Economies of Scale: How To Manage 3 DTC Brands With Braxton Manley

Braxton Manley is the Co-founder of Braxley Bands, which makes comfortable Apple Watch bands using an innovative elastic material. He is also the Co-founder of Mystic Gum and the CEO of Peace Love Hormones. His entrepreneurial journey began as a college project and became Braxley Bands, which he has since scaled to over $6 million in revenue. Braxton's creative and strategic approach to business has led him to successfully manage three unique brands simultaneously. With a deep understanding of e-commerce and a drive for continuous learning, Braxton excels in marketing innovation and product development. His journey showcases a blend of creativity, managerial excellence, and adaptability in the fast-paced world of digital commerce.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[2:25] Braxton Manley’s insights on entrepreneurship, business growth, and financial management
[4:28] Adopting a Profit First mentality to ensure business sustainability
[9:04] The importance of economies of scale in business operations and personal optimization
[18:30] Leveraging motion product pictures to boost website conversion rates
[20:41] Why are strategically crafted pop-ups crucial for customer retention and profit maximization?
[28:09] How to tackle the challenge of leaked discount codes to maintain profit margins
[30:14] The potential benefits of a unique first-purchase subscription model in strengthening customer loyalty
[40:16] Creativity, branding, and meeting Mark Cuban
[47:13] Braxton highlights the power of preparation and seizing opportunities for brand visibility and growth

In this episode…

How can one adapt to the shifting tides of e-commerce, find joy in the journey, and still achieve remarkable success? Could economies of scale be the secret sauce for a successful e-commerce empire?

Having scaled a college project to a multimillion-dollar empire, DTC expert Braxton Manley reveals his strategies for thriving in the e-commerce sector. He shares lessons from starting his longest-running business while managing two other DTC businesses under a single brand umbrella. By focusing on each brand’s strengths and scaling them individually, entrepreneurs can navigate the challenges and opportunities of managing multiple brands. He dives into his strategic approach toward business, adopting a Profit First mentality, leveraging motion product pictures, tackling leaked discount codes, and his novel approach to first-purchase subscriptions.

Tune in to this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast as William Harris chats with Braxton Manley, Co-founder of Braxley Bands, about scaling DTC brands beyond traditional growth metrics. Braxton explores the resilience and ingenuity required in business, the essence of staying true to one’s goals, and the value of preparation, creativity, and flexibility. Braxton's story is a testament to the modern entrepreneur's journey.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

"You can't spend money you don't have."
"I believe all these businesses will reach $100 million; it's just that I'm optimizing for my lifestyle."
"If one of them requires attention, you've got to figure it out."
"If you give more than expected, you'll receive equal value."
"The most prepared make it look the most effortless."

Action Steps

Adopt a Profit First mentality: By focusing on profits before expenses, entrepreneurs ensure sustainable growth and avoid overextending their businesses financially.
Incorporate motion product pictures on your e-commerce website: Movement attracts attention, can increase conversion rates, and enhance the user experience.
Develop a strategic pop-up strategy for customer retention: A well-crafted pop-up can significantly increase email captures and improve long-term profitability through retention marketing.
Address leaked discount codes with dynamic code solutions: This prevents customers from abusing discount offers and protects your margins.
Explore a unique first-purchase subscription model: By charging a premium initially and then reducing the price, businesses can foster a sense of exclusivity and improve retention rates.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:00

Music. Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show.

William Harris 0:16

Hey everyone. I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of element and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million. To 100 million and beyond. As you up arrow your business and your personal life, I'm excited about the guests that I have today. Braxton Manley. Braxton is the co-founder and operator of Braxley bands, Mystic Gum and Peace Love hormones. His longest-running business. Braxley started from a college project and has now scaled to earn over 6 million in revenue. Each business is family-run and truly unique in concept. Braxley, I'm excited to have you here. Brax Brax called you. Braxley, Braxton, I'm excited to have you here. You wouldn't be the first Yeah, I know it's a play on your name, isn't it like Braxton, Manley. Braxley, yeah, yeah. I didn't even come up with the name. It was a class project, and a girl in the group came up with it. And I said, All right, well, it's just a class project, whatever. We'll go with.

