How to win in ecom in 2025 (from a $200M/yr marketer)

I'm glad you guys invited me here because you're slumming it down with like the e-com millionaires again.

This is like a Make-A-Wish type of episode for us.

You know, I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel. Never—

there's really two things that I need to talk to you about.

There's two reasons you're here.

Number one, I cannot believe that you sell hundreds of millions of dollars of this stupid little wallet. This is unbelievable to me. It's been blowing my mind Ever since I found that out and now you're here finally to give us some answers. And two, um, I think you're very opinionated when it comes to e-com. You don't hold back, you don't pull punches. And so we like that. We like spicy guests. And I think you're, you're going to be able to have both of those things for us.

I think you should smack Sean right now for calling it stupid little wallet.

Did you hear that?

Stupid little wallet.

I'm just trying to get him fired up. I told you he gets, he gets fiery, he gets feisty. So I wanted to, you know, stir the pot a little bit.

You better play nice. I'll dox your, your e-commerce brand. Uh, that's true. He knows he's got, he's got some, uh, he knows too much.

He's got some compromise.

Powerful, dude. I've been a, uh, I've been a Ridge Wallet owner since 2016 or '17. You know, Ridge, uh, sponsored The Hustle.

Well, dude, thank you for the support. And you guys were super early for newsletter sponsorships. Like, we probably run like a pretty big sponsorship, like, ecosystem now. We sponsor like a ton of newsletters, like, you know, YouTubers, obviously. You guys were like one of the first people selling that ad space.

So yeah, and you know what I learned about your guys' industry? Well, just any marketer who's savvy is people like you and Sean. You guys know how to find early interesting stuff and you take all of the risks and you, and you just, you understand the arbitrage, like the underpriced opportunity. And so we had a lot of smart people who would buy these ads with us. And I'm like, I can't believe they're doing this. This is so unproven. And then I realized that that's like the theme of a smart marketer, which is throw dollars at a variety of things and then exhaust it once everyone else comes and finds it.

Yeah, it's ad arbitrage, right? Like, everything's attention. So if I'm giving Facebook at this point $15 per 1,000 views, and if I can get a better price off of newsletters or influencer or YouTube, like, it's all just an attention economy. And it's so funny to watch that, like, pendulum swing back. Linear TV, like the TV your parents probably watch, is so cheap to run ads on because nobody's buying it. So, like, you know, I'll probably—

what's like the CPM of linear TV?

A dollar, like, oh wow. It's like, because there's all these channels, right? There's been like, you know, thousands of channels that have come out that like have 800 people who watch them. So like you just buy like big blocks of random ad space that are just very male, male targeted. Um, and like, yeah, literally like a dollar to reach 1,000 people.

Do you know what our best performing ad channel is? Our marketing channel for my brand? Postcards. You would not believe it. Postcards. It's not super scalable. Like you can't just like spend to infinity on it. But, you know, you put a dollar in, you'll get $8 or $9 out of revenue. It's amazing.

That's great. You use Postpilot?

Postpilot.

Yeah. Nice.

So, okay, so Sean, we should start at the start. So what's cool about y'all's story is you sell a simple product. It wasn't like some, some Mark Zuckerberg, you know, innovation or anything like that. And you've scaled it up, you've built it brick by brick. But you said you started in the service, in like a sort of a sweaty services business. You didn't start the company and you didn't start off in the product game. So can we just do your story for a little bit? And then I want to brainstorm other D2C ideas with you afterwards. But first, let's do— let's do your story.

Sure. Yeah, you got that right. The show's My First Million. So I made my first million dollars off of an ad agency. So, you know, Facebook ads came out in 2012. That was like when it was probably like an open beta. Anybody could join. And I learned how to do Facebook ads. I worked at an agency with my CMO Connor, and the agency sucked. Like, you know, it was 200, 200 people working there, probably 500 clients.

You were an employee?

Yeah, yeah, I was just an employee. And then I was like, oh, I should do this. I could do a better job of this. The agency I worked at, the average client was around for 4 months. So imagine that sales cycle, like it takes 60 days to onboard them. They get 30 days worth of work and they're like, this sucks. And then 30 days to offboard. The average client was 4 months. Right? And I'm like, imagine if I just did this but I kept them for a year. I'm like, I'll make so much money, right? So I started an ad agency. I have 10 clients.

Um, so you're saying this like it's simple. So you, you're working at an ad agency. How old are you roughly at this time?

I was 22.

You're 22 years old. You're not like a marketing expert yet, right? You're like, you know, you're learning on the job, I would assume.

Yeah, yeah. But like, it was— it's kind of like TikTok shops is today. Like, nobody's an expert, right? Like, it's, it's a brand new thing that came out. Like, I was— we're probably 2 and a half years into Facebook ads. People still thought Instagram followers were the most important metric, and they're like wanting to run campaigns to get followers, right?

And was your agency super bullish on Facebook as a channel, or it was kind of like this new thing that, you know, you got really interested in because it was new, but Was the whole agency like, hey, this is going to be a really big deal?

Yeah, it was like a cookie-cutter D2C agency, like in the heyday. This is probably like 2015, right? So Facebook— Facebook and email was the services we were providing. Like there was no other services. Maybe there was one guy doing Google Ads, right? But it was really all in on Facebook as like this brand new channel. And if I could go back in time, I would have been even deeper into Facebook. Like the biggest challenge with Ridge Uh, I mean, we're skipping a couple years in the future, but like, we try to diversify too fast. Like, I was doing newsletter sponsorships and like, they worked. I should have put all of my dollars into Facebook back then, up until like 2020. Um, I would have just been better off putting as much money into that as possible.

