5 Thoughts About BFCM With Andrew Foxwell

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In this episode of the Founders Forum, the "big cheese" himself, Andrew Foxwell, sits down post Founders meet-up with Edwin and Tris to talk through his thoughts about Q4/BFCM and trends he's seeing in our industry.

The guys share on some of their most favorite takeaways during the educational presentations held at the Amsterdam Founders meet-up and highlight the value of having the right offer for success. (IE 20% off might not cut it this year).

They round out the episode with a few hot takes and while Andrew doesn't quite call them "Twitter beefs" he shares on what might be truly holding us back when it comes to learning and growing in the DTC community.

If you'd like to learn more about the Founders Community or want to become a member you can do so here.


Full Transcript:

welcome to the founders Forum podcast brought to you by the Foxwell Founders where we interview some of the hottest

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Minds in D Toc right now and deep dive on their area of expertise everyone that we interview here is a cherished member

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of our Foxwell Founders community of over 550 advertisers worldwide and are at The Cutting Edge of what is working

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right now I hope you enjoy this and if you have any questions feel free to let me know Andrew at foxville digital and

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now let's get stuck into this week's episode here are Edwin and tris our hosts ice cream truck drove into the

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canal by accident we could be like a barers

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[Music]

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shop three best ways that we've ever seen to deal with this is it's one of the things that's working really really

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well for our agency right now question of the week right he's going to spill all the tea on Tik Tok for us what is

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the oh strategy of the moment it's working if it ain't broke don't fix it who buys it even at that time

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[Music] right hi guys welcome back to the

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Foxwell Founders Forum I'm Trish this is Edwin and here we're here with Andrew the host the owner of found Foxwell

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Founders group we're here today in Amsterdam the day after the Foxwell Founders Meetup what a day and a night

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my voice is not going too hot right now but listen we're going to roll and we're going to talk a lot today of a couple of

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hot takes a couple of piece of advice for Black Friday Cyber Monday and just you know generally chill out and find

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find out what uh what Andrew's got on his mind so STP in let's go what's going to happen in

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Q4 yeah I mean you know I think there's a lot of different things that can happen uh I think it's definitely going

1:48

to be going to continue the record of being the biggest you know that we've ever had in terms of e-commerce online I

1:54

don't think there's going to be any change there I've sent that same email every year this year is going to be the biggest the best simply the biggest I

2:02

mean I think if you think about it from a meta Advertiser perspective the thing what's going to happen in Q4 is going to

2:08

be uh the continuation of not having separate assets number one you're going to basically be utilizing I think

2:15

mostly your existing assets that are your best performing creative throughout the year and making changes through uh

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on the site in yes yeah which is going to be huge we saw a lot last year that we kind of after the end of October we

2:28

didn't really produce many more new creative yeah you just don't need them you got the stuff that's working got the data behind it social proof why would

2:34

you you can put in some Black Friday stuff it's never it's never going to be performing as well as anything you know

2:40

that you have already been using yeah and I think you'll continue to see the the difference of you know it used to be

2:46

that so many of the sales like the majority of the sales came on on the Thursday the Friday Saturday Sunday was

2:52

a little bit of a LOL and then there'd be the Monday would hit again I think you'll still see spikes you'll still see

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that but I do think that the overall event is going to be spread out so if you if you are going to say he I'm going

3:04

to launch this in like earlier or the month of November or what like I don't think there's anything wrong with that

3:09

you're going to like consumers are ready to buy and the consideration process is such that you know they're going to be

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okay with uh thinking about it and coming back and maybe they will buy to see if the deal gets better on Black

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Friday C Monday time frame exactly but if the deal is like the this is the deal

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and you say that and you honor that you don't change it cuz I that can really tick people off then I think Pro

3:33

probably that's a good method and that's something we'll continue to see one thing that we've seen uh in the trends

3:38

of this year is we've been seeing people waiting and waiting and waiting until the sales so we're actually seeing that bigger anticipation for these sales yeah

3:45

oh definitely it's been it's been more Consolidated though this year previous Years Gone by back in Co years it was

3:51

kind of like a gray week rather than a Black Friday right uh now this year you know Labor Day uh or sorry 4th of July

3:58

anything like that they all been very heavy hitting days and then the last days of those sales have just been 3x

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like jumped I think that's big I think if you think about it through the lens of uh of cost controls you know I think

4:12

you're going to have a cost controls let's not talk about cost controls oh my God you're going to

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have a certain selection of people that are going to keep the cost control similar or a little bit higher yeah and

4:23

then that'll they'll just ride it out and raise budgets like if it does if the inventory is there and they're going to hit it then it's okay m I think that

4:30

majority of folks will have some campaigns or a large percentage of campaigns probably more like existing

4:36

customer style campaigns that are going to be utilizing like a one-day click um and I think that's good we you know we

4:44

used to mess with bidding all the time right we used to do B bid overrides and everything many years ago we would do

4:49

like a $10 click bid to make sure we won I learned it from you yeah yeah yeah and it was great right and we did that and

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then I think we kind of went off of that because we it just wasn't working anymore you didn't need it and you

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didn't need it um the system was a lot smarter so I think you know in terms of

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how you're planning it for Q4 like how you're thinking about it making sure that you are covering your bases when it

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comes to bid cost like kind of cost controls I think is smart I don't think you want to have it all on cost controls

5:19

I don't think you want to have it all on auto I don't think you want to have it all on one day click like I think it's going to be it's going to be a mixture

5:26

of those things would be my guess I don't know what do you guys think I mean the the one of the biggest things we're

5:31

seeing this year is actually uh our ASC campaigns are really taking off but one of the one of the when you're talking

5:37

about cost controls and kind of the different types of campaigns we're finding ASC working super super well uh

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just for scaling like we've done a lot of testing in [ __ ] getting our our creatives built out like that and just

5:48

moving that winning creative into the asc's yeah I mean my big thing with ASC and my big thing with generally like the

5:54

AI that meta continues to put forward is I like I mean I think it's great I think

