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What I Learned Climbing a Mountain 13 Times in 25 Hours Until I Climbed The Vertical Equivalent of Everest 

 
Note that this write up has 2 main parts – one more descriptive of the event. The second more philosophical about what I came away with. If you want to jump to the second part look for “WHAT DID I COME AWAY WITH?”
 
Some events are time-based, some are distance-based. So to make things new and interesting, a vertical feet-based one was next. Created by Jesse Itzler (wrote Living with a Seal, founder of Marquis Jet, wife is Sara Blakely – founder of that just slightly amazing billion dollar plus Spanx business…). He’s partnered up with a great group of folks to help put on this event series which will be put under the Live Boundless umbrella.
 
To set a small bit of context:
Simply put, the goal is to climb the vertical equivalent of one of the 7 summits of each continent. Originally, the Utah event I’d signed up for was Denali – 20k feet, 9 times up. Wasn’t shabby by any stretch, but then a few months ago, they decided to allow people to have “official” goals that were either shorter or longer.
 
The event took place at Snowbasin Resort, a bit north of Salt Lake City. Beautiful area that I didn’t realize was so close to an event I go to each year near Powder Mountain. The reality is that the smoke from the California fires is evident in the sky. Oh, and Snowbasin starts at 6400 feet and the top of the climb summits at 8700 feet. Altitude would be a factor, as would 80+ degree heat with very limited shade.
 
We started at 6am, with the sun rising probably 30 minutes after we started. An amazing way to start the day. Mini groups and individuals quickly broke up, as the first 1/3 of a mile was a nasty and unrelenting 40% grade.
 
Looking back, I felt like I was intentionally going easy the first few laps. In retrospect, I probably should’ve gone easier. I went 1:15 up for the first 3 loops. My avg for the last few was 1:35 or so. With a 15-minute gondola ride down and some other breaks, it ended up being a 2-hour full lap.
 
But the day really started on lap 4, when I started feeling it. It also got really hot. And note that I had major stomach issues the day before, such that I couldn’t eat dinner. So I started suffering. It didn’t help that I have a very high sweat rate, then with nasty heat at altitude, I’m losing more water. Stomach issues meant I couldn’t drink nor eat that much. It’s frankly amazing I kept moving the way I did.
 
Lap 5 ended with meeting Sarah at the top of the gondola (she flew in that morning). Probably in one of the worst shapes I’d been in at an event. Had it been lap 8 or 9, I would’ve understood. Lap 5 was too early. And troubling. So we went down, took a 30-minute break, including some time in the Norma-tech compression machines.
 
Going up lap 6 I felt better. I finally used my trekking poles, which were a god-send. I used them for the rest of the event. And feel good on that lap. Until.
 
Until a flat section near the top. I gagged, had an air bubble hit my throat. And I knew. It dropped me to all fours. Once. Twice. Those weren’t that bad. #3 and #4, those really hurt and emptied my stomach.
 
But I felt a ton better. A few folks were going by and stopped to make sure I was okay. I wasn’t trying to be brave or pretend I was strong, but I was actually better. The medic at the top talked to me and felt good that I was lucid. Always a good thing…
At that point, I told Sarah I was looking forward to the sun going down. Cooler temps meant less sweat, which meant whatever water I put in my body was having a great impact. And meant I could process food. And get energy into my body. A brief rain shower gave me a forced respite – I just didn’t have it in me to get that wet, potential get cold, and then suffer even more.
 
By the 8th lap it was 8:30pm. I really started feeling better. I kinda knew that I would, and this is where tapping into prior endurance event experience (2 Ironman races, the 508, biking across the US) all pay dividends. More on this in a sec.
 
Here’s one of the crazy things. At roughly 10:30pm, 16.5 hours in, I had 4 more laps to go. That started feeling manageable. One more and I’d be at double-digits, with three to go. The crazy part is that I felt good knowing this meant I still had 8 more hours to go. Talk about shifting perspective…
 
As for what it was like out on the trail, it was brutal and unrelenting. Sure some sections were “flatter” than others. But other than the beauty of the mountain, one of the last things you’d think in looking at the route we took is that I want to hike this. Again and again.
Aid stations were at the top and bottom. And then 2 broke up the way up roughly every 3/4 of a mile. It also provided a natural place to gather, pause, and commiserate with others. But everyone had their own plan. Which was cool. Sometimes you talked with others, sometimes others were around you. And sometimes not.
 
I’ll say hiking thru the nite was one of the coolest experiences I’ve done. Sarah is putting together a video, where she captured footage from the gondola. At most there were 10-15 people out there at 2am. But we all had headlights and so you see these images of 2 lights per person – one from their heads where the light is. And then a second circle on the ground as the light hits the ground. So cool.
 
Laps 10 and 11, I felt good, but started getting tired and sleepy. No duh. So I made what I think was a smart decision in taking a 15-minute nap in the norma-tech chairs. Sarah made sure I got up. And I was amazingly refreshed. (Someone told me that a 10-min nap in those chairs feels like an hour. Definitely.)
 
#12 was solid. Just a matter of staying within myself. At the summit, Sarah was there as she had been for the prior 14 hours each time. As were the volunteer staff who cheered each time I got there. I tried holding back my emotions – The Wolf’s words from Pulp Fiction are one way I try to keep myself humble and contained prior to being done….
 
#13 was awesome. I felt pretty good. The sky was getting lighter, but the sun wasn’t out.
 