But— and Ridge was one of your clients, were they an early client?

Yeah, so I had 10— so I'm at an agency, it sucks, I think I can do a better job. Me and my CMO, uh, Connor, we ended up starting an agency together. We take 10 clients with us. Um, 8 of them you have never heard of. Okay. Like they've just, you know, gone extinct. Uh, one of them was Ridge and then one of them was actually Mudwater, which has actually gone on to crush it. Like we did their Google ads at some point, like in 2016 or whatever. But yeah, so we end up taking Ridge over. Father, son, best friend. They start this business, they get to like $5 million a year in sales and they are you know, like the dad was a special ed teacher, like, you know, Daniel was going to go to be an accountant and this thing just kind of caught fire and he really didn't want to be an accountant. So like their expectations for the brand, when they got to $5 million a year, they're like, this is the best thing that's ever happened, right? And me and Connor being hella young and I'm like, I think we can get to $15 million a year. I think we can get this thing to $30 million a year. I remember telling Connor, I'm like, I think we can do $100 million a year selling this wallet. And he looks me down the face and he's like, there is no fucking way in hell we're going We're going to do that, right? This was like 2017, but they didn't really want to run it all that much anymore, right? Like they didn't want to manage people. So I'm like, cool, we'll do everything else. So my agency kind of gets built around running Ridge Wallet. Uh, we do their customer service, we do their product importation, we do all of their marketing, we do their web dev. Uh, and then I'm charging them like $200,000 a month. Like all of the money is coming from Ridge Wallet. They end up being like 60% of all agency billables for my, for my tiny agency. And at a certain point they're like, hey, we should just merge, right? So me and Connor take an equity stake. Everyone in my agency just goes in-house to Ridge. I end up selling off the agency to one of the people who was running it, and that was probably 2018. And since then, Ridge has gone from, you know, $30 million a year to over $200.

That's amazing. What I, what I love about that story is that it sounds like when you were running the agency, like almost like nobody would in a business school would recommend, hey, you're running this marketing agency and then for one client you're going to start doing customer service, logistics support, all, all these other things. It sounds like wrong to do that. It's like how one customer is going to make up 60% of your billables. From a business school perspective, that would be like a bad move. But Dharmesh said something once on the podcast. He goes, with my first business, he goes, I got, I got mixed up later. He goes, just cause I was ignorant doesn't mean I was wrong. Meaning I didn't know the right way to do it, but my instincts actually were leading me in the right direction. It just wasn't, you know, I didn't have like some sophisticated game plan and maybe it wasn't typical, but it was, my instincts were correct. And it sounds like your instincts were correct that you should just keep leaning into the Ridge thing, even though it was like maybe not what a normal agent, normal marketing agency ever would have done.

Most clients suck. Like, if you guys have ever done client work, like, most clients fight with you, they don't pay you, like, they're always trying to fire you, right? And Ridge as a business was ran by really cool guys who didn't want to take any, like, reins away from us. They were very happy with the $5 million a year business and they're like, we could always go back to shipping the orders ourselves, right? Like, I mean, the guys are like, you know, Buddhist, like raised, raised Buddhist their whole lives. I think that's part of it. But they were very much like, hey, this is a good thing. These guys are growing. Grown this business, let's give them more responsibility. And, you know, you can't really exit agency businesses for all that much, right? One reason why we went all in on Ridge and did the merger is like, an agency is probably worth maybe 1x client contracts, and like, maybe at the peak it was 2x client contracts, right? So like, if your clients, you know, if you have a guaranteed million dollars in revenue, you might be able to sell it for a million or two. Where Ridge, at the time, we're like, fucking $10 billion a year business right here. We're going to grow this thing to the fucking moon. So it just made sense to put all our chips in that basket.

What was the metric that you saw that gave you the aha moment where you were like, all right, they're doing $5 million now, but this could be $30 million, this could be $100 million? Was there one or two metrics or was it just a guess? What was that research process like?

That's like an interesting, um, process because a lot of people, myself included, will say focus, focus, focus, get it right, make it great. It's gonna take a decade plus. But your story is more so like, I tried this, I tried this, I tried this. None of it worked. This thing was clearly the winner. I should go all in on this. Is that what your recommendation is?

Well, my recommendation as a person trying to make it is you should make the best decision at the time. So whatever the facts are, when the facts change, make a different decision, right? Strong beliefs held loosely. So like, I'm like, I'm at an agency. I could have just like did that grind and be like, I'm going to be a VP at this agency when I'm 26. I'll make like $200 grand a year. But I was like, no, these people suck. I think the best decision for me is to just do what they're doing better, right? And then from the agency to Ridge, I'm like, run an agency business. I'm like, running an agency sucks. The Ridge thing seems to be going better, so I should just do that instead. I should find a way to, to, to entrench myself inside of this business. And then at Ridge, it was just like, I mean, for so long we did not launch any other products. For 8 years it was just selling more of the wallet because that's what was working. As soon as it started to get a little hard, then we pivoted to everything else.

Which is funny because I would have thought early on I would have the, uh, paralysis of analysis would have been like, well, there's not that many wallet. Like you're like, if you told me $200 million a year in revenue, I would say, well, you've, you've sold every man in America a wallet. Like there are no more wallet buyers. You know what I mean? That's like one of my uneducated self-limiting belief a little bit would have been on that. If you said $200 million a year, I mean like, well, there are no wallet, there are no, no more people who need a wallet.

