Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
So you asked me how I got Coach Eureka. So be a fun way to start this podcast. I've never started this one with this story. So when I was 21, I dropped out of college because I almost failed an art class. And I was like, this is stupid. I'm leaving. I'm not doing this. And I was working online as a writer at the time. So I started looking for cheap places to go around the world because I'd never traveled at all. I was born in Northwest Georgia. Other than going to Florida, I had basically never been more than like 50 miles from my house.
So I was like, I'm going to travel. My parents hated that idea. They started crying.
They told me they'd, like, cry themselves asleep every night, that kind of stuff. So they didn't like that. But I was like, I am just going to leave states, leave it what I know and go travel. So didn't have a lot of money because I was 21, broke college student, and I just started looking for, like, really cheap places with a nice view. And I found this tiny little hole in the wall in Costa Rica on Airbnb. It was like 300 bucks a month or, you know, whatever. I joked that it was so small, when I went to sleep, my head was in the bedroom and my feet were in the kitchen.
It was true. I remember I shared it with, like, cockroaches, and I showed it to a friend one time, and they're like, you should not live here. Like, this is insane. But it had an amazing view of this lake with, like, mountains behind it.
And pretty much every day I could see, like, birds or sloths or monkeys or all this stuff. So I just fell in love. And then I just kind of kept going back and ended up buying a place there. Took my parents back. They loved it. So I bought a place there. So that was how that. That was how that got started.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: It's wild. We have a similar story. Like, I. I grew up in a ultra Orthodox kind of Jewish world, number two of ten. But I also never traveled. Like, I size the family. Parents did not have a lot of money. First time I got on a plane, I was 14.
Went to my first ever flight was actually to, I believe it was Denver for like a summer camp, and then Iowa and then like a bunch of other random kind of like flyover states. Drove across the country a few times. Summer with my older brother. Like, we would do a road trip from Jersey to, like, Phoenix or Jersey to Salt Lake or Jersey to la and then like fly back. First time I left the country, I was 20 years old and had, I think I had like $800 in my bank account when I left the country, but I had like a few million miles from credit card points and I spent my early twenties, dropped outta high school, didn't go to college, spent my early twenties traveling the world with like a ton of points and $0. So I was like staying at these five star hotels, being like absolutely broke in the bank. So like couldn't really afford food, but kind of like staying in a five star hotel, eating in the lounge and kind of spent my early 20s just midlife crisis saying at 20 before finding e comm, like E Commerce was just the thing that you can. As long as you can show that you can do something.
Almost anyone was willing to hire you. Yes. Like my first job I was making like $30,000 a year for a couple of years. But it was, it was a way to get in. Took me like what, an additional 10 years to get to Costa Rica. So you're probably like 10 years ahead.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Of me, probably 20 years behind as far as career progress, but.
And then what's the story of how you ended up at yo where you are right now?
[00:03:17] Speaker B: So kind of catch you up quickly. Spent a couple of years at this luggage company based in Tel Aviv.
Was living in Tel Aviv area for like four years. 2014, 2018 started like spent two years as a degenerate just traveling like based out of Tel Aviv, traveling to Europe. 2016, I got that job there after doing a bunch of like, I would basically spend six months in Tel Aviv, come back to the us, Work for some like my cousin's uncle's company for like a month, make five grand and go back. And I was living on nothing. I was sharing with a bunch of roommates. My first like real, real job that wasn't like a six week kind of like summer stint was in 2016. Like I, I, I'm not that, I'm not that long in the, you know, it's like basically 10 years since I had like my first like big boy job and it was customer service. So kind of like $30,000 a year started as customer service. It was really everything. Like I was the only native English speaker. So it was like a Kickstarter campaign that was years delayed. So I was doing customer service, I was doing email marketing, I picked up Amazon ads, I was doing like the whole Amazon listings ops and logistics to like 64 countries with three different warehouses, investor relations, trade shows, literally everything outside of finance and like meta ads which Weren't really running at the point. Finance, design, like those are the two things I didn't touch. Spent four years there. While I was there, started a startup that failed. Moved back to the US in 2018. Still stayed at that luggage company remote until 2020, which again like at that point maybe $60,000 in salary. 2020, I got a job smackdown and Covid at a company called Nuggs. They were like very, very much like the IT startup at that point. Raised a ton of money. A 20 year old CEO, kind of like a bizarre story was there for a couple of weeks until I realized like culture wise it was so not a fit. Like it, it, it was so great for some people. I'm like, I work really hard, but I hate the idea of being told what to do and when to do it and how to do it. And the idea of like being in office six days a week and like not leaving before 8pm when I'm like, I'd rather just be working from Zion national park with my laptop. So I basically left after like six weeks. And somehow through a friend of a friend, I had been sharing stuff on Twitter. I built like an audience of a couple of maybe a thousand, two thousand people at that point in time talking about and somebody connected me to Olipop. And this is 2020. Olipop was super small. I think I was number 16 there. We went from a couple of million in revenue in mostly Erewhon sprouts and you know, Northern California, to a $75 million business, 70 something employees, all in the span of like a year and a half.
