Scaling Startups & Hippie Shops w/ Cody Schneider and Koby Conrad

Welcome to our deep dive with the dynamic Kobe, a mastermind in the growth industry. From sipping lemonade in Idaho to leading growth strategies at prominent start-ups, Kobe's journey is nothing short of inspiring.

Episode Highlights:

[0:02] - Dive into Kobe's early fascination with the gaming world and his venture into arbitrage between 2012 and 2014.
 
[4:03] - Discover the birth and rise of the Hippie Shop on Facebook, which gathered half a million followers and went viral on Reddit.
 
[8:29] - Kobe shares insights from his days working with a unique marketing agency catering to cannabis and finance companies, his experience with Y Combinator, and lessons he's carried with him throughout his career.
 
[12:38] - Explore the importance of aligning growth with the product. Why companies like Calm stand out in the crowd and the ups and downs of ventures like Cork.
 
[17:34] - Uncover the challenges of scaling a startup, raising venture capital, and the journey of crafting a "sexy product" in a less-tapped industry.
 
[22:53] - Why did Kobe decide to join his current company? Dive into retention rates, testing marketing strategies, and the magic of layered marketing.
 
[28:07] - Delve into the world of media monetization, from podcasts to print magazines, and their influential partnerships.
 
[31:07] - Building trust with audiences, turning content into gold, and the power of bootcamps for professionals.
 
[36:02] - Demystifying the YouTube algorithm, training it to work in your favor, and the beauty of a consistent strategy.
 
[41:28] - Kobe's consolidated content approach, marrying SEO with topic categories and blending the digital with the physical in marketing.
 
[46:35] - Targeting the right audience with innovative techniques and maximizing offshore resources without breaking the bank.

[51:37] - Navigating the complexities of pivoting in business, identifying opportunities, and the subtle art of refining your product.
 
[58:02] - The value of getting paid while learning, garnering insights from the business world, and the power of choosing the right early-stage company.

Join us on this riveting journey as Kobe spills the beans on the intricacies of growth, media, and product innovation. Perfect for aspiring entrepreneurs, marketers, and anyone with an appetite for success stories. Dive in!

Ride with the Prompt Jockeys

https://promptjockeys.ai/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-dirico-8450a428a/

Transcript

Cody Schneider: 0:14

Welcome. Today I have on my good friend COVID Conrad, we've known each other for like 10 plus years. Joe is up here as well as he, he's gonna be helping with the admin side. So quick background on Kobe, Kobe has done things from spent, you know, millions of dollars a month to do more mortgage, like loan acquisition for large banks. He wants a Y Combinator for a company. And now he works as the head of growth at a startup called Rupa health. That's where we last work together. So he has an insane amount of growth knowledge. We've known each other again for 10 plus years and over the years have just shared the arbitrage is that we see and then capitalize on those and yeah, that's basically kind of the context for why it's here today. We're going to have this conversation while it's gonna be valuable. So let's begin Kobe.

Koby Conrad: 1:31

Oh, man, that's a great question. I don't know how far back I need to go here. Um, like when I was for me and my How did you get into growth? Man, I actually never asked you this or like, never understood like what I mean, you were brother was some lemonade in the middle of frickin nowhere, always selling stuff from my understanding, but like, what Idaho. Um, I think like, I think like, it really started really drew you to this thing? probably, honestly, with like, um, Runescape gambling videos, like when I was like, 17 I like was you ran a casino, right, like a RuneScape. Casino. Yeah. And I was like, recording the videos and like throwing them up on YouTube. And then I'll do like drop parties and be like, hey, everybody needs to go follow me in order to before like the drop party begins. Yeah, shout out to Louis redhead. He had on the floor. But yeah, so I was posting most YouTube videos that I was going super viral. Like, I was like, my first foray into like social media, like, oh, man, it's kind of fun. I started school, like making the content and like the stuff sort of starting to go viral. Like, that's kind of cool. Um, and then my girlfriend at the time, was really upset that I went to college so she hacked into my account and deleted all my videos. So that was that was upsetting. But I think it was like What first got me interested in like the quote unquote, marketing world.

Cody Schneider: 2:42

Awesome, man. Yeah, no, I'd love I love it. I think at one point, he told me you were doing something with Wow, to write, like World of Warcraft where you were basically creating guilds and like selling like the digital currencies for like Pay Pal or something.

Koby Conrad: 2:56

Yeah, we, I was doing that with both Runescape and Wow. Cool. So funny. If like, all of the web three stuff with like, NF Ts, is kind of like Lucile similar. I just, I just wish that they would all be all these video games would embrace, like, their digital stuff being worth real world money, because that would have made them so much more interesting. Like there, there still haven't been like a massive game like wow, I Runescape at that level that like has embraced all the web 3d stuff. And I am so excited for that to hit.

Cody Schneider: 3:37

Totally, totally. Sweet. Okay, so fast forward. When we met you were basically running Facebook pages and at the time you get free traffic from Facebook. Talk to us about how you found that arbitrage and like what you were doing, I mean, you were like, Oh, gee, drop shipping. This would have been back in 2012 1314. We met her I think it was around 2014. So anyways, lay it out for everybody with the kind of the things you were doing there and what you saw.

Koby Conrad: 4:02

Yeah. Oh my god. Ah, that's hilarious. Okay, so back in 2011. I'm basically a grip for now. So I'm losing all my hair. Like I have screenshots of 1000 Facebook followers would get you like, like millions and reach every single month. So I was just honestly smoking too much weed with my girlfriend and we had like this Facebook page for hippies. And we were just like, posting like memes and shit that we found from like Pinterest and Tumblr and crap. And we grew that, like 17,000 followers, which like wasn't wasn't that much, but it was like 20 30 million, like impressions a month it was fucking wild. So like, okay, cool. Like we can start a business with this. So we like throw up like a really shitty like blogger.com template with like Pay Pal integrations, and we went to hippie shop.com. We basically just took all the images and like put them monitor website and like mark them up 20%. And then whenever like someone would purchase it, we would just go to their website and like place the order. And they eventually got really mad at us for doing that. But like you can't steal our images and like, you can't do that. So I'm like, making you guys like 10s of 1000s of dollars a month. Like, why are you guys getting upset at me? So anyways, I was like, fuck it fine, I'll start my own hippie shop, it's gonna be better. So we call it hippies hope shop, which is hippie shop with an E at the end. So we started SEO doing that. And we got to terrain like above their website, which was wild. And then yeah, we started with just like importing products from like, 30 different countries.