Sarah was at the top. She couldn’t have done anything more for me. Just an amazing feeling being done. I had trained for this in my own way and got to see what I was capable of.
WHAT DID I COME AWAY WITH? 
  1. A different form of meditation – For a day or two, I didn’t think about much.  Frankly I couldn’t  As Jesse said before the start, for a period of time, this was our job.  No kids, no taxes, no work.  I wasn’t concerned with much of anything other than what was in front of me.  For me, meditation is about focusing on the breath and getting out of my head.  But it’s also about just taking a break from all the things that can consume me day-to-day.
  2. Just how much separation I got – It wasn’t until I dug back into my phone that I realized how much I’d separated from everything else.  Just how little I’d thought about work. About social media.  About some of the personal things I won’t share here but that keep me up at nights.  I never expected to stop thinking about these things, and it wasn’t until I realized I’d taken a break that I realized they were out of mind. To be clear, areas of stress aren’t inherently bad.  It’s just nice to take a break.
  3. It’s harder at the top.  Nearer the goal.  – It’s easy to associate being better at something as making things easier.  Or that when a business grows, it’s easier.  Well, if the mountain reminded of something, it’s that you may be closer to the top, but it’s likely that headwinds are going to be blowing in your face.  And so when you’re most tired, you have to dig even deeper.
  4. Forced focus at night because you just can’t see much – We hiked at night with headlamps.  Other than the light from the moon and lights at the aid station, the course was dark.  That meant we had to focus on the steps immediately in front of us.  And as much as we could look up a bit ahead of us, we couldn’t see the rest of what lay in front.  And sometimes that’s a good thing.  Knowing the goal is important but sometimes just how big it is can be more than daunting. It can be debilitating.  It can be overwhelming.  Rather than just focusing on the next step and you can take what’s coming as it comes.
  5. “Mastery” comes thru repetition – Let’s be clear. I didn’t master the mountain.  But I’ve been asked about the monotony of the climb.  Having to do the same climb 13 times.  But this climb was hugely reflective of how you get better at a skill, and certainly to master it.  Learning something requires doing it over and over again.  This is a valuable skill.  Especially when each repetition was nothing remotely close to easy.
  6. Repetitive doesn’t mean redundant nor identical – Each climb was similar and yet different.  Of course it was the same basic route, but whether in the day or at night.  Sunrise or sunset.  It was always a bit different.  The heat would change, the wind would change.  The trail was worn in different places. Or perhaps I chose a slightly different route (even 3 feet to the left might feel very different).  And then there are the mind games.  Parts you thought were easier are harder on lap #11.  And harder parts get manageable.  But each climb brought a different challenge.  So yes, it was repetitive. But in no way was each lap identical to one prior.
  7. Get used to never feeling “normal” – anyone who’s done an endurance event knows one of the biggest balancing acts is the one with your stomach.  Heat, altitude, emotions, adrenaline, big efforts. All of them change the biology and chemistry in your body as never before.  And depending on what you’re able to get in, that affects fatigue and certainly is a cycle affecting your stomach.  Getting sick on lap #6 helped me feel better.  But that didn’t mean I felt good.  Just better.  And even at night, when I was able to get down more calories, I never felt like my stomach was settled.  A day later and I was still feeling it.  You can’t wait to feel good or normal.  Sometimes that uneasy (in this case nauseous feeling at times) was just going to stay and you had to navigate thru it.
  8. Hiccups suck – there’s no lesson here.  Only my desire to say that I got them for 18 hours on and off.  Never experienced that before.  There’s no medical explanation.  But suffice to say that my go-to solution is normally to hold my breath or turn my head upside down.  Neither of which was an option on the mountain.  Hiccups suck.  Hopefully you don’t get them that often. And hopefully you don’t get them in the middle of a climb…
  9. Sharing experiences adds such richness to them – I was only one of a few that had someone I knew at the event and who wasn’t participating nor event staff.  Sarah was an unreal trooper. For someone who generally needs more sleep than the average person, the fact that she hung thru and was an absolute ball of energy until 630am when I finished was just awesome.  Many others were solo.  Most everyone made friends, whether in the FB group previously, on the mountain, at aid stations, or in the recovery area.  For my part, having my wife see me race for the first time in our 10 year relationship, riding down the gondola with me each of my last 9 laps, taking video of me, cheering me on as I headed out, and most of all, being there with a smile and words of encouragement at the top each time.  Well, let’s just say I’m getting teary-eyed as I type this.  It’s something that has been forever added to our shared memory bank.
  10. The lows will come.  But they will also go – Not feeling “normal” is one thing. Feeling really down, tired and drained is another.  When Sarah arrived, it was the worse I’ve felt at an event in ages.  It sucks feeling this way.  But you learn that some lows aren’t actually as low as you end up going.  But most of the time, you get better.  You just have to stay in the game and keep plodding along one step at a time if necessary.
  11. Taking a break, even near the end, can be a good idea – With 2 laps to go I took a 15-minute nap.  I could have decided to push thru.  2 laps out of 13 seems really late in the game to take a nap.  But those 2 laps were another 4 hours.  2 out of 13 doesn’t seem like much.  4 hours does.  Keeping some perspective about what’s left in the game, and when to recharge, can make the last part more manageable. It also meant I was semi-lucid when I finished.  Which is a good thing…
  12. It’s okay to compete when many others aren’t. And it’s to not care about competing no matter who else is – I trained for this event.  Multiple weekend mornings, I was out early to do sets of stairs or to get biking on the road.  For hours.  That’s time away from my family.  Time away from plenty of other things.  And so I wanted to see what I was capable of.  So yes, I paid attention to my times and wanted to see what I could do.  That doesn’t mean I didn’t stop to say hi or to give words of encouragement to others.  I also know that plenty of others out there weren’t competing.  That’s cool. We all had our reasons and our own goals.  It’s just important to know what those are going in.
  13. Why I didn’t sleep – this one is a bit multi-faceted:
    1. Like I said, I trained for this.  My goal wasn’t just to finish.  I didn’t disrespect the event, but I felt confident I could finish.  But that wasn’t all it was for me.  I could’ve slept more than I did and still finished.  (Note, I say this very respectfully since some people finished at the cut-off.  Some didn’t reach their goal, whether 13 summits or something shorter.  I’ve been that person as well.) In this case, I wanted to see what all those hours of training, of countless sets of stairs, of hours on the bike, those hours away from my kids, the tradeoffs of skipping dessert (sometimes) – what those allowed me to do.  Those were the prep.  I wanted to see the outcome.  Sometimes you know you can do something, but it’s crucial to do it.
    2. The experience of going thru the nite is surreal.  It’s so hard to explain.  Whether as a participant, spectator, or crew.  Sunrise.  Thru the heat of the day.  Sunset.  Moonrise.  Moonset.  Dusk.  Just an amazing life experience to do an event thru literally a full day cycle.
    3. Doing what others aren’t.  I like doing things others don’t.  Or won’t.  This event is one of those things.  Even within the event, there are layers to that.  And even though this is more of an event than a race, there was an important point I wanted to get across.  To myself and in the story I knew I would tell. Sometimes you get outworked.  Sometimes you consider something differently than others do.  At this event I was one of those guys.  Others were ahead of me at 10pm.  But they no longer were at 3am.  They had their goals. That’s fine.  This isn’t about judgment or being “better” than someone else.  It’s about remembering and knowing that sometimes you just have to sleep less than others.  And sometimes, and this is the part that sucks, when you’re sleeping, someone else may be still climbing the mountain.  In whatever context that fits.  I think it’s important to remember both sides of this point.  And to be intentional about which side you want to be on.  Because there’s a place for both. You just have to be aware of it.
    4. I wanted Sarah to see what I’m made of.  Again, in 10 years of being together, she’s never seen me race.  Racing had been a big part of my life.  Tri’s, ultra-distance cycling, whatever.  This has been an important part of my life. And I’ve been totally at peace not doing so since we’ve been together – building a life and family take plenty of work, none of which do I ever think twice about.  But she got to see me doing an endurance event.  And pushing like I did was something I wanted her to see in me.
    5. Final point – Playing against my weakness.  With this type of event, it’s hard to say things play to your strengths. So this was more about playing against my weakness.  If that makes sense.  I suffered in part because of the heat and altitude.  When the sun finally set, my body started coming back to me.  I had to take advantage of the cooler temps to get the miles in.  Because of my sweat rate and stomach issues, it would’ve been a different level of suffering to be out there in the afternoon of day 2.  So I had to play against that.  Plus, 4 years each at MIT and investment banking, even though years ago, prepped me for all-nighters.  Knowing that I would truly suffer and suck during the day, I had to stay out during the night.  So sometimes, you have to know where you’re going to suck.  And do whatever you can to avoid that…
Couple final points.  This event was awesome.  The staff and volunteers were amazing.  And the fact that 100% of people who started got at least one summit (minimum of 4 climbs) – that’s just awesome.  A heart-felt thank you to everyone who worked the event.  Certainly to the other participants whose even small nods or words of encouragement made a large difference.  A big thank you for the support of my family who was texting Sarah throughout the event.  And of course to Sarah, who was such a rock, cheerleader and welcoming smile each lap.

