#249 -Michael Erickson Facchin - Ad Badger

[MUSIC] Hello everybody, before we jump into today's episode, we have two sponsors we want to say thank you to for supporting the show. The first one is routine. You guys have heard me talk about routine honestly back from the early days of the podcast and it's still a product I use every single morning. They have a prompt for me here. I'm going to do a little impromptu on this ad read today because honestly this is a product that I truly believe in and so I'm going to I'm just going to tell you guys exactly what I think in and why first and foremost, this is a stat that they shared but when you sleep, you lose between a pound and a pound and a half of water and most of that's just sweating while you sleep. I used to not know if that was actually true to be honest. I felt like a pound to a pound and a half of water seemed like quite a bit while I slept. 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I was like, do I really want to have mushrooms in my coffee? Well folks, I will tell you when I use NeuroRost, one of the things that has stood out to me the most is in. Well, I'll back up. People that know me know that I have way too much caffeine typically one of the things this year I've done a good job of is cutting out alcohol, not completely, but predominantly I don't touch a lot of alcohol anymore. What I think I've actually done the other way though is that a lot more caffeine. So I do I do definitely drink too much caffeine that something I need to work on next year is to try and minimize how much of that but NeuroRost is something that has actually helped me. Because of the way they formulated their coffee like unlike regular coffee, which is you know still something I consume. But NeuroRost specifically doesn't cause jitters or crashes mushroom coffee provides a more balanced and sustained energy allowing to stay focused and productive throughout the day. 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You get to use code just Shane White and you'll get 30% off your order. Hope you guys love both these products. I'm trying to not only bring you guys products that I use but that I believe in on the podcast. I'm not taking ad reads for any brands that I don't really believe in. So anyway, hope you guys love both those products. Your routine.com and NeuroRost.com. I've added those links to the show notes. Hope you guys love it and I got an awesome guest coming up right after this. All right, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Shane White show. I'm pumped. This is going to be a fun one. Michael Erickson, Fishing on the podcast. Mike, thank you for coming on. I really appreciate it, man. Thanks for taking some time today. Good to be here Shane. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. For everyone who doesn't know who you are or hasn't heard of your name, would you mind giving everyone a little intro just to just who you are and what you're building. Yeah, my name is Michael Erickson, Fishing. I spend most of my time at adbadger.com where I talk a lot about Amazon advertising strategy and I help build an Amazon advertising software tool as well to help marketers on Amazon more easily automatin optimize their campaigns. Love it. Love that. So for everyone listening, the reason this one I'm so excited about Mike is legitimately one of those advertising geniuses that you've probably heard me talk about or alluded to potentially. And today I'm pumped because he's the man behind the platform that you know a noble partners for starting to really use and really leverage and it's I've told you this. We've been on a few calls together now. I feel it's the first advertising platform that I truly believe for anyone who works with Amazon. It was an advertising platform built for advertisers buy an advertiser versus what you typically see, which is like a software that is built by engineers or just just folks who see a business opportunity and they get a lot of engineers involved. You can tell it as we've been testing it. There's just so much thoughtfulness and little nuggets here and there not to go on a tangent even start this off when we can I was in I was doing the end grams today and I just went down a new rabbit hole in that report that I hadn't found before and you mentioned it to me there's a reason I dove into it was you had mentioned it to me on the last call we had earlier this week and it was like. It's just I opening thing that you know I've been looking at PPC within campaign manager in Amazon for everyone listening doesn't know campaign manager is just a platform with an Amazon that you run advertising this report that that Mike's developed within ad badger the software he's designing and building this kind of of data you just you wouldn't be able to get to without a ton of data manipulation that is not scalable and so it was really. It's funny I just keep having all these light bulbs each week as I'm diving deeper and deeper into the software so music to my ears yeah yeah I know I boosted up here but seriously it's an awesome it's an awesome platform so let's let's rewind the clock a little bit Mike if you don't mind how did you even get involved in PPC management where did all this start with Amazon and you just even getting into advertising like what where does the story all begin and you know it started like almost 15 years ago I really my first sort of on track. My first sort of entrepreneurial goal was to like move to the beach in Thailand somewhere and make like a thousand or two thousand dollars a month and like have my cost of living be like $500 a month and just like for our work week type right that was really my first inspiration in order to get there I was just sort of taking inventory of like what is valuable to businesses like what kind of value can I create for the world and I started just picking up odds and ends like. Digital marketing jobs so somebody wanted a website made I'll build your website somebody needs help with our Google Analytics like let's dig into it somebody needs help with their Amazon marketing let me help you want to build like a Shopify store and like do SEO for it like let's do it together I did so many different facets of like digital marketing like online work that pay traffic PPC seem to be the thing that bubbled up the most for me think seem to be the thing that I resonated the most most with it made sense to me I liked data like data manipulation like thinking of strategy and like how to use the same tools as competitors but use them smarter better faster and that's when I just sort of started focusing more and more on the pay traffic side of things so that is sort of the inception point behind that whole thing it just I did a whole bunch of stuff and I found the thing that I've resonated the most with. in what was it back things? It's evolved a lot. What was kind of the big thing that