It got big and I started just getting antsy. Like I love the idea of doing all the things. I hate the idea of just being the CX person. When I started at Olipop, it was like, you can jump in on the retention side. We built subscription from like a thousand subscribers to 10,000 subscribers. So like it was. So much of my work was subscription and retention and cx and suddenly it's like, Eli, you're great at cx. Just hang tight in that corner. And that made me just, I just couldn't handle that. I just love early stage doing everything. I remember at that point some one of my senior leaders was like, Eli, the idea that you can just jump ship because a company's getting too big is crazy. Like you can't just jump just because of the size.
And I was like, well watch me. I have nothing. Like I have no equity, I have nothing holding me here. It's a great company, great job, but like this is 40, 50, 60 hours a week. I want it to be fun. Getting too comfortable. Also with like a non traditional background, the idea of like generally go to go to college, get a degree, do the thing you're good at, wasn't prevalent in my mind, right? Like, I didn't have a college degree, I didn't have a traditional route. So for me it was like, I'm going to learn as much as I can and then I'll just jump. And now, you know, 10 years later, seven years later, six years later, it's like it's finally clocking to me that that's maybe not the smartest way to learn. But as somebody that's on their own just learning, I just want to learn. So Ollie Pop, two years, a little under two years. Jumped into Jones Road Beauty 3 through a friend. I got connected to somebody on Twitter. His name was Cody. We got in a call, turns out it's his mom's company. We become good friends. A couple of months later, he brings me on to do customer experience and retention.
And again, like number 16, the company was probably doing like 40, 50, 60 million. Year two, the business doubled. Year three, year four, and it just was like again, kind of like 75 employees.
I was getting a little antsy, a little under two years in, where I was like, okay, I love clicking customer experience, I love retention. But what they need from me is much more than I am willing to go in terms of like, retention is twofold. There's the, there's the art and the science.
And I felt like I was always better at the art than the science. And the science to me is the incrementality, testing, the spreadsheets, all that stuff that I didn't want to do. And in my universe it's like, okay, let me find somebody, or let me find an AI tool or something that I can query to ask the questions without actually doing the work.
But that wasn't where growth was demanded from me as a leader. And I figured, okay, what do I do now? I started building a newsletter. The newsletter is driving more revenue than my job. And I was like, I don't need to work. So if I don't need to work, what do I want from a job? And that was like a quarter life crisis that had less to do with Jones, more to do with me as like a, as a law, as like, as a leader, but as an employee as a kid, right? Like I'm, I'm not 60.
And I realized that the three things that matter, I want to have fun which feels like boomers hate when you say that, right? Like, a job shouldn't be fun, but I love having fun at my job. I love when it feels exciting, even if it's not 90% of the time. But it should have an element of fun. Number two, I want to be challenged. Like, I want to be the dumbest person in the room. And number three, like, I want a really hard problem to solve. And Jones was doing so well that with or without me, they'd crush. And that for most people is like, that's amazing. Companies crushing. For me, that's like existentialism. Like, what am I here for? What value am I adding? YO sponsors, the newsletter. I am like, wait, I've turned YPO three times. I hated them for so many reasons. And now I'm seeing that they're entirely different than what I remember them. I remember them being like an overpriced review software, and now they're like, loyalty and they have a platform and they're thinking about RFM and email and sms. And I had a quick conversation with the CEO because a bunch of people told me, I talked to this guy. He'll be able to help you understand yourself and where you want to go next. He's hired thousand plus people. He. He gets it. And within five minutes of talking to him, with no intention of ever touching SaaS, he says, like, you're an entrepreneur without. Without the risk tolerance. And I said, yeah, that's 100% fear. Like, I love building. I hate, like, not having a salary.
And he was like, I can see a universe where you come into YAHPO and bring all the knowledge and the, like, all the data that you have on the brand side and help us build something better.
And the title will come up with the salary we'll figure out.
And at that point in my life, I'm like, less excited about the salary, less excited about the title. I want a really fun challenge.
So in that quarter life crisis moment, I said, you know what? Screw it. I guess I'm going to SaaS. So mission number one, delete all the nasty tweets about Yeppo, which was quite a beat. And mission number two is, like, put myself in between. Like, if you want to hate yapo, you have to hate me now. And it's less exciting to hate me than it is to hate Yuppo. And I tried to bring myself as the person. So if you have a problem with yo, I'm here to help you. If you have feedback, I'm here to help you. So pulling from My CX background on, like, deeply listening and deeply understanding, pulling from my retention background on what does it take to build a product that people genuinely like and enjoy and not have to fight for getting out of a contract?
And then the rest is just like brand marketing that I'm trying to teach myself.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: Gotcha. Yeah. Fighting getting out of a contract, kind of going through a bit of that right now. Um, but one thing you touched on that was really interesting to me, so you said that you were learning a lot kind of by this job jumping, but you said that this, you didn't think that this was the fastest way to learn, so. Or the smartest way to learn. So what would you say for someone who's in their early career, they're in a very similar position to you? They have this sort of entrepreneurial mindset. They want to learn more, they want to solve hard problems. They don't like when things get, like, where they're not needed. What would you say to them is probably the smartest way to learn?