Hey, hey, Brown Sean. White Sean's got that immigrant energy that I love. He's got— you know what I mean?

Like, he's got the— what do you call it? The Korean restaurant.

I call it the Korean convenience store owner energy. You know, it's just like there's not like too, too much overthinking. It was like, well, you guys are all wearing this. I'll just sell that, right? You know, like, yeah.

And I think you'll keep wearing this. So, you know, Munger has these great quotes where he's like, his main thing is like, instead of trying to be brilliant, just avoid stupidity. Or he'll be like, you know, the best thing in the world is stupid competition. And we just have not much and stupid competition. It sounds like that's part of what in retrospect made Ridge work was you were like, hey, look, we took the simple idea and, um, there's not a lot of other really smart, you know, DTC marketers that were doing this. And so we were able to, to make hay.

Yeah, totally, man. I mean, and to this day, the best D2C marketers are working on stuff like, you know, AG1, right? Like they're selling supplements and it's because it's a better business. Like undoubtedly if there's an LTV tied to your business, like it's going to be better, it's going to be more valuable, it's going to trade at a higher multiple. But the other thing is like the best marketers have more or less left the industry, right? Like in 2021, running an e-com brand was incredibly cool. It has gotten less cool every single year. So there's less people doing it, there's less voices, there's less people talking about it. And it's because it's fucking hard. Like, I, I'm unjokingly call it like the, the blue-collar work. It's like, you know, everyone wants to be shipping cool AI products, or everybody wants to be shipping, you know, something that isn't physical boxes to people's doors of products you actually have to like make. Everyone wants to build, you know, the services of whatever. So anyway, yeah, over the past 4 years, it's gotten really uncool to do what I do.

Do you guys, on $200 million in revenue, are you able to make a good cash flow and profit, or You know, I know so many friends who have these companies and their numbers are huge, but they— cash is always an issue. Are you able to manage this well? And, or at that scale, do you still struggle?

I think the reason why you guys asked me to be here is to talk about the fact that you can in fact make a profit running e-commerce brands. So, uh, Ridge has never raised any money. We have no debt. So every dollar in this business, every dollar on my balance sheet is profit that has been reinvested. Uh, I've been able to make millions of dollars a year for the past couple of of years running this business. So yeah, it can definitely be done, man. Like, I, I bought a house in LA directly because of selling wallets on the internet.

Give us a sense of the timeline. So you said kind of like, I don't know, it was 2016-ish, right? When you, when you guys merged or you took over the brand. But can you just give us kind of like a year one, 5 million when you, when you started working with them, then it went to 10, then it went to 22, then it, you know, give us a timeline.

Yeah. And I'm fucking horrible at timelines, so I'll give it my best. It's basically been, it's like a 50% CAGR since I started working with the business. So I think they did a Kickstarter in 2013. The first year they do like a million in revenue. In 2015, they probably do 2 or 3. When I meet them, 2016, they do like $5 million. So I think it went from 5 to 10 to 15 to 18., and that's like the hardest year of the business. When it went from 15 to 18, that was like, we had no inventory with this massive fucking tax bill. That sucked. That was probably 2018 or '19 when that happened. 2020, we do $50 million. So I might, I, that must've been 2018. It must've been 30. So 18 to 30 to 50. And then we, then 50, this, the COVID year. So it went from 50 to 100 and then it's been like, Yeah. I mean, last year was a, I'll just say a multi-hundred million dollar year.

So, so let me, let me, let me, let me recap that for the listener. So you started in '15, I didn't hear what you said, but in 2016, $5 million. And then each year after that was $5 million, $10 million, $15 million, $18 million, $30 million, $50 million, $100 million with last year being multi-hundred. That's incredible growth.

So let's, let's talk about this because we're in this group chat that you, you have, which is like a bunch of, bunch of DTC brands. I don't know what the cutoff is. I think I'm like below whatever the cutoff was supposed to be, but you let me in, which was nice of you.

You're in the, uh, like the charisma hire.

Yeah, exactly. I'm the personality hire. So, so I, um, you, you talked about like going into new categories and like the wedding band was obviously a smash success. You've said the wearable thing maybe wasn't as big of a success. And you had this kind of interesting way of looking at it because I just thought Ridge Wallet's that kind of like the, the sort of carbon fiber metal wallet company. And you were talking about like Montblanc and you were talking about these other almost like luxury accessory brands, and that was the vision you had for the company. When did that vision kick in? So like, when did you reframe what the company is? Because I think entrepreneurs, we hear stories where somebody already has the vision and they already have the right frame and it sounds beautiful and big and, and really appealing. But at the beginning, they don't always have that. You know, Mark Zuckerberg, there's a video of him on a couch somewhere and somebody's like, are you going to expand past colleges? He's like, no, that wouldn't be cool. And now he's like got satellites above India giving people internet so they can use Facebook. Like, you know, your vision expands as you grow. Um, when did your, the vision kind of change or when did you reframe it? And secondly, how do you think about going into new categories?

Yeah, well, I'm a very paranoid person. So like in 2018, I'm like, this is going to end. We have to fucking find some other shit to sell. So we got into backpacks and phone cases, all this stuff pretty early in 2018. Um, and we, the first year we did like $4 million in backpack sales, or maybe it was $3 million.

It was like a big chunk of revenue.