attracted you to the paid side of the media buying in this whole world that we're all both involved in? I'd like to the fact that it was so quantifiable. I really like SEO. Even to this day, I really liked SEO back then. And looking at the way that SEO was done versus the way that paid traffic was done, it felt like if I'm going to work with customers, because I really liked that element too. I really liked meeting a new business, getting to know them, seeing how I can help. And then if I can go back in time, it was like, I really liked SEO. I really liked paid traffic services. What's it easier offer? And at the time I felt like from what I knew about how to create an offering to apply and how to develop a service, paid traffic had better tracks, I felt. And I felt like, I really liked it. I felt like I was going to work with SEO. And I just felt like PPC, paid traffic, paid media, whatever the word we used for it, just seemed really quantifiable, which I was attracted to. I couldn't agree more with why. You and I have similarities to why we got into it. I know for me, my background has always been in finance and then e-commerce related finance. And I told someone this recently, I said they were asking about why do I seem like I talked so much more about marketing now than I do about finance. And I said finance is cool, but for a lot of finance jobs, I don't know how much you know about finance. It's a lot of theory. Like you're building forecasts, you're taking things that happen, but then you're trying to guess on what's the future going to look like for a business. And I started to realize over the first five or six years of my career, I'm like, man, how many things have I built that never came to fruition? But the business is that's part of what you need to do to be in a finance role. And then I remember my first time I was really playing around with marketing and especially PPC. The first time I ever dove into PPC, the metrics reminded me so much of what I loved about finance. But to your point, it was literally like you try somebody try route a you get the results and then you can make a pivot and you continue to build a business with actual quantifiable. It was just so much more tangible. Yeah, I remember for the first time that was it was like, oh, this is like fun with number of what it's tangible. It's not like theoretical. Yeah, I really like that you said that one of my favorite finance books and I don't pretend to be a finance expert. One book that I have read was like financial intelligence for entrepreneurs. Okay. And in it, it says, hey, entrepreneurs, if you're reading this book, I read this so long ago, but at the time, it was like really opened my brain right and it's down. But at the time, it has a, it has like maybe the first 20% of the book is just trying to educate entrepreneurs that finance is not necessarily what you think it is. It's not a definite absolute thing. There's a lot of storytelling that actually goes into finance. You can move things around. You can do different kinds of depreciation or appreciation. There's so many things that you can do that actually make it more of an art than an absolute science. And I think that really blew my mind when I was the early days of entrepreneurship learning about business finance. And it's always a reminder I find interesting about finance. Or is it like a PPC for example? Yeah, I mean, so true. Right. I always, when I was in business school, I remember down the middle. I always thought about it as, you know, finance is kind of the, that's how the fence is like the artist, the like what could happen. Yeah. Accountings, what happened? That was always like, you know, to me, you either were like one or the other. You were like looking at the past and telling the organization what happened or you were trying to paint a picture of what could happen. Yeah. Cool. So you, you, you kind of fall in love with the paid side thing SEO. That all makes sense because those tie together really well. What was your first like real job within PPC and within paid marketing like, would you work for a firm? What did you, where did you kind of start? I started freelancing. Okay. Freelancing, finding clients off like jobs sites. So like sites like Upwork for example. I was, I was grinding those sites, building up, you know, my profile and my resume and whatnot. And just trying to deliver as much value as I could back then. I'm just to sort of build up a roster of recurring clients. So yeah, I was, I was grinding those job sites. Would you recommend that for like looking back now? Is that a row route? Like if someone's listening today that maybe wants to get into something new but doesn't want to maybe take the lead like starting a huge like an organization, right? They just, I have something they're obsessed with. Is that? Yeah. Could you say that's a great way to dive in? I've never, you know, that's like a really scrappy, really interesting way to do it. I would say absolutely, you know, because it's, it's like, it's not elegant. It's, it's really like, you know, backyard wrestling, where it's just like, it's like a fight club, where it's like you're going and it is a little bit brutal. Like, you know, going off of those job sites, you're able to be more selective about your clients. You're able to frame up offers better. You're able to like get more specific work that you really want to do. And on those job sites, it's like you're almost like boxing other people bidding on these jobs as well. So it is very much of crucible, but I feel like it really does. Harden you and you come at the other side. Really good. So yeah, if someone's like, hmm, maybe I want to get into some kind of digital service. Upwork is like a great spot to like go and battle it out. And when you mean battle, I've never actually never used in the sites like to hire or to sell my services. What are you like, are you trying to bid out people on like prices basically? So first of all, the people that go to upwork and request jobs is or like they go on upwork and they say, I need help with social media. The fact that they're on the client is on upwork is sort of telling, meaning like this client doesn't have any contacts. They don't have any referrals that they can go to first. Sure. Like in their networks, all of this. So they're going into something where they haven't, you know, have any peers that they can get recommendations from. And then on top of it, they're just sort of putting, you know, nailing a wooden sign into the ground saying like come and do my social media. And a lot of times like that thing might not be very detailed. It might not be very. It might not even be the thing that the business needs. But then they're getting a lot of people from around the world saying I can help with your social media. And it's difficult for the person bidding on that job, you know, to really even know