6:00

that when an ASC works it works really well but the issue is it's just not consistent and I think what when you add

6:07

the Advantage Plus bra umbrella and blanket across like a whole bunch of things it's horrible it's it's so

6:13

challeng it's like it's it's not reliable yeah and it also there's there's certain percentage of it let's

6:19

say 20% that just like gives you headaches and makes your job as an Advertiser way harder yeah and even if

6:24

you're inhouse that makes your job at to tell the boss is sending you a screenshot on Christmas or you know on Thanksgiving hey why does this ad look

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like this you know like that's insane and so I think meta right like meta's

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jobs always to like make your job easier that should be the job and that's really the premise that they've been pushing but I think it's just like it's just

6:41

like anything else I think that there are accounts when you can go all in and spend if you're spending a million

6:48

dollars a month and go all in on cost controls with ASC and that can work but for the large majority of people that

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sit in the 20 20,000 us a month to 100,000 us a month and spend there's

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more Nuance to how you have to build an account and it can't be just all in one in my opinion and because because I

7:07

honestly I just don't trust it and it had meta hasn't it's just like a relationship you don't trust you know

7:13

where you're like you're like you've told me before that you were going to be here at 8 but you've been late like

7:19

before okay you know what I mean you it's like you you told me you were going to go to the store before you came but

7:24

then you didn't why you hurt me yeah like why did you hurt me and so like that yeah yeah yeah there just like I

7:30

think that's the kind of thing is like you know Zuckerberg's going out what did he say in last earnings call he's like we would love or he's like it'll be a

7:36

situation we'll be able to put in the creative assets and press play and honestly I would I would love that to be

7:41

the case because I would love that to be a marketer's case that we would be able to say yes we can trust this process and

7:48

it can move us into being General marketers continuing to work on the the total funnel um uh you know client

7:55

financials and really helping in being a CMO or like that kind of relationship but we still have to maintain that

8:01

Advertiser side because I just don't think it's trust it's trustworthy at this moment in time a test we're starting to do now is we're breaking out

8:07

and this is old school we're breaking out different placements so we now instead of having we breaking out different placements what are we in

8:14

2021 what is this only so what we're doing a cuz look

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our Facebook rep said to us hey you know Auto placement baby and we're like nope we're seeing terrible results here I'm

8:28

surprised even up the call from your Facebook we kind of we're forced to but the uh but the what what what's what

8:36

we're doing now is we're putting on a uh uh a reels only and we go and testing reels only what we're finding is it

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works really really well in that size when you're spending kind of 20 grand but if you're going upwards from that if

8:47

you're starting to spend even more it doesn't have enough people to serve it to so it then starts to scra scrap the

8:52

barrel and the performance really starts to dip but if you're spending that lower bit and you're looking for a bit more incr Inc incrementality then you're

8:59

sorted it's going to worky well it's really interesting you know I think real is an example well uh I was think talking about this to to a bank that I

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consult with on about meta's company about the stock and they were asking

9:11

about reals you know where it was where it is you know it's like three or four years ago it was just garbage I mean it just wasn't anything even two years ago

9:17

and it was like showing pictures of like women and bikinis on lambor on Lamborghinis right and you're like okay

9:23

this isn't like my this isn't this isn't like my my type of content but it would show me yeah it would like show me all

9:29

this stuff that just wasn't relevant to me um I remember once I went on reals and it showed me like videos of a monster truck rally I was like do you

9:35

know me like this isn't me anyway and so and like now it's like yeah it's like women and bikinis

9:43

moner monster trucks yeah it's a lot like you guys are finding out a lot and it's a lot like uh it just

9:48

wasn't the right thing and now it seems to be really relevant and so now it's interesting in terms of like continue to be bullish on meta in terms of the

9:55

profitability you know look at threads now we're all it's we joke about we just do the same thing with reals and I think

10:02

that threads is going to be more an opportunity for us to continue to do that and I do think that creating

10:08

creative which is I mean this isn't my idea this is something that I learned from Dave Herman talking about it like

10:14

just doing reals centered creative and having that be what you're making in a 4x5 and then having that be the way that

10:20

you're putting all the creative out there I think we've done things similarly to that but that's one of those things that you're like that's

10:26

kind of what we've been doing so the validity of him saying that makes me feel good of like trust and I think that's been really useful so I would do

10:32

that more in key4 honestly too so so give give us actionable like like quick

10:39

tips like let's do a top five let's do top five let's say we're spending 20 to 100K

10:46

and then let's say let's say we were Big Spenders like in in Q4 to in Q4 what are you going to do yeah tips yeah I mean I

10:54

think one like you definitely never want to forget about the people that have purchased from you before

11:00

and I think that's I think that's big I think that there's been a movement in a lot of us away from utilizing

11:06

retargeting any sort of sense necessarily and just like there's either you don't do it as much and you know met

11:12

is naturally doing it or um you know you generally not advertising those people

11:18

as just just not part of the the campaign like you're doing no retargeting basically the marketing manager is starting to say well I can get that an SMS an email don't need yeah

11:25

or like meta is doing enough of it and I don't need to do it separately I think that I think this is something that like you

11:31

know engaged at least engaged audiences email list right like I think that that is useful in Q4 okay I mean for a lot of

11:39

reasons but I think it's useful because you just want to get in front of those people I'm not saying that necessarily it might be the most it might be that

11:45

they're going to see it convert on Facebook but being visible to them in another place other than just the inbox

11:50

is going to be useful sure um and you've been you know working to build out those people for a long time like even if

11:57

you're talking about like a 95% View on some sort of a video yeah that's I think worthwhile to get in front of how much

12:03

are you spending like how much how much of your budget are you spending on that oh I'd say that's probably like in the 20% range okay like 10 to 20% range I

12:11

would say but but it that's big like his SoMo on his it's an ice cream con 20% is

12:20

chocolate ice cream con how do you justify that when they say there when like how do you kind of get the checks

12:26

and balances when it comes to the email marketing and the SMS and they're like well we're going going to buy it that way they're going to be yeah I mean I I