Revenue. And we canceled that program because I was too stupid to know that was like actually a good amount of backpacks. I was like, I'm like, the wallet's doing $20 million. How come we can't do $20 million in backpacks? In retrospect, we've since relaunched backpacks. So I was just too stupid, right? So we were always looking for new products to sell, mostly because I was worried that I was going to sell every wallet to every man in America. But as you learn more about the industry, like the very common thing is very large holdcos holding lots of accessory brands. Like, LVMH is just an accessory brand. Like, everything inside their portfolio just sells accessories, mostly to women, but there are occasionally pop-ups of, like, very strong men's accessory brands. Montblanc is owned by Richemont. They own Cartier. Like, that is the strongest men's accessory brand, and they do $500 million a year. You think it's going to be pens. Pens are, like, 18% of revenue. It's mostly just, like, small leather goods, right? And it's across the world, people buying each other gifts, like wallets and backpacks and belts and everything else. Um, so it's, there's a playbook here. It's like you have to find a group of customers who like you. You have to like continue to make products that they like and sell it into them. And I am more ruthless with product expansion than I think a lot of brands are. And I think more people should just try. They're really worried about hurting brand. And I'm like, your customers never fucking think about you. Like you're lucky if somebody is mad you launched something. Like, you know, I always go to, uh, like Bic is one of my favorite brands. Like they make lighters and they make pens and they make razors. Right. And We buy all of those products independently and they're best in class.

I didn't even think of the, I didn't even think of those three.

Yeah.

But you saying that, I'm like, oh, it's same.

Yeah. Yeah. And they're the best in class in all three of those. If you want a disposable razor or a cheap pen or a lighter, they, that's the only one they own those markets. Um, and it's just because the guy had a plastic factory and he's like, he's, it's, it's a French company and they're actually, they got into tattoo removal now, right? Like they're making like, they just bought a bunch of tattoo companies because they're like, yeah. Whatever takes plastic, we're just going to do those things, right? And it doesn't violate anything in your brain because you just, like, that's just the way it's always been. So I think it's more elastic than, like, than a lot of people want to admit. And brands die by being too rigid by that. Like, Allbirds should have got into fucking bedding or like all these different type of things, but they didn't. So now they're just a fucking dead shoe company, right? Like, you should just be so ruthless with that product expansion.

You're a very charismatic guy. You, you're, you have a lot of interesting parts of your personality that I enjoy. What attributes would you say are most responsible for Ridge's success, you think?

One, it's a very trust-forward organization. It's a very transparent organization. When I say trust-forward, 6 of us own it. You know, 3 of them are father, son, best friend, like literally would die for each other. And then me and my CMO, Connor. I lived with him for fucking 5 years. Like, the guy we— I was talking last night, there was a time when we were running the agency where we did not have $1,000. Like, we would have to take— his dad gave him a car and it was like a 1997 Honda Civic that smelled and like paint was peeling, windows didn't work. We would take it to meetings. We would have to park it behind buildings so people didn't see us get out of this fucking junky car. And, you know, tying it to that, it's like not being— not being scared to go back to zero, right? Like, I'm from like a very poor, bad area where kids die died of fentanyl overdoses. And like, I lived in a flop house with like, fuck it, like it was like 14 guys living in, uh, bunk beds when I moved to LA. And so I'm like, dude, not scared to go back there. So just more, more willing to take risks. Things are never that bad. Also being willing to eat shit. I'm like, bro, if I have to fucking be a waiter, we'll figure it out, right? Um, yeah, so I— yeah, that fortitude, like not being like so ego-tied to whatever the fuck you're doing. If I, if I have to pack boxes, I'm gonna pack boxes, right?

What are the ways people get, uh, e-com wrong? So we've talked about Allbirds, right? It was a product that was hot and now the stock is, you know, dead. There's, you know, a bunch of other kind of famous examples of that. And then there's companies like yours, which is keep scaling profitably, you know, never took a dollar of debt, never took a dollar of investment and made it work. Um, what are the kind of— give us like your, your version of the dos and don'ts and maybe just start with the don'ts, like the dumb shit that people do, the bad decisions that people make or the some of the common traps you see people fall into? Because I'm sure, you know, you're— that's your network is e-com. So you see the full spectrum, people who totally flop, people who grind away for years and get nothing out of it, and people who excel and succeed.

Same with keto stuff.

And what you mean by that is you got to be profitable early on on that customer you acquired. If you acquire the customer for $200 and you only made, you know, $20 and you're saying, oh, the LTV, it'll all pay off. That's kind of what you're talking about, right? Versus the way you guys do it is you're trying to be profitable either first purchase or Are you guys profitable first purchase or is it like, you know, a month or two later?

Can we play a game called Change My Opinion? And this is for both of you guys. I have a bone to pick with your industry. I think Sean's heard me with this spiel before. What frustrates me sometimes— not exactly you guys, but I'm going to use you as an example— but of people who all they worry about is like the CAC and the LTV and the TAM of these industries, or— and they don't spend any time actually thinking, is this product awesome? Is this the best? You know, like, is this truly solving a problem? And it bothers me sometimes that it's more of an arbitrage, not exactly thinking about, can I create a widget that makes a customer's life better and is of high quality? I wish that more people in this industry sort of talked about that a bit more. Do you think that's a fair criticism or where am I wrong on this?

Dude, I mean, I think it's a fair criticism. My industry has been washed out though. So like the people you're talking about probably have all left. It's that there's so few people left in e-com. Like, like Sean brought up like the group chat, maybe 2 people respond every single day and one of them's me, Tab. Like it's, it's like we're at, we're at like a, a multi, a multi-year low of interest in the industry. So like, yeah, all those people have left. The people who are still here in shipping, dude, I bring up HexGlad. You guys want to talk about like amazing. Um, yeah, so like, I'm very close.