Crafting Amazing Customer Experiences: The Strategy That Helps Marketers Both Build the Brand AND Scale the Business

Think about what happens when a customer has an amazing experience with your business. They are happier, more satisfied and more engaged. Which typically means they will buy again from you. So they stick around longer and are worth more to you as a customer. When they are happy, they’re more prone to tell positive stories about your business. Those stories help to craft the brand. Similarly, people talking good things about your business in an authentic way drives word of mouth. Which is the cheapest form of customer acquisition, not to mention helping your paid media efforts to be more effective. And since referred customers have been shown to be some of the highest value, these are particularly profitable customers.

That’s a lot of goodness…

Every marketer wants to grow their business. It’s human nature to do more, push ourselves, and our businesses. At the same time, the big win isn’t always just growth. The payoff happens when the business you’ve built becomes a brand that customers know, love and are excited to engage with.

On the spectrum, performance marketers generally believe that growth comes from pushing paid media hard, and that in selling and delivering on the product, you build the brand. On the other hand, traditional brand marketers approached things as “build the brand and the sales will follow.”

At the same time, we now operate in a world that is no longer either/or. As much as many things in society are portrayed as binary, marketing is not that way. Growing your business with more of a performance marketer’s hat is not at all at odds with building a brand. In fact, there are ways to achieve both concurrently.

One analogy I’ve found helpful is that performance marketing (aka direct response) is to brand as income is to wealth. You need income to get to wealth, just as you need a performance marketing approach to generate sales on the path to building a brand (I’d posit that even if you are funded, there has to be a sustainable business model in place at some point – see Blue Apron if you need a counter-example).

Over my career with my clients, the goals of scale and growth are typically the biggest reasons we engage. With a history in paid media (8 years at Beachbody and with my clients since), exploiting channels like Facebook, TV, and otherwise has been a cornerstone of my work. That always transcends to conversion and maximizing the value of each customer. Let’s be clear, there is a massive amount of scale and value that can be generated with this focus.

At the same time, every marketer faces the point where a channel has seemingly maxed out and so a search for a new channel to scale occurs.

This can be exhausting – the constant paid media, conversion, LTV, CPA model. Again, I’ve always considered myself a paid media guy, driven heavily with an analytics mindset. This stuff can be a big deal and can be used to push a business pretty far.

At the same time, word-of-mouth, and to a certain extent referrals, rarely gets that much attention. It can feel like it’s not trackable or measurable, when in fact there are ways to do so. And yet, it’s the cheapest form of customer acquisition and typically sees the highest value customers.

So where does word-of-mouth come from?

In essence, it comes from the stories customer tell. The good and bad ones. Those show up when someone asks them about a product they are using, on review sites, and beyond.

Where does these stories come from? Most often, from people’s experiences with your business.

And in a world where the customers are the ones who actually define the brand, as much as we try to affect it, those stories – which are an outgrowth of their experiences – are the way the brand comes to life.

It’s this progression and evolution, at least from my side, which has led to the realization of the power of customer experience. Not just CX in the online user experience definition, but much more broadly.

That crafting amazing customer experiences can serve both the growth goals of a business while elevating the brand.  And while I don’t believe in silver bullets, it is convenient when a strategy can serve multiple goals concurrently.