12:31

think it's I again this is like anything else with meta or like our world in general is like it depends and I think

12:39

it's those words yeah it's like it's like if it's if it's something that has

12:44

if you know that if you know that you've been running videos all year long and you have these videos that have like

12:50

that are good storytelling or they're an US versus them or they are founder story and you can do a 95% view off of them

12:57

you know that makes a lot of sense or even a total through play that makes a lot of sense to hit those people and

13:02

depending on the audience size like if you haven't really talked to them and it hasn't been part of the strategy before this then I think spending yeah I mean

13:09

maybe not 20 but maybe 10 to 20 I mean like I think I could be go as high as this because you really just haven't touched them before okay so I think

13:16

that's that's why I say that number why it could be as High um I I tend to think that we all think prospecting is a

13:23

little bit easier than it actually is in especially the Black Friday Cyber Monday time frame so you to to sort of hedge

13:29

your bets as an Advertiser overall I think it's smart to have at least some of that that's considered um to talk to

13:36

those previous people so you're not having all of your chips on the we're going to prospect during the most competitive time of the year and it's

13:42

going to do great yeah and SP and you have to remember it's election year so cpms are going to be naturally High anyway because it's uh election year so

13:50

right up into the no it's a week before you have to stop or is it a week before they have to stop advertising so up

13:55

until just the end of October cpms are going to be super high compared to what we would Norm see October being super

14:00

low cpms so you're going to see that and you're going to have to to work it out one thing that you actually mentioned

14:05

there it kind of brings back to a testing thing that we've seen as well people previously when they're excluding

14:11

from the top of funnel campaigns they excl exclude existing customers and sometimes even engagers but now we just

14:17

turn that part off the engagers and just Target uh just uh uh exclude purchasers

14:23

so you're not showing to people who just bought let me just ask a question did you say that they have to stop advertising cuz I don't think they have

14:29

to stop advertising in America before the election is that a thing that be became true I well I I cut it they have

14:35

to have their ads like four weeks before they can't launch new ads okay four weeks before

14:42

the election so ads the the political ODS oh wow okay I don't I don't know why

14:47

I didn't know this stop they can't they can't keep they can't run them on the fifth you can't run him on Election Day what that's un American I'd have

14:56

toss any ads that you're going to run for election yeah have to be launched

15:02

four weeks before they will not allow any ads to be launched in that four we

15:09

oh wow interesting okay interesting yeah I guess I didn't I guess I never knew that even though I used to be in the political world I never knew that um

15:15

interesting yeah but anyway not on Twitter though no well you're going to be launching ads

15:20

on the 4th on X yeah on X yeah I would say I mean so I would say that's one like don't forget about those folks um I

15:26

would say another one is generally having a mix of campaign and audience type I think it's going to be useful

15:31

okay what's the mix and and and I mean I'm not if I was doing it I would obviously want to make sure that there's

15:38

some kind of um an ASC involved in what we're doing that's predominantly like

15:43

what I would if if the ASC has worked previously in that account that's what I would just keep on rolling and I really

15:49

wouldn't change much like if if I have top performing things I would just keep that going okay in the ASC and I

15:55

honestly wouldn't touch it like really um that would be one and I was going to

16:00

ask is there there's plenty of people out there that will get the question was like well it's kind of off off off season or anything else like well it's

16:06

working it's still working in late October don't turn it off L off season I

16:12

I wouldn't um I think that's part of it um I would in terms of like this setup

16:18

itself I would think that You' generally moving away from broad during this period of time I think is a good thing

16:24

and the reason the reason I would say that is because so many there's the competition is so high that when you're

16:30

really what you're looking for in adding other audiences or any other spend to your campaign okay you you if broad has

16:37

previously worked in your account I think there's validity to running it yeah but if but if it hasn't if it's

16:43

been like we've launched it and it kind of went like up and down I think really what you're looking for across the campaign mix is you're trying to find

16:49

something that's going to be incremental to add to the campaign and that would be things like an in stack or high

16:55

relevance lookalikes because it's they're going to be sort of short run bursts I'm not saying these are going to

17:00

be things that you're going to depend on longterm but they're going to be things that in a twoe period around Black

17:06

Friday Cyber Monday that's going to be like yeah they they're going to be little 10 increment 10% incremental wins

17:11

right that's really what I think with top performers that you want would want to be looking for um I would think

17:17

you're probably mostly operating in an AO format too I don't think you're necessarily operating in a CBO format I

17:22

think that you know yesterday we're here at the founders you know day after the founders learning sessions yesterday at

17:27

the Meetup and Freddy um from Germany mentioned uh Frederick Road that they're

17:34

utilizing CBO a lot I think that a lot of the advice inhale at that time yeah I

17:39

mean and I think you always have to put that in context in context this is German uh Advertiser that they're

17:46

advertising for in Germany and I think that when you look at countries if you're looking at you know advertising

17:51

only in a certain area um and it's tight geographic area specifically like only the UK or whatever I think there's

17:57

validity in doing a boo likely like because it's going to it'll operate differently than it would in the United

18:03

States a lot of the advice that I have is because of the accounts we run and because of always being a US Centric

18:08

Advertiser but I think there's Nuance to that so I think if you're in a smaller country where you're targeting a smaller

18:14

set of geographic places maybe not the US certainly a CBO could be part of that but most likely in what we're going to

18:20

be doing is like it's going to be more of an AO format I'd say that's big I think you're going to be wanting to not necessarily create brand new stuff like

18:27

we talked about you're going to keep running the best creative that you've had maybe you're going to have a couple new things that are four to five real

18:34

style that are going to be to those pre previous customers or those people on the engaged lists or on your email list

18:40

or whatever that you've gone through one thing I'll just say about the email list is that clavo integration freaking breaks all the time yeah so just make

18:47

sure before you do this that you check that the clavo integration is actually working yeah keep checking it check it

18:53

again cuz it's like sh that [ __ ] busts all the time yeah and then um so that's

18:59

that's another one I would think that you're trying to would want to go for um and I think yeah if you've been running