[00:11:23] Speaker B: I think a few things. I think, like, I've gotten to a point where I can hold two truths in my head equally. On one hand, like, yes, it's not great for your career to be the person. Like when, when an HR person sees your resume and sees that every year and a half, you hop, that's not a great look. Because if they're hiring you for this role, what's to say you're not going to jump in a year and a half? So I hold that truth in my brain. The other truth I hold in my brain is you are your brand and you are yourself. And you, you deeply understand what's best for you. And, And I think gut is a combination of, like, childhood trauma and street smarts. And your gut tells you when it's the. You know, I've spent four years at a company and then six weeks at the next.
And now looking back, it was definitely the right decision to jump when I jumped, but my brain at that point was telling me, like, you spent four years. Why are you jumping after six weeks? So I, I think you really have to hold both truths that, yes, it's important to see, like, what the outside world is looking at.
And two, it's like, yes, you, you know, when the right time is to jump, and sometimes it's just a matter of being lazy and just kind of like, yeah, it's kind of safe, it's kind of okay. But realistically, you know, internally, is this the right move or is this the wrong move? I will say like, on the, on the practical side, like, what are the. How does it mess you up when you jump a job every two years?
The answer is it does. Like, HR people hate me. Like, I'm not HR's best friend. Like, if they see my titles, they see my jumping, they see, like, I've. HR wants to see somebody that spent a good amount of time at great brands goes through the career ladder. None of my jobs I've gotten ever in my life came from hr. Like, none of them came from applying. My first luggage job was a friend of a friend that knew somebody at the luggage company that just needed someone that speaks English just to respond to emails. Olipop was like, they already near hiring somebody. But a friend of a friend vouched for me. Jones Road Beauty was a friend I made on Twitter. Yeppo was like, I became friends with the CEO, which again is like, these are not the traditional ways. But I think I've gotten to a point in my career where I understand that I won't.
My. The consequences of my actions are that an HR professional, a headhunter, won't jump into my LinkedIn messages and say, like, hey, can we hire you? I'm not, like, I'm not that cookie cutter person.
And I think I've learned enough, you know, now I can be riskier because now I've like, I have the important brands under your belt. So what I tell people is generally like the first three, two, three jobs in your career, take the safe bets. Go to college.
Like, if I had a choice, I would have gone to college. Like, I didn't go to college because I was like 20 something and I had no way to pay for it and would have to start by finishing high school, which I did in my 20s. Like, that wasn't just, it wasn't practical. But I say go to college. Get a job at a, at an important brand. So I say like, if you can maybe make $10,000 less if you can go to the job, that's the Ollipop and not just the tiny little mom and pop shop that's going to pay you $1,000 more because brand recognition really matters. Like, Olipop was such an important piece on my resume that now it's a key that opens up so many more doors than I ever thought. And again, back then, Olipop wasn't Olipop. It was a bet I took. But Jones Road was another calculated bet. Like, this gives me another analogy, is like, it gives me another kind of like another square in my folder of like, this is now a celebrity bootstrap brand that I was able to spend time at. And I spent time at the venture backed, kind of like in it soda brand. And then I spent time on the sass side. And I think most career professionals would tell you, okay, you get good at something, just do that one thing. But for me a, I think I like hard things because if not, I feel like an imposter. If not, I feel like if like I don't do the hard thing, I feel like you're just kind of chickening out. You're just kind of taking the easy route. So I like hard things, but also I feel like I read Range, you know, the famous Range by David Epstein book. And I was like, oh, this is so me. And then I couldn't get a job for four years after reading it because like I was a generalist and nobody wants a generalist at a large company. And again I, I think my biggest problem is I'm a generalist.
So Olipop didn't want a generalist. They wanted at the beginning, a year and a half later they're like, no, you're a CX guy. Jones Road. Loved that. I had two things that I knew super well. But at some point we were like, this is your lane, you need to get really good at it. So being a generalist kind of screwed me. But I think it's, it's like range, the idea of range is up to, up to a certain point or at a certain point in your career when you're starting a company it's great to be a generalist because you can get almost everything from 0 to 1 and then you can like find the co founder, find the hire. But when you're like a mid level executive, being a generalist is like, is a path, is a path to terrible life. Because most people don't want to hire a generalist. Now on the yuppo side, like the fun part about Yuppo is on one hand it's a very large company. On the other hand it's like a very, very evolving company. And there's always kind of the things that fall through the cracks that now I can pick up and that's like the impactful.
When you get to a point where you're the person that picks up the things that fall through the cracks, that's a fun place to be. But very few companies are looking to hire a role like that.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: Yeah, you mentioned something a second ago about kind of going for the bigger brand instead of pursuing money. And the story you were Telling about your early life sounded like several times you made the decision to pursue your dreams or pursue travel or pursue fun instead of chasing money. So I think this gets harder as people get more money. But I'm curious as to kind of what your experience was.