Cody Schneider: 5:39

You did that man. So just to reiterate that some people hear this, like they had hippies, hippie shop.com. And so Kobe bought hippies hope.com, which, basically he could go after and start ranking for their brand name. And so that's what he accomplished with that, like through that through that domain acquisition was he was outranking, the company that he was competing against for their own brand name, every day. It's just crazy. So anyways, I just wanted to reiterate that because I always thought that was

Koby Conrad: 6:09

you know, it was it was funny, this one and but yeah, we so we went viral on Reddit and like, this was back before I knew like jack shit about like, raising funds. So we sold like 30% of our company 20 to 25% of our company for like 30k Found some random person in Chicago that like wanted to invest some, like bought a bunch of inventory and like put that into like Facebook ads and stuff. And then yeah, we built up like half a million Facebook followers between a couple Facebook pages. Um, I mean, it's fun like I honestly, like I'm like super deep into like the the VC backed tech world right now. And I like I wait, make way more money but I was like a 19 year old with a cute girlfriend was just like smoking weed with me and like running a hippie shop not having had any bosses or anything, like rent was like 700 bucks a month and like Boise, Idaho, I don't know, I don't think I appreciated how great life was for that, like year period there. Um,

Cody Schneider: 7:08

so the all that traffic evaporated, right, just to set the scene. So you're making cash, it's printing, you're doubling down on this whole distribution channel. And then overnight, basically, basically turns off traffic. So talk to us about that. And what happened?

Koby Conrad: 7:24

Yeah, low. Um, so Facebook needed to make money. And at first so that they started swapping up the algorithm and it was this like, massive shift from organic to paid. And, um, yes, so we were able to play the algorithm a little bit at first, but then the algorithm got better. And it was like, really hard to gamify it. And yeah, we are we went from like, 10s of 1000s, like, 500 a month from Facebook traffic, and we're like, oh, this fucking sucks. Um, and yeah, I we tried some paid stuff. But honestly, like, our product wasn't very good. Like, like, just retro actively looking back on it, like the product was shit. Like, I was not like a developer, or, like, good at making websites. Um, so we moved on to more profitable ventures, we started a cleaning company with my girlfriend at the time, started a marketing agency with for my best friend's group, both of those to be fairly large, one of the largest cleaning companies and marketing agencies in Idaho. And yeah, life goes on.

Cody Schneider: 8:28

Totally. Okay. So fast forward. You get hired to come in and work for I believe it's a bank. Right. And you were doing basically like, mortgage leads is what I would describe it as, can you talk about that? Or what's that? What's that look like?

Koby Conrad: 8:42

Yeah, so the marketing agency, we had two specialties. We had cannabis companies, and we have finance to things that apparently go well together. So we were basically like, because cannabis companies couldn't advertise. It's like alcohol. You can't run Facebook or Google ads. We were facilitating like influencer marketing ad purchases. And then on the finance side, um, yeah, we, I don't know, some random dude off Craigslist. Um, I found as a client, like, got me into the industry. And then yeah, we started just doing like a shit ton of lead gen for mortgage companies. So like, back in 2013, where, like, everyone in the mortgage industry was like, 5060 years old. They had no idea. Yeah, no, no idea how to do digital marketing. So we started doing a bunch of Facebook and Google ads. And yeah, we're able to get like one loan officer just start like, originating like millions a month off of our traffic. Um, that was fun. agency work fucking sucks. So eventually, I just like found my best client and they they wanted to bring me in House. So when house did that with them for a little bit? And you know, super.

Cody Schneider: 10:04

You're spending like 5 million a month. Was that the number when you were there? What was it a year? I can't remember what it was.

Koby Conrad: 10:10

Yeah, that was a different company. I don't know how upset they're going to be if I say exactly how much Yeah, but we yeah, we were originating like 10s of millions if not like hundreds of millions, like total while we were there so and then the company where we're spending money on SEM was actually bold after that, Cody. So eventually I quit that moved to San Francisco, and then they're, they're like a resume builder. Yeah, that was that was fucking wild. Um, they were spending like, total it was like $5 million a month. So they brought me on to like, handle all of their international ads accounts. Um, yeah, it was super fun. Unfortunately, that only lasted like six weeks until my little brother was like, hey, Kobe, I applied to Y Combinator, and I put you down and my co founder. And it was like, I gotta go do that. But

Cody Schneider: 11:03

yeah, I didn't know he did that. That's so funny. So Cobis brother is like one of the, I think one of the early engineers at segment just for context for everybody. So he's just honestly just got here like a G. So anyway, before before we move on to that I just wanted to kind of poke to kind of reiterate two things from from that or what you shared. So specifically, the the idea that these arbitrage like you couldn't do those same things now like with like Facebook, and Google ads so like at the time I just remember this like Facebook, you could basically just run any finance ad with like zero, like any targeting that you wanted, basically, it's like cool give me only rich zip codes and now serve ads. They're basically I here's your thoughts, Kobe on just like how you're thinking about, like those experiences, like how you think about diversifying ad channels? And like, what's your kind of approach to that now that you've like, you know, what do you like, carry with you from the learnings that you had with with those previous companies?