19:04

cost controls before you'd keep that but I think that's kind of the setup that I would be looking at I think that you're making generally less changes than you

19:12

would I think really what you from an overall standpoint that you want to be looking at is how quickly can we bring

19:18

these people to a purchase and what are the things we can do on the site and really auditing the customer Journey

19:24

before you go forward on it these are things like the cart drawer right or like how does that look on mobile how

19:30

quickly are you going to are they going to see an incentive you know because so many times you know you walk through

19:36

your client site and you've seen it and it makes sense to you or they've seen it but having reviews or having other people look at it is just so critical to

19:44

actually making that time successful would you even advise to go as far as put hot jar or something like that on it to have it look let people do it I mean

19:51

I think you certainly could During the period of time that you're testing right I mean especially you know you get it out in October you could get some

19:57

learnings on it I don't think there's anything wrong with that even if it's only though to five people and you're asking them to go through of all

20:03

different of your your main customer base that are friends of yours or something else what's confusing about this or whatever I think that's that's

20:10

work that we didn't necessarily used to talk about because we were in the spoiled days of like let's launch an ad

20:15

and then it'll we'll run it to a PDP and it's going to be great yeah and I don't think that's uh necessarily the case anymore I just want to give you a

20:23

correction okay so on the political ads it's one week before new ads can launch

20:28

okay week before and then day of it's historically that political ads do not

20:35

run because campaigns choose not to but they canot yeah yeah I knew it was I

20:42

knew it was a thing they don't generally I think they almost almost like a parlay and they say like we're not doing it so

20:48

so they just for the US they made the Restriction of uh one week before

20:55

know before interesting interesting there you go okay mention that so we got

21:01

two so far we need a third and a fourth and a fifth advice on third and fourth advice I mean I

21:07

think you know um generally let's just get into uh the the third one uh that's not necessarily like setup related but I

21:15

think is in terms of like your setup related which is how are you going to my mind and my body correct your mind and

21:22

your body and body get your mind right you know like how how are you meditating

21:27

yeah I mean well like I I I do think that during that during this period of time when things are really intense one

21:32

of the things that you have is Sun cost bias right you're going to you keep working on the same thing and you think

21:39

that it makes it more productive um and really what I I think you want to be

21:44

aware of that that continuing to work on a client problem if it's an issue or there's some sort of thing um it

21:51

actually stepping away for an hour will give you Clarity I think it's really easy to like give your to be glued

21:57

during that period of time because everybody else is talking about how they're glued to it and showing Shopify screenshots and [ __ ] like that but my

22:03

point is is like I do think that it's necessary today because there inevitably

22:09

will be things that go wrong to have a plan for like what am I going to do to keep myself sane during this period of

22:14

time take a [ __ ] walk yeah right scratch a walk like I think I think

22:20

that's that is really important and I think that a lot of it in the last couple years I think has been focusing

22:27

on the planning beforehand so that during the actual event of BC bfcm is like you're CH you're you're you're in

22:34

more relaxed state so I think that is something you want to just have like generally like a key4 self care plan I

22:41

think that's important yeah that's absolutely key and I I would say as well just on that is like even if you you're

22:47

like oh I'm fine I can get through it you'll tell yourself you're fine put it in schedule into your diary to go for a

22:52

walk look at yourself in advance cuz it's so easy to give yourself that bias of like I feel fine but then you're in

22:58

the middle of something like okay yeah and I mean the landing page thing that can't be the fourth one no oh yeah it

23:03

kind be so that's one of them but I mean the the the offer one that Jenny ly was talking about yday is pretty big so like

23:09

let's talk about it yeah so I mean it was it was it was pretty big and wait is this number four or number five this is

23:15

number five number five the day yesterday was obviously the the one from from Jenny Lynn where she said we can't scale products we can scale offers and

23:22

that's obviously really hit home for me because there's so many people trying to get out there being like got a product

23:27

here and getting the page to Perfection within an inch of his life but actually not no one's buying it because there's

23:33

no reason to buy there's no one there's no it doesn't have to be an offer like a two for one or something like that it just has to be a reason for somebody to

23:39

actually buy without Facebook ads so so many people look at Facebook ads and go oh that's the Magic Bullet but

23:45

realistically if people aren't buying anyway you're wasting your money you're just going to extend it to more people

23:51

yeah yeah yeah that's so true you know I think I I really appreciate you bringing that up because it's one of the journeys

23:58

that I have had to be on I think over the last few years as a Facebook marketer that I mean generally a meta

24:04

marketer I've been doing this for how you know since they've been invented I I got spoiled focusing like a lot of us

24:10

did only on meta ads and I think so much of it obviously the offer is massive part of it you know cro landing pages is

24:16

a whole other part of it and so looking at the offer it's like it is it's it's almost should be number one you know

24:23

what I mean like but I mentioned it last because in my head I'm always like thinking about the Tactical side of it yeah but I think that um the offer

24:30

itself is is massive it's huge I mean what's what are you g to put out there it's meaningful you know I mean in our

24:35

Q4 course that we sold before we we don't have it anymore but um we talked about in there doing like a meaningful

24:42

offer people always like do you think 10% is Meaningful and like No And also like when and also like if you never do

24:50

if you never do a sale maybe 10% in interesting but still like even from the favorite brand if you offer me 10% I'd

24:55

be like it's kind of Rizzle Dizzle yeah no it's not your email like you get 10% off for adding your email address like

25:01

so so it's like you know kind of thinking about that like what does that really mean you know the companies that

25:07

really I think have been successful that I've seen and have been really inspired by are

25:14

those that put an element of surprise into it too you know mystery boxes that are coming with stuff showing what could

25:20

be in it making that process fun um I think is is a huge part of it too in terms of this specific like time frame

25:28

right of like what else are they getting that's fun and interesting um and maybe yeah two for one I don't know if that's

25:34

useful but it's like incentivizing them to VY in volume is another piece that I think can be really powerful but I think

25:41

the offer I think you know it's a good show to bring that up I think the biggest thing that people Miss though is