Braxton Manley 1:05

Now it's everywhere.

William Harris 1:08

yeah, little did you. Well, I mean, I spell element e, l, u, m, y, N, T, for the same concept where, when I first started, it wasn't a thing. And so it's like, I like the spelling. I think this is really fun. And, you know, now here I am, and that's what it is. Yeah, I get it. Speaking of which, I want to get into the good stuff. Before I do, I want to make sure that I announce our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by element. Element is an award-winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired, with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that I poed recently. You can learn more on our website@element.com which is spelled E, l, u, m, y, N, t.com that said, enough of that stuff. Onto the meat of what we're talking about. This is an interesting one for me, because I talk a lot about growing from 10 million to 100 million. But what if that's the wrong goal, and you are the one who kind of put this seed in my mind. So I'm excited about this. Talk more about managing three DTC brands with economies of scale, and how that looks at things. So I'm excited about that. I want to start by basically just saying, how, how would I know if that's the wrong goal? And like, when, when is going from 10 million to 100 million? The wrong goal?

Braxton Manley 2:25

Yeah, well, I mean, I do believe all these businesses will reach $100 million. It's just that, you know, I everybody has their own dynamic, and I felt really creatively inspired at first to do Braxley, which was elastic Apple watch bands. And we grew that to the size that it felt like it could reach to. We're still trying to find a way to grow it. We tried coming out with a new product and, you know, we got some decent growth from that. But, you know, ultimately, at that same time, I started dating my now fiance, Maddie, who has her own e-commerce business called Peace, Love hormones. And I realized when working with her, it was like, okay, I can really own this whole area of like, for me, it was, it's like managerial role of managing all the marketing channels and generally having a good understanding of e-commerce. Well, well, that allowed Maddie to focus on product and actually go back to school for her supplement brand. And so that was when the birth of, oh, wait, actually doing two of these at once could actually be really, not just efficient, but also really inspiring and really enjoyable, because it's like having three, like, right now, basically I'm a father of three rather than a father of one. And, like, it's a metaphor, but also it's pretty true. Like, I'm these are all my kind of, my babies, and I have to, like, spend time on each of them. And you kind of just got to get it done. Like, if, if one of them requires attention, got to figure it out. And I think they're all going to grow up to be really successful. So the idea is, I have a better chance at one of them becoming successful out of the three than if I were to, I think, you know, and what I'm trying to do here if I were to just focus on one, I don't know if it would lead to the, you know, say it's elastic Apple watch bands. What I started with that might be really hard to get 200 million. And maybe, if it just does a million a year, that's still pretty great for my lifestyle that I'm ultimately optimizing for.

William Harris 4:28

No, I like the way you put that. You know, there's, there's two different things you called out there that I like. One is the idea of economies of scale. I think about this Brandon Turner talks about this a lot in his podcast, bigger pockets, right? And the idea of even just one rental versus a four-unit rental, there's, there's economies of scale. And just having four units there, you've already got somebody going over there to mow the lawn, or whatever that might be. And so you're, you're just making more profit on on each one of those units. And so there's a lot of. I promise there. The other thing that I like that you called out too is just that idea of what are you optimizing for? You get optimized for $100 million business that you're miserable with, or you can optimize for a million-dollar-a-year business that you're wildly happy and satisfied with, and that allows you the lifestyle that you'd like to lead. And I think that that's an important consideration when looking at, you know, what is the goal in being able to use that to identify, what should the goal be? So, okay, I wanted to talk a little bit about the backstory, because you were talking to me about this before. Like you said, you started this in your college. The name came up out of out of nowhere here. But you started this with, like, $20 and, like, hand stitching these together yourself, college project. Tell me a little bit more about what, what gave you this idea in the first place, made you say this is a thing that I'm going to spend my time and money on.