Koby Conrad: 12:05

That's a good question. Um, yeah, okay. So I like leg the two, the two lessons that like I've taken with me are, first of all, make sure you're fucking diversified. Like channels will, like fundamentally channels change over time, like stuff that's working today, like, Will will change in some way, like five to 10 years from now. So at the minimum, like make sure like you're you're working across like two to three channels. And like running, that's to figure out like, how else you can push growth. Um, see this a lot with tick tock, a bunch of people went all in on tick tock, and like, tick tock is gonna last forever, and then it started getting really hard to get reached on tick tock. Like, it's just like the natural, there's a natural ebb and flow to channels. And then the second half of that is, um, products become super freakin importance. Like, I like my favorite example is looking at Calm, calm is a unicorn because they have like their LTV is like 100 to $200, where their competitors LTV is like $30. Just fundamentally, when, when your product is able to make more money per conversion than all of your competitors, it becomes so much easier to start bidding and becoming aggressive. And like my hippie shop, shits, mortgage products are fixed. So it's like an ultra commodity. So it's like, okay, cool. How do you create a

Cody Schneider: 13:39

competitor battling up that margin, rather than thinking about the customer lifetime value, or expanding that customer lifetime value, etc? It's just hard to do when you have ship product. So

Koby Conrad: 13:48

yeah, um, this is why why I've like landed in tech and why I think tech products are so cool is because you can increase your LTV over time, like a physical good, like you got to make it as good as you possibly can. But then it's like, basically, that that's your product. So like, If, however, whatever type of product you've got thinking in terms of like, how do I make this the absolute best I can and like, continuously improve and iterated over time. Super important, more, more than I realized in my early days, where I was just like, trying to sling shit. I don't know.

Cody Schneider: 14:22

I mean, that's where we all start, right? And then you realize, like, Shit, I'm putting three years into this thing, but I can't sell it. And that's where that pivot happened. So I at least personally, that was kind of my we're all doing the same thing. I was like mining, fucking ecommerce data and just reselling the best sellers and other companies. Anyways, so. Okay, so fast forward, you get into YC you guys go and you build this company. Talk to me about that whole experience. And actually, this is a perfect segue into that of like the customer lifetime value and like what you're seeing there, so

Koby Conrad: 14:53

yeah, um, um, and what can I say about yc? Okay, ah, Don't believe the Twitter hype you hear from people that didn't actually go through the program? Like just just for me it was it was honestly a lottery ticket, but it was one of like, the most important things that like had has happened to me.

Cody Schneider: 15:20

It networker what were those more than like, if you had three bullet points, what would it be?

Koby Conrad: 15:24

It was honestly brand is honestly brands. Like it just opens

Cody Schneider: 15:28

doors like having that on your like it's almost like resume type shit.

Koby Conrad: 15:31

Yeah, like I was just this entrepreneur from Idaho like No, like people in Boise Lake had heard of my like cleaning company and marketing agency but like, I moved to SF and like puking nobody has, like had heard of like the companies that I built before. So it it gave like legitimacy to like actually be able to charge full price for like what I was doing in life. Um, and then check out their startup school like YC startup school, you don't have to, like go through YC to to get access to that. They're really fucking smart. Like, they basically accumulated all of like the right answers and put them in like consolidated resources. So they like level up in the product knowledge of top like a lot. It taught me how to like pattern match with like VCs and just tech startups in general. Like, that was super important. The network was is good. I should have invested more into it. My little brother did a much better job with that than I did. I am kind of anti social you like put me in a room and like all my energy goes away. stuff but yeah, like the I would say like, the actual

Cody Schneider: 16:41

crazy because you're a sales maniac. Just for context for everybody. Like, I've watched this kid, just do the most ridiculous shit sales wise. So

Koby Conrad: 16:50

it's a switch man, like, it drains me. You know, I feel I can I can. There's, there's a reason why I went into marketing, like heavy heavy marketing, heavy sales, you know? Just I? Yeah.

Cody Schneider: 17:06

Totally, totally. All right. So, um, talk to me about the company. So you build a company called cork, and it's making revenue. But again, customer lifetime value is just shit from my understanding. What what was that? What was that experience? Like? And like, Tell me Tell me some of the data just so people can get off on the fucking, like the growth porn you guys were seeing? It was it was ridiculous. And you're spending $1 And getting like 20 back I believe or something insane. Right?

Koby Conrad: 17:33

It wasn't it wasn't that crazy. So we had a 300% ROI. Um, so that was driven through two things. So like first, so Okay, so backup apps. So cork was card was open source, cognitive behavioral therapy on your phone. So if you go to a therapist, most of them will use some form of CBT. It's super, super effective. And my little brother was suffering from panic and anxiety attacks. And he was like having it was insanely infecting his life. So he started, like, he made a little app for him to be able to do these therapy exercises on his phone. Um, and yeah, we became the number one app for CBT on iOS store. And then we were being able to run Apple Search Ads as a 300% ROI, which was just like absolutely wild. There was just a very clear path on how to scale apps like a million dollars in ARR problem was no one actually fucking use the app. It's kind of was kind of like people people go to the gym. And but they'll they'll cite Sanford membership but then like, won't actually go to the gym, is people got really excited for this, like mental health app. And we had a really good conversion funnel and where no one else was, like really bidding on these keywords. So arbitrage but then they would like the retention after month would like people who would actually came back and used it, let 1%. So we were like faced with this dilemma of do we do we keep going and like try to scale this even though people aren't actually using it? Or do we pivot and try to like build, like, pick a new product that like people would like actually want to use? I'm raising money

Cody Schneider: 19:23

for this right, too. So you almost had one choice like you had to you had to build a venture company rather than just a money printer.