what is being asked as opposed to the other way around where if someone's like a social media manager, they can go on their site and say, I do this thing for this amount. If you need it, you know, these are the people that need it. If this is you come work with me. Yeah. So it's an interesting thing. It's an interesting dichotomy of like people companies that go to jobs sites asking for help. And then there's like the professional service provider. And like, so it's a it's a really tricky situation. I think it's harder. And then on top of it, you know, upwork takes like a gigantic percentage. They have all these rules about where you communicate. So it's not even like you could apply your system to the upwork environment. So it's tricky. But for certain situations, it really is helpful. You know, a lot of people have build up good client rosters through those jobs sites. Yeah. Okay. Got it. And so you you do this. You've battled out. You did back yard wrestling. As you said, how long did you just kind of go through dealing with this and trying to build a business that way before you did the next thing. So yeah, slowly but surely those clients, you know, you work together for a long time. You start to have sort of steady revenue. You start to get referrals from them. You know, it starts to sort of snowball that way. And I started an agency at the time because I was really energized by the whole thing. I really like that whole concept of like building a team like doing great work together. You know, I grew up playing sports. So it's like it's a lot of similar reasons that I like it today. Like entrepreneurship. Like I'm really I really like to build teams and like get the team. Yeah, the right configuration really energized talented people doing cool things like having high five and clients like doing cool work, being a value. Like there's a lot of those reasons why entrepreneurship really inspires me. Okay. Got it. Yeah. And the agency was it. Was it mainly doing PPC or was it doing PPC? Nice. Okay. But do you have a certain category or types of brands and clients you worked with? That was all. Primarily it was e-commerce. So it was probably 80% e-commerce, probably 20% just straight up lead gen. Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. And you guys have like a it was Amazon mainly or you doing all sorts of. Yeah. So that agency is still going. It's search scientists. Nice. Okay. And that's Google ads, Facebook ads. There's a team there that is just Google ads and Facebook ads experts and. Yeah. So in 2017, we were doing Google ads, Facebook ads and Amazon ads. I feel really fortunate because we had clients at search scientists who were doing Amazon like before it was cool. Like before like there was like a quit your job. Do arbitrage. Start an Amazon company, white label some product or something on Amazon. We feel really lucky that we had a few clients on Amazon at the time. So we're just like, you know, we didn't know much about like having an offer and like having a scope. We're just like, oh, you want us to also do your Amazon. Like sure, let's do it. Okay. I feel really fortunate because we got early exposure to Amazon. I mean so long ago, like maybe 2011. Wow. I was working on Amazon clients. And then in 2017, it was like, what if we were to build out our specific Amazon company that just did Amazon work. and that's when I'd badger with it. Wow, okay, good for you. I didn't know I didn't realize that's how the story went. I mean, yeah, you got to be there. Like I really didn't get in day, I was on until 2017. So right when you were starting Ad Badger, that's when I joined our X-WR. So I still felt like that was early days, but you were genuinely the early days. Very cool. You know, I have to ask, 'cause we've talked about this a little bit, obviously, you know, I run an agency. What were some of the biggest lessons learned like good and bad that you, right off the top of your head that you think of that you're like, yeah, this was either, you know, something that I will always remember, and it's a good thing, that were roadblocks that, you know, just inevitable with running an agency. - Yeah, I think the thing that is most, one of the most valuable lessons is like getting in front of problems earlier. Because when you're doing agency work, you know, you have a client expecting certain things. You have your team working with that client who understands certain things and has their own set of sort of set of expectations. There's really two separate realities going on. There's like the reality of like the company, providing the service, and there's the reality of the company who has the service. I feel that it is impossible to be completely aligned. Even if you get a client and agency sitting down and you're like, what is our goal for Roe as? And you wrote down a number, both people on the opposite sides of that table will both have different thoughts, feelings, histories, expectations, even within that number. - Mm-hmm. - Yep. - So it is so difficult to get on the same page with clients. Like a client might want a seven Roe as and the team providing the service might feel like that's so unrealistic. So they may be, they say five, but like now nobody's happy. Like it's so difficult to like get on the same page with clients, but the one thing that I feel like is incredibly helpful about getting on the same page with clients is getting in front of issues. Meaning, you know, the economy doesn't only go up and industry or a niche doesn't only go up forever, but it's just so infinite. And at the same time, there's like a degree of random variance. Like I was just looking at an account for a set of a thousand search terms. It had like 600,000 searches one week and those same terms the next week was like 800,000. Like the week after that was like back to 600,000. And that's just like random market noise. Like there's not the exact same amount of people searching every single day, purchasing the exact same amount every single day. So there's like you need to zoom out. It's like how far do you zoom out? Why, like, you know, why are you zooming out? So it's like, so many of these factors. The thing that I feel like is most helpful in an agency relationship is to like get ahead of those. So like if you are having it down week, that's worth being communicative with the client. And as soon as you find out that, hey, this is a week where there's only 500,000 searches instead of our average of 800,000 searches. It's worth having that conversation ahead of time, firing off a quick message, saying, hey, just FYI, this is going to be a down week, revenue wise, because of the fewer searches. That kind of thing tells the client that even if there's sort of things that we're, you know, we have different expectations. Client wants to grow now. You know that it's going to take a long time. Even if we have these different