How He 10x'd His Business in a Year - Sam Maxwell, The Cold Life

Speaker A: I was in a, honestly, a really rough spot in my life and I was still addicted to Adderall at the time. My Amazon businesses were failing, my photo booth brand was failing, and I was losing. All my money practically went to zero. I mean, like, I'm talking, you know, 100 grand on the credit card payment was due in 11 days and we had maybe 12 grand in the bank account. At one point I was like, what could I make and create that I have a passion for or something that I believe in? I was holding a Tumblr cup one day and I was like, what if we could create a human sized yeti cup but for cold plunging? So I bought a plastic barrel for 1200 bucks and I cold plunged every single day for 30 days straight. And I was trying to get off Adderall and I didn't think about Adderall at all.

Speaker B: That's crazy.

Speaker A: As an entrepreneur, you naturally feel like you should do more than one thing or you can multitask. No. All of our eggs were in one basket. We spent about eight months developing the product that we've now sold just over 6,000 units of, which is our ultimate plunge.

Speaker B: What's total revenue?

Speaker A: Total revenue is.

Speaker B: Welcome back to another episode of the Bad Marketing podcast. Got a special guest today, second time on the podcast. Last time he was actually in a completely different e commerce business. Sold that business and now we got the founder of Cold Life, Sam Maxwell, co founder, is that correct? Co founder. Pretty cool. Literally climbed. I watched this guy climb from like, I'm starting a new business venture, I'm super into health and wellness, to now partners with Gary Breca and literally taking over the entire space, bro. Fucking welcome. So happy for you and proud of you, dude.

Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you, man. Thank you.

Speaker B: But, um, I'm not gonna get into his background. If you guys haven't, you know, seen the first podcast with him, go watch it. It's a background how he went from pressure washing, literally like nothing to starting an e commerce business, making money online. He doesn't sell courses, he doesn't do none of that shit. Literally just makes all his money from e comms. Let's jump into Cold life, bro. I remember when you first started last business, you. You had some issues with the demographics. You're selling to a lot of chargebacks, et cetera. It was kind of like a make money online product in a way. Um, and now you decided to go into health and wellness. I watched you change warehouses, start this thing from scratch, work on different products. Like, walk me through how the idea came about and like what those beginning phases of figuring out the product manufacturing was.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. So my prior business you're referring to was my first ever high ticket business. So I was selling to a rough demographic, but I was selling products for four to six thousand dollars. And that opened up my eyes to high ticket e commerce. And I liked that because I felt like in a way it's working smarter, not harder. Um, I was having to fulfill one to five orders a day verse thousands to make the same, if not less money.

Speaker B: People just can't comprehend though that like someone could go online and swipe their credit card for six grand for something they've never touched, talk to a person, etc. You don't.

Speaker A: I mean, yeah, we can, we can add the screenshot to this or whatever, but right when I walked in, I got an order for $50,000, which is crazy to think about.

Speaker B: We're sitting back at each of all I talk about.

Speaker A: So, um, long story short, by the

Speaker B: way, same as two sales guys, they do, they do, you know, they sell B2B. And uh, as soon as the order came in, Sam messages the other sales guy. He's like, he's kicking your ass today. Are you, do you uh, do you care to compete with him or like what's the situation here?

Speaker A: 30 seconds Got him fired up.

Speaker B: The notification came in voice, no one

Speaker A: out so fast last 48 hours of the month. So it's crunch time, but I always got to be pushing them. But that, that last business opened up my eyes to a different type of E commerce I'd never done before. But I was selling something like always. I didn't have a passion for, I didn't believe in it. It was a photo booth, but it made money. And as that business was starting to fail and we're trying to get out of that business, I reflected on what I did with that brand, like all my prior projects. And I took what I liked and what I didn't like about it and I liked more than what I compared to what I disliked. And I was like, what could I do? That's high ticket. But I don't want to drop ship again with that brand. I was drop shipping it, uh, but from an American manufacturer. So that was eye opening. Fast shipping times, better customer service. And I was in a, honestly a really rough spot in my life and I was still addicted to Adderall at the time. And I, my Amazon businesses were failing, my photo booth brand was failing and I was losing all my money. Practically went to zero. And I was lost. I was like, should I give up on E. Commerce? No. I want to give it one last shot.

Speaker B: I remember you almost started an agency,

Speaker A: basically, and I did for a few months just to keep myself afloat.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, I immediately got clients.

Speaker B: I'm gonna get gray hairs pretty fast.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. On top of what I already have. Right. And I was like, I know a guy that owns a pretty big agency, so I might as well just send him to Eddie. So, uh, anyways, I was just literally in my office in Alpharetta, right down the street, late at night, every single night, brainstorming, brainstorming, brainstorming. And I was like, what could I make and create that I have a passion for or something that I believe in? And I didn't have the idea at the time, but I discovered the rave of cold plunging. It was more like ice baths. So I started doing my research. Google Analytics, the search volume on Google of people typing in cold plunging or ice baths. And I saw that there was starting to be some volume. And I also saw at the time that one of the cold punch companies that was around at the time, one of the few, was also on Shark Tank. So I heard about their numbers. And then from there, I discovered that it could possibly help with ADHD and with the boost of dopamine and mental clarity outside of the inflammation, all the other things that it's good for and known about, especially for athletes. So I bought a plastic barrel for 1200 bucks because I didn't have enough money to buy a $5,000 Chinese bathtub for cold plunging. So I bought the barrel, and I was like, let me see if this is the placebo effect. Let me see if this is real. And I cold punched every single day, ice bath every single day for 30 days straight. I actually did a challenge on TikTok of cold punching every day for 30 days. And it was like the winter time in Atlanta. It was brutal, but I liked how, like, mentally challenging it was. I like chasing that, like, dopamine hit and just doing challenging, tough things. And I was trying to get off Adderall, and I didn't think about Adderall at all after 30 days. I was like, wow, like, I don't need my Adderall. This is actually helping me substitute taking that prescription.

Speaker B: That's crazy.