25:46

they kind of go oh what percent do I need to give off and they talk to yeah well 30 I get it right they talk to CFO

25:53

cfo's like H that's all of our margin I hate the CFO yeah don't we all throw them out

25:58

until until the IRS comes but no what we find is uh the best

26:05

performing uh in terms of sales and anything like that and an offer is value added so if you're adding more value

26:11

whatever it is keep the same price but add more value yes your margin is going to go down the same they're going to get

26:16

more so they're spending they're used to spending that amount cuz you have to remember you're acquiring a lot of customers so new customers coming in now

26:22

you don't want them to be the poor customers that are like you're going to be relying on them to Reby in February

26:28

March April okay guys let's be real have you ever had an offer that worked better

26:35

than a 30% or greater offer like yeah all the time all the time bro you're on

26:41

camera don't lie you're on camera I say it right to you no we have and I'll tell you why why it works it works what is it

26:47

first tell me what it was uh it would be it would have been value I don't have a number but it would be a value ad and so

26:52

what instead so say if somebody's paying 70 bucks for something say a pair of leggings girl buying a pair of leggings

26:58

and it was 70 bucks for the leggings what we did was we threw the top in and the jumper in to make it a full a full outfit oh in at the same go right it it

27:07

would make it that value ad and the idea here is that obviously that's insane value if you're buying a pair of

27:13

leggings and you're get in the top as well okay great but the thing is the people but first of all they have more

27:18

stuff to wear from your product second of all they're they're looking at it going oh this isn't a discount brand I'm

27:24

actually getting more from it so it feels good I'm coming back I'm going to buy more third of all then they're going to see that they're going to not be used

27:30

to spending less so if I go and say I bought from your brand I paid 30 bucks not 70 bucks and then there so I'm I'm

27:37

the right type of customer to be able to spend that amount anyway so you got three good reasons there why 30% if you

27:42

knock off 30% it's like devaluing your brand by 30% wait and you launched with

27:47

this no we didn't launch with it no this product's been out for months and then we added some stuff in but it it

27:55

worked it's very busy airspace around here I will say that no we we didn't launch with it but what we did do was we

28:00

had that maybe from August September time and that was it was going to become on sale anyway so that was something

28:06

that kind of coming into Sal season it was it was it was kind of Autumn winter okay we we it had been launched late in

28:13

the summer autumn winter stuff end of autum winter and we wanted to kind of put it on sale I had a client once that

28:18

we actually wanted to fail and they did an 80% off sale holy [ __ ] just kidding

28:24

I'm just fine they were [ __ ] and we wanted them to fail they sucked yeah they

28:31

sucked Al would that be terrible though there's the biggest one that I've seen by the way it's not real no I'm put the

28:36

hand up on that one got that but no the uh what's really um we had a guy before

28:42

H do a lifetime offer of hoodies what for five grand you had to you could you paid five grand I think it was 12 years

28:48

of hoodies and you could buy for five grand I think they sold three of them they sold three of them three of them

28:53

yeah so three people PID five grand for 12 year worth of hoodies is are they s is this I don't know I haven't talked to

28:59

them since okay but what I'll say is that's just a point to say that you you can put that massive offer in there kind

29:06

of anchor it in up the like super high so it's something to have a look at as well but 30% you see everything going

29:11

across your whole portfolio 30 for for I've we've tried so many things and it's

29:18

always been 30% like plant a tree no borrow like go go go kick rocks like 25%

29:25

no like but this is like I I will caveat it yeah these are for

29:31

brands that they're they're spending we're spending like 20 to 100K right so

29:36

it's not like super large Brands it's not Performance Products it's is fashion and apparel right I statistically see a

29:44

difference in performance the the the watered is 30%

29:50

you do 25% no kick rocks 20% kick rocks 30% whoo oh like step chain like

29:59

statistically significant like on my mother wow I was think dollar amounts

30:04

are even more powerful dollar amounts percentage sometimes but I dug in and I found out that this dude had not

30:10

released product for six months I'll do it and like and his top sellers were

30:15

already sold out and he came for me oh he came for me and he's like he's like why was my Black Friday lit and I was

30:21

like because you're not lit yeah it's like you've been not only lit it's been lights out yeah anything yeah

30:28

yeah but I was like thank you Jesus I found out why or else I would have like that's the rock that like I die on yeah

30:36

for Black Friday Andrew what is your hot take okay H honestly my hot take is that

30:43

people's ego gets in the way uh in our industry way too often for

30:50

sure do not a hot take that's not a take yeah that out well hang on hang on maybe

30:56

let's dig into it a bit is there something you're specifically talking about is there Twitter beefs that you're theigh words here give give us some

31:03

fighting I mean I just I think there's there's people are too much in a rush to uh be a person of authority because

31:10

their ego wants them to be like you're smart you're smart you're smart and so they go out and they try to say things

31:16

really declaratively and really definitively to make other people feel small oh um and I think that that is uh

31:24

or confuse them um so there's a whole bunch of like comp ating words and

31:29

obus um I think there's a certain I'm not saying this is bad but I think

31:34

there's a certain level of person that will turn the video on themselves to record their own thoughts for the

31:40

audience to hear okay because they think that they're of a stature that people like really want to hear from them and

31:46

here we are sitting on a podcast and me saying this but I think I think that like I'm nobody I mean like ego plays a

31:53

huge role um in actually misguiding and miss informing a lot of people um to not

32:00

make their own decisions and you know I often think um I had a friend that was

32:06

not it's not in our industry and one time I was telling him about you know some of the Twitter beefs that were going on or something and he's like all

32:13

you need to do is just keep laying bricks yeah it's all you need to do you know so my my hot take is that I think

32:19

that that really leads people a stray and I think that that also distracts a lot of people um and ultimately it can

32:26

be helpful to be on x uh in our industry but that I don't think you necessarily have to be and ultimately I think it

32:31

might be better if you aren't most of the time for your mental health and end for your business wealth yeah when has