It seems like that's worked out, but I'm interested to hear kind of your take on that.
[00:16:47] Speaker B: This is the first time I think I've ever shared this on a podcast or publicly. But I think two things for me that were interesting is number one, I grew up in a family where when I was like zero till six years old, my grandparents had a lot of money and when I was six, they lost it all or seven.
And that has an effect on a kid where it's like you suddenly everything you ask where you get to learning what budget means, right? Like when my parents, I'm seven and I'm eight and my parents are like, that's not in the budget.
And I was like, I don't even know what that means. That's crazy. And me and my older brother are both the same age. He's a year and a bit older than me. He became like a ruthless saver and very, very kind of on top. Like he was the chipmunk hold holding the acorns. And he eventually became a big time lawyer and somehow without a ho, without a high school diploma or a college degree, got into Columbia Law and went to work at the number one law firm. And I was completely different. Where I was the hustler that like my grandfather had a food company and he. I would buy wafers, like these chocolate wafers for, from him at wholesale and then sell them in school to make like 50 cents each. And I was always a hustler trying to like, figure it out.
So I think a lot of my early adulthood was just calibrated towards like, how can I, A, not be stressed about money? B, I hated the idea of being told what to do. And those two things pulled very, very hard at me. Like, on one hand I would spend two years traveling and doing nothing because I didn't want to be told what to do. On the other hand, I really needed money to feel safe. And I think that friction took me to a place where at some point in my 20s, when I met my wife and we got married and I finally feel like, no, now I really have to get my shit together. At some point it clicked where I was like, okay, I really need to figure out how to make money. And cx, I get into the CX world and it's like, the average salary is 60k, 50k, 35k. If you're making big money, you're at 90. And then I learned that if you're in the top one or top five or top 10% of CX professionals, you can be making 300, like the SVP of CX at whatever Fortune 500 brand is making a couple hundred thousand dollars. And then I was like, okay, I can either become, like, an operations or a growth guy, or I can deeply, deeply, deeply learn CX and figure out my niche to become in the top five or top 1% of, like, direct consumer CX. And that was. This is like 2020, 2021, when Olipop is popping off. And I tell myself, okay, like, this is the time to lock in. And if you can build an audience around yourself, if you can kind of like, clear out all the. All the, like, oh, shit, what happens if I go broke? Like, get past that point, then you'll be able to think normally again. And for me, like, a combination of my child and the combination of what my adult self wanted, like the inner child and current adult self, brought me to a point where it's like, okay, yes, I want money, but only because of the safety.
So as a kid, you tell yourself you want to be a billionaire or you want to be a millionaire. And then as an adult, you realize that there's a number. And somebody super smart told me this two years ago, he's like, figure out what that number is. Where, once you're past that, you don't care anymore. And it's generally, for most people, it's not as high as you think it is. Yes, it's a lot of money. It could be a 2, 3, $400,000. It's not 10 million.
And I think once I hit that number from the salary, from the side gig, from the consulting, from the newsletter, whatever, that's what broke me.
So suddenly it's like, I'm making that money.
My wife is going through med school, and I'm able to pay for her med school tuition in cash. And I'm just like, that's amazing. But now what? And I think because my number is. Is not as high as people think and less than most people, it just brought me to this midlife crisis where I was like, okay, now the money thing is figured out. I feel like I can choose whatever job I want. Both sides of the friction of the push and pull are. Are exactly where they are. I figured out the money. I figured out the kind of, like, hate being told what to do. Here's a job to get, and I'm kind of miserable.
And that's when I realized that I just.
I just need to do harder things and harder. To me, like, there are two things. There's harder of, like, getting really good, good at spreadsheets, and then there's harder of, like, harder directionally, the things that you're excited to do, harder. And that was one thing I learned about myself is like, I can go my whole career and never know how to, like, vlookup. And I'm good with that. Like, I could never know how to incrementality test, and I'm good with that. But that's not what this job needs from me. So I can either kind of fight with that friction of, like, they want me to be something that I can be, but I don't really enjoy, or do I find a job that is looking for exactly what I am and where I want to go, and that's like the best.
I mean, that's like the dream. The dream is finding a job that wants exactly what you are. Plus 30, 40% growth.
Because you don't have to be anything else. You just have to get really, really good at that. And I think I'm blessed that I'm like, probably 10, 15 years in my career, and I found that so many times over. Like, the job that's demands exactly what you need. Plus 20, plus 30, plus 40%. Because if you don't have the plus 40%, you just cruise and you become really, really lackluster and you never learn anything. And yeppo has been that for me, where on one hand, it's like, it's a very, very big challenge. Like a business. This. I've never been in a business this size. I've never been in a business that has done things that some brands didn't like. Right? Like there are brands that use them eight years ago and hated that they kept charging more and more for reviews. How do you win back trust in an industry this small?