Speaker A: And from there, one of my, uh, Amazon investors at the time on a failing store that I was dealing with, along with 18 other ones that I was having to deal with, um, he was coming by my warehouse to get a partial check to try to get him as whole as possible. And he saw this barrel in the right corner of my office and he was like, what's this Jeffrey Dahmer barrel bucket doing in the corner of your office, dude? Tell me about it. And I was like, I buy ice every single day and I use that as a ice bath and bless you. And, um, I told him, I was like, I, I use that barrel as an ice bath. I buy ice every single day. But I was like, dude, it's amazing. He's like, you don't have to tell me about cold punching. He's like, I get in the river, I get in the pools in Atlanta with a big group of my friends. We do it in the winter time here in Atlanta. He's like, I love cold plunging. He looked at the water and he's like, this water is disgusting. And I was like, yeah, dude, I don't honestly care that much. I was like, just throw ice in it and kind of distracts the area of the water. Uh, and from there he looked at me. In all seriousness, I wasn't yet convinced I was gonna start a cold plunge brand because I had never created a product from scratch before. Yeah, and always just white labeled stuff. And Kyle, my partner, looked at me and he goes, dude, we should start a cold punch brand. He's like, you have the marketing E commerce side. I got the more corporate sales like executive kind of background. I used to do staffing. I've been in healthcare. He's been in all kinds of different things. A few years older than me as well, with a lot more experience and things I didn't have a lot of experience in. We made kind of the perfect duo. And he's uh, like, listen, listen, get out of your mess, get out of your photo booth business. Get out of this Amazon crap that I'm also involved in. But I gave you that money to invest into you and possibly work with you long term. I didn't care if Amazon worked or didn't. I just wanted to make my money back some shape or form from you. And I like who you are and you're a good person. You were trying to give me my money back. You didn't try to scam me like everybody else that was in that space for the most part. And, uh, he was like, focus on that for a few months. I'm going to get out of my existing business and I'm going to focus on the product engineering and the manufacturing. And that's exactly what he did while I got out of that. So obviously we had to figure out what we were going to create. And I was holding a Tumblr cup one day and I was like, what if we could create a human sized yeti cup? Like a Tumblr cup, like a Stanley cup, but for cold plunging. And that was when like the ding went off. And we're like, that's what it is. So we went to Dick's Sporting Goods Academy right up here on Exit 13 every day for a few weeks straight with like an engineer we hired locally, touching and feeling every type of cup and looking at it for inspiration. And we're like, let's make the lid and the cup just like a tumbler cup. But for cold plunging. It's got insulation, it's powder coated, can be any color, you can customize it. Space efficient, being vertical. We did more research. Easier to breathe sitting upright versus laying down. So many cool things about it. And we spent about eight months developing the product that we've now sold just over 6,000 units of, which is our ultimate plunge.

Speaker B: What's total revenue?

Speaker A: Total revenue is eight figures, I'll leave it at that. But we're doing good. Yeah, last year, I'll be honest, we

Speaker B: were saying eight figures a year.

Speaker A: I'm saying total revenue like still eight figures. We're not nine figures yet, but hopefully after an extra, we'll be there. Um, but last year like low seven figures, like we, we still were nowhere near where we needed to be. Um, this time last year, like this year was really our, our blowout. We, we 10 xed our business this year. Um, and uh, yeah, we spent eight months developing it. Kyle kind of handled the manufacturing side and we were calling manufacturers, I mean hundreds of them, hey, could you possibly make this product? And it's like, what the heck is this? They didn't understand cold plunging wasn't even as known then three years ago compared to now. So they're like, they didn't understand the concept and it's not a proven concept yet. So it's a risk for them to take up room on their assembly line. Found uh, a mom and pop shop like an hour away from Alpharetta right here. And we're like perfect, perfect world. They manufacture ah, an hour from where we're based out of and we've made a steel and it weighed 280 pounds. And I remember like that feeling of like seeing it like 80% done. And we're like, we did it like we're about to hit the. And um, we ended up launching about a year after we started. The idea took about Four more months to finalize everything. And it was made of steel, about 280 pounds, I think. We sold it for 8,000 bucks. And we were on a mission for everything to be American made. But the only thing we couldn't figure out was the chiller, which is the most important component with a cold plunge setup. That's what keeps the water cold and clean 24, 7. So we hit the market. Cause we were falling behind. We went overseas. Everyone in the space is all sourcing them from the same plants and factories overseas. They're just the same guts, just different frames and different logos. They look a little bit different. We tested it for like three months while we were finalizing the. The cold tub. And, uh, no problems. WI fi capability. It heated, we're like, dude, it works. Everyone's selling the same thing. They're in business. Let's buy a hundred, put it on the credit card, and let's see, let's hit the market. We hit the market in June of 2023, and we sold those hundred units in about three months. Three to four months.

Speaker B: Not bad. Like a unit a day.

Speaker A: Yeah, not bad. It wasn't anything crazy, but, I mean,

Speaker B: how much were you charging?

Speaker A: Like eight grand a unit?

Speaker B: Yeah. A lot of money, bro.

Speaker A: Yeah. And our margin was like 50 because we were buying them. We're practically drop shipping from our manufacturer. We were like, besides the chillers we bought all up front, um, the cold punches, we buy like three to five at a time. So our lead time total was like six to eight weeks. And that was like twice as much as the average lead time in our industry. And 60, uh, 5% of those chillers failed within six months.

Speaker B: That's crazy.

Speaker A: So we almost.

Speaker B: Which means everyone else is failing too, right?

Speaker A: Uh, exactly. And we were hearing it too, right? Because I was doing a lot of the sales. And, you know, it was a team of three of us at the time. And, uh, we were hearing feedback like, you know, asking us, how good is your product, truly? Because I've already bought one for three grand. And I learned the hard lesson. It broke within three months. They sent me a new one. That one broke within three months. And. And now they're not answering my calls. And why is that? Because that company now knows which most companies in the industry are the same. That chiller is not a chiller. That's built to last. So if you're gonna keep replacing that customer with the same chiller you know is gonna break, you're just dragged deep. You're digging yourself in a deeper hole. Where eventually you're losing money on every customer. And that's why 90% of the Cold Punch businesses that were around three years ago when we started and came up within the next year, they're all out of business. They're nowhere to be found. A lot of them have gone out of business publicly. Um, lawsuits and people upset and Reddit and et cetera, talking about how much money they lost. They didn't get their orders fulfilled because they went out of business right after they ordered.

Speaker B: Um, and that's crazy.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's super sad. And we all know from, you know, from drop shipping, you know, all, all the OGs like chargebacks and a bad supplier can ruin your entire business. Um, from your payment processor tradition, general losing money, so, and cash flow issues. So we went on a mission to create everything to be made in America and for the first time ever have a business that our customer base was high income individuals. It was wealthy people. Because in my opinion, that's better customer data, better customers to deal with. As long as they're getting a quality product, they'll always buy anything from you going forward if their first transaction and interaction with your business was successful and good and stress free. Yeah, so we almost went out of business when our chiller is broke. And, um, we had to raise money from family and friends. I got like a personal loan from Amex just to stay alive. And that was the true definition of your back being against a wall. Like entrepreneurs talk about that, been through it. That's either where you break or where you rise. And when my, our backs were against the wall, it was like, are we going to let this fail? We've made it this far. We got a patent pending on this product. We've gotten amazing feedback. We know we need to raise money. It's a super, um, tough cash flow business. Buying inventory like three to four months in advance and all the SKUs that come with it and the margin is already being super. Uh, we, shortly after about a year we raised money and that's when we partnered with, uh, with Gary. And then six months after that, we just brought on Mark Wahlberg as a partner too.

Speaker B: So, um, tell me about the. So one thing. First of all, like, it's crazy to see because we just had a podcast last podcast which was like a really big AI software founder. And literally he was like, we're like two months away from fully going bankrupt and like, explain the whole situation. And then now, one year and a half later, they're like on top of the world. You know what I Mean, it's. It's cool to see that, like, sometimes people don't realize, like, that's how close the difference is between the guy that made it and the guy that doesn't is they both ended up in the same scenario. They're like, this is really hard. It's not going to work out. And the one guy got resourceful and was like, I'm going to make it work no matter what. And one guy was like, it doesn't make sense for me to do this. I'm going to stop. And that's literally the difference of the breaking point of someone failing or someone turning everything around. It's cool. It's cool to hear. I didn't know you guys were that close.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I mean, like, I'm talking, you know, 100 grand on the credit card payment was due in 11 days, and we had maybe 12 grand in the bank account at one point. And during that time, thanks to you, too, you're. You were part of this opportunity happening, which closed. Gary, you gave me a phone call. I remember, literally. This is actually a funny joke. I've said this exact line to multiple people. I was like, I was walking into the Forum gym on pre workout at like 6pm on a Thursday, and I got a missed call from Eddie. And Eddie never calls you twice unless it's like an emergency.