32:39

it ever been bro I've opened up x one time and I we talked yeah we talked

32:44

about this I opened it up I had opened it up for a while and I looked at Tris and I was like bro I feel bad about

32:50

myself I was I got to shut this thing close it get rid of it yeah my other hot

32:55

take is I think that uh now that I'm thinking now that I'm rolling on hot takes my my another one is that a lot of

33:02

the advice that you hear is incredibly is like all needs way more context oh yeah oh

33:10

for sure like you need you need to to actually be like okay what country are

33:15

you advertising in because you hear stuff from people this is what's working this is what's working and it's like

33:20

that's what's working for this brand that's spending this amount in this geography and it does not apply to me in

33:27

this particular thing so I think that I think that as an industry like my hot take is like add context yeah as much as

33:34

you can it's going to be helpful can we can we say it for real Twitter beefs or

33:40

Twitter not Twitter beefs but this this context what it is people that are spending a million bucks a month yeah

33:47

they can't give advice they should not give advice they should only give advice to people that are spending a million

33:53

dollars a month yeah right yeah so different I can't have my dude that's not spending a million dollars a month

33:59

come at me with some LinkedIn article or like some tweet that from a dude that I

34:05

know is he's spending a million dollars a month it's like why aren't you doing this in my account why don't you give me a million dollars to spend I'll do it in

34:11

your account no problem at all I think that's I mean that's huge and like you know it's it's it's that and it's also

34:18

um a a misunderstanding of of actually the smaller accounts there just so much more Nuance to it and I just think it

34:24

does a huge disservice honestly to our industry that that's it so I think the more the best thing we can do is

34:30

continue to try to be like kind to one another not like watch your ego and to

34:35

try to add context and I think if we do that that's big the fourth thing I'll say on like this threat like this idea

34:41

um is I think as much as you can and as much as people anybody that's watching this can the smart people that you know

34:48

smart young people that you know or people that are looking to move careers in your life get them involved in our

34:54

industry we need more people in our industry that are good people um you

34:59

know look look at the Advent of creative strategy as a job I mean there's a lot of people that are coming in from

35:04

different parts and I think that's been good overall for us um and so the more that you can especially if they're

35:10

people of color and women I think that's really good because that helps us to

35:15

actually Market better generally as an industry and not be just a bunch of white dudes giving ideas to each other

35:22

and so I think that in order to like be marketers for the world and be marketers for marketplaces around the more that we

35:29

think holistically and the more that we bring in people that don't look like us the better off our businesses will be

35:35

because the reality is is like we have to be good at at marketing to people

35:40

that look different than us long term and that's going to make us more money that's going to make our customers more money he's thinking about that and

35:47

thinking about the inherent bias that you have so I think that's a big one that I've been certainly ruminating on recently that's another I think the the

35:53

the diversity in our industry has gotten better but it needs to get a 10x yeah yeah and I'm saying I think it's on

35:58

people like us and people in our Founders group or people that are watching this you know you're it's on us to be to to be the people that are

36:05

trying to make that change to be like cuz we've been in it a long time right and I think it's on us to be like let's

36:10

try to figure that out let's try to bring more folks in um cuz I think that's yeah I just think it's good overall like it's we need more good

36:17

smart people because ultimately the people some of the people we met at the founders meet up yesterday right they're

36:22

like 10 years younger than us um right they're they're younger believe it

36:28

they're young and and they're bringing fresh new ideas because that's great and we want that Innovation and we want

36:34

those new ideas that's what's going to really move us forward that's what's going to help us be like continue to be

36:40

ahead um because I think you know you get in your job you do the same thing for a long time there's the blinders you

36:45

have on to some degree which is good but you also can need to continue learning from those people I mean I'm biased but

36:50

obviously the founders membership is a great place to do that what I've definitely found though yesterday is that is that Curiosity just that consist

36:58

Innovation the new ways of doing I I'm running this way to do creative testing I'm doing this way iterating on

37:04

different creative there's no the back to something you were saying ear on about this ego thing the best people in

37:10

business I've ever seen can hold two things to be true yeah what they believe and what someone else believes they don't have to tear down the other

37:16

person's idea and that's why you see a lot of ego Le leaders and ego Le people tearing each other down it's like you

37:22

don't is it not a zero some game well I mean yeah I mean I've really been inspired spending time with you recently over the last like week here together of

37:29

like your curiosity is a huge part of it and Edwin you always have that I've always I've learned that from you guys I

37:35

think that when you guys been meeting exp parte yeah we've been meeting behind your back yeah we're looking to take

37:40

over um but yeah I think I I think I think that's true I think that the Curiosity piece is really really big and

37:47

we'll continue the Innovation so yeah bring new people in I think that's a good thing for all of us yeah we we actually work with that like and this is

37:53

not a plug on our side it's literally the something that we've made a conscious effort to do is work with more female Founders female Founders and

38:00

female lead companies to the point now where 60% of our our clients are 50% or

38:05

our 60% of our clients are female lead Founders nice that's amazing good I mean

38:10

I just think it's good for the industry overall I mean it's male OS I love being around guys I love being you guy friends

38:16

are great but there's like a male ego thing that does come into play especially when it comes to business long-term that I think is detrimental um

38:24

and a lot of it largely actually those of us that run marketing agency we actually trying to Market to women a

38:30

lot of the time yeah like and so it's like we we need to have more perspective

38:36

in what we're trying to do and I think the more the I mean not just the way that we're like mirring what's on Tik

38:41

Tok to explain things but also like just thinking about things from a female L perspective is going to be useful and so

38:48

that just means we need more women in the industry which and so go talk to your friends get them in tell them about creative strategy jobs tell them about

38:55

Dar Denny's course tell them about our course tell I mean I don't care watch rr's YouTube videos you know what I'm

39:01

saying upskill yourself this is a this is an industry that you can you can go from Zero to Hero pretty quick and I

39:07

think that the more people know that the better off that can be because um those

39:13

of us that are have been in in a while I think that we need we need that to keep us going to keep us learning and to keep