Why don’t more business focus on customer experience?

When you’re growing a business, sales are key. Without them, the rest is moot. And with so many different platforms and tools, it’s easy to get caught up in trying to optimize and scale paid channels. But even within doing so, it’s possible to create an experience – I’d argue that Dollar Beard Club (now The Beard Club) has very effectively used videos to craft the experience AND to acquire customers. For them, there really isn’t a distinction between the two.

Also, setting a goal around word of mouth is not common. And while it’s not perfect, looking at direct and organic traffic as well as referral customers can be an indicator of word of mouth, especially when paid media may not be as strong. There are a host of other metrics that can inform the strength of word of mouth – volume of social engagement (shares, hashtags, etc.), as well as indicators like Net Promoter Score (“NPS) and CSAT ratings. All of these typically follow when repeat customer rate is strong and refunds are lower.

None of those are entirely perfect, but there are certainly signals to look at to better inform the volume, and certainly the likelihood of word of mouth.

Finally, it’s also true that retention and building long-term value can simply be a prioritization and sequencing challenge in an organization. Especially those that are just getting some traction on sales. It can mean attention and resources (time, dollars, people, technology, etc.) that feels like it’s pulling from sales. But based on the above, that additional attention should assist sales, not be viewed as a draw from it.

What, then, do great experiences look like?

Think about the businesses you rave about. That your friends and family post about for no good reason other than they are excited to do so. Which businesses get talked about at conferences and in case studies.

There’s the list of regulars – Nordstrom, Amazon, Ritz Carlton, Apple, Starbucks, Disney.

And there’s good reason that they often pop into mind and are talked about. They’ve put a ton of time and attention towards the experience they want their customers to have.

There are countless other examples:

Harley-Davidson

Peloton

SoulCycle

The Beard Club

Buc-ee’s Convenience Store

Sephora

SaddleBack Leather

Rock n’ Roll Marathon

Loot Crate

Each of these businesses has created a brand, in part by intentionally crafting a great experience for their customer.

How they do so can include a variety of tactics:

-Different forms of media, such as video and music, for example, can be powerful in helping to deliver an experience.

-The product itself may be differentiated in such a way that may establish a unique experience

-Arguably, for some businesses like Uber, AirBnb Stitch Fix, the product and experience are so intertwined that there isn’t a clear delineation of one versus the other. This is reflective of many shared economy businesses and new business models around existing services (taxis for Uber, hotels for AirBnb, retail for Stitch Fix)

-Clearly, customer service affects the experience. As do how you handle the various components of the transactional process (acquisition, returns, cancels, etc.)

By far the most powerful way to craft experience is by tapping into people’s sense of identity and community. These are raw human needs, so can be the most powerful. And certainly not mutual exclusive with any of the above.

Let’s look at just a few of the above:

Harley Davidson customers clearly have a sense of identity attached to what it means to be a Harley rider. And whether it’s at Sturgis in South Dakota or at one of their local Hog events in countless cities across the US, there is a strong sense of community with the Harley world.

Peloton and SoulCycle are each fascinating by themselves and taken together. Both are focused on indoor cycling. And even though SoulCycle customers go to a brick-and-mortar location while Peloton riders are at home, both nail customer experience.

(As a side note, this is one category I feel particularly qualified to discuss. I spent 8 years at Beachbody, was a licensed SPINNING instructor with Johnny G back in the day, have ridden across the county on a bike and have tried most cycling programs.)

For its part, SoulCycle, has become a lifestyle brand. SoulCycle is about identity, community, and apparel. Despite being a health and fitness company to start, you’ve never seen a before-and-after picture of their customers (at least not by the company). Whereas FlyWheel and SoulCycle were true competitors in NYC, FlyWheel focused on winning and being #1 while SoulCycle has been about being a team and inspiring yourself and others around you. And no doubt music is huge for SoulCycle.

Peloton similarly does a ridiculously good job with music. Anyone who has worked out at home knows how good or bad music can affect that experience. Just how much they are paying for music licenses is not clear, but they are using music well. It’s important to note that the Peloton bike and screen are top-notch. And with superb instructors and even the way they shoot the class, you feel a part of the in-person classes shot at their NYC studio. As much as Flywheel was about competition, Peloton has a leaderboard, a la Strava, but it’s a choice you have the option of hiding. But for those craving competition, it’s there.

Buc-ee’s may be a brand folks outside of Texas may not know. But the fact that a convenience store is on the list is telling. Buc-ee’s may be the nicest convenience store on the planet. That’s why they’re here. It doesn’t take much to describe why most people go to a convenience store and all the parts they can’t stand. Often it’s to get gas, use the bathroom and to get some simple foods. Rarely are any of these better than horrifying. Instead, a typical Buc-ee’s has 50-100 gas pumps, is immaculately clean (the floor is spotless when you walk in and there are Purell dispensers next to each urinal in the men’s room), and the food is just amazing. When was the last time you said the food at a convenience store was something you looked forward to? And did I mention that these are 100,000 square-foot locations with shelves and shelves of jams, jerky, candy, not to mention a section on Buc-ee’s accessories. Essentially, Buc-ee’s did what I refer to as “Do the opposite.” Take everything that was horrible about a place, and do it in a polar opposite way.

-This list can go on for pages, but the final one I’ll mention now is Loot Crate, a box company for gamers and geeks in general (their language, not mine). What they’ve done particularly well is to tap into Seth Godin’s notion of “tribe.” By naming their customers Looters, on their site and in their emails, they immediately impart a sense of both identify and community on their customers. It’s not imposed, but it’s welcomed. At the same time, something I love is they are very clear about who they are trying to speak to. Their order confirmation email includes an image of a nerdy-looking woman (Note – as a math major from MIT, this is another area I feel highly-qualified to discuss). Loot Crate doesn’t shy away from who they are speaking to. In fact, they lean in. And while that image may not work for anyone else here as necessarily the core customer, it works for them.