levels of expectations and timelines, it at least forms the bond that like the client wants to know that somebody cares about them and is thinking about them proactively. And I feel like that's such a great way to do it, which is to like, hey, I'm as dissatisfied on this downturn as you are. And like, here's why it's happening. Here's what we're going to do about it. And like, here's why, you know, I am or am not worried. I feel like that kind of stuff is, is gold for an agency client relationship. - No, that's, that's such great advice. Yeah, like I, we try really, really, I mean, it's definitely an ethos of ours of just full transparency, good and bad, and you know, everything in between with our clients. That's a really good point though, especially, you know, trying to get ahead of things like macro like that. Yeah, that's a wild one because my brain spins on the, you know, the variety of different brands we've worked on over the years. There's so much of that. And I know, you know, just as a fellow advertiser working with brands, that is a challenging piece. And I'm sure you've dealt with this. Add Badgers a good example of like, as I've gotten to the weeds over the last few months and trying to like understand all these different things I can see. The one thing that's been eye opening is, the more you learn about PPC and advertising, I almost feel like the bigger the universe around it gets and then trying to always boil that down for clients is something I'm always working on, right? Because sometimes we have 30 minutes or an hour on a call together and I could spend the whole time talking about theory and data we've seen and trends we're seeing and you can kind of overwhelm people that aren't doing PPC all the time. So I know that's like a, that's like a, there's a given a take. But that's a really good piece of advice. I appreciate that. I'm just saying who's involved in PPC, that's a, that's a gem. That's a good one. Yeah, what's that saying? Bad news doesn't get better with time. I love that one. - That's a good one. - Yeah, yeah, you know, that's so true. When you see something, say it. - Wow, yeah, that's a good one. My brain's spinning. So you, so you do the agency, we've talked about this a little bit off air, but I'm excited to dig into it a little more. I mean, obviously starting your own agency, seeing some success there, big jump to then start a software company. So I'm sure your brain started spinning at some point before you made that official jump. But was there a, are you still with search scientists now? Are you doing both at, okay, okay, got it. So you're still with the agency. Do you remember like week one day one of the concept of ad badger? Like did you write something down? Did you wipe over something? Did you have a conversation with somebody? Where was like the spark of this business and where the two come from? - You know, it's really, I think perhaps every entrepreneur needs some kind of delusion, little confidence, where, you know, a quote that I really like is like operate as if success were inevitable. Meaning, you know, you wouldn't do anything if you knew that it was gonna fail or if you felt like it was gonna fail. And I feel like sometimes people do, right? Like they're like, I'll try this and, you know, I'll just try it. As opposed to like, I'm going to do something. This is like, you know, woo, woo mindset stuff. But I literally think I, I simply have a delusion that says like, oh yeah, I can do that. Like that's something I can do. You know, I can organize my schedule or like I can figure that out. So it's just sort of the belief that like, I was using a lot of tools for Google ads and Facebook ads at the time. And I was like, how come there's only a tool that, you know, scratches my own itch for Amazon ads? I can do that. Like I can see what I see what's out there on the Google ad side and like, I can figure that out. So I think that was like the seed of it. And then yeah, I would also say the other superpower there is like having a really strong network. So I was able to like contact people that I knew who had software products and like e-commerce or software products on Amazon at the time and like get their insight. And like, so having a really strong networks for like someone who's done something that you might also want to do in Jalipal as well. Okay. Got it. Got it. And so launching a software, is it just like launching an agency like, did you start with the bait six? Like did you start like an LLC? Get like some ad badger emails going like, we're some of those just like admin things. There's a bunch of admin stuff here. Yeah. Okay. So that's the same for a software company. It would be for anything else. What was like the, do you remember like some of the first steps? I think the beginning of any story is so fun. Like what were some of the first steps where you're like, okay, ad badgers like a thing. So you had to, did you make some sort of like, I'm thinking like an API connection or something. Like you had to probably play with something with the data out out of Amazon. One do I feel, I think the first moment I was able to use it to like automate a process. Like, hey, we have these Amazon clients. So like now you can, now you don't have to do that process anymore. I think that's really, I thought that was really neat. What do you remember what that was? It was a negative keyword management. Just like the classic, one of my favorite things is just like, if a search term gets 30 clicks in a month, that in order like turn it into a negative exact, it was that thing because it was like, we're able to grab data, absorb it, study it automatically. And then every night it will check for you. If it, if you have a search term that means those parameters and then like go take action for you. So it was a sort of like automation component that, so the oldest tool in our toolbox is that search term negative keyword finder. Which I really like. That's one, I mean, that was one of the things they actually gravitated us to come to you. Because it's funny, you know, I've told you before, the whole AI word, I feel like is used really, really, really widely at this point. And there's a lot of software companies that are just grabbing it and saying everything's AI. It's just an algorithm. The negative targeting for anyone who's involved in Amazon, they'll know exactly what, you know, we're talking about. But that is something that I remember when we were going through some software tools. That feature alone, like tangibly, it's such a, it's such an awesome tool. And I'm, you know, not to just totally blow you up here, but it's even, you know, I say it as an agency, like we, we are so much more in the weeds than an average agency. And we do, you know, harvesting and negative targeting very, very, very frequently. Yeah. But even with that, like if something hits that 30 clicks, zero