Like, how do you get back somebody that used us eight years ago and hated us, that has said a bunch of nasty things? Well, we've been able to do that over time, like, become friends with these people, show them how we've evolved and we brought some of those people back. Now, how do you, like, how do you build a business that's consistently being competed with at every realm, Right? Like, there are ankle biters in every part of the industry. How do you stay relevant? How do you stay focused? Like, these are the hardest things but they're hard in the realm of things that I'm excited about.
And I think 1% of the world gets to do hard in the realm of excitement. And everyone else just eats shit or doesn't get paid, which are both terrible.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: What kind of skills do you feel like you need to learn to be in that sort of top echelon of performers?
[00:22:36] Speaker B: I think eq, which you can barely, which is like so important but nobody, it's like hard to teach. There are a million books of like how to teach eq. Trust me, if those books all worked we'd have a lot, a lot more EQ than iq. But we don't. And I think society generally overpays and over prefers IQ over eq.
But as somebody that's worked with some of the smartest people I've ever met, like every business. Olipop, Jones Road. Yepo. Like these are insanely smart people. I would put myself as like half as smart as these. As these people. I don't think I'm very smart on the IQ lens. The value that I can bring on the EQ side and again like depending on the brand, some brands lean into it more than others, right? Like Olipop was a very soft, emotional high EQ brand so they leaned into it more of the surprise and delight, etc. So some brands lean into that more. But I think EQ is number one and part of EQ is really like deeply understanding yourself and your own strengths. Because most people I talk to that are like, oh, I'm early in my career, should I take the job at mailchimp or at like Intel? And it's like that's not the question. The question is what's the job? What, what, what? Like what's the culture like? And I don't say culture as like a softie. I say culture as like if you're not in the right culture for yourself, you're just going to be a very stupid employee. Like you're just going to be a very lame employee. Nobody wants to work at a company that doesn't bring the value that they can bring, that helps them bring the value they can bring. So I think eq, I think really good at self reflection, like to better understand like what's the quadrant of like the thing I'm excited about and the thing. And there's like a bunch of like it's the Japanese thing called icky guy, whatever. Like putting all the Japanese stuff aside, I don't think this is like Buddhist.
I view this as an intellect. Like I Think those two things of like, what am I reasonably good at and what am I excited to get better at? I think if those two things were overlapped more for people, they would work. And the hardest part is like sometimes you're a customer experience associate and you really deeply like product development. That's like a very hard bridge to cross. Now how do you cross that is like, and I talked to people, I spoke to somebody yesterday, she's a customer experience associate, she wants to jump into product development.
How do you tell that person very politely, this is going to be a very hard bridge. Well, what you could do is at your current job you can ask to help the product development team. You can lean into like customer issues around product development. You can be the cross between product development and customer experience and learn as much as you can and then slowly ask them if you can. Can I be like a product development associate as well on the side? Because it's easier to change, to grab that as your full time job than to apply to a new one and then take that and put it in your resume and try to get a job. But that's the hard part. And some people learn that 30 years in their career they're like, I absolutely hate what I do. Like, I went to accounting school, I'm a cpa, I hate numbers.
[00:25:19] Speaker A: Yeah, that's very unfortunate.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: You mentioned one thing about society paying better for iq. Totally agreed. I would say that people are disproportionately fired due to eq.
In my experience.
Like, I think, gosh, I hate to put a number on it, but like probably three quarters of the people I've ever fired has been due to eq, not iq. Like it's been due to fails, barriers of communication or. Well, gosh, I mean that's pretty, that's pretty much most of it. You know, the people who just can't communicate well, that just really, that just really grinds my gears.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: But it feels like it's barely reflected in hiring processes. It's very like hiring processes are mostly iq, right? It's like, do this case study, do this, what do this, whatever, you know, like show us your code. And it's barely ever like, how do you handle, like something we used to do on the CX side was, was EQ stuff. Like on the CX side I would send like these are three examples of customer emails and I just want to see how you'd respond. And I, I don't care about your, like your style. The way you write is interesting to me, but it's Less like, are you gonna blame the person?
Are you gonna say we, but not I? Like, are you gonna take zero accountability and just say we as a company don't give a shit? Right. Like, how do you. How do you handle? And less about, like, what's your response time? Can you give me stats from your old job? Like teaching somebody to move quickly or, like, pick up a new tool? Like, all those are easy. Teaching somebody how to, like, use good judgment and obviously is different than a meta growth guy job. But I think every job demands, like, even if you're an executive, if you. Unless you're Elon Musk and you can get away with whatever chaos, most executives need to have decently high eq. Like, how do you fire people?