39:19

making our sure our Industries around for a really long time absolutely who's your favorite founder

39:26

member he has to say you know said he was like happy with me the camera's rolling I mean honestly you know the

39:33

biggest thing for me that's funny is um you know I the people in the founders group I've become I've just become

39:40

friends with you guys you know like it's it's it's truly it's true friendship and and it and it's so valuable because you

39:47

it's so rare that you have a friend that knows the Deep of like the deep side of what you actually do professionally and

39:53

the nuance and the things that you carry and the things that you like hold in your bones you know what I mean and so to me the that we can go around the

40:00

world and be in Amsterdam here and have 50 people get together or however many were there 50 or 60 people and chatting

40:06

and being with them and at the end of it we're all like giving each other hugs goodbye you know that's that to me is is

40:13

like so insanely beautiful and makes my heart sing like it's just it's great so

40:21

I mean who I mean the people I look at that are like friends the people that I look at that are like true friends you

40:27

know coming off of it like you know I think about somebody honestly I mean like you guys like Phil you guys are in

40:32

this like Phil Keel as a person right like I learned from Phil all the time and it's just because he's thinking

40:38

differently he's got different ideas I love from I I love working with him you know I look at somebody like Aila who is

40:44

an incredible leader who has made a choice to be her own boss and has made a choice to run things a certain way and

40:50

knows what she wants to do and knows what she doesn't want to do yeah like that's the kind of stuff I'm like man

40:56

that's really I mean Jenny Lynn's an example you know you watch her talk about your offer and you're like and she just makes you question like you're like

41:02

what am I doing with my life you're like that is a shitty offer we have you know and so that's the kind of thing that I

41:09

mean is like the constant bringing in of of of new ideas from people um because I

41:14

think there's also that idea that if you're going to join a community that's around collective learning you're a person that's intellectually Curious by

41:21

Nature that's you're not coming in and saying I've only had one time a guy came in and he goes I've been in the founders membership a month I know this so I'm

41:27

going to leave and I was like awesome I will speak to you never actually actually I was me I'm me

41:35

so I was like actually I was like good luck like I wish you luck you know like yeah like it's I'm not trying to get any bad blood in the world um but mostly the

41:43

the people that are in there the regular people it's like that Curiosity that drives us forward and that's really what's inspiring to me is that the

41:49

people that I look to that I'm like yo they're so good and I'm so glad that I'm learning from them they're asking

41:54

questions have you seen this have you seen that and that makes me feel more like okay cool they're asking it's too

42:01

because I think we all deal with imposter syndrome all the in this it's like it's natural in doing this work and

42:07

so I think that if it's a place that can help you feel more validated help you feel like you're you know um learning

42:13

and and that you're able to to ask in a vulnerable way that's a really beautiful thing yeah that imposter syndrome is

42:19

massive I mean we've couple of people I was talking to yesterday even were talking and they were saying like I I

42:25

just I'm seeing all these amazing amazing talks amazing words being said and strategies given and I have nothing

42:31

I'm just talking I'm just talking about something it's it's uh yeah it's amazing the the humility that we're seeing in

42:37

there is is fantastic can we talk about cost caps what the [ __ ] I I I [ __ ] no

42:45

but there's this whole movement at the moment to be like let's do c caps let's do c caps turn off your notifications

42:53

turn off your Twitter notifications is that block button not block button that mute button for certain words if someone mentions cost cap you have like AI on

43:00

everything block it yeah why Andrew why why are people doing this why are people going for cost caps I mean I think

43:06

there's always a validity to to to keeping you know um cost rined in and

43:11

having cost controls on I think I think that they there's more predictability uh to

43:17

them than there was before uh I think that it's still not something that I

43:23

think you want to do 100% of the time personally I think that you we did see a

43:28

new member that joined um and he's transitioned 100% to cost caps with

43:33

Target Raz um does he wake up at 500 a.m. and take ice bath every day and he

43:39

and but I learned recently that I think he's spending like north of 500k a month so there you know these are the things

43:45

that you have to kind of understand about that there's a volume to it as well right like if you're going to be

43:50

doing these you're going to be doing cost caps you're going to be doing really kind of like limiters on the account if if you're at a certain level

43:57

it's okay if it goes from 10K down to you or from you know 100K down to 10K to

44:03

to 60k you you know you kind of have to accept that inherent uh volatility almost to it and it's a different way of

44:10

uh of going about things and it also obviously works when you have like creative winners so it's sort of like

44:16

you have to be at a certain stage to be thinking about this longer term I'm not

44:21

I so the thing that I I I think we get into is you there's very little that

44:28

differentiates us as advertisers sometimes I think that you know you look at it say oh they you know these

44:34

agencies look largely the same and I think that cost caps is an example of

44:39

something that people utilize as like a sales tactic and I I'm not saying this is

44:45

everyone but I do think this is like a decently common thing um that people will say like oh well you know we have

44:52

this Secret Sauce that you don't know about okay um and I think other I think the people that are real cost Maxis

44:58

would say like no like we just know they work and I think that if they haven't worked for you you're doing it wrong

45:04

okay um and so it goes back to that ego thing though right because yeah it comes

45:09

and so to me it's always mute Twitter mute to me it's always like uh it's a

45:15

thing of I'm not saying it's an invalid idea I'm not saying I probably wouldn't switch everything entirely onto it the

45:22

reason that Zach is doing it is because they're not in a scaling portion of their business because they're

45:28

inventory can just I think you just name dropped it and so oh no yeah yeah he

45:35

says on Twitter yeah he said it on Twitter so Z Zach is Zach said Zach suck who's actually like literally one of my

45:40

best friends actually he went on and said I'm going to try these because it's something I've seen and we we are

45:47

holding inventory for Q4 and so we don't want to do like a ton but we want to see if we can control cost to keep margin up

45:52

and what it's going to do um I think it's a great time to give it a shot right I think anybody giving things a try is never a

45:59

bad idea I think the cost cap thing is really interesting because it's sort of like this white hot topic of discussion