Koby Conrad: 19:32

Huh, got to figure out how to answer this question correctly while being recorded. Yes, we, we we raised venture capital, which gives a certain expectation. Um, we didn't raise very much. So we have gone through YC and we took one chap, maybe two checks, but I think we'd only raised like maybe 300 400k So it wasn't until No money it was it was from a couple investors in like it was from a couple like post YC investors. Um, it was actually really hard to raise funds for cork. So like going back to pattern matching like what what do you have in the tech industry? Do you have all these like tech founders that built their tech companies and then made a bunch of money, and then they want to invest into like, more of the similar tech companies that they built. So you got b2b tools, and you got like dev tools. There is like when we went through, there wasn't a ton of mental health unicorns, like, like calm was dig it headspace was big. But there wasn't like hundreds or 1000s of like, like these random acts b2b tools, or like dev tools and stuff. So it was it was actually really hard to pattern match and raise funds for that. I'm also I think something like the best investors were smarter than us in the sense that, like, they asked for about our engagement, and they looked at it, and they're like, oh, maybe there's not product market fit here, even though it's like scaling. So it's probably like a little bit of a gamble sides. Um, so we did, we did eventually pivot. So we were like, okay, cool. Um, we need to build products that people actually use. So we decided to build a conflict free replicated data type as a service. So for anyone who has ever used like figma, or Word doc or anything, where multiple people can, like, use that product at the same time. Those are one of the best ways to do that is to do CRD T's, or WebSockets, I believe. And basically, that sub piece of software costs like millions of dollars to build. So we built that. And then we made a generalized version of that, so people could like build products on top of that, um, and that was a really sexy product to investors. Like, we that was so much easier to go raise funds as, so we took that product, we got like a couple initial users. And then we went and we raised like $2 million off of that. But it was just an interesting lesson. And like how easy it becomes if you're like pattern matching the correct thing of we had a real product that hundreds of reviews, that there was some usage and like it was growing really well. And super hard to raise money for that just because it was in the mental health space. But then we pivot to like a b2b Dev tool where like, we barely had a product and like no money coming in. And like we're just selling the idea of that, but like, that was way easier to sell, which was just wild to me.

Cody Schneider: 22:38

Totally. Okay, so fast forward, not Roopa health. Just for context, I came on, I think it was like two months after you Rupa. And we did, we ended up in like six months taking it from like, a$20 million valuation to 110 million. I remember, you texted me at one point, you're like, Dude, I turned on ads. And this happened. So So you were founder, you went back and forth to the company? Why did you do that? And like, what, like, what, what drew you to that? And then what are some of those, like, growth? Like, I think for a lot of people, they think about growth and an organ like what is growth? Like, nobody actually knows what the fuck it does, or like, why it's important or why it's even valuable. So I'd love for you to hit on that. And then how you approach it and think about teaming, etc. So,

Koby Conrad: 23:20

yeah, okay. So I think there's two, two and a half questions. There's the questions you asked. And then I think there's like, Why did I stay to because why I'm still here, I think is different than like, why joined? I'm really into like, okay, so start from the start. Why did I Why did I join? I love my little brother, doing business with family, not always the best idea. So like I was, I was ready to go like, do something else. And honestly, I just needed a frickin job. Like, I applied to a bunch of places. One of my best friends whose name is Ben was one of the co founders of Rupa, and he's like, cool, we should come help me grow my startup. And I just fucking terrified man. Like, the turnover rate for like, like marketing and growth roles are super high. And they they

Cody Schneider: 24:11

leave companies,

Koby Conrad: 24:12

especially for seed companies with like, unproven products, and that they had hired like someone before and like it didn't work out. So I was like, stepping into this role where it's like, okay, cool. We have no channels that are working for us. We've tried like Facebook and Google ads before and like, that hasn't worked for us. Good luck. Go grow the product. I was like I should Okay. Um, yeah, I liked my friend Ben. And I liked the people at the company, and they were giving me paycheck, which is great. Um, thankfully, there was a bunch of stuff that worked really, really well for us. So like, I stepped in the role and we started running Facebook ads and that were like, that was scaling. We started running Google ads and that was scaling. Um, you And yeah, like, honestly, like what had happened was going back to you need a product that's really, really good is that they had spent, it's like a stereotypical store, like we grew through, like word of mouth organic growth, but they did spend probably a year and a half at that point, just trying to build a really good product. And, um, the retention, so yeah, wow, the retention was great, people would use the product and then never return, they paid a lot of money for it. And they loved it a lot, which meant they referred all their friends. Um,

Cody Schneider: 25:34

that's a good interesting piece, too, is that as they use the product, they expanded in revenue as a customer, there's like, one of the things to think about in the business space is like, can I build a thing that when people use it, they, it makes more money for them, which in turn, you know, typically they use the product more, so their company grows, they grow with you, etc. So just throwing that out there? Can you talk tactical stuff? Like I mean, a lot of the times I'm trying like, just to give context for the people that are in the discord, they, you know, it's just starting out just in this, they're trying to figure out like, how do I do SEO? How do I do any of this gross stuff? How do I do bulk cold email, all of these things? Any of those pieces that are you like that are the tactical kind of like learnings that were interesting?

Koby Conrad: 26:17

Yeah. So hard to show that like screen sharing, but um, so like, Facebook ads, like, step one is go figure out your audiences, right? So like, we Rupa health is a labs platform for doctors is the best place to order 30 plus different lab for different lab companies for the camera one liners talk today. Um, but like, different types of doctors responded to it very differently. Now, we fully understand that our niche is like this functional integrative space, but like, you take it to like a conventional doctor who all they order is like quest. And it's like, Why? Why do they even need to do it? So with the Facebook ads, we started really heavily with, like audience testing. And it's not like you can just target like licensed types on Facebook, you have to like figure out, they're different like audiences. So it's like, cool, do you like people have IFM perform different than people have a friend that perform different than nurse practitioners got performed different than just like the category of health workers. So we went in and we like tested, I want to say like 2030 different audiences to like, figure out like, what audiences would convert for us. And then once we found good audiences with just some like, basic, basic creative, then we like started testing creative and be like, cool. Let's test out like a bunch of different ways to describe a product and a bunch of different images and a bunch of different videos, until we found like, stuff that like really started to turn for us. And I mean, that's basically your playbook for almost any type of advertising, right is like, totally out of touch with its own audience. Yeah, tested creative. And there'll be different variations of how you do that, whether it's like Google or Facebook, or Twitter or LinkedIn, or whatever. But yeah,

Cody Schneider: 28:07

it's the same philosophy. I think the thing that gets magic is when you layer them all together, right, so like, just for context, like he again, do, like figure out Facebook, and then you move on to Google and you figure out Google, then you move on to LinkedIn, you figure out LinkedIn, and then you move on to cold email, and you figure out cold email, and all of those things layered together as to how you like create a company that can grow extremely quickly. It's honestly it gets crazy when it's when you get all of them firing at the same time, it's kind of it's a wild, it's a wild feeling to be a part of something like that, when it's just like, it's too, it's too much grow too fast, to be totally honest. But you're breaking the laws of physics. I want to talk about some really, two specific things that I think are really interesting that you did that I thought, you know, just for people to hear would be super, I think it'd be valuable. I want to talk about owned media and monetizing it. So the podcasts in particular and like any of the other things, selling selling courses, like basically to educate your audience, which makes them make you more money within the product, which again, was that was super interesting. And then the other one wanted you to share what you're seeing work on YouTube right now. Because I mean, you showed me some stuff two weeks ago and I was absolutely losing it like basically figured out how to get YouTube channels to just like start proliferating itself, like dramatically. So can we can we go through each of those?