Speaker B: But I never call.

Speaker A: In general fact, you call. You. You called me and I didn't answer, and you texted me and you're like, you better pick up. Like, you're gonna be pissed off if you don't answer this phone call. And I was like, what is it a discount on, like, you know, uh, uh, a conference you're doing or something? Like, whatever. Like, that's what my assumption was. Because I was like, why the else would he be calling me this time? Like, once a lifetime opportunity type thing? And it was just completely opposite what I was expecting. And when we started this business, our goal was to partner Gary Brecka. We manifested that. We were like, dude, at the time, he had like 200,000 followers on Instagram. He was starting to blow up. Seemed like an awesome guy, human biologist, love cold plunging. Talked about it and, uh, you called me and you're like, hey, I'm on the phone with Gary's chief of staff, or what, whoever it was. And you're like, there. He's. He's looking for possibly a new cold plunge company to partner with. Like, you got to get on this phone call right now. And, um, and thank you for that, seriously. Still still owe you for that as well. Like, seriously. Thank you. And it's crazy how that worked out because when I got off that phone call, they were like, listen, you need to get to Gary as soon as possible. He wants to test it for six months minimum. Because the last cold Punch company we partnered with, they failed tremendously. It almost ruined his reputation. It was a horrible representation of him. These were going to celebrity clients like the Beckhams and etc. And uh, he wants to try it, make sure it's legitimate. And if it is, we'll be in touch. At the time, we maybe had three cold plunges, an inventory at our little warehouse. Me and Kyle that night went to the warehouse at midnight.

Speaker B: Uh, uh, here in Georgia.

Speaker A: Here in Georgia. Uh, the shop next door of our warehouse, he had like a T shirt company where he had like a vinyl like machine where he can make a logo. And that was one of the things we start off with, was to separate ourselves. You could put custom logos in the cold tubs. We googled the ultimate human logo, which is Gary's media company. And we got the printer, we got the, we got the vinyl sticker and

Speaker B: the T shirt shop.

Speaker A: From the T shirt shop next door to our shop, it was winter time. It was like maybe 35 degrees outside with no heat in this warehouse. We were in there till 4 o' clock in the morning. I literally have a picture I took of Kyle putting on the logo at 4 o' clock in the morning. So like eight hours after the phone call that we had with Gary's chief of staff. And um, the next day we got the shipment scheduled and I think we bought a Frontier flight down to Miami. Like a few days later. We went there ourselves to set it up. And we're like, oh, dude, we might meet him here. Like, we're here at Gary's place. Like, this is insane. Keep in mind our business is about to like go under.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And, um, we, uh, installed it. Yeah, this is it. Like, this is do or die. But also we're ignoring that. Like they said he wants to test it for a very long time.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Just hoping like, oh, he's like, he's gonna love it. And we're sign a deal and we're gonna, he's gonna be, we're gonna blow up from there. And uh, we. Unfortunately he wasn't there. Gary's all over the world, even more now than he was then traveling. And uh, we met his team, though some people. His place is insane.

Speaker B: Um, I'm like, wait, there's more. They're like, oh, yeah, the living room. Oh, which one?

Speaker A: The third living place is literally never ending. You do laps in that place and get your steps in. Um, it's a biohacking, like, just heaven palace. But, um, yeah, we delivered it. We didn't get to meet him, and we left town. And. But right before we left town, I'm

Speaker B: sure you're kind of like, that was kind of anticlimactic. Like, we did all this, and, like, we're kind of left with nothing. We gave away a free cold plunge. We meet together.

Speaker A: We're like, oh, like he just got a free $8,000 cold plunge. And maybe we don't hear from him

Speaker B: again, and we go bankrupt.

Speaker A: Yeah. So with that, that ended up turning into, like, seven months later, him partnering with us because he had no problems. He's based in Miami. And coincidentally, right before we. We partnered with him, we just switched our manufacturing from Georgia to Miami, found a better manufacturer. We swe. We shifted our cold plunge from being made of steel, uh, to aluminum because it went from 280 pounds dry to 70 pounds dry. Shipping was cheaper, easier to move around, Quality was better. Manufacturer was better, Costs were better. And he loved that they were made local to him, and they never break on him. So he ran. We ran. We got a phone call. When we started raising money, he was. He called us at the same time, and he's like, hey, guys, like, I know you're raising money right now. From what I've heard, like, I love to figure something out and be a part of the business. And now today, a year and a

Speaker B: half later, there's more to the story, though.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So tell me about the other investor.

Speaker A: Yeah. So coincidentally enough, when we started raising. Looking to raise money, and we spent, you know, thousands of dollars in this deck, and, you know, we're hanging on by a thread. And, you know, we know our business is not very appealing, numbers wise. We were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and the business was doing 80 to 120 grand a month in revenue. Nothing crazy. Best month, I think, was 180,000. Um, we.

Speaker B: Revenue, not profit.

Speaker A: Revenue. Exactly.

Speaker B: Where was this revenue coming from? Ads.

Speaker A: Ads. Yeah. I mean, and the thing is, our return on ad spend was actually pretty darn good, but I didn't have enough money to spend any more.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, because all the costs that came into operating the business. So we started going through family and friends and our network and, hey, you know, you want to be interested in this business? I remember meeting a guy at the gym, um, and he was Possibly interested. He was like an investor. And I remember him, for example, he's one of the first people look at our deck and sit us down. And he liked cold plunging. He was like, this evaluation is nuts. Like, you guys are saying that you're worth, you know, $15 million or whatever we were raising on, and you guys are hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, like you're worth nothing. And I get the vision and I get the, the, you know, the, the game plan, but I can't do that. Like, I can't give you guys a few million bucks, what you're looking for, because the first few hundred thousand dollars is going to debt. It's not going to grow the company.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And you don't have really a proven concept yet. This is a huge gamble. So we went through that same conversation with about 20 different people, and we remembered one of our first customers, several actually of our first customers, because they're wealthy people and some of them are investors. Since they're already a customer. They all said the same thing. You don't have to sell me on the product. I'm a customer. I love the product. But you got to sell me on you and the company and the vision. And I might one day be interested in investing into the company. So when you start raising money for this business, don't forget about me and give me a phone call. So remember, there was a guy in South Florida that was one of our first customers that we contacted. We met him in person, we gave him our deck. We flew down there to meet him. He was super interested. And we ended up kind of feeling out the vibe. And we're like, I don't want to raise money from this guy. Nothing against him, but I don't think we'll work well together. And he's trying to nickel and dime us and practically get 51% of our company for a fraction of what we're trying to raise. It's not going to be enough working capital. The other customer of ours, coincidentally, we found out after getting on a phone call with him. After that phone call we had with him, he coincidentally was on a phone call with Gary. And little did we know he had a really good relationship with Gary. And as we just talked about, we were already in the works of partnering with Gary. Gary already had our product, and Gary was just now starting to express interest in becoming a part of the cold life and becoming an equity partner. Our, uh, now investor and Gary were on that phone call. We're having a conversation about whatever they were talking about. Keep in mind, Gary actually helped save our investor's daughter's life through some stuff she was going through. And, uh, he obviously feels like he's in debt to Gary in a lot of ways. And he, he believes and. And loves him a lot, as he should. And, um, Gary's done that for a lot, a lot of people that's not even publicly talked about. And that conversation end up saying practically, gary, if you partner with the cold life, I'll invest. And we didn't get our full valuation, but we got close to it, and, um, the two came together and came to us. They're like, let's just do this all in one, in one transaction, in one agreement. Gary's gonna come on board, I'm gonna invest into your business, and let's scale this thing and grow it together. And, uh, he didn't look at our deck. He didn't look at anything. Just a straight shooter guy from up north. And he was like, literally, sam, tell me your story. What are you about? What have you done? What's your plan in life? What you're playing with this business? Shoot. Same with my partner. And his reaction was literally laughing hysterically. You guys got balls. Because you guys got balls. But I'm in for the ride. Let's do it. If Gary's in, um, I'm in.