You tweet about them all the time, and like, they inspired me because you said they like worked for 3 years finding the perfect pan.

Didn't Gordon Ramsay like write a huge check? He didn't just like sort of join the brand. He like invested a pretty sizable amount. Or was he part of a round or was it him personally investing in it?

That's all public. There's like, there's like a thing. He came in with Fox on some, on something and like, you know, because Fox, it's like a 3-way deal. Fox wants to give him money to make shows and he wants to get more equity in xCloud. So it's like a big 3-way deal.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Dude, I have like 12 HexClad pants in my—

are they awesome, Sean?

They're great. Uh, you know, I don't know if they're the best pants, I don't try 100 pants, but they're way better than the pants I had before. And to the point where I bought a second set of them because I was like, these are great. I'm happy with these pants. Yeah.

And they put years into that product development. Like they actually spent, like they care about their customers. What comes out is respecting your customers. If you're just like, that's why I don't like info products. Like if you don't respect your customers, if you're just like trying to ARB them or like, you know, We have a customer name, so our customer is Everyday Dad. We call him Ed. And I'm like, almost every meeting I'm like, are we respecting Ed? Are we delivering value to Ed? Right? Everyone has an Ed in their life. Think about like your guys' brothers or your dads. He's just like a guy. He likes widgets and like he loves fishing and like he loves NFL. Like, that's fucking Ed. And I'm like, look, Ed has— Ed has paid for everything in my entire life. We need to take care of Ed. We want to make sure Ed gets like the best, coolest shit possible, that we give him great value and great deals. And that's what Hashclad did. And like, we're talking about like, I think this industry gets a bad rap because so many people have entered it and so few people have left with any amount of money. Or like, the people who did leave with money, like, it was like a greater fool theory. They were just tricking somebody to give them money and then they bailed out. But then there's companies like Hexclad where they'll be a 50-year brand, they'll be a generational brand, and they're fucking crushing it. So it's possible. They're buying Super Bowl ads. Like, I mean, this is, you know, a they were bootstrapped up until like 2 years ago. Like a bootstrap brand getting that done, it's fucking amazing.

Yeah, I think, Sam, what you said is true, that marketing skill is the core competency for most of the winners in this space. Most. There's a few, there's a couple who just really nailed product or community, right? And then they just, they, they built slowly brick by brick over, over the, over a decade. But for the most part, the people you'll hear about and the people you'll They're great because they are great at doing Facebook ads and Google ads or now TikTok, uh, content. And so that's true. But at the same time, you're like, oh, I hate that it's this CAC to LTV thing. Well, it's like, guess what? When you sit down with your team, you're like, how do we raise LTV? Right? Like there's some natural gravity, like Sean saying, like you buy a wallet every 7 years. You're not really going to change that. But like for my product, you do buy it way more often. You know, in the first 6 months, we double our or double the amount that they paid us on the first order.

Right.

So it's really, it's a, it's, uh, it's, it's a movable number, right? We can actually affect that. And then you're like, all right, well, how do we increase LTV? It's like, yeah, you could spam them with emails. You could spam them with text messages, but guess what? The better way to do it is to make an amazing product that they're going to want to buy again and like lower the return rate. How do you lower the return rate to get more profit? Right. It's like make a better quality product. And so I think that that when you, that for anybody who's actually going to try to win, you will have to make an amazing product. Otherwise you won't be able to do the, the ad arbitrage you're trying to do because, um, how else could you increase the LTV if everyone hates your product or it's not doing anything for them? And so, you know, I think the, the people who stick around and actually win in the long run are the ones who do what you.

Yeah, I think those are good answers to the, to the question. I think that, um, like, you know, when I see someone making like a boost your testosterone like thing, or I'm like, dude, I don't know if any of this works or if they're just really good at making a label that's appealing. And so I like start to lose confidence in the industry as a whole. Oh, totally. What actually, and that's actually, I'm actually curious if you guys have any of these like D2C brands where you're like, this product is amazing. And so it's actually really good to hear that HexClad is one of them. Uh, do you guys have any other favorites?

Well, going back to the supplement side, a lot of it is like, I mean, a lot of this work is being done like the co-manufacturers, right? Like there's co-packers that actually do all the formulation. So a lot of times people are just showing up and buying stuff off the shelf. So if you're getting any sort of supplement, like it's probably the same supplement white labeled 100 times and that's just like the way the industry works. So You know, I would put hard goods in a special category and like we talk about D2C brands. I mean, all of my favorite fashion brands are small and independently owned, right? Like, does that count? Like, this is Buck Mason. These pants are James Perse, right? Like, I just got a suit from Billy Reid. Like, these are all small, independently owned companies, right? That are, that are running. They have Shopify websites. Is that kind of D2C, right? It's, it's very much like there's, there's a, a black box of of bad rap products. And I think a lot of supplements that come from Comans, right, or anything to do in the health and wellness space like that is like typically where there's a bunch of shit. But if you buy a Ridge Wallet, you're going to get what is on the package, you know what I mean? Like, right. Or one of our phone cases or whatever. It's like a fucking phone case, man. Like, it's pretty good.

What, um, who else is crushing it? So what are some D2C brands that we wouldn't know or we wouldn't really realize how well they're doing? Um, just because we're not in the space, we're not paying attention. Yeah.

The other reason you guys called me here to talk about the Woobles. Okay. The Woobles is fucking crushing it.

Uh, the Woobles. Okay.

So what are, what are the Woobles?