How do you. Like, how do you hire people? How do you celebrate wins? How do you walk through losses? I think that's like a very, very EQ heavy role, but we just barely ever screen for it. I do think a lot of CEOs get to where they are because they have EQ. So there's that. Right. Like, there's. At some point you get. You get like screened out. If you're like completely on a spectrum, you get like screened out because people want to hire, people want to work with people that have eq. People want to work with people that get them, and they don't want to work with psychopaths. So at some point you get screened out, but it's never like in an interview process.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: Yeah. I think probably as, like, people move up the ladder, EQ probably becomes more important, I would say. And I feel like I'm actually a little bit infamous in my company for I only hire based on one interview, and I don't. I will just talk. And that's the whole interview. And it usually takes 30 minutes. And I feel like I have a good enough read on someone after 30 minutes that I can pretty much sell.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: I would lie if I say I don't do the same, but I think.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: We'Re very rare, right? Agreed. Agreed. But it's worked out for me so far. I have absolutely hired some superstars who are way smarter than I am. Just fantastic. And they've moved up the ranks. That's been really cool. I would like to talk. So now you're doing branding. What excites you in branding right now?
[00:28:14] Speaker B: I think marketing SaaS is an absolute nightmare. I think very few people do it well. It, like, on the SaaS side, I think there's a few things there's. You can talk about, like social proof. Right. Like the case studies, the brands you work with me not super interesting. You can talk about the value that your tool brings. Again, kind of boring, right? Like there's very besides like cluey like besides like the kind of like the very in very current like the chat GPTs of the world can just show a workflow and be like your life just changed, right? There are some SaaS tools that are really easy to market. Most SAS tools are like we will make your competitive research three times easier.
That's like boring. So you start on the outcomes. You're like you're, you'll be able to sleep better at night. Too far right? You'll be able to like get to your lunch faster. Also too far. So you kind of balance between like the boring. Very, very generic. These are the brands that use the tool to like where you can get the kind of like end goal of what happens after you use the tool. And I think most SaaS vendors are in that are in that prism, right? It's either like use this tool, 10,000 other brands use it or kind of like we'll change your life.
Yupo is so different because YO has kind of gone through so many evolutions. It's 13 plus years old. I've never worked for a brand that's been around. Like all of the brands I've worked with were like two years old a year. In two and a half years in where there's not a lot of baggage and Yuppo has like on one hand you have 25,000 plus incredible brands like from Barnes and Noble to Ikea to like legendary brands that use it and love it to mom and pop shops that are doing a thousand dollars a year using it on a free, on a free plan.
But you also have like quite a few brands six, seven, eight years ago that have had like a not great experience that signed a contract and then two weeks later decided don't like contracts and then we're told that they can't leave a contract. Which again sidebar I think is very funny because you don't do that with your car lease, right? Like when you sign a two year lease, you're stuck with the car. You don't do that with your house. For some reason SaaS, SaaS people feel like I felt this way on the brand side. I never tried to get out of a contract unless you have like a crazy good reason. Just because finding better pricing is not a reason to try to get out of a two year contract. And the reason why contracts are created is because SaaS companies need to hire support and CS and like there's a, there's a model that goes into this pricing. Not because Brian decided he's sick of Yahoo, which is like a separate brand, but I think like as you start kind of like learning about the history that people have. And I get it because like I left YAHPO too. I get it. That's the hard part. On like a, on a brand level, it's like how do you hold both of those truths? One, people love this tool. Two, people have baggage with this tool and how do you bring those people together and take Yotpo kind of like to 2.0 to 3.0 to the future.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: Or are you doing that?
[00:30:57] Speaker B: I think a lot of it has been, from my perspective, has been listening. Like I think yeppo has been like a large company that just operated and operated well, but there hasn't been enough of like just getting down and listening to people that have been through whatever. So our CEO in the last year and a half has spoken to hundreds of customers of agencies. I mean it's like a couple hours a week is, is doing that is like listening and not just like a listening tour and, and you post a photo and you're done. But it's like dinners and agency days and I mean like he's met hundreds of customers both current and past and, and sit with them. Better understand where we messed up, better understand what we can learn. And so I think a lot of those are the things that don't scale the advisory boards. The kind of like sitting in person discussing the future of yahpo. And then on a scalable side it's like how do we continue just testing things and seeing what resonates especially on product marketing. Right. It's like testing, learning, iterating. Like the, the more, the more like mass and fast moving versus like the boring and difficult stuff.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: And for the scalable stuff, I'm curious, what say metrics are you tracking as far as marketing? What stuff's worth listening to? Not worth listening to. Now you said you're not really a spreadsheet guy, so we can skip if.
[00:32:08] Speaker B: You need to, but yeah, yeah, tough question. No, I'll say a couple of things. Like on the yacht post side, on the marketing side, like I'd say two things. A is the basic, like how many leads are we driving?
You know, MQLs, SQLs, all that fun stuff. Like what is marketing accomplishing in terms of driving demand. Right. Which is the ultimate goal of marketing. I was reading something today that's like somebody Was like there's no middle of funnel, right? It's either top of funnel, no intent or intent bottom of the funnel. And I think like something that, which is like an, it's like a hot take. It doesn't have to be true, right? It's like one of those things where people just say stuff to get a couple of likes. But, but the thing that I found valuable with that is like from a marketing perspective, it's either it's working or it's not.