Speaker B: That's crazy. I got goosebumps.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's. It really. It really is nuts, dude. It really is. But that yet again, instead of closing shop and just giving up, I'm glad I took that extra 20k personal AmEx loan out so I could afford my bills for another four months. But my partner taught me something that was super powerful, is the first time I've ever done this. And I think that's partly why this business is where it is today. I focus on one thing. As an entrepreneur, you naturally feel like you should do more than one thing. Or you can, you can multitask and no. All of our eggs were in one basket. It was only cold life. We are not. No matter how slow this shit is, liquidate whatever nice assets you have to keep your shit alive, but consumes as little as your time, as little bit of your time as possible. So you stay focused to the plan and the mission. Focus on just the cold life. That's what we did, dude. I didn't do what I, uh, used to do where I'd go start a side drop shipping store to make five, ten grand a month profit or go get consulting clients or an agency. None of that stuff. I Literally would just do whatever. I could go in more debt. But that way my full focus was on the cold life.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And that's why I feel like we are where we are today. Because I didn't start the cold life, but I was also in this business and in this business and in this business, it was just all in. And that's. I think that was super powerful.

Speaker B: So, um, that led to Mark Wahlberg. I see him posting all the time. Is he a partner too?

Speaker A: He's an equity partner.

Speaker B: Okay. He's an equity partner. Cool. That's sick. And like, seeing this butterfly effect of like, we almost went out of business to Gary and current customer also became like, happen to be friends. And like, pulling you out of this was so sick. But now your business is at a whole different stratosphere than it was. Right. Obviously, you know, Gary Brecker talking about all this stuff helps. But like, what's like the marketing behind this? Like, where, where are you spending your money? Like, what are some advantages, things and advice you can give?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: From, um, marketing side for someone else who's an econ brand is doing, you know, six figures a month or so.

Speaker A: Of course. So when I started this business, my whole background was meta ads. I'm good at running meta ads and scaling meta ads. So, uh, our first year, it was just meta.

Speaker B: And how valuable would you say that skill is for E comm or business in general?

Speaker A: So valuable, dude. And ignore the bad day, dude, because you got to look at the blended return at the end of the month or at the end of the quarter. Like, don't, don't micromanage it day by day or you're not going to make it. Yeah. The only way to scale is to look at it at the bigger scale. Look at it every day, every hour. Like I used to refreshing Shopify and triple whale. Like, you know, oh, my God, we spent five grand. We've done three grand in sales. It's like no or zero. Yeah, exactly. And some days we'll spend 15 grand. We'll do 15 grand in revenue still today as a company. But look at the end of the month, in the last two quarters straight, we've averaged over a five to a five and a half x return on ad spend. Blended. Um, and obviously people don't realize how

Speaker B: important that skill is. Dude, I can go and buy any company and just like grow it with a computer.

Speaker A: Yeah. If you, if you got the systems, dude. And you know what to do, you got to have high spending power and just have balls and you'll you'll get it there just with trial and error and figuring out that sweet spot. That's what I also discovered. My business was that I scale up to $20,000 a day and spend. A few months ago and I realized our, our, our, our roas got shot and our business wasn't growing, it was almost doing worse. And I realized the market size was only so big. And for some, for some industries it is that way. For other industries, it's the masses. You can sell it like comfort clothing. Right now, you see they're, you're on Track to do 600 million this year. And why? It's because anyone will buy a blank hoodie as long as it's marketed well to them. It's in front of them everywhere. But compared to expensive, cold plunge is an expensive need. And there's only a certain amount of people that can afford a 7 to $12,000 cold plunge. So I scaled back and I'm like, you know what? Unfortunately our sweet spot is spending on meta, uh, about seven to $10,000 a day. That's how big the market is. I cut my spend down. My add to carts were double compared to 20 and my ROAS was double compared to 20. So what I need to do, diversify. I realized everything's blended in together. So I was like, okay. People are seeing my Meta ads are probably going on Google because it's such an expensive product and looking up the cold life, see if it's legit, see if we pop up, see if we have Google reviews, see what's about my company on Google. Is there any bad reviews? Is there more videos talking about it, whatever. Um, so our brand search just on Google alone this year. I think we spent $500,000 this year on brand sear on Google and it's returned like $4 million in revenue because the meta plays a huge key in that, because the people that see us on Meta are going on Google and typing in the cold life. So I started, after the first year I started incorporating Google, which mostly started with brand search and it started bidding against my competitors as I had more, more, um, more budget to work with. And then we started doing a little bit on Bing. I spend like ten grand a month on Bing and it makes us like 70, 80 grand a month. Just keep stacking up.

Speaker B: Next is Chad gbt. Bro, get ready.

Speaker A: Yeah. Why big sur on my website, which is a chat GBT search box on my website because people are getting familiar with chat GBT and also saves that person from calling my, my sales rep and distracting them from another opportunity. Um, if they got one question. If I'm 6 foot 10 and I could fit in the. Can I fit in the cold plunge. That's the only question which we see the searches on the big Sur AI on our website. They get the response they go by right after that. It knows the discount codes, it knows every single thing. It just syncs up to the site where it scans it and it has all the information from FAQs and stuff and you can feed it stuff as well and train it better. Um, but it was also incorporating those things, right? And then getting like the Aaliyah pop up on our website, doubling our opt in rate on SMS and signups. Getting um. I'm going to say it because if I don't remember it doesn't make me look like I believe in it. Opens end. We got open send, right? Thanks to you. Got open send. Didn't believe in it. I was like, oh, this is bullshit. Even my partner was like, there's no way this is real. I've done some. We were at dinner the other night and the same guy was giving me this argument and I was like, you know what? But yeah, he's giving me a free trial for two weeks. What do I have to lose? I connected Opensen in my website 98% or after Aaliyah pop up our opt in rate went to four and a half percent. So the other 95.9. The other 95.9% of people that went on my website, unless they abandoned a cart or they called us, I don't have their name, Number, email, nothing. OpenSense like, well, that other 95.5% of people that come on your site will be able to recover a good amount of those people's emails. It syncs up to your Klavi list. You do no work. All we do is change the subject title of your welcome series flow, integrate it to your open sin list that we get for you and we'll do it for two weeks, see what it makes you. And if it works, it's like two grand a month or three grand a month. Whatever it is. I did it for two weeks on my free trial. I did 85k and now we're doing like 250amonth off OpenSense. Some months it's down to like 140, some months it's like 100. But on average it's about $200,000 a month in revenue. So what I'm getting at is, is that I went from just meta to Metta and Google to then Meta, Google, Bing, YouTube opens in changing my pop up, putting more money in email and SMS marketing. And that's why our business has gone from doing two and a half years ago, 100k a month in revenue to multiple seven figures a month. It was just a matter of me spending more money on ads and marketing in all different angles and then additionally creatives. Dude, I was so scared. I was just talking to someone in your office about this. My demographic is 35 plus and wealthy people. I'm 27 with salt and pepper hair. I was insecure and scared to be the face of my brand and run ads and founders content because I didn't think it would help our business because of how young I feel like I look.

