care, care less about Super Bowl?
 But she would sit down for the commercials. She was doing other things.
 She's like, hey, I'm going to watch. It's the one time of the year that happened.
 So you can't ignore that. You can't ignore the 40 million people that are
 watching or in the US or whatever it is. And hundreds worldwide, if you have
 a product and I don't know how the syndication goes and all that. But nonetheless,
 you can't the the media strategic understanding of reach side of me
 and brand side of me goes, you have to take advantage if you have the budget.
 But then the other side and I am not the guy that's on LinkedIn going,
 you could have done 4,324 mobile billboards.
 Yeah. Okay. I'm not that guy either.
 But there is a thing to be said for the impact that could be made for that budget.
 Ryan Reynolds giving away cell service, you know, bundles for his new company.
 Other ways to make a splash with that same amount. That's a lot of money.
 You know, a lot of a lot of goodwill could be done that could be leveraged into
 something else or but not 3,423 urinal ads.
 It's going to flash across. I am not that guy every urinal in
 country. But so it's I don't know where do you fall on that pendulum?
 If you know your Toyota comes to you and Robbie. Hey, Robbie should we run
 Super Bowl this year or not? 6 million for one spot. It's eyeballs at scale.
 Yeah. And it's hard like eyeballs and attention are really tough.
 So can you can the brand put themselves in a position that they're going to
 captivate and move an audience? So you're going to have a completely lay
 audience that doesn't know your brand at all. And either you need a position
 yourself where you really make an impact, but you can't be bland.
 You can't do something for everybody. I think I would sort a little bit in
 some of the ads or groups were taking more of a like more of a positioning
 stance and really kind of focusing on what they were like who they were.
 Like you saw Amazon trying to be a really progressive company.
 They had Ellen DeGeneres talking with about all of the like in an ad that
 like joked about fake news through through time and history.
 But you see those groups kind of taking a little bit more of a narrow focus
 and they this isn't for everybody, but for the people it is for,
 they're going to it's going to knock it out of the park. Yeah.
 And I almost think if you could do it in a way that's not spray and pray
 where everyone in the country is going to get something kind of average,
 but if you can get something that that isn't for 90% of the people,
 but it is for 10% of the people, then I think that that in some way that does work
 because I mean 10% of like 100 million is still 10 million people.
 Yeah. And it's hard to reach in the attention.
 And if you have those deep pockets, you can do do that kind of work,
 but you may have to be a little bit more lean on the way you spend your other ad
 budget done in the year and maybe not paying for a TV during the rest of your
 year too. Yeah. I come, I come down like when I,
 you know, hold the proverbial fake BB gun to the head of where I would go.
 If you're launching, if you're a new brand that has good investment,
 and you're launching something brand new, and it's a mass market product,
 hard to beat the attention and reach that you get with Super Bowl.
 I think check the yes. If you're an existing brand launching an all new feature benefit product,
 check the box yes. If it's just a pure wide mass play and not more targeted leverage,
 it's like you just described, I think I fall in the, we can probably make a bigger,
 better splash somehow else with by the time you add all the cost, both the media cost,
 the agency cost, and the creative cost, you're probably talking 10 million dollars.
 Yeah, it leads to 10 million. I think I can do a lot of damage with 10 million
 outside of that. If it's not product launch, new brand, new, you know, like there's a couple
 very specific scenarios where I think it makes a lot of sense, but, you know, the Doritos fighting,
 I don't know, you know. Is it, so where I think it'll get interesting is I think when,
 when larger brands start to pull out of it, I think when they see, hey, we're not seeing the same
 impact, when Doritos pulls from it or when Budweiser pulls from it, I think that's when we'll see
 some different, some people really questioning, is it worth it or not? Because I think the shoe
 hasn't necessarily dropped on like, hey, we're pulling out of this completely, and if it has a
 night, missed it, yeah, goodbye on me, but I haven't seen that kind of major exodus from
 that Super Bowl ad, that kind of mentality of, hey, this is the mass, we're going to reach,
 and this is like the crown jewel of advertising, and everybody, like if you had a Super Bowl ad,
 as an ad agency, that's like a win, that's a big win there for you. So I don't think we're,
 we're going to see that in the next like five years or so, but I think it's like,
 people are stuck questioning it soon, I mean, and start really trying to differentiate,
 is this going to be worth it? Is this not going to be worth it? And in order to get
 it's interesting, when it's addressable TV at scale, so every TV is addressable,
 when, when, when basic cable, basic, all television is addressable, it gets pretty interesting,
 you know, like that's obviously capable now, but if the Super Bowl, you know, when, when the base,
 with the cable channels get addressable, which is coming with, I think it's called ATSC3.0
 or something like that, it's coming to where every box, every cable box is addressable,
 it's a little wacky then, with the buys, potentially, for how you might can buy the spots to
 the, to the more targeted, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, if you can, if you can make it
 direct response, suddenly you have every, it's every, every television marketer's dream.