So yeah, we are, we are 3 young adult men. We're not the core customer, right? It is a, uh, crocheting product. So it is like you make little characters and they have licensing and like there's little education. It's like basically like either it's. It's, you know, young people doing it to have less screen time, or it's you're doing it with your kids so they have less screen time.

And that's awesome.

How did they even think of this? Like, how did this get on there? Were they big crocheters? What is the origin story of this?

Dude, I've, uh, spent so much money on Legos lately for that no screen time, uh, trend. What are other no screen time products?

I feel like, um, I feel like the microplastics is another, another trend, right?

Like, And air quality.

Yeah, dude. Yeah. So like just glass everything, glass bottles, glass containers, whatever. Just like imagine if you could just buy a backpack and they're like, we guarantee there's no plastic in it. Fucking awesome. Just wrap it in paper, ship to people. That's another trend I think is gonna be fast emerging. Um, yeah, no screen time, just more physical tactical toys, right? Like bringing back the fidget spinner but as like a focus tool. Right. Like, I think there's a bunch of shit you could do in there. But anyway, those are fast emerging trends right now. Protein was a trend that's basically probably dead, right? Pre-protein was collagen. There's always these just like pockets of success you'll find. And that's the beauty of the space.

It's like, you know what it is right now in that space? What's the, what's the early boob milk? What's that called?

Colostrum. Yeah.

Oh my God. I'm getting so many ads for colostrum.

Yeah. You know, the other one will be like, I think raw honey. I had like a small moment. I'm sure it's going to come back, right? There's like a bunch of New Zealand honey companies.

And if you, if you were a founder, where would you kind of look for these? Are you, are you a proponent of look in your own life? What are you doing or what is your wife doing that seems unusual, but actually there's a passionate community? Are you like, I scour Etsy and Reddit? Is that where you would look? How would you do this if you didn't know which trend to start with?

With, right? So you should look in your own life because you probably don't have the skills to actually go out there and like, like, you know, or I'm assuming you have no resources to actually pick a trend and double down and actually deliver on those promises, right? So you should find something in your own life that you actually know and are passionate about. If you're a more seasoned professional, I think you can find those things, right? And really what it would be is, I think Reddit's dead, I think Etsy's dead, like that's AI slop, up basically at this point. The inshittification of the internet has happened to those two websites. Uh, I would look at literally what's happening inside of Erwan. Like, I would just move to LA and go to Erwan every single day because those, those are the best people at catching trends. Like, they were anti-vax in fucking 1997, right? Like, that's like, like, they are very, very early on those things. Um, and if you're, if you're not going to do that, then it's like you just, you have to follow the girlies on TikTok, right? Like, the, the other one I bring up is Pilates. Like, Pilates was a thing in 2000. It's having a massive resurgence right now. And like, once again, we're 3 young men. How are we gonna fucking make a Pilates brand? But Pilates for guys probably could be another trend.

Just needs a new name.

Yeah, totally. Well, Laplace, I think, is what the actual name is. Uh, or no, Legree, something like that. My wife knows. Uh, but yoga is very much a downward trend, right? And like, this I think that yoga was just a synonym for health and wellness and like, you know, non just jack dudes weightlifting. I think that's actually changing and it'll be something else like Pilates or something else.

What are some other going up and going down? Give me like a topic or a trend and tell me, is this a buy or sell moment?

Uh, what do you think about, like, you know, these, uh, like, other people who do the same model you did— services to products? So for example, I think the guys behind Brez, which is that, uh, I think it's a— I don't know what it is, like a mushroom drink, or it's like an adaptogenic drink. It's basically— it's like, it gives you a high, but it's not alcohol. It's like mushroom or something.

Their website says Brez is microdosed cannabis and mushrooms in a can.

It's a weed drink. Okay, great. It's a weed drink. Those guys were agency people, right?

Sean, you should go to drinkbrez.com. Do you see their website? That's the prettiest website I've ever seen in my life.

Yeah, that's usually not a good thing. The prettiest websites are not usually the ones that work the best.

I hear you and I am on board with that. This is one of the exceptions.

Look at this. But, you know, I think what happens is you see the front the front of the house is not always where the traffic is going. So, you know, the front of the house is the, it's kind of the hero, it's the brand, it's the aspirational, but you run your ads and maybe you're running straight to a PDP or to a TikTok shop or to different things like that. I think they're very heavy into TikTok, right? Like their, their model is the, the TikTok blueprint, which we just did an episode with, with Rob from, uh, Rob the Bank about like the, the TikTok blueprint that a bunch of the brands are using right now. And I think Brez is doing that where it's organic, it's, it's kind of the TikTok affiliate slash organic model where you're getting really cheap CPMs because TikTok videos can just pop off and, you know, you're, you're putting out thousands of pieces of content a month, but, uh, and it's driving sales on, unlike the way, you know, I've been doing it or you've been doing it, Sean, which is like a lot of, um, you know, Facebook, Google ads, you know, you put a dollar in, it's attributed exactly how much that, that ad generated in revenue. And you just sort of optimize from there. The TikTok game is a little bit different. It's a bit of a spray and pray game for the most part.

Yeah. So I just sent you guys— this is from Aaron from Brez. They did $4.6 million in revenue in month 21, January. This is their LinkedIn post. So this is all public information that they share. TikTok shop was $37 grand. Amazon revenue was $342,000. I'm not going to read this for the audience. Maybe we'll just show it, but Um, dude, they're fucking killing it. Bryce is awesome.

They post their P&L basically every month on, uh, uh, not, it's not an actual P&L, but like, you know, sort of a marketing P&L on, uh, on Twitter and LinkedIn. It's great. Let's say we could read this. So total net revenue, $4.5 million. Uh, let's see, that's in, you said month 21 now?