Which leads to arguably the most important aspect of crafting an amazing experience. 

Knowing your customer.

That sounds like such a simple statement but how many companies try to be all things to all people. Or are concerned about alienating 5-10% of their audience by not leaning in as boldly as Loot Crate has done. Your core demo may not be as clear, but don’t underestimate how much can be lost by not letting your target audience know loud and clear that you’re speaking to them. Part of the job of marketing is to separate the audience – to attract those you want while dissuading those you don’t.

As for devising your own strategy, knowing your customer, at least who you want to attract is one key step. As is knowing your brand values and what you want to stand for.

Keep in mind, too, that experience can and should be tied to measurable aspects of your business. Not perfectly. And not always. But nothing in marketing these days is “perfect” or an “always” thing. Even one of the most measurable components of the business, traffic from Facebook or Google, has clear areas of grey (attribution window, methodologies, cross-device, etc.).

Next, think about what you are replacing.

For starters, be honest about whether your product is new? Very rarely is the product entirely new.

-StitchFix is a new model for shopping for apparel

-Uber is a new way to get a taxi

-Tesla is an alternative to other cars.

The models and execution were different, the core premise wasn’t.

Hotmail was new. The iPhone was new. Spanx was new. If you have a truly new product, then product can win on its own for a while if it’s good.

Given that most products aren’t conceptually new, and they are a way of replacing what people have available to them, dig in to what people are currently using?

-What do people like about the thing you are replacing?

-What are their pain points around those things?

-What do you bring to them, especially if they’ve never had it before? This could be everything from health to convenience to identity.

-What do your customers value? What *should* they value?

Look back on the above examples and how they have created experienced for their customers that didn’t really exist previously.

Finally, it’s important to be self-aware about your organization’s resources and capabilities. What are some areas you have a sense of skill at or feel like you can create a true point of differentiation around?

The final finally, attach a business outcome to these efforts. Don’t just call them “brand marketing”. Depending on what you do, you should see an impact on one or more of these areas:

-Better performing paid media

-Increase in direct, organic and referral customers

-Higher repeat customer rates

-Lower refunds

-Low inquiries to customer care

-Higher NPS scores

It’s a rare case that a strategy can serve the growth and brand goals of a business. Frankly, consumers would rather have great experiences. They have become accustomed to the status quo. But when done well, as these companies have shown in crafting amazing experiences, consumers reward businesses both with their pocketbooks and thru word-of-mouth.

And aren’t those the outcomes that all marketers are looking for?

(I’m always interested to hear from others who they think nails (and doesn’t nail) customer experience. What aspects of the above resonate? Which parts would you like to delve deeper into? )

Next Level Media Management for Performance Marketers

(This is the third in a 3-part series where I share some of my “secrets” to scaling a performance marketing business. Here are part 1 and part 2, if you missed them.)

This post is specifically titled “next level” because it assumes the first level of media management is in place. That means having the basics of Customer LTV as well as having a working unit economics model.  You can see my posts here and here if you want more info.

The question then moves to, “How would you feel about paying 3x what you currently for customers and being really happy about doing so?” Because it’s likely that you could already be doing so.

The basis of this possibility comes from the fact that customers from different traffic sources, or from different targeting options, are likely worth different amounts.  You may have one ad set on Facebook where the average customer is worth $100 in gross margin and another where the average customer is worth $200.  But if you are managing both ad sets based on the same target CPA, then you’re missing out on additional opportunities.  If your unit economics model is based on an overall average, then you’re also likely overpaying for the lower-value customers.

This is the key to next-level media management:  moving beyond a single target CPA.

How do you do so? Start segmenting customers into different buckets – that might mean Google vs. Facebook at the outset. Then it might mean different campaigns/audience targeting for Facebook.  You might find that creative differences drive different customer values.  As a small side note, it’s important to look at the full funnel – so you may have a segment with a really high LTV but also a very low clickthrough rate, which nets out worse than a different segment with an LTV that isn’t the highest.  You can’t just look at things in a bubble. A holistic view is important.

But if you net out with a ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) that is significantly different from one segment to another, you may want to consider shifting how you manage these segments.  In terms of how you define ROAS (a term I hate; just a bit more than EBITDA…), you can look at day 0 as well as the lifetime gross margin (net revenues less variable expenses) of those customers relative to the cost to acquire them.  Day 0 average order value may be a proxy for lifetime, depending on what happens on the back-end.  Or you may need to layer on more info. Each business has its own dynamics.

The broader point here is that you likely have customers who are coming from a certain place (station, platform, ad group) that are worth a different amount than another segment.  As such, you should be managing how you evaluate those media sources based on different target metrics.

In a best case, your highest-value customers are coming from a channel that you can scale dramatically higher with a new target CPA/ROAS goal.  Or you might discover that because of these differences, you should limit the rate to which you’re expanding spend.  At a simplistic level, imagine you thought Google and Facebook customers were worth the same when in fact Google customers were worth far less, but you could only scale Google – well, it might take some time to discover that error, and that time and mistake might’ve cost you a lot of money.

Executing on this approach requires solid analytics, which I know is the bane of everyone’s existence.  Facebook and GA have different attribution methodologies, so you end up having to triangulate across a couple different approaches.  But you’re likely having to do this already.  So, making sure you’re sending the right order values back to Facebook and Google, for example, and having a UTM structure that is robust and consistently used across all channels are the foundations to tracking and being able to do the necessary analysis.

Then, it’s a matter of having someone pull the numbers and then managing the media appropriately.

Which leads to one more point.  The actual managing of the media.

Meaning, if it’s an agency, then how do you work with them, and vice versa.  Or if done internally, how does the internal team operate.  I don’t have a rule of thumb on either.  I’ve seen agencies work and fail. I’ve seen internal teams work and fail.