 Yeah. I mean, it's, that's the hardest part, it's like the John Wanda maker, like I'm wasting
 half my advertising, I just don't much half, and that's where you finally start to bridge that
 gap, and like that's, I really love digital advertising for that reason, because a lot of it's
 measurable and a lot of it's trackable, but again, to your point, the brand side, it's hard to quantify
 all the time, and if you can reach a large group, yeah, it's just, it's, there's no perfect answer,
 and with this one, and I think it's kind of exciting to see it, continue to evolve.
 The curve ball for me, Sockney, where the hell is that? Like what, like Sockney's like a small,
 like almost niche shoe brand, and suddenly they have a Super Bowl ad, and I was like, did they
 get acquired by somebody? Yeah, that's right, just randomly throwing cash at it, maybe, I don't know,
 yeah, bought by a media company, yeah, but it was kind of kind of fun to just see a few of the
 curve balls in there too. Yeah, there was, and then I think about like back to like, you know,
 little seizures announcing delivery, but it was early on, and then I almost, I just remembered it
 as we were talking about this commercialism, like, did that resonate, yeah, because it was early on,
 and I think we had one spot, you know, maybe two, but I think it was just one, and that was early
 on in the Super Bowl. And I mean, not everybody has paid in, not everybody's glued to attention,
 I guess maybe they're, they're, and when do you, when do you put a, when, when do you place
 not in Super Bowl, do you want to be early or late? Like, that's, that's what people toil over.
 Do you want big brands are like, all right, you've got people, I can see them in the room with
 the whiteboard, and they are toiling over what time they've got, you know, data scientists in the
 room going, there's exactly 3.4% less tension at the 32nd mark versus the four hour mark. I mean,
 I can see it. Dr. Tucker is on his fourth beer. You will not remember any of this. Yeah, exactly,
 by then you have the perfect memory and buzz going at the two hour and 10 minute mark,
 and we're going to put the Bud Light commercial there. It's going to feel nostalgic in part. Yeah,
 it's a, it's a weird beast. Yeah, I honestly, the television side of things was kind of before,
 before a lot of my time in marketing, so I can't, I don't know what that world was like beforehand.
 So it's a different beast. It was, it was another world, another world. I have had feet on both sides
 of it, but another story for another day. So let's jump into the main event today. So today,
 we wanted to dive into owned versus rented land in terms of marketing, which seems like a,
 it's ever-evolving relevant topic because it's, we play with these things every day,
 but and on any given platform, if the service is free, your eyeballs are the, your eyeballs are
 the product. It's a little bit different on Amazon, but this is really rainstrew for social,
 and now it's coming into the retail space on e-commerce with Amazon, becoming the jargon out,
 that it really is. Yeah. But I guess I wanted to kind of dive in and talk a lot of people that
 have been in marketing for a while now, everybody's had the experience on social, where suddenly,
 Facebook was introduced 2000, 2005 when people could start really getting on it at scale. It was
 again, introduced 2004 with just a small niche group of college students. 2007 or so is when
 it really became a mass medium, and the algorithm started really kind of kicking in.
 I drink updates really kind of through marketers for a spin in 2008-19 when it was kind of
 the wild, wild west. But a lot of people that have lived through that, you kind of understand where
 where it's going in a lot of ways, and you can kind of look through it. But thinking about kind of
 what's next for some of those platforms, and then kind of what it's like on Amazon also.
 Yeah, and I get this, probably the most common question I get asked with e-commerce brands is
 how much there's too much on Amazon, or if it's a new brand, do we go in the Amazon route?