Speaker B: Thought it would hurt your business.

Speaker A: Thought it would hurt my business. But I heard that white listing ads worked well obviously with creators and from my experience, even inexpensive product, a micro creator with 5 to 12,000 followers does better. With my cold plunge ads selling an expensive product than an influencer with 100 or 500,000 followers. 10 out of 10 times I got a friend of mine that's 8,000 followers, one of our top creators. I gave him a free $4000. Cold plunge gives me 2 to 3 pieces of content a month. Like a 6x average. Last 6 months straight. It's insane. But why? Because he's promoting, uh, a lifestyle, an expensive product, but it doesn't look paid. He's a normal dude that just lives a healthy lifestyle. So I tripled down on that. I got like 40 active whitelisters promoting my product that live a healthy lifestyle. But I started incorporating selfie content of me just literally in my facility, showing what no other cold punch company can in my space inventory. Some can show that, but they can't show manufacturing because they assemble in America. But they don't manufacture it from a sheet of aluminum to a finished product. I do. I can show you that locally from around my facility. I can drive 10 minutes to my manufacturers. So I'm in our, in our headquarters, I'm in our manufacturers and I'm just like, screw it, I'll try it out. Founders content. I'm not even good on camera at the time. Started taking selfie videos, getting on podcasts, and I am our top performing ad for my entire business.

Speaker B: Let's go. That's security.

Speaker A: Yeah. It's really me against Gary. Yeah, I haven't cracked a joke with him yet, but legitimately it's me versus Gary. Some days Gary's good. Better than me. And some days it's me, my partner as well. Some days. Some days it's his just podcast clips. I've even rented a where I rented a podcast at a staged clip where wasn't your real podcast.

Speaker B: Some of this is. Is so interesting though because, um, something that's important, dude, is like, you were like, dude, I wasn't good on camera at the time. Right? Uh, I mean, it's good that you're acknowledging you're a lot better now because like, even being on this podcast, I can feel your energy's significantly better and more comfortable than it was like when we did the first one like fucking three years ago. You know what I mean? So you've come a long way for sure. But like I think that's what stops most people, dude. It's like they sit there like I'm not good or I'm embarrassed or I don't want to show my face or like whatever self excuse they have without even testing anything like they might be shit still running ad and still fucking perform really well. You know what I mean? And then over time, I've seen you get better. Yeah, I've watched you literally go from like kind of shy on camera to like fucking whipping my dick out and walking around the house.

Speaker A: I'm not gonna lie. I come up with some good ideas and I literally will be in my office and I'm like, I got an idea. I walk straight into the other door into the facility. I dropped the phone in the Cold plunge and I looked over. I'm like, oh. Beeped out the. And I was like, my name is Sam. I'm the founder of the Cold Life and I'm here at my facility. I'm gonna show you another Cold bunch company can. And I'm like, that's one of our top performing ads. I just thought of it myself six months prior. I'm like, I'm not a content guy. I was also my insecure. I was insecure about it. I wasn't confident about it. And I just faced that fear and I was like, what's my goal is to grow the biggest cold punch company in the world and to be the biggest cold punch company in the world. How am I going to do that? Continuing to do what I've been doing, put myself in uncomfortable positions and just try, try it out. What do you have to lose? It doesn't work. Fine, go on to the next thing. So. And I appreciate that. And that's literally what I preach to everybody. I'm like, no matter what type of business you own, you are the Founder, dude, people are going to resonate with your story, your energy, your messaging. I talk about another one of our top performing ads. I talked about the failures. Go buy a, uh, cheap product. You're going to get what you pay for. I know because we almost went out of business because I sold a cheap chiller and 65% of them broke within six months. So I had closed down shop for three months and go design my own American made chiller. And I now sold 5,000 units of it. And I can count on one hand how many cancels I've had because the products failed. And it's because it's quality. You pay for what you get for. I had people literally on my way here, I got a dm, um of a guy from one of my whitelisted ads swiping up on me. He goes, dude, you need to spend more money on this ad because this is amazing messaging. And it was that exact ad I just talked about. I literally talked about a failure. As the owner of my company. We almost went out of business. I sold a cheap product before I learned the hard way. If you want to go do that, do that. But you'll be calling me in six months. That's one of my sales guys lines when people are budget sensitive. Uh, I don't know if I can afford it. Listen man, you can't afford it because you're actually shooting yourself in the foot. You're going to lose more money if you go spend 50% less today. It's going to break in three to six months. You're not going to be out of pocket all that money and you're going to be back to square one. And they're going to be calling me. So you're going to be spending seven grand plus four instead. Let's spend seven now. That's the only seven you're going to spend. Closes them every single time. It scares them, but also gives them and I tell them, give them the story. The founders, when they started this, sold Chinese shillers just like the one you're thinking about buying. Don't do closes them every time. It's crazy, dude.

Speaker B: So you have a, um, you have two sides of the business. You have the DDC side ads running the website, closing deals, online transactions. And then you have a B2B side. Are they outbounding or what's it, what's.

Speaker A: It's all inbound.

Speaker B: It's all inbound.

Speaker A: It's all inbound. We actually haven't even tried outbound.

Speaker B: So like that 50k order you got today. What was the process? Someone to the website. They filled out a form for like multiple units.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And then you call the. The sales guy called them and closed them.

Speaker A: Yeah, so we just. We have a for business tab on our people click on that. That are obviously business owners. And the only way to get business pricing is to contact us. They have to put in their information. They go on the form. It goes to Salesforce, gets assigned to my.

Speaker B: Ew. You guys use Salesforce?

Speaker A: I mean, what's the other one Go high level. That one was even worse.

Speaker B: I mean, opposite ends of the spectrum go high levels, like the beginner business owner. And then Salesforce is the fucking angel dinosaur company.

Speaker A: Listen, I've learned one thing about running a business. You don't want to have your hands in every bucket. I have not touched Salesforce once. My partner had to deal with that. And I heard nothing but bad things. But I heard it sucks. I know it's expensive because I see how much it costs us, but it's

Speaker B: the most expensive and the shittiest.

