I've already had Jack Rubin on once before, and that's for a simple reason: he's one of the most impressive DTC operators I've been around, building one of the best DTC businesses I've seen from the inside. So there's lots to share.

In this episode, learn how Jack's relentless focus on his core funnel led him to increase his Meta spend by 500% in the last year while lowering his CAC and growing to a very profitable $50M+ in revenue.

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"Make Ugly Ads."

It's on his hat. It's on his mic. It's on his wall.

Barry Hott isn't afraid to tell you as many times as you need to be told, and it's for a simple reason: he's right. Ugly ads work.

Barry has a lot of years in the ecommerce/DTC/paid social/growth marketing space, and I brought him on this episode ostensibly to discuss the how and why of ugly ads. But for two guys who just love talking shop it was impossible to keep ourselves from delving into all kinds of growth strategy and media buying specifics.

Strap in: Barry brought the energy and this is a fun one. Enjoy it, then go make some ugly ads.

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"Test creative until you have statistically significant results, then scale the winners based on that."

That seems like good advice on first glance. How can you disagree with methodical testing that's attentive to good statistical principles?

Because it's almost impossible to actually do without burning huge amounts of money on Meta, for one, and for two, it's unnecessary anyway, since Meta's machine learning can use better methods of forecasting your creative's performance than frequentist-style stat sig tests.

Yes, this one is getting into the weeds. Hopefully it helps clarify more of why you absolutely positively should not run auto-bid creative testing campaigns on Meta.

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You probably know Beardbrand and its founder, Eric Bandholz.

Beardbrand rose to prominence in the ecommerce landscape as they built a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers, thereby powering their customer acquisition with basically zero investment in paid marketing channels.

But as the impact of their organic efforts began to fade in 2022 and into 2023, Bandholz and his team decided that they needed to crack the code on Meta Ads. The problem? This channel had never been successful for them before.

So when Bandholz reached out to me to see if I could be any help as they handed the keys to a talented but green (as far as paid social is concerned) team member, Mike Lawson, I suggested he come on the podcast and build a plan from the ground-up, complete with screenshares of their actual Meta Ads account.

In this episode, you'll learn exactly how I'd build an ad account almost from the ground-up centering on a consolidated, broad-targeted, Bid Cap strategy, and you'll even get a follow-up a month after our initial recording to see how their efforts were going.

We referenced a lot of resources in this episode. Want access to all of them for free? Sign up for my email list below and I'll send them your way.

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WATCH MY PREVIOUS OPENING THE BOOKS EPISODE

• "Opening The Books: Mixed By Nasrin": www.ajfgrowth.com/mixed

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We're taking a break from the tactical, but this episode is no less practical.

Taking a full day completely off of work every week has been one of the most important practices for keeping my relationship to work in its right place in my life while also providing the rest required to perform at work at as high of a level as possible.

In this episode, I explain how the ancient practice of Sabbath has unique power for people like me who love our jobs, and I give practical recommendations on what has made it work for me.

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My last episode with Jones Road Beauty CMO & CRO Cody Plofker is the most popular episode in my podcast's history. Which meant it was time to bring him back.

This is a wide-ranging episode in which Cody and I talk about how to think about Contribution Margin as a dollar amount (instead of just efficiency metrics like MER or aMER), how to forecast a DTC brand effectively, and how to use the concept of a "unique mechanism" in your DTC ad messaging.

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I've always said that the offer is the foremost driver of performance in direct response advertising. But I haven't always aligned my actions with that thought.

But after some recent & massive client wins centering on running the same ads to new offers, I've been reminded of just how crucial it is to get this right.

So in this episode, I'm categorizing defining what I mean by "offer" and categorizing offer type that can move the needle for different kinds of brands.

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A few weeks ago I told you that longform explainer ads are the best performing ads I run in an episode where I went through an overview of the concept and structure of the ads.

But then I thought: "Wait, why don't I just record myself actually writing one of these instead?"

So I got together with my good friend Dave Rekuc, President & COO at Bambu Earth, and we briefed out a longform explainer ad from start to finish to prep for an upcoming shoot of his.

The result is a (long) episode in which we document the entire process of thinking through what makes customers love Bambu Earth and how to communicate that with clarity in an ad.

Important note: we don't know how this ad will perform yet, but once we do, I'll update you. So make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out as we learn how it goes.

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One of the most common pieces of advice I give ecommerce operators is to hunt for savings in their supply chain so that their unit economics can better. Supply chain savings go straight to the bottom line (or open up more room for you to spend on customer acquisition).

It's good advice, but it often isn't actionable, because there is an obvious follow-up question:

How?

Lara Guevara knows the answer, and on this episode of the show, she tells you. We talked about knowing your suppliers' suppliers, negotiating freight forwarding, and thinking intelligently about exchange rates.

It's all doable, and if you don't know where to start, Lara is ready to help.

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What if you could be running ads that pushed your spend up 50% at your target metrics–and they cost you nothing to create? And also, you already made them?

If you're not turning (almost) all of your existing organic content into ads, there's a good chance that's the exact scenario you're in.

Today on the show: a simple but important push to get your organic content into your ad account.

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