Koby Conrad: 29:28

Yeah. Cool. Okay, I'll start with like, owned media and like how we got into that. Um, so only media started with paid media. We we began sponsoring a bunch of doctors. So we sponsored Dr. Mark Hyman, we sponsor a bunch of other podcasters and then every like Doctor has their own like publication for whatever type of doctor they are. So there's like the naturopath magazine and the chiropractor magazine and the integrative medicine magazine and like the gastro di magazine. Um, so we started sponsoring, like all those organizations, um, and that was great was driving users for us and just woke up one day and was like, wow, I spent a lot of money here. Wouldn't it be great if we like took some of this money and we like owned our own, like media placements, it's kind of like, like a rent versus buy situation. Like you can you can pay these influencers and you're basically paying your rents. But you could also like, start building your own house, and then one day, other people will pay you instead of like, the other way around. Um, so yeah. One of one of the most successful placements was with schools. So we'd go to like the educational institutes that would like teach doctors about lab testing, and we would sponsor them. And that was effective. And then we're like, cool, we should like have our own courses and stuff. Um, so it started with live classes. So every week, we would have a live class where someone would come in and we'd like, give them like, some masterclass over some technical topic. And they frickin loved that. It was more it was more just like super engaging, didn't actually turn into orders being placed. So are you had

Cody Schneider: 31:21

their attention, like they were like, these, these people that every and I just want to talk about that audience so that audiences like traditionally a very competitive audience to get in front of like, they have money, and they're physicians, and they can add purchasing decision power. And so a lot of the times, it's just really hard to market to them are really expensive. And so this was a way to cheaply do that, and build this trust over time. Like, if you're doing that on a weekly basis, giving that free education away, what that does is create this deep relationship with them. So anyways, just to piggyback off what you're saying, but

Koby Conrad: 31:51

yeah, 100% Um, and yeah, I think like after a year of that, it only took us a while before we like we evolved in the next step, we we started running boot camps, which you can kind of think of them almost like a mini like lambda school, but for doctors, so they're paid six week programs, doctors pay us like 300 to $400 for each one, um, then we partner with the lab company to be able to provide a free test. And then we bring in like a world expert at whatever it is that we're teaching about. And that's amazing for us because A, they were profitable, they are profitable. Be every sign up is a rubber health activation, because you take your three tests and the order health, you ordered it on Rupa health. And then you go through a six week program, where you learn about that test. Um, and that was much more effective at getting doctors to actually activate and to actually, like, incorporate the testing into the practice. Um, yeah, that was that was huge cornerstone of our strategy to this day. So now we're like, trying to figure out how to like expand and taken to the next level, which is really super fun.

Cody Schneider: 32:59

So just to reiterate, buying ads on other people's stuff, realize, hey, let's build our own thing. Because we know that the cost of all these ads are going to increase over time. So we build our own media for that, so that we can put whatever we want on those rails, as time goes on, they start giving away free education, they start selling higher level education to that same audience that they've been giving away free education to, and that turns into a red line, and also creates a better customer long term because they're going to spend more money because they got that education on the testing. So just to synthesize that down, but, um, sweet man, talk to me about YouTube. Like, this is an incredible tactical thing. Yeah, some context on like, we, you know, you had a YouTube channel, and this is a YouTuber health YouTube channel that had, you know, hundreds of videos that were on there already. And what did you do and what worked?

Koby Conrad: 33:50

Yeah, okay, so disclaimer, I'm not the best YouTuber in the world. This is just what I'm seeing in the universe currently. Um, there's a really simple concept, if you watch a video, you begin to see more videos just like that one, specifically from that channel. Um, I think a lot of people think of the YouTube channel as like, trying to organically go viral. And in YouTube's algorithm, where it's like, cool, if I just make a video that has like, a high enough engagement rate, like YouTube's just gonna, like, naturally make my content go viral. Um, and I think that's definitely true is that like, you create really great content, and it'll, it will go viral. But it's hard. And I think that the way that it figures that out, like the way it goes viral, is it serves it to some people. Usually it's your subscribers. And it's like cool to do these people liked the content. And then if those people liked the content, it'll like branch out, you know, like, share two more. Um, the way you get like that initial layer though, is people need to watch your content. So there has to be like this top of funnel that YouTube can start Serving your content out into. And if you don't have that top of funnel, YouTube doesn't know like what the fuck to do with your content. Um, I so I have two channels, right? I have the Roopa hell channel and then I just have my channel that I was like fucking around with with like 40 subs, and it's a very gross

Cody Schneider: 35:18

person, it's like fuck with your own shit so if you fuck it up you don't fuck it up for the person that you're working for. Yeah,

Koby Conrad: 35:24

sandbox. So taking like my channel like literally zero if you if I look at where it's showing my content it's not actually matched with the contents of my channel so what what that's telling me is that starting at like zero is YouTube doesn't know where to put my contents like It's like trying to figure it out by like putting it in and all these like random places but it like it literally doesn't know. But the but the rebel channel it doesn't know like like it'll match up gi math video with like H Pylori and h pylori. Here's what they wore. And I'm cool we do we do an episode on like vitamin E and it'll start matching that to other Vitamin E videos. Um, anyways, I think that the way that you you train the algorithm as you build up your top of funnel, that's

Cody Schneider: 36:17

to get people introduced to your YouTube channel. Yeah, because the more people we get introduced, the more we're gonna see those videos, because it's going to start serving those when they come back to the platform the next time etc.