46:05

and it seems to bring up a lot of like passionate feelings obviously but but

46:10

what's the context like so look you talk about context right and so you're

46:15

spending 20K and under c cap no I wouldn't say so no because you're really looking at a volume play okay what's

46:22

what's the volume though like generally when you're seeing it I mean to to me like if you're going to be be spending any if you're going to be if you're

46:28

spending 50k north of 50k a month like I think looking at a campaign maybe one that's cost capped I think is like

46:34

legitimate idea yeah I think there there's definitely validity in that maybe you're going to crosscap the whole campaign or everything you know um over

46:40

time you're going to transition into that really what you have to get used to is you have to get used to like I said a

46:45

day where it doesn't spend anything and then a day where it spends the entire budget you also have to be really weary

46:51

because there are I mean at least from what I like couple times when we've seen

46:57

personally I've seen it personally on our accounts and then from like the community like a dozen Bakers Dozen

47:04

other times where people have been days in the last let's just even say like four months where cost caps just

47:09

Facebook just forgot about them for the day yeah so so then there's like so then you know so then you have it because a

47:15

lot of it is that you're spending it you're spending you're having the campaign budgets at these really high budgets because if it's really good you

47:21

want it to be that right and so then they'll just spend through a whole budget of 10K by 9:00 A.M or something

47:27

and then you're totally screwed so I think you this is one of those things like we talked about before with Zuck

47:33

like you want it to work that way but it just doesn't 100% yet yeah right and so

47:38

that's another piece about it so I guess my feeling is that generally they're on the table because there's a lot of

47:45

people that are utilizing this as a sales technique to make to to make it seem like there's something that they

47:51

have that you don't I think that there's also people that are pushing it that have seen it work over time and and

47:57

really believe in The Meta system and believe that it is the most profitable thing to do and have seen it repeatable

48:02

in accounts and they're talking about it because they're evangelizing it because they think it's really a great way to

48:07

control costs and make businesses more profitable and I think there's validity in that okay and I also think that it

48:14

there's people that have tried it and it hasn't worked and they've tried it again and again and it hasn't worked and they've tried to raise it up by 10% or

48:20

by 15% a day or every 72 hours or whatever and it hasn't worked so it's like there's all of these things are

48:27

true so my point is is that if you are having a situation where you're not you're not scaling profitably and you're

48:34

spending 50k a month or more is it a valid is it a valid idea to try them

48:40

sure Absolut why not absolutely would I try a cost control for the first time during Q4 I probably would not because I

48:47

would rather get the lot of volume through the door please don't please don't but like you know is it if if you

48:54

want to have if you want to control costs during Q4 and make margins better and

49:00

make sure that your CPA doesn't go above a certain amount that's a that's a valid argument and that could be something

49:06

that you'd want to try but you are again largely going to be sacrificing volume from you know for the most part so it

49:13

depends on you having creative winners it depends on you having a lot of factors that go into it it's not just like an easy fix yeah so I think there's

49:20

it's like yes and no I think J does a good talk about it in the in the founders uh group group I think what he

49:27

talks about is again that making sure you have constant winners and if you don't have constant winners it's kind of

49:33

like you got to you got to have the right tools to be to do that particular job you can't just compare lowest cost

49:38

to cost caps you have to have the the consistent winners you have to have the consistent testing and everything else

49:44

like that that will uh allow you to kind of see it allow you to do it you can't just

49:49

go oh I'm going to turn this on it's going to work you can't expect that you you have to have testing have done your

49:54

tests in lowest cost you have to have on your test in [ __ ] making sure that they work there and then bring that stuff in

50:01

that's really your kind of is where you to go with it I mean it's just a funny honestly like I it's I'm just going to

50:06

go going to go off on this really briefly but like it's just a continuation of in my opinion this kind of stuff these little things that are

50:13

just driven largely by people talking about complicated [ __ ] or talking about

50:18

things that are actually simple and making them seem complicated to confuse people to make them become dependent

50:23

upon you and your content to explain it to them and that is just a really that

50:28

is it's so frustrating to me because it's like I think if you're going to be

50:34

speaking about stuff like make it easy to read make it public or or not just public but like it doesn't have to be so

50:41

complicated doesn't have to be that way I don't know but like then again like also I'm we have a membership and I'm

50:46

like you know if you want the real insights come inside the foxille founders so like I guess I'm doing it too I mean true just like in reality but

50:53

like I I'm trying I try to not be like holding like this is a secret sauce like

50:58

it's the membership's a secret sauce for you well the you know the membership really gives you like a diverse set of perspectives that you're going to learn

51:05

from and a sa like really a safe place that you can come in and ask questions not be flamed for asking that question on X and that's a lot of people have

51:12

said that the reason that they joined yeah and so I think there's a difference there and I think in order to continue

51:18

to actually evolve and like bring more people in like I talked about earlier and involve the industry properly which is I think some of the duty that we have

51:25

doing this kind of like making people feel dumb type thing is just not a useful thing for us to be doing and I

51:32

don't think that it's I don't think it's you it's good and I don't think that it really helps us overall because it

51:38

really keeps people out it's like the other day I tried to go rent the bike from rafo Cycling Club and they didn't

51:44

include the pedals or a helmet on a bike rental because they're because they're

51:50

like well if or shoes they they're like if you're a hardcore cyclist you're going to bring your own pedals and it's like this is dumb this is stupid like

51:57

make it accessible you know what I mean like you know which is why a lot of times like we take the best stuff from the founders membership and turn them

52:03

into blogs yeah because we wanted that to be out there so I mean obviously I'm struggling with that too we're a little bit in that case but I don't I really

52:10

try not to be like overly declarative about things so I think it's a big part of it so anyway been more transparent

52:16

than I thought I would be all right guys that is a wrap we talked with the guy with the man himself Mr Andrew foxel the

52:23

man with the biggest mic talked about Q4 we had a couple of

52:29

hot takes couple of intro looking inside what to do to keep yourself sane for Q4

52:36

I'm Edwin I'm Tris and I'm the big cheese thanks guys on the next one.

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