In a world where there are a massive number of people running paid traffic, online and offline, it is shockingly difficult to find partners (again, whether internal or external) who can really nail paid traffic.  That’s not being rude or disrespectful.  If you ask a group of top-notch marketers who they would recommend to run paid traffic, it’s usually a very short list of folks, which the group probably wouldn’t agree on anyways.

That’s because paid media is really hard. Especially when you start scaling. And that’s not simply because of the supposed diminishing returns of scale – I’ve actually seen results improve upon doubling of spend, and at 6-figures plus of weekly media.

Paid media is really hard in part because of a number of factors:

  1. a) Reporting and tracking – as I already mentioned above, systems disagree.  But it takes a rare company that fully understands the differences and gets confident with what they (and you) are really looking at.
  2. b) The difference is in the details – As spend increases, the number of campaigns, ad sets, stations, and placements increase.  At scale, all those little variances, errors, or anomalies that used to be ignored really start to add up.  At Beachbody, I’d often say how crazy it was that we had an internal team managing an agency, who had both a client services person and buyer, who then worked with someone at the station.  From one perspective, it was absurd to pay someone 6 figures internally when you have these external partners, but when you’re running $100MM of media, just how much do they need to improve to more than ROI their salary and bonus? The answer was enough to justify having them on board.

That’s what happens at scale – minor changes really add up.  You can be annoyed, or you can acknowledge the reality and then manage through it (and if you can solve the original annoyance, then great).

  1. c) Too many people accept the easy answer – I’ve been on so many calls where a hard question was answered with something other than facts.  But it sounded really good. For my part, I learned some of this rigor in a Stanford Business School class taught by Andy Grove, founder of Intel.  That guy wouldn’t accept a single statement in the class without facts, without data.  Answers that sounded nice but didn’t have solid facts to back them up weren’t tolerated. And yet, most businesses operate this way. What sounds like a good explanation only is one when everyone is looking at objective information.  Not to say that subjectivity comes into play.  As we use to say, “The numbers don’t lie, but they also don’t tell the whole truth.” Clearly, this is a point that transcends media management and into the entire organization, but it’s a particular issue here.
  2. d) Especially in the digital world, the platforms have a ton of nuance and are constantly changing – TV media management has its particulars and challenges but the number of ways that Facebook has changed, the minor little differences that can happen with targeting differences, and the fact that the people who really understand the platform are likely a handful of engineers who have no exposure to the sales team nor marketers – all these can make TV media management seem like a breeze (it isn’t – I’m just trying to make a point here…). Those changes and subtleties require a close eye and real digging into what’s happening (see a, b and c above).

To be honest, nail this part first (the basics of media management), then get to managing to different CPA’s.  Not that it’s an order of magnitude more difficult, but rather it’s necessary no matter what.  Very few people are actually doing it well.  There’s a skill to managing, be it vendors or employees.  None of us is perfect so asking questions and pressing (respectfully) can uncover something that isn’t being optimized.

To summarize, the media part of scaling is about a few things:  1) knowing what a customer’s worth and managing to certain performance metrics; 2) segmenting your customers and traffic to see how and where you should be managing to scale more efficiently, and 3) managing your media partner (agency or internal) tightly.

Everyone wants to reach their “next level.” Hopefully, this 3-part series has helped shed some new insights (or reminders) on what it takes to do so.

(If you have any thoughts on any part of this 3-part series, please leave a comment below.)

 

 

3 Pillars for Ensuring Your Company is Built for Scale

(This is the second in a 3-part series where I share some of my “secrets” to scaling a performance marketing business. If you missed part 1, you can find it here.)

Scale doesn’t happen unless something is working. It sounds obvious, but the reason I start with that point is that if you don’t have a working offer and channel (again, you can see Part 1 of this series), then this post would be moot.  Thus, I’m assuming you have something that’s working.

The next step is about making sure attention is put in the right places. Some is foundational work, some is true operations. And whether you’re at $5mm, $50mm or over $100mm, it’s a bit of a relative question about putting in the foundations for the next level of scale.

So, what constitutes building that foundation? Well, fundamentally, I’m a believer that focusing on the below 3 areas can dramatically increase the chances of scalability and sustainability of a business.
1. Customer LTV
2. Brand
3. Operational Excellence

Customer LTV
I’ve written about the importance of knowing the value of your customer and having a robust unit economics model numerous times. I walk thru the actual model here and go over some additional basics here.

I’ll hit only the key points now:
1. There are 2 primary reasons you need to understand customer LTV and your unit economics model:
a) to manage your media. If you’re running paid media of any form and don’t know the value of a customer, you’re headed for trouble. You need to know how much you generate from a customer, what your goals are (% margin, breakeven by a certain day, etc.), and then that helps you back into your target CPA.
b) to identify the key levers in your model and where to deploy resources for improvement, testing, etc. Knowing your baseline metrics and goals is one thing. Great companies believe that they are never fully-optimized and so have a constant testing program. But everyone is resource-constrained, so knowing where to deploy resources is crucial.
2. Someone on the team must be accountable for maximizing customer LTV, and as a result, the target CPA. That doesn’t mean they do so at the exclusion of the brand (see the next main section), nor does it mean they do everything on their own. But someone must “own” customer LTV. You’re not going to get better at the pace you want if you don’t do so.

3. Customer LTV is a combination of revenues AND costs. It’s more fun and sexier to focus on the former. But if you reduce the latter, that goes straight to more dollars you can put to customer acquisition. Here’s are a couple of my posts about optimizing revenues and costs.

4. G&A, investments, capex, etc. should NOT be a part of your unit economics model. The point of the model is to capture the revenues and marginal/incurred costs associated with those revenues. You don’t need to hire a new person for each incremental order. Sure, at some point, you do need to make those types of commitments, but that doesn’t mean they should be included in that model.

5. Who has checked the data that is behind the assumptions in your model?

Brand
If you want to build a business that is scalable and sustainable, you need to focus on brand. Again, look at the patterns. There will always be exceptions, but I’m a believer in playing the odds when it comes to things like brand. And more great companies have put attention towards building theirs.