And the difference between the brand stuff and the stuff I touch on, the advocacy on the events is the funnel is longer. But at some point, you know, daddy needs to get paid.
At some point the company has to make money. And I think like that's where, you know, we go towards like the, the SQLs, the MQLs. A lot of like the ABM, like account based marketing motion we're running now is like iterating and testing new outbounding, new outreach and trying to better understand like what can we learn on the upcoming renewal dates on what tools they have, how they choose those tools. And we're using a lot of AI to kind of like build towards that. But that's again, like how many leads are we getting on the like soft brand stuff? We haven't done a ton of like, like I feel like most of these are fluff. Like yes, we track social mentions and yes we track are they positive or negative, et cetera, but nothing like, nothing crazy there.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: And how much are you guys tracking ROI on your marketing efforts? Like is there a room for art or is it all science all the way down?
[00:33:46] Speaker B: It depends who you ask.
I feel like we need more, I feel like we need more art.
Currently, I'd say it's more science. Like it's very much an attribution model and we don't invest in things that don't pay us. And there are things that I've gotten away with given my job and given like the EQ soft softness part of my role. There are definitely things that I get away with with senior leadership being. We know that this will work. Like, we know having the CEO talk to people that hated YAHPO to hear them out and explain what we've changed. There's no way that doesn't work. So yes, if he's taking hours of his week doing that, I'm not looking for an ROI on that tomorrow. But for the most part, like any heavy spending, any like large brand campaigns, yes, we're, we're certainly tracking, you know, pipeline. There's no sugarcoating it. Like we will extend that visibility window a little bit if we're, if we're feeling a certain kind of way. But I think it also depends, depends on like where you're at profitability wise, how much you raised, how much you're spending. Like I think it's also ultimately a math example. Right. If a business raises a hundred million and is growing 10x year over year, it's a very different, you know, to, to write off a million dollars for brand is much easier than, than businesses that are striving to get profitable and you know, don't want to raise as much. So I'd say it's, it's brand dependent. Yeah.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And as far as that sort of lack of art. So I feel like this, like if I could average out everyone who's in a marketing position, I would say more than half are probably in like the more science and art side. I'm curious as to your thoughts for Yopper in particular. So do you feel like the lack of art is due to, is that due to business culture or is that more due to business size? Context on this question is I feel like as I've seen businesses grow and I've been in them, it's almost always going from art to science.
And it's almost like depending on where your business is at, like if you're on the smaller side, there's no room for the science because you don't have tracking in place, you don't know what campaigns work and so on. But as you're bigger, there's no room or not no room. But there's very little room for the art of marketing. It's all ROI, pipeline, gen, MQLs, SQLs, sales, all of that. So just curious thoughts.
[00:35:50] Speaker B: It's a very good observation and again like coming from somebody that hasn't done the, you know, Yahpo is the only SaaS company I've worked at, but I do write the newsletter every day for the last three years. All of that sponsored by, by SaaS companies. So I've worked with probably 50, 60 SaaS companies and you see all of them asking different questions, right? It's a newsletter. What should you be asking? How many clicks, how many opens. But then you see like certain ones will ask like okay, of the clicks, how many clicks are on the ad read of the, of the opens I and what percentage of like. And so many of you know, so many just don't ask any questions. They just view this as like I know that you have X amount of Subscribers that are in this world and if they read it, that's like reading a billboard. And I hope and pray that they see my name five times. At some point it'll work. And some of them will try to triangulate. Like the middle is like triangulating that, hey, I signed three clients and three of them mentioned your name. Right? So it's like triangulating a little bit. Yes, they clicked on the meta ad, but they have definitely seen it in the newsletter versus, you know, the extreme is like I want to know exactly how many clicks and I'd say like more than half of people that I talk to are, are closer to art than science on newsletters in particular. But a lot of the brands that are looking at newsletters are not even looking at it because they don't believe that's like straight demand pipeline generation. But on the size piece like the only Caveat is like HubSpot's plastering trains and billboards. So like I think there are some like very large brands that definitely do write off X amount of dollars. Like I can't imagine, I can't imagine that HubSpot is tracking pipeline generation from like wrapping the Q train. I might be wrong. Like maybe there's like a special, you know, link that you can use on the Q train, X, Y and Z.
[00:37:31] Speaker A: But my guess is they're tracking. So like branded search, something like that.
[00:37:35] Speaker B: Possibly, possibly. I think I will say like my two cents is it's more business culture than it is size. But again like it also ebbs and flows. Like I think yeppo has gone from like only pipe to now kind of like much better understanding the soft, the soft parts of the funnel. Within reason, right? Like my cart stops working at some point, but within reason. Like I think my budget is like 4 fraction of, of you know, what we pay on spend and what we, you know, within reason. But I think it's business culture. But again like small startups will raise $10 million and they'll do a whole merch line and they'll fly a bunch of influencers to God knows what. Like we see, we see on. I think it's more about like how much money they have liquid and what the timeline is that they need to show reasonable ROI until the wallets get squeezed.