Braxton Manley 6:00

Yeah, I think I read The Four-Hour Workweek at an impressionable age. And also I'm, you know, my, my parents were entrepreneurs, my my dad and my uncle in the 90s had a stretchy athletic wear, like pants, uh, brand called nowhere fashions for anywhere that I want to bring back one day, by the way. But they were, like, serial entrepreneurs, and then eventually they're now, they own restaurants in Austin and San Antonio and so, um, from the an early age, I was like, Oh, I identified as, like, somebody that were to end up being an entrepreneur. I think because I was inspired by, you know, seeing the adults that I grew up around, you know, be that and seeing all the all the freedom that came with that, like I wanted to be able to travel, that's like, I was like, you know, no matter what I grew up doing, like, I want to be able to have location freedom and to travel and to like, really see the world. And it seems like there's nothing more amazing to me than that. And so read the four hour work week, and I was like, okay, so selling stuff online is the ticket to being able to travel the world like, you know, figuring it out from that angle. And at the time, I just signed up for this marketing class that I basically had to bring a product to market and come up with a business plan about it and a marketing strategy. And my idea was Apple watch bands sold on the internet because and not just Apple watch bands, but my own that I came up with a design for making them out of socks. So I was literally cutting up athletic socks, stitching them onto a little metal piece to slide onto an Apple Watch and then showing that the band itself is actually far superior to the Apple watch bands that were available at the time. And so we were first to market with a stretchy Apple watch band. Turns out it ended up, it ended up pretty much blowing up online in like, 2017 we scaled we like, tripled the business to 18, tripled the business to 19, tripled it again to 20, and then 2021, is when we really saw the plateau hit. And then, you know, have since struggled in a lot of ways with keeping up with the same let's say market has changed so dramatically. So I've also learned a lot of very hard lessons along the way to figure out how to remain profitable, to remain a business, yeah,

William Harris 8:24

which you told me about, there was a book that you're reading Profit First. Is that the name of the book that you're reading? Yes, yeah. So, so what's the concept here of profit first? Because, I think you said this past year you spent some time kind of reading through that book and changing the way that you operated the business. What kind of changes did you make, and what's this book really about? I mean, aside from the title being obvious, yeah, so,

Braxton Manley 8:47

okay, basically, the best way to put it is, everybody is taught in business school that revenue minus expenses equals profit in Profit First, the idea is that, let me think about this. It's revenue minus profit equals expenses, and so you have to adjust your expenses around a constant profit. You can't spend money. You don't have type philosophy like because, yeah, under this methodology, you'll never go in debt, and you'll never overextend yourself. You'll never go bankrupt. Like Eric Bandholz from Beardbrand taught me a really valuable lesson back in the day, which he calls it the water bug analogy, where basically there's this, I guess, a type of bug called a water bug in the desert that can survive without water for 100 years, and it basically, somehow, it hibernates in a certain way where it can survive for 100 years without water. And he says, essentially, like, use that as a metaphor for your business, and be a water bug business where you could if, if, say, somehow money dried up for 100 years, how do you how are as soon as the rain falls, how are you able to then. To start running again. I like that, because there's

William Harris 10:04

going to be droughts, and then there's going to be rainfall, and so you have to be in a position to where you can be able to be in business. Then it reminds me a lot of the infinite game by Simon Sinek, right? That idea where it's like, the only way that you lose is if you stop playing the game. And so in this situation, like you said, it's like, how do you weather through those, those droughts that you're there when the rain comes in, a Profit First mentality makes sense. So what are some things that you did to be able to adjust your businesses to look at and use this framework?

Braxton Manley 10:36

Yeah, I mean, it's, I guess one of the big decisions I have had to make is whether or not I need to let agencies go, if you know so. For instance, in 2021 we were spending over $100,000 a year on our email marketing agency. In 2022 I did it myself, so I effectively saved $100,000 by just taking that roll over again. And it's but it's very complicated, because the question is, did I earn as much revenue as that agency did? What is my time worth? All these things but that? But that's the hard part. Is like, if you don't have $100,000 to pay the agency, then you have to do it yourself. So it's like you have to retreat before you can progress again.