Having a brand mindset also provides the necessary counterbalance when you are driving so hard on Customer LTV. It can be easy to be so exclusively focused on Customer LTV that you lose sight of what truly serves the customer.

I’ll give you an example from my early days at Beachbody. In one of our offers, we sold 3 bands with 2 handles. In my supposed genius at the time, the math said that if you pulled out 1 of those handles, we’d save money. The math isn’t rocket science. But the move entirely ignored the customer experience – it’s not easy to switch handles from one band to another. Now, I doubt that this decision had a significant impact on the brand experience, but it’s a simple example of how an action might save you money and increase customer LTV while being pretty crappy for the customer. My bad….

I’ve become so much more focused on brand over the past couple years because it’s been noticeably absent from conversations I’ve had with performance marketers (another area I’ve posted about previously). Ultimately, the “brand” conversation is about customer experience. How are you serving them, how do you treat them, what experience does a customer have of your business? As much as we want to drive what the brand means, our customers are the ones who have the final say.

Brand is not simply a logo, fonts, or an ad you run. Your brand reflects the values and perspectives you stand for. The logo is simply a representation of those values, but the logo isn’t the brand. It’s easy to get these mixed up.

A strong brand means a higher company valuation. It means connection with customers, which leads to more repeat customers as well as word of mouth (which is another term for a $0 CPA).

At the same time, the difference is telling in the way that performance marketers vs. traditional brand folks look at brand and sales. Performance marketers believe that sales drives creation of the brand. While traditional brand folks believe that you create the brand, which in turn drives sales. I can’t say for sure who is right and who is wrong. But many people can’t afford to build the brand while ignoring sales.

Which is why the term “branded response” has gotten in vogue. The phrase reflects that it is no longer either/or, but “and” – brand and performance need to be built concurrently. We’ve seen this become particularly prevalent as e-commerce players have used video – Facebook and TV – to build their businesses. The goal is to drive response, but without feeling like the ShamWow! (Btw, Vince made 8 figures off that product, so there’s a good measure of respect behind what might’ve felt like a jab at the ShamWow…)

At the same time, especially if you’re in a consumer business, and a subscription one, the quality of your product and service can be a huge difference in how your customers experience and think about your brand. Just as many marketers ignore brand entirely, too many ignore the importance of the quality they are delivering, believing that good marketing will always win. True, good marketing is helpful. Good marketing + exceptional product – that can be a game-changer.

Where is brand created? The answer, for good and for bad, is that our brands are created everywhere. At every touch point and interaction. Pre-purchase, post-purchase, in the product, name a place. That can be daunting but it’s also the reality. Alignment across the company of what the brand stands for, how you expect to treat customers, vendors, or stakeholders, is crucial if you want to have a consistent experience at all the touch points. And to build something that is defining and long-lasting.

Operational Excellence
To scale, you need to build a machine that runs as effectively and efficiently as possible. At scale, the organization needs to run well so that it’s no longer a couple people getting things done, scrambling to take care of those last customers. Similarly, no longer is everyone in the same room nor even same building. Which means building out the org, internal processes, systems, and beyond.

It’s at this point where the importance of bringing in people who have “been there and done that” is so important. In a company’s early days, you can figure things out real time because often the scope of the issues that arise is manageable. But as the business becomes more complex, sophisticated and expansive in scale, it’s just not practical that the original team can manage these issues.

Not to say that people can’t evolve into these more expansive roles. At the CEO level, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg provide great examples of founders who have transitioned into professional CEO’s of huge entities. But a) they are the exception, not the rule; b) you must be honest about different members’ real strengths; and c) simply because of the expanding scope and needs of the business, new people will need to be brought in no matter what. And if the existing folks on your team aren’t delivering with the new needs, it doesn’t serve anyone to hold them in those roles too long. I’ve seen plenty of examples where those people continue at the company and have a great career. And I’ve seen times where the culture shifts, their ego gets in their way, or there’s just another dynamic that they exit the company.

Operational excellence is such a broad phrase, but here are a handful of questions I ask clients when evaluating this area of their business.
• How well is the company led? (It sounds simple, this gets to the heart of building a business.)
• How well does the company run? (This is different than the first question – I like asking it because if there is supposedly good leadership but things don’t run so well – that’s a disconnect to investigate.)
• Can each functional area in the business point to improvements they’ve made in the past 12 months when it comes to vendor pricing or new / redundant vendors?
• Can you point to certain areas where things used to break but no longer do (increase in order volume, technology issues, quality of data, new hire onboarding, financial statements being produced more quickly, etc.)?
• When something breaks and a flood of customers call to find out what’s happening, do they a) get thru; b) get a reasonable answer with reasonable expectations. (I like a customer service question, especially when something breaks, as it goes to how front-line employees and workers have been communicated to, trained, etc. on what the brand stands for.)
• Is there a single person accountable for the different areas in the business, and do they and their teams have specific KPI’s / performance targets they are trying to hit?
Just asking these basic questions can start to reveal areas of opportunities.

Even if you keep your business focused in certain areas, but as the business sees financial growth, the number of moving parts increases. That could be as simple as more customers buying the same product (which has operational, technological and customer service implications) or more products you sell (the same as the prior issues, but you get to add product development, sourcing, etc.). It can also include new services, new geographies, or new partners, to name a few.

Regardless, each time the business changes or grows, it comes with its own issues. Some of these appear over time and may require step-function changes. At some point, your technology platform may require an overhaul, your office space may no longer be sufficient; or you may need to add a location with your fulfillment partner.

Operational excellence comes with a methodical and organized approach to breaking down the business, assigning specific people to be accountable for those areas, and then setting targets for them to achieve.

Typically, the break points for growth happen at $10MM, $25MM, $50MM, $100MM, and $500MM. Not to say there aren’t challenges along the way, but those levels are when a lot of businesses run into challenges. Knowing they are coming, planning for the next stages of growth, and then managing through as it’s happening are all just components of growth. The good thing is that it’s likely that others have gone through similar issues, and there’s a lot you can model off.

