Happy Sunday! I spent the weekend in NYC for my wife's birthday and had a blast. We stayed at the 5th Ave Hotel. If you need a great hotel in NYC, I highly recommend it. Ok so I don't usually listen to Marketing Operators because who wants to listen to themselves, but I missed recording an episode due to a doctor's appointment so I did get to listen as a fan to a recent one. It's an episode which I've been thinking a lot about. The guest was Zach Stuck, who not only has a successful agency but he also has a hold co of his own DTC brands and he's killing it. I wanted to share a summary of what he's doing that makes him so successful, at least in my own interpretation. (You can listen here. )
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Product Market Fit and Product Partnership - It all has to start with the product. Zach is a marketer, so he's smart and humble enough to partner each business with a product person. Brilliant strategy. Look at some of the top DTC businesses out there today, including JRB, Hexclad, Ridge, and AG1. Many of them were founded by product obsessed founders, and then growth or marketing people were brought into help scale that great product. Reader tip: If you are trying to launch your own brand, especially if you are an agency owner wanting to do wjat Zach is doing, nail the product. This likely means having the humility to partner with a prodct person. You can nall your website, have the best ad acount structue and more, but if 2024 (almost 2025) you truly need an amazing product to win.
High Leverage Marketing Activities - Zach has a very lean team, which I will get into in a minute. But having such a lean team forces him and his team to really lock in and focus on the key areas that are driving growth for his business. This may be different for every business, but the'res no wated fluff. They're probably not spending on a ton of channels and not doing a lot of brand marketing with no expectation of returns. He really laid out a great playbook on the pod, so you should listen. But esssentially the first stage is getting Meta dialed in, plus core email flows. Build landing pages with different messages, test static creative with those same messages, and test offers while dialing in your core email flows. The second stage is getting videos working on meta, finding another personna or messaging angle, and doing more structured CRO work on your website. The third stage at 8 figures is crackingn another channel like TV or Applovin, doing paid influencer work, and then whitelisting those influencer assets on paid social. It's really simple, but it seems to really work.
Keep A Lean Team With Low OPEX - One of the reasons Zach (and others like him) have been able to scale so quickly is through paid media. The pro of paid media is you can really quickly scale once you find some success. It's how Zach and others have gotten to 8 figures super quickly. The only downside is that once you scale it, ad spend can be a pretty high % of revenue. In addition to needing solid gross margins to stay profitable at scale, having low opex as a % of revenue is the move. The one great thing about this DTC business model is that you don't need many more people do 10 million in revenue as you do to do 1 million. Zach is able to lean on his agency, Homestead for a lot of contract work.
I highly reccomend everyone that is scaling a brand today to keep opex as low as humanly possible. There are these amazing, 7 and 8 figure DTC brands that have 2-4 full time employees and I just love it so much. I used to be pro in house, but more and more I see the value in freelancers as needed. But hiring good quality freelancers is hard, or at least it used to be. I've persoanally hired multiple A player freelancers from The Starters, which was nice enough to sponsor this issue. The Starters is a vetted freelance marketplace that helps brands find and hire the best quality freelance talent for a variety of roles. It was founded by my friend Jai, who was the CMO of Winc because hiring freelance roles was something he always needed but struggled to find.
At JRB, we have hired freelance video editors, copywriters, UX designers, and retention marketers and every single one has been a great experience. They are all vetted by Jai, and their model is great. It's just a membership, so there is no recruitment fee or markup on the freelance rate. It couldn't be easier to find them, and the quality is really top notch. The freelancers on the platform have worked for DTC brands like Kizik, Dr. Squatch, Dollar Shave Club, and more.
I not only have used The Starters at JRB with great success, but I am actively using it and will hire a few extra freelancers this month for some upcoming projects. We have never had to use it, but I do know they offer a satisfaction guarantee so if for any reason you're not hapy with who you find, you can get your money back. Jai has gone above and beyond helping us find great talent, so I am sure he would do the same for you. He was nice enough to hook my readers up with $100 Off your first month of membership if you act now. Just use this link, sign up, and you'll be on your way.
Hope you enjoyed this and the Zach Stuck podcast. I'll see you next time.