orders the day after we go through a harvest, and we decided not to negatively target something with 28, 29 number, as you're talking about, could be a whole nother week, a couple of days until you harvest again. And so just that, like what that can save a company at scale over time is pretty phenomenal. So it hats off to you on that one. I know that one was for sure what grabbed my attention anyway, just because that was something that keeps me up at night constantly is, you know, negatively targeting. Funny enough. So that one's huge. OK, so that was your first kind of foray into it. Did you do some of the initial building? Did you hire people to do the initial building? How did all that side of it start? Found. So again, thankful to the network that I had, like being able to, you know, put out a job posting to find the right people and get recommendations and work with cool people. I am not a software engineer myself. So I rely on software engineers to help bring the software to life. Yeah, that makes sense. Is, um, was it at a tough skill to learn? Like I know personally, you know, it's one thing to be someone who's obsessed with PPC and then I go and hire someone to help me with PPC and I teach them what I know. What you're talking about is hiring someone who, it's like, I know I want this thing to do this thing. Yeah. I'm trusting you to figure out how to do it. Is that, like, a master like from a management style that was totally different learning too? It's something that I'm still learning about, which is, you know, software development process, building a software product for other people to use is a skill in an, in and of itself, where even at, at a large company, you know, you're going to have people that their only job in the software development process is to host the meetings and take notes for people and I ask certain questions at certain intervals. You, you'll get other people whose jobs it is to just interview software customers and like see what they want and just someone else to just look at how people interact with the tool, like track clicks and watch session recording. Like, there's so many things that go into software. It's huge. Like, we don't have just a tool. We have like a suite of tools. We have a bunch, every single page is like its own unique thing. Yeah. So I would say that it's a skill that I'm constantly working on trying to refine, which is how to get an idea. You know, if I talk to you and you say, Hey, we'll be awesome if AdVatcher also did blank. And like processing that, taking that, putting it in a form, prioritizing it against all the other hundreds of ideas that we might have to improve the tool. So like literally prioritizing the backlog of ideas is a behemoth task in and of itself. In fact, you know, at one point in time, we had like 500 some odd things of ideas that we would ever want to incorporate. And we're just like, each, this is difficult to even prioritize and like, where is the next thing to do? Like that in and of itself is a process. And then once you have an idea, how do you put it in a format that your engineering team can understand to actually build. And then after you spend time building it, how do you actually know that it's something that people really are excited about? And like, was that the right thing to spend your time and money on? So one of the tools that I think is most valuable in AdVatcher is like the end gram analyzer. So it analyzes your search terms in a way that would be really laborious outside of the tool. And we do some really unique things that like pools in many months of your search term data and like it does a lot of cool stuff for you. And you can like add new negatives and positives directly from the tool. It's cool. But you know, the end gram analyzer, you don't need to do it every day. Nor do you need to do it every week. I'd say most people maybe do it once or twice a month, typically because like you need time for the data to recruit in order to like really get tons of value out of it. Like if you did it today and then you did tomorrow, there wouldn't be that big of a change. So like then you're collided with, you know, well, what should you build? You know, should you build tools that are going to be used more frequently or maybe like less frequently, but value like more valuable. So it's a constant sort of, you know, crashing of waves trying to have all these things come together. So it's a real interesting exercise in like the production process of like all things coming together to like choose the one most important thing that you believe should get built and then like executing it and like measuring if it was the right move after all. It's really complicated. I can only imagine. Do you as the founder, do you in CEO, do you, are you involved in like the prioritization or is that something that you, yeah, you're still a part of that part? Yeah. I feel like that's like probably the most important part, right? Arguably. I mean, there's lots of important parts. You know, picking the most important thing for software engineers to build is, and we've only discussed like, you know, a lot of times too. It's like you think of, for which of the software engineers build, it might be like a new product, but you also like a new feature, but also might be like improving an existing one. Or there's a lot of like, hey, if we did something that a customer would never even see or hear about, maybe it's just like optimizing your AWS, you know, your server infrastructure, which you know, will help speed up a specific thing in the tool, but like the user might not see it as a new feature. Like there's so many things that come together that get fought for attention. So like, I think of it like you're building a physical product where like if you're building a physical product, you like design the product and then you ship it off somewhere to get made. And then it's a very similar process where you think of a feature in detail, then you like ship it off to get made. And then like it comes back in like two weeks. And you know, you then look at it and tweak it and you want to be really sure that you get like your initial designs right to avoid a lot of back and forth. Right. Because I'm sure that you could you could waste a ton of time and energy if it's just all back and forth. Infinite. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. And how do you that seems like they could that could like be never ending where you just there could be you could be stuck in and for lack of better words, just like this process of all these engineers constantly working on things. And how do you make sure that you guys pick the things that prioritize they not only get worked on but then complete it up to the standard that you believe they need to be completed to before you move on to the next one. Is that just kind of project management 101 and then you guys just keep iterating, keep moving on. What I find so interesting about the software development process is because it's it's like not project management 101 is like project management like 303. It's like really advanced project management. You know, there's concepts in software engineering. I don't pretend to be an expert in, but like one concept, which was like, you know, why can't you throw more engineers at a software problem to like get it faster. And there's an example. There's a software engineer listening, explain this to us. But there's an example that I heard, which is like how long does it take one toaster to toast one slice of bread? It's like, I mean, four minutes. How long will it what if I what if you have two toasters? How long will it take to toast one slice of bread? It's like also for me. So it's like, there's some things that I think are so deep in the world of product development and software engineering that when you're building like a really ambitious tool, it goes really deep. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to that's so like over my head that I totally get the analogy. Like that's where software so wild to me because there's just you can tell you obviously the deal with a lot of smart people. Yeah. So I'm assuming Mike, do you have people you have like an internal team now? Like I'm assuming you guys have like a full time internal engineering team versus still kind of always been it's always been internal. We've never outsourced. You know, it is a software company and I feel like. You know, I feel like it would be foolish to outsource your core competency. So we have people that like get to know Amazon marketing. We get people that like get to know the API really well instead of like just working. We've experimented over the years with like a outsourced augmentation of a team. So like, oh, that's just like higher out of house temporarily for this thing. And that's just, you know, I think there's a little bit more friction. There's just how many a place for it. For what it is that we're doing trying to build like a really enduring product. I think having a set of in house employees, which again, it's part of the reason I like entrepreneurship like to build teams and like get together and like have a team and like cheer the the wins and triage the losses together. Like that part is exciting to me. So, you know, I sort of have this mindset when it comes to getting an hiring engineers as well. Yeah. Transparenately, you're, I believe, I think you might be the second probably trying to think out loud here. Second or third guy I've had on here that, you know, I had something to do with software for example. Most of the founders I've had on here, they've built physical products for the most part. So the question I have for you Mike that I find this so interesting is so many people, you know, again, I could told you my background. My first foray and a CPG and even PPC was the protein bar company Rx bar and that was an obvious story where Peter and Jared, like they started making bars in their parents' basement. They made a few bars. They sold that paid for the next round of raw materials and they kept going and I know you and I have talked with us a little bit off air. How did you it? I had badger. How did you think about that component of it? Because like you just said, you kind of need to start with people who are really, really smart and cost a lot of money to do that. Did you, did you try to bootstrap that in the beginning? Did you go out and just like raise capital right away? How did you think about structuring the business plan? You know, it's not as simple as making like a simple cheap, minimal viable product. You kind of have to like invest a lot in the beginning to be able to get to minimal viable product and it comes to software. Yeah. So for some time, I was self-funding it and ultimately it's sort of like the thing it was just like I'm like looking down at the ground, like taking one step, taking one step, only to like be looking down and they bump into mountain and then like you look up and you're like, oh, okay, like it's going to take a lot more than what we have. So we took that badger through an accelerator to raise the money, meet the investors and we did that in like 2018. And it was its own interesting process. But I would say Pradant, we didn't, you know, we didn't raise $4 million. We intentionally raised, you know, an amount that I can still sort of operate that badger in a way that I really want to, in a way that I think does it good service. So I would say say we're sort of back to our bootstrapped roots today and I have no interest in sort of going out and raising again and doing it again. Yeah, okay. And would you say that mostly because of just what happens when you go out and raise a lot of capital? Like it is, because I know from talking to you a few times now, I definitely understand that, you know, you love being an entrepreneur, building teams and I've always felt the same way. It's like you take on capital from somebody else and all of a sudden now you got to report to them and they have KPIs and things that they, they expect with the money they gave you. Is that a kind of a big piece of it? It's more so the way that you operate the business. I would say that it's not a bad thing to have people that that the owner of the company is accountable for, accountable to, and like that you have to report to. And it's kind of cool also that in the owner of the company can almost have people that can check the owner of the company. For just like, you share about that, like why are you doing that? So I actually think those things are in a lot of ways. I would say the hardest thing is literally like, do you want a bootstrapped company, that you upgrade like a bootstrapped company, or do you want a startup style company? And I think the biggest difference is the startup style company is constantly overstaffed to grow into something constantly. It's not as if you're overstaffed and then when you get to a certain point you will no longer be overstaffed, but you will be constantly overstaffed, meaning if you grow into, if you grow too close to your overstaffedness, then you will hire again and continue to be overstaffed. So if you are making profit or if you're making profit and you are the right sized company relative to your costs, labor and revenue and you actually have a profit at the end of that, you are doing something wrong if you're operating in a startup mentality. Meaning you should always be falling over the cliff, constantly, you should always be overstaffed, you should always be have a cost structure for a year relative to your current level of revenue, which is pretty exhausting. It's pretty difficult to do that forever versus the bootstrapped growth plan, which is, hey, we're gonna have the right size team relative to our desired profit amount. And then