 And you know, it's not an easy one to answer. It's the elephant in the room doesn't sound big
 enough. No, it's the elephant in the closet. I don't know. You can imagine an elephant in your,
 let's just in your room and in your closet, you know, it's suffocating you. And is that the,
 is that the, because again, there's so much ambiguity here still now, and it's the elephant
 is suffocating you, but is that elephant propping up your business at this point? How much your
 business is going to be reliant on Amazon? And is it going to be something where you try and
 ramp up quickly on Amazon and then try and transition over to a Shopify and owning as much as
 as possible, or is it going to be something where you start with your own audience and then start
 to gradually let that Amazon, let that Amazon drip start. And I mean, from the brand perspective,
 I can't think of, I can think of a few like a, like anchor, a few brands who have really made it big
 on Amazon and really kind of ventured out from there. And for every other brand that's done well
 and kind of ventured out from there, I'm sorry, I'm, it's not, you're not coming to mind right now.
 So yeah, that's what I'm saying. I have a hard time thinking of brands that have been successful.
 You know, getting 80% of their business on Amazon and then becoming, you know, this hero on
 and D to C. This household name. Yes. But you see these D to C unicorns popping up and doing
 really well. And then maybe adding part of their business to Amazon after that. Like everybody
 loves away or a Casper or any of those large businesses that are doing really well and kind of
 innovative things. I guess Casper's kind of, Casper's got some heat lately. Their evaluation is a
 little bit high, but there's some, there's some really innovative things going on there. And they can
 really drive lifetime value of the customer because it's so, you have somebody who's purchasing,
 you understand what their behaviors are. And if you're, the more niche you are, the better you're
 going to be able to really foster a relationship with that brand. Yeah. And I, I usually answer that
 question that with it's complicated. You know, if you, it really is almost how you're funded
 as a company and how what your goals are, it's very specific to that. If you are, if you have a great
 product and a very limited budget and you don't have funding or you're not trying to get funding,
 you know, it's hard not to get on the Amazon drug to get some revenue coming in the door.
 It is certainly the easier way to faster sales amongst whether it's D to C or on your own
 with less budget because though you have to, you know, Amazon's got their hand in every bucket now
 from the, the ads to the product, you know, percentage that they make on the revenue to storage
 and we're asking, we'll get into some of those things. But it's, it's still easier to get started
 there to start growing scale in volume because everyone's shopping there. And so if you have to
 have immediate fast revenue to fill the coffers, it's hard not to tell someone not to consider that
 as a realm. But if you've got the backing, the funding or multiple partners to get the ad marketing
 content machine rolling for your D to C brand, then I like to say do as little as possible on Amazon.
 You know, I mean, I think don't eat the less you can get dependent on at the better. It seems like
 it's almost like a, your margins are going to get cut, you know, your margins are going to get
 cut down gradually as Amazon, like Amazon right now today is probably the most profitable Amazon
 is ever going to be for your business. And like it's just going to go down from here because I mean
 ad inventory is going to stay the same and or maybe go up with a little bit more, a few more people
 on Amazon, but the prices are going to go up and the costs and the level of competition in the market
 is consistently going up with drop shippers from China just jumping into the mix. You have people
 that want to fight you for, fight you for a listing and you're always playing a pricing war.
 There's so many little small things that are so hard to manage at scale that it's really, I mean,
 unless you really want to invest the time effort and blood sweat and tears to really focus on it,
 it's a lot to handle for a business. Like there are even pieces of individual businesses that are
 kind of almost side projects that are focused just directly on Amazon. Like if you have a larger
 brand, some people that I know out of Northwest Arkansas and who work for California offices of
 large companies are in, they are like, they basically work with individual lines of products that
 are made specifically for Amazon that are kind of like child brands of a larger, larger CPG.
 So there, everybody's kind of starting to figure out how they want to dance with a devil, but
 there's no real perfect answer to it yet because do you want to give them a few of your products
 that you may not sell anywhere else? Do you want to make a line specifically for Amazon?
 Or do you want to just toss everything else on Amazon? And I think it was telling you about this
 before when like I needed to get some new, some new running shorts. I love, I've paired running
 shorts like these kind of plain Jane running shorts I've used for years from Roadrunner Sports.