Yeah. Yeah, dude.

Like, then their ads, they spent $1 million on Facebook, uh, $400,000 on Google. On, uh, TikTok ads, they spent zero, but I know that they must be spending on, on the affiliate part of TikTok because I, if I'm on TikTok, I see Brez stuff all the time and it's always an affiliate link, uh, you know, swipe up and you can sort of buy it from there. Um, AppLovin, $472,000.

It really seems like one of the keys to this business, like, and this is not always the case, but it's picking the right idea. The right idea and the right angle. It seems like there's no other way to explain how something can get to $4 million in monthly revenue in 21 months.

Yeah. I mean, and the reason they were able to be right is because they're both agency operators, right? Like they— the right people to launch a product like this. And also it's so hard. The reason why they're willingly sharing their P&L is they have nothing to hide and they don't think you can beat them. Right. And I think anybody listening to this can't beat them.

Because are they shutting down their agency or they just going to keep trying to do both? Like, why would you run your agency once this happens?

Yeah, I mean, you end up just like, you know, selling it off or hiring operators. I mean, I mean, Nick Shackelford, which was the partner in Brez, I mean, he had, you know, an events business, he had an agency business, he had an email business. I think you just, you find partners to take that over and you just put more time into this. But I mean, early on I was like willing to bet on these fucking guys because they're the best.

Sam, I want you to Google Nick Shackelford tattoo.

Tattoo.

And, uh, tell me if you want to compete with this guy.

Oh my God, his whole body is covered.

Yeah, from the neck down to his toe, every inch of his body is covered in a tattoo.

He looks like a—

like, he looks like the guy from Prison Break, dude.

Yeah, he looks like a Japanese murderer. Like, you know how they do, like, the Yakuza? They do, like, the whole— that's insane.

Included his dick. I mean, he actually got it done, man. He said it was so painful.

Oh my God, it looks horrible. I mean, it looks great, but I don't want to do it.

Looks painful.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Uh, that's insane. Uh, what do you think Ridge is worth right now?

What would you want to sell if you weren't doing Ridge? If you had to sell Ridge today, what would you— what other product? I mean, you're not a guy who would stop. What other product would you want to sell?

Yeah, my goal for Ridge eventually— I'm not the long-term shepherd of this brand. Like if it's going to go public or whatever, or most likely get bought by one of the rollups, like in our industry, that's the exit path. There's 10 strategics that end up buying brands like ours. I would like to net $100 million and then I would like to start a portfolio of brands and services basically. Like, you know, everyone wants to have their own little PE, their own little family office type thing. So I would launch a bunch of weird little e-commerce brands that I think are going to be trend relevant and hire service providers to run those businesses.

I love that you know what you want. You know, you've mapped this out of like what your ideal setup is. I love that. I love people who call their shot.

Do you— you talk about trends, like, but, but, you know, bone, bone broth, it's hot, then it's not. Keto, it's hot, then it's not. And so, like, why go after a trend if it's gonna ultimately, you know, do what trends do? Most trends don't last forever. So is that like building your sandcastle, you know, uh, building your castle on quicksand or something like that? Like, why, why go after a trend when trends have this like shelf life? Are you trying to time an exit, or are you trying to— you're going to hop trends? What, what's the plan if you're going to build on top of a trend?

Yeah, dude, going back to Will from IQ Bar, trend surface area. Like, you create a product in a trend because that's the— the best way to grow is in a growing market. You can be average in a growing market and grow very, very fast, right? I was an average operator when Facebook ads were growing, and that's why my business grew Now I can be a good operator because I have to be, right? But when a market's growing very fast, you could just be average. And then once, once you get some sort of success, it's, it's pivoting. So like if I was in the bone broth business, I would have told them like, hey, we have to do fucking protein-focused bone broths or bone bars. Like I, I'm that guy coming in here trying to like disrupt whatever fucking business I'm in. I'm like, we need to— yeah, if I was at Bone Broth, I'd be like, look, that's fine. We should do that. We're going to do bone bars and we're going to get get whatever, some jack guy to talk about how they're great. Then I'd be in the bars business and it'd be like, we gotta do bone supplements. We gotta be the only guys doing bone, whatever, marrow pills. Like, that's the type of shit I'd be pitching to 'em.

So, uh, I love that that's your answer, 'cause it's like, that's the attitude you have to have to win in that game. My takeaway is, man, what a horrible game to play. Uh, like, you know, I was just doing a podcast yesterday with a guy and he goes, uh, you don't want to be in the fresh produce business. Business. He's like, um, you know, you know, he's like, you want to be YouTube, not a YouTuber, right? Just as a simple example, he's like, you take the best YouTuber and they're in the fresh produce business. They have to keep running as fast as they can on that treadmill, and then the treadmill gets faster and faster every year, and if they stop, they fall behind, and there's 1,000 other people on that treadmill. And so same thing, like, if you're on a trend, and a trend, you know, almost by definition is going to sort of peter out, and then the new trends will emerge. That just seems like a really hard way to win in business when there's other styles of businesses that don't have that problem.

Right. But I think— but, but, but, Sean, I think you both could be right. I think the right answer, though, is to whichever, whichever path you take should fit your skill set and interest, and you should commit to it and be that. You know, we had Moiz on, Moiz Ali from Native Deodorant, and we said, like, why don't you do something easier? He goes, because I'm a merchant. This is what I do.

And I think that stuff is silly, dude.