if we decide to hire and grow our team, it will be to expect a certain level of profitability next. But we're gonna do it slowly, more controlled as opposed to always be overstaffed. And so I think ultimately this was just my sort of personal preference that the constantly overstaffed can really grind on you when you get hit with the normal hurdles that one might experience in business now the pressure's on a thousand times more because you're already overstaffed and you have a constant net operating loss. So I wanted to sort of get back to my bootstrapped roots 'cause you can be a little bit more slower and more intentional and build a company that you really resonate with. - Yeah, it doesn't make sense. I love that, by the way. It's cool that you kinda got a taste for raising and what that could have turned into. And then you decided to kind of go back and continue to do it bootstrapped wise. Where do you see ad badger going? You know, as someone who's starting to use the tool, you can totally see where this can go, especially just knowing what's out there and knowing how much thought and energy has gone into this. For you, do you have kind of a macro goal that you'd love to take ad badger to? - I'll start with the micro goal, which is really to have people like you have ad badger be part of like a daily tool stack. For you're like log in daily, you log in multiple times a week. Like you're getting really good work done that helps the business that you're working on, the Amazon business that you're working on. To me, that's the most exciting thing. So like that's the thing that I chase a lot. And I feel like if I continue to do that and do it well, like success follows that. So that is always how I thought about it. So like whatever that is, you know, PPC, SEO, Amazon marketing, like it can definitely evolve over time. And I feel like as long as we're constantly asking ourselves that question, like what is one thing we can build? It's gonna be like immensely useful for people doing what it is that we're doing the profession that have people that we make this for. I feel like we can't lose if we do that. - Yeah, no, I think that's a great goal. And it's also just kind of staying focused on why you started it. It sounds like it's well, right? We're just getting to the broader big goal. - Correct. - That's so cool, man. How much time do you feel like in a week? Like obviously you're the CEO of ad badger and you're working with it with a search scientist? Are you trying to build bigger teams? And the reason I'm asking this is this book you and I have talked about before we did the podcast. I'm just always curious, like for you, do you envision, like can you still solve that micro goal by building bigger teams that let you continue focusing on the few things that really like fill your bucket and help you build a better business? - I think that there's a part of me that will always be a little unsettled. And there's a degree of like how can I, it's just the way that I'm wired. I do sort of have this treadmill that I'm on, that sort of pushes me to say like how fast can I go? Where's the next level? And like where are the limitations to my success? And like how do I break through those things? So really like doing different things. I like to stay stimulated in those regards. So I love the challenges of like can, you know, I can transition from CEO to owner. How do I take it to the next level in that regard? And like can an owner own several companies and like still operate them to some degree? What does the team look like in order to be, you know, a multi company entrepreneur? And like how can, you know, I build something enduring? Like how can I build generational wealth? Like those kinds of things are really interesting to me. - I think like throwing elements. - Yeah, so funny is the way you just phrase that whole sentence is exactly where mine goes constantly. So I think we're, we're, you and I are very similar in that regard. It's like where my brain goes all the time. As you figure it out, you gotta share. 'Cause it's constantly something I'm trying to think about too. It's a hard, it's a hard thing to be, I can tell you're obsessed with a lot of the things that make ad badger special, which I think transparently is you and I have talked about. That's also something that I face every day too. Like I'm, the things that are in the weeds and are the reason we started it at Noble is, those are the things that take a lot of time and I'm also obsessed with. So it's to achieve what you're saying and continue to get to do that stuff. It is, it's a challenge. But it's a fun thing to figure out, right? I think it's like half the fun of building a business. - Yeah, you know, there are no rules, there are no limits. And I sort of believe that, you know, you get to create the rules that you want to play by and like the limits are only in your head. - I love that. That's such a great way to wrap that part. So towards the end of the podcast, Mike always loved to ask founders a few questions. The first one is around source of knowledge, which transparently, like I said, you've shared a few with me in the last couple months that have been awesome and life changing. For everyone listening, you know, a lot of folks on here who listen are, you know, either entrepreneurs themselves or other people who, a lot of people that listen to this are also on the fence of like, they've always wanted to start something. They've always wanted to, they've never taken a leak. So with that in mind, any sources of knowledge, whether it's a book, whether it's a podcast, an article, anything that pops in your head that you're like, hey, this would be something great to read after you listen to the podcast today. - I think the longest running business podcast that I've listened to, I've probably listened to these guys for like 10 years is Dan and Ian from the Tropical NBA podcast. They have an entrepreneur group called the Dynamite Circle, which I've also been a member of for like 10 plus years. And I have some of my best and favorite friends that I've met through the Dynamite Circle. So that's a big community and podcast that I resonate with very much. - Okay. - Yeah, that's great. You've mentioned that to me before. I still, I need to go back and listen to them. That's, I marked that. That's gonna be one I check out for sure. I didn't realize that. They've been one of the longest running business podcasts for a very long time. Yeah. - That's cool. What did they start? - They started any commerce brand and, you know, it's been decades since I've known them. They've evolved quite a bit with their own interesting story. But the thing that I like about it so much is that it's really like business for people who maybe don't have an MBA. Where it's just like, you know, I was a former high school biology teacher. So it's like, how do you go from like high school biology teacher to, you know, being an entrepreneur? Like that's a leap that I had to just figure out. So it's a, that's very much the energy of that content, which I really resonate with. - Now I love that. 