William Harris 11:28

That's an interesting concept, isn't it? Where sometimes we think backwards motion is actually a step in the wrong direction, but sometimes a backwards motion can be the step that you need to take in order for forward progress to start up again. Yep. I like that you were talking about riding the financial highs and sometimes feeling like one of your brokest friends, I feel like this is a concept that a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to, where there are, man, there are some good years, and it feels really good, and there are some tough years. A lot of us went through that during covid. There were some, you know, good and bad and whatever things. But what made you use that specific phrasing when you talk to me about this, about like, feeling like one of your broke his friends, like, what did, what did that feel like? And how have you worked through those feelings?

Braxton Manley 12:15

Yeah, so, I mean, some of our most profitable years that we had as a business were the years I right after I graduated college. So I was 2223 24 those were the years that I was able to take home, like multiple six figures in distributions. And it was like, This is crazy. Like, I'm like, I'm like, gonna retire. I literally put, I remember putting that, you know, on my goals, or whatever, that I wanted to retire by 25 Sure. And now I'm 28 and I'm not retired. I've actually started working more jobs, right? But when I both, I think what you know, what then happened? Right? Was right around 25 is when iOS 14 and a half changed and we weren't running profitable ads at that time, and it was like, Well, what do you do? Because we need to get traffic to the website, and we're not in a bunch of retail stores like we the whole thing was built. We scaled it up to about two and a half million dollars in 2021, and it was great. You know, it was, it was totally working. But then all of a sudden, you see month over month P and L's, and you're like, well, something's broken, and we don't really know how to fix it. And so, you know, it's, it's required us to literally do a full flush of our whole entire marketing strategy, or everybody that was on, you know, as an eight working for us as an agency, we've completely changed the people that we're working with and and it's been good in the long term, because we had to do that. And now we're working with people that are more aligned with us, that are better performers, that are local. So one of the things I really have been trying to do was, I live in Austin, great city for this type of industry. I decided I'm like, I only want to work with people in Austin, like, if I can't go get a coffee with somebody and talk about something over a real conversation. Like, I don't know how you can really be that collaborative. We were working with some people that weren't even in America. You know, they're overseas, and it's like, we're in way different time zones, different like, cultural backgrounds, and to expect them to be able to make awesome creatives for a brand is like they don't even have the product in their hands. It's never gonna work. Yeah,

William Harris 14:28

it's very different. And I would say that there's pros and cons to both of those, right? We are a remote agency, and so we were remote before covid. And I would say one of the benefits is I have the freedom and flexibility to get the best talent no matter where they are, which is great. We've got people in Denver, we've got people in Pennsylvania, we've got people here in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and I like that. But to your point, there's a trade off. There is a little bit of a collaboration that just can't happen the same way that it would if we were all in the same office. This. And so I think you have to evaluate those trade offs for each individual business and for how you're running a business, right? And so, like certain businesses, maybe that's totally fine. Other businesses, it's not. And I can see the value and benefit of what you're saying about being able to just go grab a coffee and collaborate with somebody, it's unmatched. And I think in this digital world, we really lose focus of that human to human connection. Yeah,

Braxton Manley 15:26

yeah. It's like, I think the best thing that could have happened to the rest of the world was, like, this remote work thing, but also, like, the like, I've always built it to be remote. It's always intentionally been remote way before covid and stuff. But like, now I'm realizing that the hybrid model, I think, in some way, is like the best. So, I mean, this is we were running a very small executive team here in my companies. It's my fiance who isn't I live with, and then it's my brother who lives, like, 15 minutes away, sure. And so we're, like, pretty easy to get in person with, but we're still technically remote. Like, I have my office, Maddie has her office, my brother Zach has his office, and we don't really see each other every day, like, in this sense, like working, it's not like being in an office. It's remote,

William Harris 16:17

yeah? But like you said, it's a hybrid, because you can at least meet up in person together. Yeah, I

Braxton Manley 16:22

think it's like, it's easier not to, but doing it, doing it requires some level of, like, commitment to, like, you know, managerial and, like, HR, excellence.