And really, much of this approach of focusing on Customer LTV, Brand, and Operational Excellence, is based on seeing what has worked (and hasn’t worked) at many companies to formulate an approach towards managing scale.

Stay tuned for the final part of this series, where I’ll focus on Next Level Media Management. It’s an area dear to my heart and allows me to share my learnings from managing over a half a billion dollars at media spend. Regardless of your scale, my goal is to provide some actionable insights.

As always, please let me know any thoughts or comments you have on the above.

Why Your Marketing Strategy Should Mirror Warren Buffet’s Investment Strategy

(Note – This is the first in a 3-part series where I share some of my “secrets” to scaling a performance marketing business.)

 

My friend Joshua Lee just published a book titled “Balance is Bullshi*t”.  It’s about people, work, and all that fun stuff. But it could very well be about marketing and building a business.

In our normal lives, many of us think we want “balance” and believe that balance means having a lot of a bunch of things.  The problem is that it’s very easy to hold that perspective but not go hard in any one thing.

In business, just as in life, it can be easy to be lured (read: distracted) by the shiny bright object of the day. (I’m talking to you @GaryVee and your obsession with telling people to allocate 5-10% of their time to Snapchat when for most of your audience, that’s a valuable percent of their time. Not to mention, that doing so, pulls important mindshare away from their core business. Plus, is it ever really 5-10% when it’s something new, fun, or cool? Never.)

It’s also easy to feel the need to be master of a bunch of areas. Or that just because other people are telling you that you’re missing out on a channel, that you should put resources there.  The “answer” is that sometimes you should listen. And sometimes you should ignore those folks.

In fact, when I look at a business and see 4 traffic sources that are contributing equally to the business, I don’t view that as a positive. What that says to me is that one of those channels very likely hasn’t been fully-exploited.  Instead, someone is trying to do a bunch of things. And thereby not killing it in any one channel.

In my experience, the companies that have achieved real scale have done so with one or two channels driving the vast majority of success. Not 6 channels all equally contributing.

Of course, we don’t want to be exposed if something happens to a traffic source, and there are definitely times you want to be in multiple places to catch the overflow from one channel to another (see my post here where I talk about the effect re: Facebook Video Ads).  It is scary to be all-in, but that’s part of what it takes if you want real success.  It’s the very rare marketer that can build a business working 4 hours a week (not that Tim Ferris actually meant only working 4 hours); no, you must go all-in to make great things happen.

I mentioned Warren Buffet in the title of this post.  Let’s look at his investing strategy for a moment.  His has not been a big diversification play to achieve his wealth. Sure, Berkshire holds a bunch of different stocks, but did you know that 75% of the value of Berkshire portfolio is held in 7 stocks.  Don’t believe me? Check it out


Source: http://www.cnbc.com/berkshire-hathaway-portfolio

Buffet and his team make big picks.  And this even with his “Don’t lose money” rule. They don’t do what the public is told – diversify your portfolio, pay that 1% management fee to the mutual funds (which by the way can add up to 30-40% of the value you should’ve had in your bank account), and don’t be too concentrated in where you put your money.

If Buffet and Berkshire were just a one-and-done example, it would be easy to point fingers and say they were asking for it.  But nope, their financial performance is well-documented.   They are concentrated with the bulk of their portfolio’s holding, and they have managed their risk.  They do their homework, have their rules for investing, and when they find something that matches their criteria, they go all-in.

The reality is that there are HUGE societal pressures not to go all-in in pretty much anything we do. Most entrepreneurs don’t succumb to the traditional risk issues associated with starting a business, but that doesn’t mean that same pressure doesn’t affect how you manage your businesses.  It seems logical to be diversified in how you run a business, doesn’t it? Diversification is what we are told repeatedly.

But when you actually look at successful companies, you’ll find many more instances of concentration and focus, as opposed to diversification.

With all that, then what do you need to scale a business?

Two offers. Two channels.  

That’s it.

Two offers. Two channels.

(Of course, there are numerous aspects to scaling – I’ll touch on those in my subsequent posts.)

Don’t just take my word for it. Look at the businesses you want to emulate. Those who you wish you were like.

Apple – 60%-70% of its sales come from the iPhone

I’d argue their channels are their retail locations and then carrier partnerships. They don’t really dominate in a direct-to-consumer, e-commerce model.

Guthy-Renker – Proactiv was a billion dollar brand for them. And as much as they were in kiosks and on radio, TV was their primary channel.

AOL – you might not remember it, but the ISP grew because of those CD’s they mailed to everyone.

BioTrust – they have focused on supplements and grew heavily on the backs of affiliates and their excellence with email.

The list goes on and on.

When you find success, go hard after it. Don’t look at your other channels and offers and feel bad that they aren’t performing. Instead, lean in to success.  That leaning in might help you to fund those areas that aren’t as successful.  But remember this, when you are really exploiting an opportunity, that’s at the “expense” of something else.  You need to give disproportionate attention to certain parts of your business.  Outsiders will tell you that you’re missing out on other opportunities. So long as you’re scaling something that’s working, then take that criticism as a good thing, as a sign of putting your head down to focus on something that has legs.

Business can be personal.  But your offers and channels are not your children. They aren’t your students.  They aren’t your patients.  Their feelings are not going to get hurt when you ignore them.

As silly as it sounds to make those comparisons, it’s very easy that just as we endeavor to treat those around us fairly and equally, that same mindset can be damaging to your business.

Getting focused on and in your business doesn’t only mean giving it its due time, effort and mindshare. Being focused means that time, dollars and resources are put into the highest-leverage, scalable opportunities.

Just as your friends may criticize you for not “having balance” in your life, or for not doing the same things you used to do (read: the things they want to do), you’re going to face those same types of comments when it comes to your business.

We all must get over it.

And need to go find those two offers and two channels.

Remember, concentration and focus, NOT diversification, are core aspects of the success you’re wanting to create.

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