'Cause right, a lot of entrepreneurship, the information content out there is probably deemed more for folks who go to business school and then want to make the leap instead of going to some corporate gig, right? There's really not as much aimed at what you just explained, which I would argue the vast majority of people who need to hear it too, actually. I love that. Thank you for reminding me of that. I wrote that down again. I'm gonna definitely listen to that. The next question, this one, this one is, I'm sure he's gonna be the interesting one coming from you just 'cause you're a knowledgeable guy in this world. When it comes to planning, so think about yearly goals could be longer than that. All the way down to what you wanna get done this week, and ultimately the shit you gotta get done today. Michael, you pen and paper kinda guy, you have a planner, do you use apps, calendar, what are the tools that you put around you on a daily basis to get things done and ultimately hit the goals that you set out with with you? - Well, I think the first thing mindset of, I think people are not as concrete as maybe they believe they are. In the sense of, there's been times where I've gone long periods with pen and paper, and there's been times where I've gone long periods with just like the note app on my computer, and there's times where I've gone long periods with like a very heavy clickup use. My current operating protocol is I have a notebook, and every day in this notebook, I write down my goals every single day. I'm running the exact same thing. I was, because the reason I mentioned that first part too, and the reason I mentioned this as well, was because felt really good in the stage that I was at, it seemed like life was moving fast and business was moving fast. And I needed a constant reminder of like the goals that I want. So literally every day, I'm just opening up this notebook and physically writing it. And that's a little bit of a woo-woo, like repeat your goals all the time. So I was just inspired to do that. Like it felt like I was doing a lot of micro work and I needed to zoom out with some macro work. So I write down business goals, personal goals, like values that I want to live by. I repeat those. every single day in a notebook. And then I do use click up to organize professional work. Just like tasks and what not get written down there. Okay, I got it. I love that. So the the notebook is really just to write out and see the macro. You don't really do micro in the notebook. Then you just click up for all the micro. Right. And then do you, does doing that offline online process help you to sometimes say, okay, I just wrote down all these things again that I want to achieve. But then I look up and click up and I'm like, that's not help me build that. Right. It's a bit of one of my favorite things is to go for a walk before you start work and like just download some whether it be a book or podcast of just something to sort of like dial you in. Just sort of like generate new ideas. And then like you take all that new information and you sit down at your desk and like you just write out your goals. And then you go and then you can see like what am I doing today? Like you're you have a fresher of lens. So I feel like that's a really, I really like that. That's really work serving me well right now. And it's possible that you know six months or a year from now. I might be have different energetic rhythms that might dictate something else. Yeah. I like the I like the idea that you're not married to one process either. You know, yeah. It's like what stage of life are you in or like what is the current state of your business or your life? You know, that's why, you know, I always roll my eyes a little bit at like the perfect morning routine. It's like, well, it's working for that person at that point in time. If it really was the most perfect thing, everyone would do it one time. Their lives would change. And then like everyone would be doing exactly the same thing. So like there's some like, you know, broad strokes that generally come up with, you know, good protocol. And I think it's a matter of like really just reflecting like what's actually working. What's not don't be attached to anything. Sure. And then there's this whole thing like kids, you know, you can go to those in the mix and then sometimes you don't control every minute of your day anymore. Yeah. Thank you so much, Mike. This is such a pleasure to get to hear your story, get to talk to you in more depth about ad badger. The very last question, just how can people who are listening to this, they're like, Hey, maybe ad badger something I should check out. What's the best way for them to do that? And how can they find you and follow the brand? I would say the easiest thing would be to go to ad badger.com. That's probably the easiest thing we have a contact form there. And do you have LinkedIn? I cannot tell you the last time I logged into it. But it is an intention of mine to be a lot more active on LinkedIn. Okay. All right. We'll keep an eye out on LinkedIn too. I'll add all those like the weakest call to action ever. No, it's not. You know, it's funny. I don't know. I think I've told one person this. I am trying. I'll say it on the podcast. That way I'll have to do it. That's famous. That's something I famously try to do. I at the beginning of August decided I'm just going to post one thing every day for the rest of the year. This is like a very audacious random thing I add up to my list. And I've done it so far. They're like 28 days in. And there's something about just every morning I wake up and as I'm working out, I just it's something it's funny. I've made it very if you look at my LinkedIn now, it's not all like trying to be prophetic. Something business. I feel like that's the problem with LinkedIn some days is like everyone's trying to do that. Mine's much more just like this is legit something I'm dealing with right now or good or bad and just sharing and being more open because I think LinkedIn's a great platform in general for me to me to be honest, it's like the best platform right now for organic connections, whether it's truly like a business opportunity, but I think there's a lot more outside of that from a professional perspective that if you're just opening on stuff, that stuff you're doing, going on good and bad, it's cool. So yeah, you should, man, you should start posting on it. I'm sure you'd have some great stuff. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, man. I appreciate it. It was a pleasure having you on and I'll add the links and and excited to share this with everybody. Awesome, Shane. Thank you. [Music]