 Again, I don't have it shop local for those and I feel bad for it in some cases, but
 they're easy, they're fat, they're easy, they're easy, they're easy, they're cheap and I apologize
 in advance, my friends that run in, they're a great place, but they fit well, they're easy and
 they're cheap. Was ordering them off, like was it Roadrunner Sports and was basically had them in
 my cart ready to go? And then in my head, I'm like, oh yeah, we have an Amazon cart that needs,
 we need to pull the trigger on. I like being that being the the great shopper I am, I looked over
 and and and kicked the tires on there and ended up actually buying them from Amazon as ashamed
 as I am to admit it. It was easier and it's kind of crazy because it was about three dollars more,
 we'll pay that in just ease of use because there it's prime, they're going to have in two days
 and it's already added on to my existing order. So it didn't necessarily come from the same place,
 but the fulfillment was just really easy and the process was smooth and simple, didn't have to
 mess around with a credit card or anything. So it's, you almost have to create that a rational
 connection between your brand and the end user to overcome the ease of use at this point and
 do you want to be there and making it easy for them to kind of take a little bit more hit from
 your business or do you want to like really kind of double down on that relationship? Yeah,
 exactly. I'm still struggling with it a little bit myself and again, like I said, a little bit of
 shame, but it's and that's why you have to build a brand if you are going to fight the giant,
 you got to either have a highly differentiated product that only you sell and you have no competitors
 or you've got to start with brand and you know, you think of the stories of
 Tom's use or other brands that have a story and a purpose and you know, you use the social
 channels that are out there and you start leveraging that to start to build your D2C name and know
 that it's going to take time, you know, and because my problem with Amazon and look, we buy on
 Amazon, but my problem as consulting with a company or brand is it's a race to the bottom.
 And it's like if you race to the bottom, you'll win every time. It's not a sustainable strategy.
 It's just by its nature, it's not. I mean, they're going to take more a higher and higher percentage
 of every transaction there consistently. And then you're fighting other people who are
 killing you on price already there too. So you're really shooting yourself in the foot and honestly,
 it's you're trying to take a product and make it a commodity suddenly. And when you play that
 game, everybody loses. But in the direct consumer space, you can really kind of take yourself away
 from that commodity space and really kind of elevate your presence and elevate your brand.
 And I think that's where the long-term play is and owning that relationship more so. And
 you still do have to battle Google with different inboxes with the inbox, your promotions folder,
 and your newsletter folder. Like you're always going to have something like that where it's
 trying to take a little bit of money back and it's still rented land to some extent with a Gmail.
 I think the biggest thing is it's no different than your investment portfolio. You need great
 distribution of wealth and assets. And it's the same thing with your sales, your distribution
 channels, your your approaches. I think getting heavy in any one area makes you vulnerable.
 If you've got all your stocks, if you've got all your money in the high aggressive stocks,
 stock market crashes, you're in trouble. Put it in Bitcoin and right into the moon. That wasn't
 a good idea. I've got a great story, a quick story on Bitcoin. I bought something somewhere
 not to be named. It might have been like some new trope pick or something that was not illegal,
 by the way. But it was not whatever, but it took Bitcoin to buy it. This was like 10 years ago.
 And I bought, I had to buy like, it was hard to buy Bitcoin in 1999 or 10 2009. It wasn't,
 it wasn't as readily available as it is now. But things people think, well it's been around
 forever. No, it hasn't. And so anyway, it was like 2009, 2010. I had to buy like five bitcoins.
 At the time, they were like $200 a piece or $150. It's like $600. And the proc that bought was only
 like $175. It was something weird the way I had to be done. I had like four or three and a half,
 3.5 random bitcoins sitting. And I just happened to have bought them from one of the
 reputable places that was still around. And you know when it spiked like a couple of years
 ago or whatever? Like $20,000 or so. I had like $20,000 sitting there in Bitcoin or more like,
 they got what it was the value of it was. And I sold it as soon as it hit like what the highest
 thing was. And I was like, you know, after taxes, still a nice like $15,000. I think you're one of
 like the three people in the country that actually made that work. Yeah, it saw a lot of frenzy
 around that and saw a lot of people. They kind of just they weren't they weren't as excited
 as when it when it crashed the next month. That December 2018, I believe was just crazy.