Speaker A: But. But we. We had it when our team grew to like 10 people, and now we're down to two. And we're doing the same revenue, if not more, with just two people. Um, which was a huge eye opener. But, yeah, we use Salesforce, but they. They go. They fill out this form, and we already know what type of business they own, how many active members they have, et cetera, et cetera. And, um, the B2B process takes, in best case, two weeks to close. Worst case, six to 12 months sometimes. They're calling in regards to. I'm about to break ground on a new commercial facility. I'm shopping around for a lease. I got to get the permitting from my landlord. I'm buying a business. Um, or we're renovating all different types of things. Um, but that lead that just came in, that was a guy that's opening up a new gym in Boston, and he bought, I think, eight cold punches from us. Um, he customized them all to match his gym. That's what's really cool about our product compared to everybody else's, is that you can fit two of our cold tubs in the same area as the traditional laid down ones. And the more cold punches you have, the more money you can make as a business owner. So, you know, people are charging anywhere from 25 to $50 a session or anywhere from 100 to $300 a month for unlimited access or like, like a 10, 10 ticket pass. Like 10, 10 entries per month. So businesses are making on average five to $10,000 a month in extra revenue from each cold tub. So a lot of our marketing for that is similar to the photo booth, which you guys killed. Those photo booth ads that I got from you guys, remember those? Yeah, of course. Where it was a business in a box, right. I bought, I bought this thing for $2,400. I made all my money back in just 30 days. I charge $120 an hour to rent this out at Blah blah blah. So I took from what I learned that worked for the last business. And I did the same with the cold plunging, but not as pyramid scheme type scammy approach.

Speaker B: That's a different audience.

Speaker A: Different audience. This is more of like let's go to cycle bar.

Speaker B: You're selling to business owners. This is different. That was like we're selling to people who want to start a business from home.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And what's crazy is we now have the opportunity. We're about to do a webinar with gym launch. I've been talking to them for a while because what do they do? They help gyms make more money. And what can a cold plunge do? So it's the perfect partnership. Um, and we run a lot of ads of educating people on the power of adding a couple plunge. You know, what's the pain points, the retention rate, low margins, separating themselves from competition. Cold plunging is still just starting. So that's what all of our Messaging is on B2B.

Speaker B: Even at Lifetime, bro, they change the hot tubs to cold tubs.

Speaker A: Finally. Finally. Yeah, we saw getting color coded. No way.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's like a blue one and like the uh. I forgot what the other color is.

Speaker A: But you could tell how much we pay to go lifetime, bro.

Speaker B: Fuck me. I know, dude. Double pricing.

Speaker A: That's crazy.

Speaker B: So even they are.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's nuts. But that's that, that's what we do on, on the B2B side and then the other side's D2C. And what's crazy is like 65 to 70% of our business is over the phone sales. About 30% on average is direct.

Speaker B: I mean, you're high ticket though.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: When, when you were in the other business, there was a lot of phone too, right?

Speaker A: About the same. Yeah. Because it's an investment. They want to, you know, just peace of mind, speak to somebody and get a good feeling of it and et cetera. So, um, about 65 on the phone. 35 to 30% direct orders. But we just transitioned our business from a cold Plunge brand into a wellness brand that releases products all through the power of water. The reason why is because what I've learned from this business is it's not sustainable, it's not consistent because it's so expensive. Anything happens on in the world, business gets affected because it's expensive. The economy's down, crypto's down, something happens in the media. High ticket goes out first, high picking goes out first. It's not their solid priority, which makes sense, but that's not a healthy business to operate. Even being two and a half, three years into the market and being one of the two, I mean, it's really us versus one other company at this point. We're, we look great from the outside in. We have tons of credibility. And, um, we're like, how, you know, how is this sustainable? How is this healthy business to run? You know, we're, we're scaling our business. We just had a record week and now business is broccoli crickets selling one to two to three tubs a day. We can't do this. Our operating costs are too high. So we just decided to not follow every cold plunge business in our industry and go from cold to hot and launch a sauna and et cetera. No, we're like, let's incorporate a luxurious product still. Because we're known for a luxurious brand, we want to stay that way. I want to be the top end of the industry, not the bottom end. And I was like, what could we do to help this business? Something that's subscription based, reoccurring revenue. So we decided to develop a filtered, um, shower head. But we did not just go to China and find a shower head and white label it. We spent the last six months developing it. We dissected over 70 different filter prototypes. We tested through 10,000 gallons of water, which most filtered shower heads on the market. The only other premium one on the market anywhere near to our shower head got tested up to 7,000 gallons. So we did 3,000 gallons more in our testing. The other filtered shower head I just Talked about, after 7,000 gallons, it only got 50% of the chlorine out of the water. After 7,000 gallons hours. Our finalized filter that we are now, we just launched last Monday after, after 10,000 gallons of water, it still got 75% of the chlorine out of the water. So now we have that data to prove it. Data is everything, especially in health and wellness. People want to see the studies, the data, the science. And that's what our partner Gary stands behind, which we respect with him, he doesn't want to promote anything he doesn't believe in that he doesn't use in his daily life. And that's, that's why he's got such a good following, um, and a loyal following that believes everything he says. So we just released that on Monday and that's 199 bucks. And already 80% of our purchasers are subscribing and every three months they gotta buy a filter and they can only buy our filter. So we're doing that and next we're introducing a new filter type product and, and so forth. We're kind of expanding our product.

Speaker B: The importance is really you're going down market, right? Like you have a high ticket product, your dependency is on high ticket economy fluctuates too much. It's also like harder acquisition source. Like you have to spend thousands to get someone for 8k, right? Even at a 5 extra turn, you're spending 16, 1700 bucks, right to get a purchase. So like now what you're doing is you're opening up an entire, another segment of the market that will never buy from you at $6,000, 7,000, 8,000 to start. But they might eventually, right? But they have to start at 200 bucks.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: They, you have to give them something for 200. They have to buy it, trust it, I really like it. You know, uh, maybe the $8,000 product is worth it more than the $3,000 one that I have in my house.

Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. So we're acquiring a customer for way cheaper, which is the hardest thing. Just get them in the door. We're going to be making reoccurring money off them every three months off a filter, which they're going to need. And yeah, down the road, when they are ready to continue to invest into their health and wellness routine and their lifestyle, they can. Then if they want to get a cold plunge, who are they going to think about? The cold life shower head was the best. The box was the premium. The shower hasn't broke. The filter is amazing. I see the results. No shit. Where they going to go when they want to buy a cold from us? So like everything you just said, it just, it made complete sense. It was the right approach, the right strategy and it was definitely the right decision. I mean it cost multiple six figures to develop that product. That's the downside and the difference of people being like, you know, why is your business so big and why, why is your business taking off and why is mine stuck at this? And I'm like, because you look just like everybody else, because you're selling something that everybody else can sell. We create every product that we sell so no one else has it. It's unique, it's special. We, uh, take the extra mile. But that's why the results are what the results are. And that's why when I drop ship for six years, I was like, this is great to get the experience, make some money, have some fun, experience life. But I'm not really building anything legitimate.

Speaker B: Build a hundred million dollar brand.

Speaker A: No, some people did and they got lucky back in the day. But uh, yeah, I mean nowadays it's all about creating a brand, dude. And it's about the culture too. We focus on culture, the brand, the quality, the customer experience. We have four people in customer service full time. I mean as soon as you order, you get, you get a contact to confirm your order, the address. You get an update when it's done getting, getting manufactured. You can update when it's getting scheduled to be shipped. I mean, we take care of them. It's a red carpet, you know what I mean? And these are, these are rich people. We want it to be stress free. They don't have to think about it. Um, so it's a really interesting business, man. But I tell people too, my business is like an info offer. I mean it's literally you get an abandoned cart on Shopify as soon as it comes in, we get a zap on Slack, sales channel gets it. They got their name, number, email address, sales organization. Yeah, I always tell them I copy and paste their address on Google so you know who you're talking to and see what type of level of the person they are is see, kind of fill out the vibe beforehand and then you see what they had in their cart, call them, speed a lead. And then just like the other day when things were slow, I was like, go through abandon this last three months, dial every single one of them again. It's the same thing. Then we get inbound calls, but it's literally just getting leads like you do on info. You know, people going on your BSL and submitting a form and then having a setter and a closer. It's literally my business is operated just like an info offer. It's crazy.