Koby Conrad: 36:29

Yeah, um, and what what we're seeing is that our videos will, like,

Cody Schneider: 36:35

you straight just turned on ads to right, just for context for everybody.

Koby Conrad: 36:39

So at one point, yeah, so we turned on ads, and, like, through I think like a month, and it drove like a couple 100,000 views. And what we saw after that was some of our videos started to like, tick up organically. Um, and I'm like,

Cody Schneider: 36:55

the ones who were promoting it was other ones that were on your channel.

Koby Conrad: 36:59

Yeah. And I'm, like, 100% Confident what happened was, we had built up a large enough like, top of funnel that, like YouTube's algorithm was like, finally starting to crank and understand, like, who is supposed to watch our videos, um, and then we you can, like see is like do to do and then. And like, some of them are just like, are starting to like, pick up and they're getting more views. And some of them are like top articles are, which is crazy.

Cody Schneider: 37:24

And you can relate that back to it's like I turned ads on the graph is like this ad start here. And it goes like this across multiple videos that are not the videos that are being promoted. They're just on the channel separate from promoted.

Koby Conrad: 37:38

Exactly. So if I like what I what the way we think about it now is Yeah, pretty good content, figuring out how to make your videos as good as possible. But also, like, how do you drive external views to build your top of funnel? Because you like, you can't just expect YouTube to just like, especially when you're small, you just can't expect it to like pick it up and no nowhere to put it that you have to like drive like a couple 1000 views before like YouTube, like understands like, okay, where where am I going to put this? Um, and yeah, so we you like if you want to see someone that doesn't really frickin Well, checkout Webflow University, like they, they have this beautiful product that gets really great search traffic. And it's all like, fluently, combined with videos. So you you go to it, and you like, work out how to do something and like Webflow and then there's like a video explaining it. So now that's external traffic driving views to their videos. And then the videos are also ranking within YouTube's search algorithm, or, and they're just like, recommended video algorithm.

Cody Schneider: 38:50

So it's the website to get those external views, which then allows the channel to get natural, organic distribution to happen on YouTube itself. Yeah, and I

Koby Conrad: 39:01

go, I don't know, I don't know which of the chicken or which is the egg. But I think that strategy is beautiful. And it's what we're trying to rep I

Cody Schneider: 39:08

mean, the graph speaks for itself, man, like I, I saw when you showed me like two weeks ago, I couldn't, I could not believe it. And just like for, again, to get deeper on the tactical side, like you were bidding on a keyword related to the video that you were promoting. And the video imagine is like, you know, 50 minute long live course. And you're showing that 15 minute long line, of course, to that search that people are doing that related search, so they don't even realize it's an ad they're watching this video and getting introduced to your YouTube channel through that. And like, like consuming it basically, which then allows the they're going to start serving more of the related content from your channel. Like to those people that watch that.

Koby Conrad: 39:51

Because what Yeah, because what happens if you watch a video you see more content like that? So um, if you watch the ad video on the right hand side Organic videos like, and then you click on that and like, like you, you get put into the algorithm like, it's not just subscribers that see your posts, that's anyone that has like watched your content before. So you can think of like Who who is going to see your content not just as like the people that are sub to your channel. But if you can just get them to watch your video, then they will go then they will see more of your content. So your your top of funnel like Who Who does your content go out to is anyone who's like basically ever, ever seen their content before. So if you can get that to be like a couple 100,000 then you have like this big top of funnel that YouTube will use to start like testing your contents. And then like as you're publishing stuff, it'll show it to the people who have seen your stuff before. Who are likely, like have demographic markers attached to them that like YouTube understands is a cool, okay, now I created content, I show it to some people. It performs well. Cool. Let's show it to more people within this like Nisha category. Um, yeah.

Cody Schneider: 40:59

So you're speeding up what's naturally happening? Like, if you just let your channel go on in perpetuity, it's going to do that it's going to try to find like, YouTube's going to try to figure out where do I place this content if it's good content. But if you let your ad spend over the top of it, what's actually occurring is you're like taking that timeline and you're shrinking it down so that it's like faster, it's figuring out faster who it should serve it to. And then it's like, there's this tipping point that happens where it's like, okay, now cool, we know who to serve it to all their content that they published, we're going to serve it to these people.

Koby Conrad: 41:28

Yeah, exactly. Like, um, cuz that's how we like discovered this sort of

Cody Schneider: 41:33

interesting, man. Fuck that makes me want to do YouTube shifts.

Koby Conrad: 41:37

So much fun. Ya know, we we posted a video and like, a year and a half later, like, picked up out of nowhere. Yeah, Mike drops off. Yeah, it drove me insane. Man, I was like, Why? Why I did the content didn't change. The thumbnail didn't change. The title didn't change. I had been ignoring this thing. So why did it take like fucking 400 days before YouTube's algorithm was like, Oh, hey, this is a good piece of content, and like it belongs right here. And people should watch this thing. Um, so now our our goal and like, what we're trying to figure out is okay, cool. Hey, how do we make your content better? But also, how do we drive our top of funnel? And I think some of it can be ads, I think some of it needs to be layered, like creating a consolidated content strategy. So like how to, like, tie this into, like, draft horse, right? is, um, we think of SEO content in like topic categories. So a topic category for us can be like cardiovascular health, right? Um, so we were thinking like, okay, cool. What video content do we have about cardiovascular health? And how do we tie that in with our website? And how do we tie that in with all of our SEO content? So now all of these search terms, people read an article, they watch a video? And we like, we have like a consolidated content strategy, where video and article content like overlaps each other?

Cody Schneider: 42:59

Interesting? Is it like one to one? Or is it just like, oh, this is in like, similar categories. Like, again, cardiovascular, we have like a high level cardiovascular video, but that's on, you know, 20 different blog posts, or you making individual videos for each of those blog posts.

Koby Conrad: 43:15

Yeah, um, so we have way more written content than we do video contents, so it's way easier and like, and we don't use draft horse, just because our current content strategies like to create No, no one content that like hasn't been made before. So we bring in like, doctors to come and create that content.