William Harris 16:38

Yeah, absolutely, um, I've even said that I think there's something to be said about getting in close proximity with other people, from a competitive standpoint, let's say to play a game of basketball or whatever, because I think that we need to be around the like sweat and pheromones of each other to continue to push us To drive right like our entire existence has basically been a part of being in these communities where it's like, you're around somebody, and it's like their drive propels you forward, and it's like, okay, there's this competition, and it's a healthy competition. And you you can kind of get that a little bit online, but you can't simulate the pheromones and the actual things that are got going on scientifically that are causing you to say, I gotta do this. I gotta step up. I'm gonna win, whatever that might be, Yep, totally. I wanna dig into some of the tactical, practical things that you guys are doing. And I know that we were talking about CRO being a big focus of where you guys are differentiating yourselves. There was something that you tweeted about that I thought was interesting. You said there's a movement that we can all get behind motion product pictures. What are motion product pictures, and why should we care about them?

Braxton Manley 17:50

Yeah, so we started basically making our product pictures GIFs, and it's been really fun because, first off, it captures the product in a three-dimensional way, like in a real three-dimensional way, you can see it, and it's so attractive that way, because it's we're not used to it, and it's so funny that we don't do that. It's not normalized, because it seems like the future, and it's like, totally available to us. So why not make your product pictures like feel like they're jumping out of the screen. And it's really easy to do. We're

William Harris 18:30

attracted to motion, aren't we? There's something in our eyes that is attracted to something that's moving. Have you noticed a big change in certain metrics from a CRO perspective, from implementing that versus not having and I'm going to say gifts. So we're both going to have to argue about which one that is, but I'm going to say gifts, from adding gifts slash gifs slash peanut butter to your website. Yeah. What kind of, yeah, what kind of metric changes have you noticed?

Braxton Manley 19:04

Well, that's a good question. We have noticed our our broader conversion rate of our website is continually up month over month. But we're also, like, sprinting on a bunch of improvements, like we've completely gamified the cart, we've overhauled our product pictures on Braxley. So I will say this, we haven't done the GIF product picture thing for Braxley yet, because it's extremely difficult to do renderings for the Braxley watch bands, because it's soft elastic. It it every time we've tried to do a rendering, it just looks hard. And so fortunately, my other two brands do use hard bottles and cans to as the packaging. So it looks great as a rendering. Anyway. That being said, Yeah, we have done a lot to increase conversion rate in a bunch of these different ways. It's difficult to to test it because we i. You know, we have the, what is the common testing app, intelligence?

William Harris 20:09

Yeah,

Braxton Manley 20:10

we have run intelligence tests. I know that's like, good form, but like, I also believe it's like, like that also takes a lot of time to do. And so you're, you're, you have a trade off of, if you have a high degree of conviction that something's going to for sure improve, just make all those changes and see what the conversion rate kind of does. And then test almost like, then test stuff you would pull out instead of adding one thing at a time over the course of many months, add all the things that you think are gonna be good. And so anyway, testing is kind of a complicated thing, but, I mean, I am happy to share real numbers. I just don't have Shopify immediately pulled up in front of

William Harris 20:51

That's you don't need to pull it up for exact examples. I'm with you on the testing stuff. Last episode here that we just had was will leach, and one of the things that he talks about is your conscious mind versus your non conscious mind, and the processing power between the two. And the conscious mind apparently has somewhere like, I think it's like 50 bits per second or something, and then the non conscious is like 35,000 bits per second. And I could be off on what is, but it's like a massive difference. And I think sometimes we downplay the incredible processing power that our gut feeling actually has, that there is a computer in us that has processed an insane amount of information and helps us make those decisions. Yeah, best form. Sure run the AB test. But if you're if you're not Amazon, and everybody likes to point to Amazon if you're not Amazon, I think that you can over test and like that causes a lack of actual tests to be done, or a lack of actual changes being made, to your point where you're like, look, this should be fairly intuitive. Make this change doesn't work. You can always revert. We haven't completely killed the company, but if you're small, that one test, that AB test, might take you five months to actually get to stat SIG. And what was the point of making only one change just to wait in there? That's also the big cost of the business as well. Yeah. You also talked about like there's a pop up strategy that your brother Zach is really excited about. What's going on with the pop-ups that you guys are excited about