Speaker B: That's a pretty cool perspective.

Speaker A: Yeah, I was like, came up with that the other day, but I was like, it's, I was explaining to somebody and he was like, dude, you realize your business is like an info offer. I was like, that's actually really true. It's crazy.

Speaker B: Even though you hate all the info offer guys.

Speaker A: I do. I do consulting, but, like, I don't. I don't. I don't like the info space that much. Ah. I have a lot of resentment, uh, and frustrations around it just from. I used to be in the scene and around people that were in it. And a lot of it's bullshit. But giving those guys credit, they're good marketers, you know, they did a lot of things right. And they do have some people that are making results, which is valid. But a lot of people in that space didn't make money off what they preach. And that's what frustrates me, because I could be worth $50 million right now if I started info seven years ago.

Speaker B: No doubt.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And you had actual results.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I had results then, you know, But I was too transparent to be good at info at the time, because I was like, you know, I lost 100 grand last month and fuck drop shipping. But, like, I still do it, you know, I was. I wouldn't have the right mindset.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: To be a good marketer for it because I. To scare people away.

Speaker B: Yeah. But it's not even being a good marker that's just kind of being dishonest, right?

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a little bit different.

Speaker B: Like, I, uh, think it's important that people understand how hard it is.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Like, even me, bro. I mean, everyone sees Eddie all this nice. Oh, my gosh, look how successful he is. But I hear it all the time. Oh, you go, you got so much money, bro. I'm like, bro, I'm m. I lost money this month. What are you saying?

Speaker A: Yeah, I lost a lot of. No, that's why I've resented With. I. I've. That's why I've connected with you so well, is because, like, every other time we. I'm around you, I either say something crazy about, like, a loss or like a. A hard time that we're going through or vice versa with you. Like, the last time I was here, I was touring that other office space, uh, that you were dealing with, all that. That business that fell apart. And you're like, dude, like, I. I just got. But you're like, I'm figuring it out. Well, then within a week, I'm out of a tenant in here. I'm doing this. I'm doing this. Like, I'm not even going after him. I'm just gonna move on from it. I'm gonna make more money. I was like, damn. Yeah. Looks good from the outside in, but he's got his own.

Speaker B: That Was mega.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: That was crazy.

Speaker A: Yeah, I know. But I'm m saying like I, I, the, the world and the Internet in particular is lacking realness. So when you can feel someone being real and authentic, I gravitate towards that person because most people are just full of nowadays and everybody as a business owner, the bigger you grow, the more problems you're going to have. You know, your team's bigger than mine, but we have 20 full time people, dude. It's, it's a lot, lot, a lot to deal with.

Speaker B: It's a lot, it's a lot.

Speaker A: And I've also realized it's like some people aren't built for this. And possibly at one point I thought I wasn't built for that because I'm like, dude, I'm. This is overwhelming. Six figures a month in payroll. Like we gotta do over a million a month to break even. What, what the heck? They get paid before me. Like, wow, that's frustrating. It's funny, right? Yeah, yeah. Some months you get paid. He doesn't. Um, this month, October's always rough.

Speaker B: This month Victor got paid and I did not get paid. Yeah, yeah, ironically. But Victor actually does work for like Scoville too. So this month Victor got paid from Scoville and from bad marketing and Eddie did it. That's cool.

Speaker A: Respect, bro.

Speaker B: He's squinting.

Speaker A: That's why you're here. That's why you're here. After five on a Thursday, you know everyone else is going home now.

Speaker B: We work till six, bro. We're uh, nine to six, eight hour days.

Speaker A: Well, I want to give you, I want to give you guys a shout out too because this is full on truth. I've been a client of yours going back to four media days, complimented the content. I spent like 30 grand with you guys on content on the photo booth brand. I use the same content for a full year. I didn't get any more content because how good it was and how much I got, y' all are phenomenal at that. But email and SMS marketing, y' all rip at that stuff. Like shout out to you guys, I'm saying you do it, you do it right. And Amazon, I use all for Amazon, email and SMS and content. And soon we'll be talking about email SMS again because I'm, I'm venturing out on that.

Speaker B: So if you do, let me know. And you already saw open send us. It's cool because the open sense stuff, we're at that dinner in Miami. Thanks for stepping up and vouching for me. And this one Guy was um, he had a big brand. I actually looked it up. He does multiply figures a year on his toothbrushes. He has the like auto brush.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And um, yeah, he was like mega skeptical and I was like, bro, ask Sam. And then you start talking about it. Another guy over, he's like, oh, I use it too. And he's like, oh, I use it too.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Four of the guys in the table are all like, I use it as well, dude.

Speaker B: Like, yeah, look, it makes me 40x return. Yeah, that was cool. It was like. It's cool because you know when you stand behind a product like bro, you have no idea how many. I mean, I'm sure you do. Like you could guess but like how many people come to shell their shit through Eddie? Yeah, bro, I had, I had a brand last week offer me 100k and I said no, really, like 100k, cash in the bank, Just like put her name on this. No, I don't use that. So I can't promote it. You know what I mean? Like I've always stood by that. Yeah, I'll promote shit that I'm, that I use or I believe in or I own. You know what I mean? And it's very rare these days when people who have big influences like, like are willing to be super tight about what they promote and only promote good products.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: You know what I mean? I think that's um. And so I'm very happy about the open sense situation ending up being an exceptional product. Yeah. It's hard at first when you invest into a company. You see things on the outside. But then when you get an insight, sometimes it's like not what it seems.

Speaker A: But it's not just that. One thing that I learned from you, even watching from the outside in too is like outside of what you just said. Like it's also just all about your team. It's about who, it's about who you hire, how you train them, the environment you, you have, the culture you have in your company. You want everyone enjoy working for you. They don't want to do it. They don't want to despise you. They don't want to be like this is just another job. Like I remember back in the day when I would pay more attention when I was not as busy now running an eight figure business, a little more time on my hands.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I would see all yalls reels, like doing like the little competitions in the office and like the fun games, the little prizes and stuff. I was like one day when I have a company that's the size of Eddie's company. I want to do the same thing, like, interact with people, see the actual true smiles, laughs, the behind the scenes. Like you're creating culture. And I told you this when we're at dinner in Miami. But like, my creative director for the Cold Life came here to, for media, the, the og Bad marketing. Yeah. And he came here right out of college. Michael, if you know, you know. And if you know, you know. But, uh, I'm saying he came here and he worked with you for a, uh, year, a year and a half. And I'm saying, like. And he says it himself. He's probably, in my opinion, the best creative director I've ever met in my entire life. His skills are insane. He sometimes takes too long to make a single static image because it's, uh, art to him and that's why he's so good. But at the same time, like, well, I told you that at dinner. It's like, you know how to, you know how to treat, treat people right, but you also know how to train them because Michael feels like he's in debt to you. And I'm saying, I've recruited people that have worked for you because I know what I was going to get. Because I'm like, all right, here he knows what. He already gets the here. He knows what I want, how consistent I want it. He makes 100 freaking ads a month, one person. And he also does 12 other things and he works nine hour, 10 hour days. But I'm going to take care of him. It's like, yo, you're going to start here, but you're gradually going to get here. And he's like, I learned the same at four Media, dude. He's like, I know what to do and he owns this whole department. Um, that's why I've learned from you in a lot of ways is like, my success is not just me, dude. It's my team. My team is only where I'm at because I hire people that are better than me and their departments and I let them own it. I don't micromanage them. Once they have my trust, own it. Michael owns it, dude. My website design, social media ads, everything. I just review the Google Doc for 30 seconds and I'm like, looks good compared to like, let's get on Campbell. I'm gonna give you some examples and blah, blah. It's like, no, uh, he came into my business already knowing all of that because he started here and he got trained. Right? So I've learned a lot from you on that as well. Just in regards to all that, Like, I, I. A lot of our people are remote, but I try to talk to them every day on the phone. Whether it's five, ten minutes. They hear my voice no matter where I am. Get on, get on slack on huddles, um, with them real quick and make sure they're good. Take care of them, make sure I get them paid on time. Never let them feel like the business is struggling.