No, it's not silly. I actually disagree. I think committing to a path is is significantly better than not. And if Sean Frank is committing to this trend thing, then he— yeah, it's exhausting for you because that's like you commit to a better path.

That's, that's, that's not true. What are you talking about?

How much better path could it be? He's got a, a 10-year-old company that's doing $200 billion a year in revenue. That sounds like a good path.

Yeah, I'm not saying what he's doing is bad. I'm saying he's the— he's an outlier winner. And even he's like, yeah, there's a company that's like us that does $400 million a year and is probably worth— and is worth $100 million on the public markets, right? Where, you know, we have to continually hop, you know, from one category to the next. And he's in a better one. It's more enduring. But let's say you're on the Bone Broth type of, type of thing where it's a wellness trend and the wellness trends or the diet trends, they change very, very rapidly. Right. It's like, that's a hard game to play compared to like, you know, look at the other, look at the possible set of businesses you could go into. That's, that's definitely on the hard side, dude. Like e-com is definitely on the hard side. An e-com on top of a trend is, is the hard version of the hard version.

Oh dude, look, I, I understand completely, but the reason why I'm in it is because it's permissionless. When I was 22, nobody would let me build fucking NVIDIA servers or whatever. Like, you know, a, a more robust infrastructure-led business, right? Like if I was gonna provide, I don't know, fucking routing cable services, some random shit like that. Like maybe now I, you know, I could, I could get to that, but e-commerce is permissionless and that's why I like it. Agencies are permissionless. This. It's like the reason why we sold on Shopify is because nobody would give us a, uh, Nordstrom's PO, right? Like there's, there's a level of—

there's a lot of things. SaaS is permissionless, communities are permissionless. There's a lot of things that are permissionless, newsletters are permissionless, whatever. There's a lot of things that are permissionless. The agency one is actually more permissionless than e-com because, you know, for e-com you have to buy inventory, right? There's a, there is a capital requirement. The agency one is different, right? That's just, I'm going to hustle my skills and I'll get cash flow. Then what you did was use that cash flow to then, you know, invest and continue to grow the brand. Right. But for most people, they get— I know a lot of people that got excited about e-com and didn't realize like how scaling works with e-com where—

Yeah, it's like people squint and think it's SaaS and it's not. It's like, it's like your problems get harder the bigger you get, right? Like it's bigger POs, it's more management, it's everything else where, you know, if you're SaaS, it's like, you know, if it's if it's, if it's, if it's 10 zeros or 1,000 zeros being processed through your thing, who the fuck cares?

Um, hey Sean, you, you've gotten more, you're, you're a great follow on Twitter because you're hilarious, but you're this perfect combination of being hilarious, but also I think you're right, like, because you've been there, done that. But has being as opinionated as you have been and willingness to call people out and this willingness to like say what you think, has that ever held you back? And do you regret doing that? Or do you think that like going all in on being a strong personality has benefited you?

I mean, the only tangible negatives of being a public personality on the internet is, is if and when you get sued, because you will be sued, right? Everyone gets sued, and it's the cost of doing business. They will read your tweets in depositions. So just like, that is the reality, right? I think a lot of people like don't want to like offend.

You're like, that's embarrassing, or what?

Like, what did you mean by saying you shoot the Wobble family.

Yeah, yeah, dude. No, like, I mean, I was— I got deposed. Why? I told someone I was going to drop a nuclear bomb on them and they read that. I had to explain, like, I don't have access to nuclear weapons. Um, but yeah, like, I mean, you should— you should be yourself and authentic. And, uh, my Twitter has sold like $300,000 worth of wallets, so definitely it's a net positive.

And your podcast, right? So your personality and being public about what you guys— how well you guys are doing with Ridge and being funny and opinionated led to you guys doing this e-com podcast. And the e-com podcast pays you a bunch of money, right? Like you guys are doing really, really well off that. So that's paid off in a different way, right? You want to talk about that?

Yeah. Yeah. So I only have like 4 minutes. I got to go to a call and do my real job. Uh, maybe something you guys don't know anything about, but yeah.

What are you talking about? Huh? I take naps after this.

Yeah. So look, uh, the reason why I got public on the internet is because in 2022, all of my friends moved across the whole world because of COVID and I didn't hang out with anybody. And it sucked for everybody. 2021, 2022, like, I used to have a community of people who talk about e-commerce, and then they've all moved. So I was just by myself, and I'm like, let me just get on Twitter and start talking about e-commerce. Um, and through that, I made a bunch of great friends, uh, because it's a very lonely thing. Running a big business. Like, you know, my, my best friends from high school, um, one of them goes to like crime scenes and cleans up like when somebody kills themselves or whatever, and the other one does garage doors. So like, imagine trying to tell them, being like, yeah man, like, you know, I spent $8 million on Meta, but I probably should have spent— like, they told me to shut the fuck up. So, you know, you want to find friends who, uh, you know, can, you know, have some sort of sympathy for what you're building. So I got on Twitter, found those people, Um, they're all like, you know, Jason from Hexclad's on there. Mike Beckham from, uh, Simple Modern. He has like $200 million selling fucking water bottles. Matt from Pela Case. We started a podcast. Yeah, dude.

What's it called?

I think that's great advice. All right. We'll, we'll let you go. We know you gotta go, go sell wallets and rings and other, other great things. Uh, where should people always go? Shout out your Twitter, shout out your URL. Where do you want people to go?

Okay, go to ridge.com/shawn and buy a wallet. That's the best way to support me right now in this moment of time. Let's go. Never stop selling, guys.

We appreciate you, man. Thanks for doing this. All right, that's the pod.

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.