Braxton Manley 22:29

here? Yeah, I mean, gosh, I think that pop-ups are probably the most important thing that you could ever actually incrementally improve on your whole entire business, because all the profit for us is made in retention marketing, like we're breaking even, as most people are on acquisition, and maybe that's the right way to do it, and then make you have to make your profit and retention. So if your retention sucks, your profit probably sucks. If you are excellent at retention, you're probably doing really nicely. And so the best way I think you can increase the performance of your retention marketing is through just capturing more contacts via the pop up. That's where most of them come from, and then, and then immediately making them excited to kind of engage with it. And so I see so many brands that are still really, you know, really big brands. And I'm like, Damn, that pop up is, like, so lame. Like, if only they improved this, would they know? Like, if the impact it has? So we are using amped right now. I heard they just got acquired, so they might not be compatible for Klaviyo stores anymore. But, for the for the foreseeable future, we'll continue to use AMP until we can't, because it has doubled our opt in rate, and we also it looks great, so it adds value to the brand, and we're able to really quickly change up like the copy on it and the offer, we find that honestly, just running a 10% offer is like, the best thing, because people just want to save a little bit of money. Like, the difference between offering 10% versus 15% is not going to make a difference. And if you say something like, oh, you might win a free gift card, people aren't buying it. Like, just give them a little 10% let them save three four bucks. Like, that's enough to get somebody to give you their email. So, yeah, I would say Don't over complicate it, but use something that is, like, really smart as a

William Harris 24:34

tool. Yeah, no, that's a great call out about not over complicating it. Simple offers. I have a love hate relationship with pop-ups, so maybe you can sway my mind here. One of the things that I as a marketer, dislike about pop ups, just in general, is that I'm offering a discount now to somebody who hasn't purchased and yes, that might potentially increase my. Purchases then, right? But I've captured a purchase of somebody who's looking for a discount. And when I look at LTVs, especially for some brands, I notice that there's a difference in the lifetime value of somebody who came in with a discount from their first purchase versus somebody who didn't come in with a discount on their first purchase. Have you noticed a difference? And maybe this is a thing that happens to do with, you know, higher aovs. And so maybe, maybe, if I'm looking at, you know, ALV of $400 This is a bigger deal. Are you? Are you seeing much of a difference when you look at the LTV of the difference in customers there,

Braxton Manley 25:38

I don't know those metrics, like, that's something I would like to be able to dive into more. I think that I am somebody that generally just looks at like a broader, like Performance view of stuff and like analytics are something that I try to have, like, the minimum effective dose,

William Harris 26:02

so that way I can another good Tim Ferriss call out there. Did he say that? I honestly don't know. Oh yeah, he did. I think it was The Four Hour Body he had, the M, E, D, the minimally effective dose.

Braxton Manley 26:16

Oh, okay, yeah, but he hasn't said as it relates to No, no analytics of something, okay? No, sure. So, you know, I'm somebody that I'm a creative and, like, I am not the numbers guy. That's my brother, and I really just try to let that like, I'm, you know, one half of the brain, and he's the other half. And, like, the more that we can focus on, like, I would rather go to him and say, like, what's working well, what's not, and then I can focus on designing and the Abstrakt of it all, and the vision. So it's just like a dynamic. Like, I find there's so much power in, like, not having to be a specialist at everything, in being the generalist. Like, that's kind of more my thing. I see the broad numbers of like, say how the pop up is performing, and I'm like 19% I think that's what it was last month. I don't know, but that's pretty good. So let's keep going.