[00:38:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I am curious. So in your position running branding, how like aware and tracking do you have to be of overall business objectives? Like churn or like if there's like a desired profit, I don't know if you guys are profitable, but if there's Like a desired profit margin or something like that. Or are they just like, here's your marketing budget, like just go, go spend it.
[00:38:41] Speaker B: I say like my role is a weird one because the way people feel about yuppo brand advocacy is something I, I spend time on, but I also spend a bunch of time on go to market better understanding the motion there's and trying to support abm, trying to support events. So I think because my role is so fluid and holistic, my role generally changes at least once a quarter. And what that means is not my full scope but like half of my scope will stay the same quarter over quarter and the rest will things come, things, things go. Because of that, I have like a general awareness around like yeah, the important wins, the important churns, where our numbers are at. Can I tell you day to day, like what? Yes, but I can. I have a general understanding of what our pipe looks like, what our churn numbers look like by product. Have a very deep understanding of competitive landscape. So I lean very deep in that. Like, why are people choosing X over Y? Like I have a very strong point of view on almost all of our competitors from being in that seat where I had to choose Yahpo over X, Y and Z. But I'd say like it's like anyone that touches any brand is generally like fluffy billboard stuff.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: Gotcha. And then I think kind of the last thing I want to touch. I know we're running out of time, but I'm curious as your thoughts as if there are any benefits from going from the retention and customer side to the marketing side. Like have any of those skills carried over or have they made you like better on the branding side or is it like kind of a wash?
[00:40:03] Speaker B: It's a good question. I think two things. So number one, the value of being brand side and joining a SaaS company that's targeting your exact Persona is very helpful. So I think that the value that I bring is like if you want to know how a pitch resonates, just pitch it to me and I'll be brutally honest. Like I think I'm, I'm yuppos like most pessimistic Debbie Downer internally. Like I, I'm the hardest on Yato because I, I know what people don't like about yeppo. So when you pitch something to me, I'll say like, this is why people hate us. Like stop saying that. But so I think that's the value I bring. The value I get is I think when you think about a business this size with AOV that's not $25. Right. This is not a contract. This is not like selling supplements on Amazon. And you learn a lot about really deeply understanding what a funnel looks like. So I think, yes, most brands are. Think everything's kind of like a direct response, like somebody's surfing YouTube and they just so happen to really deeply desire a supplement, a biotin supplement today. And if I give that crap the perfect message, they're buying today. And we tell ourselves that from the brand side that if the. If the copy is so good and if the creative is so good, all I need is that one. That one click. And that's the fault of Meta. That's the fault of, like all these attribution tools is like they. They want you to think that that one ad is the thing that's like, no, you got them through the funnel and this is the ad they clicked on. When in reality is a lot of things you can't track with SaaS. You see that every single day.
Like, there's no way that somebody signs a 6,000 or $12,000. Yep. Contract because they happen to have seen your ad on Meta. Like, there's no way. And obviously the people that run the ads will say that. And obviously the person that the BDR that outreached two weeks ago will say it's 100% them. But that's the value that it brings to the brand side is you start really understanding what a. What a timeline could look like and how these tools almost always kind of direct you towards thinking it's an easy win.
[00:42:01] Speaker A: But so true.
Hear that every day. The attribution problem, though.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:42:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, well. But I know we're running out of time here, so any last thoughts that you'd like to share with listeners or anything else that I should ask you? But I didn't know too.
[00:42:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that's on my mind lately is nobody knows you as well as you know yourself. And I think almost four or five times a week I'll get questions of what do I do next?
And almost nobody can answer that other than yourself. And most people just don't believe in their gut enough. Maybe some people believe too much in their gut, but I don't think that's generally the problem. People don't, like, just lean in. If you're feeling like the job is over, it might be over. That doesn't mean you have to quit tomorrow. It means you can start looking. If you feel like you can do better, you don't need your boss to tell you. You can do better, you know? You know what that feels like when you're just giving 20%. And it's something I'm telling myself lately as well, is like, I. I feel like I just almost never been wrong when my gut gives me a weird feeling about something at work or beyond. But I think at work, it's. It's super relevant now. It's like, companies are hiring, companies are firing. I mean, times are weird with AI. Just dive in. Like, if you feel like AI can help you, just jump in and learn. Because if not, somebody else will and they'll do your job in half the time and you'll get fired in six months. So just like, just jump in. Something I definitely need to hear myself often is like, trust your gut more and lean in, because it's going to be a crazy ride.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: So true. Maybe I needed to hear that myself to trust your gut side. So, Eli, thanks so much. If people want to learn more about you, what you're doing, where should they go?
[00:43:35] Speaker B: Yes. So ypo is yo.com, y o-t p o.com I'm Eli Weiss, so you can find me on Twitter, LinkedIn newsletter, Eliweiss. There's almost always an extra S because Eli Weiss is just a common name. So, Eli W E I S S s dot com. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:43:53] Speaker A: Awesome. Thanks for being here. See you guys.