 I don't think that's actually happening on the audio line. It's not happening on the audio.
 It's just what we hear. I'm just going to start talking. I'm just going to keep talking. Yeah,
 it's anyway, that was my Bitcoin by ran a Bitcoin story. diversifying your sales portfolio like
 a like you would your your own investments. And it's kind of, I guess it's a good point. It's
 like looking at your risk profile as you would an investor. And are you 85 and want to retire soon?
 Or are you 23 and and are like you don't even worry about health insurance. You're just ready
 ready to ready to go because you're in invincible. So it's kind of looking at your individual
 business assessing how you approach that risk and approach those those issues. But yeah, I'm
 I'm a I'm a believer in building on on land as much as possible. Yeah, and and you know some
 of the clients come to us and they've 70% of their business on Amazon. And I you know the first
 strategy like number one in the deck is how we start you owning this on your property as fast as
 possible back over and you see and like it just so many products on Amazon you purchase
 they've the little cards like hey if there's a customer service issue let us know we want to be the
 first to know. And I swear like they're almost praying for it because if they can have a customer
 service issue they suddenly have a touchpoint with their brand. And it's almost a good thing because
 maybe you can bring that person over and saying like hey we'll give you 10% less next time
 just to come and purchase from us as opposed to Amazon. That 10% can be 5% more than they were
 given to Amazon last time. So yeah, it's and if you're listening and you are you're just getting
 started just so you understand if you don't know Amazon owns the customer period you cannot contact
 them you have no relationship with them. This is Amazon's customer that just happens to be doing
 you a favor by allowing you to pay them from 15 to 35% of the revenue to sell your product.
 Now I've not look they've built the scale they've built the monster they've built the machine.
 I'm a cap I believe in capitalism. I don't have a problem per se but it's just reality so just
 be ready for it. Yeah and and again you're you're dancing with the devil and like it's like every
 market around Facebook in 2009 like why are they taking away all my reach I earned that reach
 those are my those are my followers they're not when they're when you don't own the platform
 they own the platform and those are not your your community at the same the same way it would
 would be if you had an email list that you could reach out to or if you had your own fulfillment
 it's a lot hair you're in a lot stickier to deal with on that end but it's a more sustainable
 strategy in the long run because Amazon's going to gradually take more and more of your business
 and what if Amazon wants to take away your like if you have a replenishable product they're
 snatching up those like crazy on Amazon every on basics is coming out with new products all the time
 yeah so how do you kind of beat that how do you kind of either outmaneuver that dragon or how
 do you beat that dragon and honestly like it's really difficult because to at scale you're not
 going to be able to do it like you're going to have to find a way to get off that off that wagon
 eventually because you're just going to be eroding your but eroding your business eroding your
 brand and eroding what long-term possibility could be there it's no different and I the LinkedIn
 post yesterday about branding over time versus sales in the short term and activity and it's
 proven over time there's countless studies with billions of dollars that you can't everyone
 listening can't necessarily see my hands have I'm holding charts that building brand over time
 the activities to do that assuming you have a solid foundation of a brand and a great message
 but with that assumption over time the speed and rate with that happen which is slower
 outpaces sales activation and the lower funnel activity driving activity and I would call
 Amazon for an e-commerce brand would fall into that hey you can get some spikes early on
 those first few months those first first half a year you can totally get some some
 rewards to the receptors when you're revenue and and and again depending on your situation
 that can be reported but building your brand over time is going to outpace what you can do
 on that rented land yeah so it's just that little serotonin hit every time you every time you get
 a sale on Amazon it's like a little bit a little hit a little hit but you've got to you've got to
 eventually start to do it start to kind of do it on your own like it's your trend it can be a
 little bit of training wheels in the front end where you can get a little bit of a little bit of
 mojo going ideally and then transition off that as fast as you can because once you're running a bike
 hopefully you don't need the training wheels and hopefully you don't need that little sidecar
 sidecar kind of following along next to you but it's it's a fascinating space because how much
 how much of the world's transactions are going on on Amazon and how much how much of every e-commerce
 dollar do they are they getting a portion of I would be willing to place a bet I'm going to look