Cody Schneider: 43:39

Yeah, I mean, like, just for context, they're doing like case studies type of stuff, where it's like, here's my personal data that or, you know, whatever my clients data that I'm sharing, so

Koby Conrad: 43:47

yeah, if I was using draft horse, like, what I would do is like for every video, I would go and I'd create like 100 articles around there, right? So like, if I'm doing a video on like brands, marketing for startups, I would go create like 100 articles around brand marketing for startups. And then I put that video at the like the bottom of all that right and then you have this like external funnel was driving views to your video through like Google search and then you have the video that starts like getting traffic and people watching it and YouTube understands like where this goes and like belongs in and then it will start like ranking within like the YouTube algorithm as well.

Cody Schneider: 44:27

Amazing amazing cool so we're just hit that 45 mark any arbitrage like pileup you know? You can just rapid fire like our marketing arbitrage are seeing right now that you're just excited about besides the YouTube Yeah, like two other ones for us.

Koby Conrad: 44:42

Man that's a really dumb but like all the physical stuff is becoming cool again, like like direct mail. Yeah, like It's wild. Um, anything what was happening there is that the same tech that may do digital ads good, like being able to target your audience really well, is starting to become relevant with physical stuff. So there's I think there's like arbitrage and direct mail. I think there's arbitrage and like physical publications, like you saw what mercury did with their magazine, radian. Like that was really cool. And it's been like staying in the sector for them. Um, like, even conferences and stuff, I've been really good. I've like I like woken up and like, who am I I'm like doing all this, like physical marketing. But like, it's, like the coolest part. It's like, you're not really competing with savvy marketers, no offense to anybody who might be doing this. But the general general, like, most of the audience is people that are from like, the 70s. And the 80s. You have these, like old school marketers who are like, Oh, I've been doing direct mail for, like, 30 years. And like, that is like the primary competition there. It's, it's not like the new age, or like school of marketers who have like, gotten into that industry yet. Which just means there's, there's like, the designs aren't as good and like, the targeting isn't as good. And there's just like, a lot of arbitrage to bring like, at your marketing into a lot of the physical stuff.

Cody Schneider: 46:17

Direct Mail, what are you seeing work like, like postcards, like, you know, what, like, what type of like, creative is are you sending out give, like,

Koby Conrad: 46:26

it depends, like, what you should do is, like, go create a database of your audience, and segment your database. Be like, these are my top 1000 best people, these are the next 10,000, besties and 100,000. Best, these are the next million best, and then create, like different levels of mailers for each one. So like, your top 1000 like send them left fuckin like gift basket with champagne, and your your next, like 10,000 you can like send in like a little tiny package box to like, actually have to open because they're not gonna just throw away a package that gets sent to them. And then for like, your next like, 100,000 you can send them like a like a flyer with like a discount code or something. Um, yeah, I don't know, that's been cool. There's also just like, really interesting things with like AI and lead gen, of like, using using AI to like qualify leads has been an area of arbitrage of like, how do you figure out who to actually target is you can now go to their websites like have aI like, look over it and be like, cool, this person is actually in my audience. And that has like, allowed you to be able to both with digital ads, but also physical ads, and also sales to target people way freakin better.

Cody Schneider: 47:44

Amazing. Amazing. Sweet. All right. Thank you Kobe. We'll open it up to questions. Now if you guys want to come up, just raise your hand and I'll unmute you and we can start rapid firing so and if there's no one I'm gonna ask questions because I have questions.

Koby Conrad: 48:04

I'm good either way. I got food after this. I'm really excited.

Cody Schneider: 48:09

Sweet um, yeah, looks like nobody does at the moment. So what all what I want to ask you're doing this content using offshore teams. Like specifically like using animate animators, etc. Can you talk about that a little bit? Like how are you getting those people? How much are you paying? Like, how are you finding them? What does that look like? And why are you doing it?

Koby Conrad: 48:34

Yeah. I can't say too much. That will get me in trouble. But what I'll say is that there's really excellent animators like in like, like the Philippines and India and just like go on Upwork or like, some third party job boards. And then yeah, he having a really good video editor will change your life. Like honestly, like they the super cheap and they're super good. And they will bring your video quality into like the top 10% Like super, super fast. You probably don't need to spend more than like 1000 to $2,000 a month to have one like full time. And if you only got a couple of videos to edit, you can probably find one that can like, like like like Cody, the interview I did with you that cost me 20 bucks. It was like 20 bucks to edit up

Cody Schneider: 49:21

since you can just build media companies now for nothing, which is just the most ridiculous shit. It's wild. Cool. All right. Manuel has a question. Last go on mute.

Guest Speaker 1: 49:35

Hey, can you guys hear me? Yeah. Awesome. This is a she's been interesting to listen to. I feel like so like I should have paid for this. But my question. My question is for you Kobe. I joined a little late and so I heard you talking about sort of the pivot that your company had to make from thinking you guys had the right idea to Can you have the right audience? From what I understood you were making money, but then it wasn't really there. And you guys made a pivot. And things kind of skyrocketed from that experience. How do I word this? I don't want to do the whole what advice would you give for someone but for yourself? If you were gonna go take this again and run, run the same play again? What things would you do differently? How would you spot the opportunities? How would you spot the right market? How would you go about finding the right market fit that way? You don't have to do that pivot again. You can just want to done it. That makes sense.

Koby Conrad: 50:41

Man, okay, um, I'm gonna give you like the answer, like what I would do again, but I super specific, I'm the best general advice that I've had that I've heard and gotten about pivoting is that it's called a pivot, not a hop. And what I mean by that is you sort of split are supposed to have like one foot on the ground. So either what that means is that you have a product and you have, like users you're targeting, you either move the products, but still target the same users, or you keep the product and then you move to users that that like product is targeting. But if you go product, new product plus new users, you're not pivoting you're hopping. Which for us worked in that sort of work in that specific scenario, but I wouldn't have done it differently to actually answer your question. I launched another product later. So when me and my mother were building the the CRD, t's of service, I'm not a software engineer, it took me a while to learn how to properly say a conflict free replicated data type as a service. So like, I went through, like a programming bootcamp to like actually learn how to code. And, um, I built another product called sunflower, which was Quark, it was basically a clone of quark is CBT on your phone, but it was CBT for addiction. So by pivoting on the product to target people that were focused on addiction instead of just general anxiety, um, the the number of people who are actually using it after a month went from 1% to 20%. Um, so we I think the right the right answer for cork would have actually been to niche down a little bit and find find a find someone within this huge thing of mental health and like anxiety, to like cool, trying to lose weight, or like trying, trying to, like stay sober, or, like pick something a little bit more specific, because once we did that, the real reason why it worked is like we were able, I was able to add in features for that specific user that would like keep them coming back into the app. Um, yeah, I I think I would have pivoted by keeping the product and then pivoting the user rather than doing like a complete jump.