Speaker B: Um, even when it is. Sometimes.

Speaker A: Even when it is. Yeah. I mean, I'll vocalize, like, hey, like, we're behind this month. Like, we got to catch it up. Like, let's go to war. And then I'll give them an incentive, like, I'll take more money out of my pocket. Like, hey, you do 100k this week in sales? Like, 100k more than your average. Like, I'll pay you $1500 extra on top of your commissions, on top of your payroll. Like, because my sales team is my entire company. I mean, they make more money than anybody in my company. Make more money than me. Um, but they deserve to, you know? So my sales rep was making, like 60k a year at, like, a tech job doing, like, support or, like, account management. No commissions. I pay him 60 base plus commissions. He's making like, 30, 40 grand a month.

Speaker B: 30, 40K a month?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: I'll, uh, quit right now. Shut this bitch down.

Speaker A: And this is. And this is a. This is. This is a new. He's only been with us for, like, four months. Yeah, first month, he made like, 20.

Speaker B: I think you're probably overpaying in commission, bro, because these are inbound leads making.

Speaker A: He's selling a million. Million. Half a month. Paying him that much.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, but the million and a half month is coming in. It's not like he's going and getting it right.

Speaker A: Yeah, but I mean, he's on the phone from 8am to 10pm every night, seven days a week. Uh, like he deserves something.

Speaker B: Oh, he's. He's on the phone that long.

Speaker A: He's the only guy.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: He's handing all of it for D to C. I understand. Okay. But I step in. I still do calls myself.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So. And that's. That's the other thing. Like, step in, dude. People get comfortable. It's like, all right, yesterday we might do 150k. Today it's noon. We're at 30. Like, I want to do what we did yesterday again instead of me sitting around and bitching. And why is it slow. I literally will pick up the phone myself, so. And I close everybody if I get

Speaker B: them, um, on the show.

Speaker A: And I close everybody. Yeah, I'm the founder, and they know my name because I run ads off my profile. They see me on podcasts. We went on Gary's podcast. People watch that. They heard our story. Like, you're authentic. Uh, your story is phenomenal. Like, I want to be a customer of your product. Like, I just had one question. Like, the fact you're on the phone shows what your company's about. Like, or I'll call customers that are frustrated because their order's a few days late. And I'm like, hey. Like, this is the founder. They're like, they're more successful probably than me. Little do they know. And they're like, what? Like, this is an A.I. i'm like, no, it's not A.I. this is Sam. Ask me any question. I'll prove it's not AI it's like, this is Sam Maxwell. They're like, no way. Like, I just watched your podcast with Gary because they're huge Gary fans. And I'm like, yeah, it's me. What's up, M? I'm like, I'm here to call you, show you what we're about. I'm sorry, your order's a few days late. We had a manufacturing air put us behind 72 hours. It's going out first thing Monday. What can I do to make you? Make you happy? And I was expected to give them a partial discount or a free accessory or whatever. Dude, nothing. I'm like, all right, well, listen, no one has my number, but you're one of the lucky, lucky people that do. Save my number. If you ever need anything going forward, just give the owner a call. They're like, that is so badass. Like, I got the owner's number. 45 year old. I'm 27. Uh, I'm like, they don't even know how old I am. That's the other thing. Sometimes they ask me, yeah, uh, how old are you, dude? If you don't mind me asking. I'm like, just almost 30.

Speaker B: Almost 30.

Speaker A: They're like, how close to 30? I'm like, all right, I'm 27. And then I used to be hesitant on answering every time. 10 out of 10. So cool. That's so cool, man. Kudos for you. Hold your partner. I'm like, 30. He's like, dude, y' all are badass. I'm like, thanks, man. So people will support dude entrepreneurs if they hear your story.

Speaker B: And it's got to be more authentic, bro.

Speaker A: That's all it is.

Speaker B: They all resonate with that man. I mean no one residents for the perfect life. Unless you're just a young naive child. You know what I mean?

Speaker A: If you're listening to this and you own any type of business, you're not running founders content, you're missing out. It'll grow your business. I'd get, I put money on it. 25 within the first 30 days minimum organically and with paid. And get on podcast too and just talk about it. If this podcast reaches a thousand people or 10,000 people, I will get a cold punch deal out of this podcast. Or uh, recruit somebody that wants to work for my company or be an affiliate or whatever, I'll get something for sure for investing an hour of my time. You know what I mean?

Speaker B: So on that note, thank you for investing this hour. It's been awesome. Yeah, thanks for sharing all this stuff behind the scenes. A lot of things people don't see online too given marketing game. Give us the behind the scenes at the Gary Brca ah collab and everything in between. If uh, people want to find you online, where's the best spot to connect with you besides uh, ordering from your company and complaining so they can get your phone number?

Speaker A: Shit, I gave that away. My Instagram is the Sam Maxwell and then uh, my company is called the Cold Life, the Cold Life.com and the Cold Life on Instagram.

Speaker B: That's gonna work. Now we have 300% fucking increase in complaints after.

Speaker A: Yeah, everyone's like, I just ordered and I'm frustrated. Anytime. Talk to Sam. You ordered six minutes ago. What's going on? You have the confirmation email. Now we're talking to Sam.

Speaker B: Thank you so much. Thank you guys for listening to the Bad Marketing podcast and we'll see you

Speaker A: guys in the next episode.

Speaker B: Thanks so much for watching another episode of the Bad Marketing podcast. I hope you got immense value from it. And if you did, all we ask of you is that you share this with a friend that you think could find this very valuable. And depending on the platform that you're watching or listening to this on, please like subscribe or rate the podcast as best as possible. It really means a lot to us. We pour so much money, time and effort into getting these guests here, filming all this, editing it all for free just to give you free value. And all we ask in return is that you just share this with people. You give it a positive review, uh, so that we can continue to reach more people and impact more lives with all this effort that we're putting in. With that being said, thanks so much for tuning in to the episode, and I look forward to continue to provide you more valuable content moving forward on the Bad Marketing podcast. Make sure you subscribe.