 this data point up I should have before the podcast the valuation of a company or brand
 that has 70 percent of their sales direct to consumer versus a similar size company
 with 70 percent of their sales on Amazon what is the evaluation difference between those two
 companies I would love to know I bet it's 10x no no I it has to be because like if you're looking
 at from a from an investor standpoint there's so much volatility in Amazon where you don't have any
 like they talk about like investor side they talk about how do you build a moat how do you build a
 moat around your business and where and you're positioning you have no moat they dug up your moat
 and there your businesses on top of there is on top of the back of their truck you're driving
 around in the back of the Amazon truck if you have a moat around your business you can kind of
 defend your position it to some extent for a period for a hopefully ideally consistent period of
 time you're not going to be it's never going to be perfect but if if you can really do that
 that's a differentiated position for you but it's from the investor standpoint I'd imagine
 more than 10x because investment valuations are astronomical right now so it's like 50x so yeah it
 maybe it's probably a good way to look at it it's probably a good way to position it for those
 groups out there thinking about hey do I need to be spending more time on Amazon or do I need to
 be spending more time building my brand because if you can position it in the way and kind of
 everybody thinks Amazon's exciting and sexy because everybody a lot of people are making a lot
 of money right now it is kind of like that Bitcoin craze at one point where a lot of people are
 making a lot of cash but if you look at it from a from a really shrewd lens and may not be as exciting
 and sexy as it is it really seems right now because everybody's kind of jump on that train
 yeah and you know that bandwagon gets heavy it gets real heavy it turns over when when
 billions and billions and like yeah I can't even imagine how many products are on Amazon right now
 if you watch college football this season when the boomer sooner wagon ran onto the field and
 turned over luckily no one was hurt I wouldn't bring this up but that man wagon flips yeah
 that's what that's that's that's that's what that's what you that's what you're like and hopefully
 you're on the side where where you're going to land on this on somebody next to you as opposed to
 the side where somebody's going to land on you yeah exactly can we can we say this you know we
 talked about the titles you know rented versus owned I think we can chalk up Amazon as a frenemy
 for an amazing you know like it's hard to hate them completely and I do not by the way but
 I'm also smart enough as a marketer and as a strategist for the brands that we work with to know
 that it is not the long-term solution for your brand you have to look at it with a grand
 assault yeah it's just like we need to we need to put all of our ducks in the same basket is we
 got to build a build a good tick-tock audience yeah it's put your ducks like distribute distribute
 your attention distribute your focus and don't put all your eggs in that's that one basket
 yeah because that basket could change yeah and that's a Amazon's probably that that group that
 we again we're probably this probably will be then not be the next time the last time we talk
 about Amazon no I don't think it will I think it's kind of that going to be continually the elephant
 the room for a long period of time it's going to be a pretty heavy topic we're we're both evolved
 in the FedEx e-commerce event coming up March 25th get more details you can reach out to us
 on on that event being put on by FedEx here in Greenville South Carolina so we're both part of that
 I have a feeling it's going to be a pretty big topic it's going to be one of my my line items
 in the speech that I'm working on and I'm going to get in the pulpit a little bit there and
 fire and brimstone it on some Amazon I mean yeah and I'm sure you're going to be you're going to be
 in very good company there with the budget with the FedEx group I know they're not as
 pleased with Amazon right now after the holiday after the kind of getting getting
 put put on by Amazon during the holidays but it's a yeah it's a it's a different beast and we've
 got to kind of understand what it's doing how it's impacting the economy and yeah like we
 talked about Super Bowl ads too earlier like there was a reason they use AWS so many times in
 the Super Bowl you heard AWS it's like half a dozen times or dozen times their AWS is going to
 be its own company soon Amazon's just getting bigger and bigger and they're either going to be
 shrinking from anti-stress legislation or trying to try to make AWS its own thing so it's fascinating
 it's it's we live in very interesting times it is Robbie enjoyed it as always Ryan it's always
 a pleasure we'll again look forward to doing this again soon I know well I hope everyone enjoyed
 it and I hope everyone has a great rest of the week depending on when you listen to this but
 please follow along at radical.com you can link to all of our podcasts there please subscribe
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