Guest Speaker 1: 53:10

Okay, and then I have a follow up to what you just said right now. Sit just escaped me although

Koby Conrad: 53:29

Oh, the word got cloned. Morning. So I've often heard that obviously if if, if you come up with an idea and you don't have any competitors, it's probably a sign that probably not the best idea. You just mentioned that there was a company cork, you decided to sort of take their same concept tailor with a little bit I know that for the most part it seems like the vertical you want to stand as medicine. How would you go about figuring out which which companies or which products would make sense being competitive Right? Like I don't know if it makes sense for me to create the next Facebook you know, on the next Twitter how would you go about finding where those opportunities are to make a clone and and then to find that one thing to tweak? Okay, that's a good question. I'm trying to figure out the best way to frame this I'll give you I'll give you I'll give you my advice there honestly, Cody's probably the right person to ask about this. But my I think that most ideas are really dumb. Like most ideas, like my my experience of starting with my shoe shitty little hippie shop and then pivoting into like a service business with my agency and my cleaning company, and then moving into like, working for the bank with a fixed product towards, like going through Y Combinator and like trying to ideate stuff and like, figure out new stuff. I was very, very bad, very, I had no product knowledge, like I was marketer from Idaho. Like, I didn't even know that a product manager was like a real a real thing. Um, and then like, coming into coming into Rupa, and learning what like a, like real product market fit looks like, um, is my my taste and my bar is now wildly high. Um,

Cody Schneider: 55:53

you also like more pitches, though, I'm just gonna jump in. Because I just think that like that whole process that you just described, like, there's a ton of business touches that happen there. And so like, every time you make a business, like even if it's small to start with, like that knowledge compounds into the next one, and you just get better looking at businesses and being like, Oh, that's a good business. It's like it but you like, again, when you're starting out in the beginning, you're like, I don't know what the fuck good business is. But then as you touch more and more businesses, you and you kind of climb that ladder, it's like you can see your business model and you're like, fuck, that's a great business, like just how they're describing it, it and talking about it. So.

Koby Conrad: 56:31

So I think whatever you do, you have to gain unique insights. So Rupert didn't start off as Rupert Rupert started off as kind of like Yelp for doctors. And they're like, Oh, we're in this industry. And this goes back to why you pivot around your user around your product as you because your first thing gives you insights. You, they were like, Okay, we're gonna try to build like Yelp for doctors, like, is it a horrible business model, like all all the good doctors already had patients, the patients, like, didn't want to, like pay cash prices for this stuff. Like it just like, wasn't working. But then like, cool, really interesting, but like talking to these doctors, we learned how these doctors are having such a hard time coordinating their labs. So like, let's make SAS for them to like, be able to order the labs. So they pivoted, they pivoted around their user, which was the doctors. Um, so I, I think there's kind of two models is you can either work for a company and develop unique insights like I, if I was going to try to compete with Rupa, like I have a number of ideas, I'm very confident would be like really great businesses like within within the space, and I have only been able to like gain that insight. Because I've been working in the space for a while. Like, I know the things that Rupa is thinking through, I know the things our competitors are thinking through. I know like where the holes in the market are, like, cool, someone could compete here.

Cody Schneider: 58:02

And you're getting paid to learn all that as well, like that. I think people shit on jobs all the time. But like, if you get into the right one, especially in early companies, you can get so much insight into a market, and you're getting paid to learn that insight. Like you couldn't pay anybody to give you any of that insight, but you're actually getting paid to do that. So anyway, just to interject, but

Koby Conrad: 58:25

and then the second model is like Cody did, right is like, he just picked something. He's like, I'm gonna make him like he started with like this podcasting tool, right? Like, I'm gonna use AI and we're gonna be able to work on make that podcast transcripts, like it, like, turn turn the podcast into like an article, right? Um, that's like, kind of, it's kind of a good business, you know, like, like, people were paying for that. But like that, like the, I don't think the product market fit for Cody was like, 100% there, like it was growing. But he learned is like, Oh, this is kind of cool. I got I got like, we can we can make AI articles. And then he like pivoted that into like draft horse, which then the market went from cool people who have podcasts, to funk and people who are making articles, and like the market for that so much bigger.

Cody Schneider: 59:16

We weren't gonna landed on that, unless we did that first thing, right. And then by doing that first thing, so I just talked to this company yesterday, and it literally was the same thing. They built this huge, massive product. It's absolutely bloated, they hate doing it, the customer service sucks. And then they had somebody asked for just an aspect of product feature of that product. They pulled that out. And it's now growing at like 500 MRR a day. Like it's just ridiculous, right? They're just cold emailing people that are in their target audience. And I they wouldn't have gotten there unless they just moved around. And I think that's something just like there's a lot to be said about just doing things. Like we'll get you a perspective on the market that you just didn't have previously like by changing that movement, like going to other places and looking around like you're going to Get you're gonna just see insights to that unfortunately I have to jump and go to a sales call Joe I'm gonna make you the host Kobe i You can jump as well. You have stuff to do I know we blocked your time for this and we've taken up a lot of it so I appreciate it. And sorry super that we didn't get to your your your hand. I apologize on that. But thank you guys for coming. I really appreciate it.

Koby Conrad: 1:00:21

too. I'm so sorry. If any other questions for free send me a message kobe@rebel.com Or at Kobe J Conrad at Twitter.

Joseph DiRico: 1:00:30

Thank you, Kobe. Appreciate it, bro. Appreciate it, guys. Thank you later