William Harris 27:08

Yeah, you need somebody who who has the ability to pull back and see the bigger picture, and somebody else that can dive in and get granular with metrics. And so I think there's an importance to having both pieces. Maybe this is a bad next question then based on that exact thing. So if it is, you just say, like, Dude, I really just don't know, like, that's a question for Zach, but I noticed you were also talking about you guys had reduced the impact of leaked discount codes, and that's just something that a lot of companies struggle with. There's they've run discount codes that have now made it out there through all of the different influencers that they've used, and maybe they've done, you know, some of those other coupon sites. And so there's these coupon codes everywhere, and while it was good for like that initial burst of sales, knowledge just exists in perpetuity, sometimes on these different discount codes. And people wonder, how is that impacting my, my, you know, first order, AOV. How is it impacting my LTVs? What did you guys do to fix the leaked coupon discount codes? Yeah, I

Braxton Manley 28:09

mean, I would say one using social snowball and using safe links on social snowball. So a lot of the leaked codes were affiliate codes. So you know, oh, we're gonna work with somebody on the Shopify collabs. They get code, William, and then all of a sudden, you're like, Oh, wow. William earned freaking, you know, $2,000 today in commissions. Like he's crushing it. But, like, what did he post? It's like, Oh, he didn't post anything. His code is just leaked on honey. And so not only is the customer getting his discount, who's never seen his content, William's getting the kickback on the commission. And so it's a terrible situation if you're not keeping an eye on it. So the answer to it is using social snowballs, which is an affiliate marketing platform that we've switched to from Shopify collabs. You know, Shopify clubs is great. It's free, and you can do the free gifts and stuff. But like, I believe, only social snowball does the safe links feature, where the affiliate then gets it generates, like a dynamic coupon code. So the answer to your question ultimately, is, use dynamic coupon codes everywhere you can, and if you're not, if you can't, use it somewhere, like set a timer in your phone to switch it every month.

William Harris 29:24

Yeah, that's smart. I use, I use, I gotta be careful saying I use my Siri all the time. I gotta be careful because, you know, Siri will hear me right now. Instead another thing. It's like, I I'm gonna say it. And I'm just nervous because it's like, Oh no, she's gonna do it. But I'm like, Hey, Siri, remind me to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah at one o'clock tomorrow, and, man, it's like, our version of a sticky note that would just be, you know, put up somewhere. It's like, Nah, I had to just turn Siri off here. But,

Braxton Manley 29:48

yeah,

William Harris 29:49

it's funny. Something else you were talking about with that I was really excited about you were talking so the the other company, peace, love, hormones, you're working on some interesting. Stuff for, like, first purchase subscriptions. Tell me what you guys are doing that's so different there from what you've seen other prescription based companies do.

Braxton Manley 30:14

Yeah. I mean, so we haven't implemented it yet, but the idea is to basically charge more on the first purchase subscription and then less on subsequent subscriptions, interesting, rather than doing the common lead on discount the first purchase and then charge full price moving forward. So

William Harris 30:41

the discount, the discount makes sense, right? You're trying to get somebody to purchase that first order, then continue to subscribe and buy. Why charge more? What's the thought process? Well, because

Braxton Manley 30:51

I think, on one hand, you just don't want people gamifying you where they they're giving you, you're giving them a discount, and then they're taking advantage of the discount, and they know that they're gonna subscribe and then unsubscribe as soon as they get their product. That's like, no way to do business with anybody. And it's weird because, because nobody wants to then, like, have to pay full price after that. And so the idea is, with the charging more in the beginning, it's more of like a club membership, joining initiation fee, which is normal. If you join a gym, you're going to pay an extra 100 bucks when you sign, and then it'll be less moving forward. And and gyms have pretty high LTVs That being said, we're going to also value add the first purchase. So you're going to get, you're not just paying more because you're like, Well, you want to, you're going to join no but you're going to get a reusable shot glass that you can take the herbal supplement. It's a liquid dropper, so you every serving is done into a dropper, into a custom piece of hormones shot glass, which then keeps them more consistent, because it's a it's a more like satisfying way to take the medicine, rather than just doing the dropper straight onto the tongue. It's like too intense of a flavor, and so we're going to give them a really cool shot glass. We're going to give them digital products. So they're going to get access to our library of digital products, which, you know, you can put a price tag on that, let's say that's a $50 value. Whatever. It's digital, it's but, but it really is, like, productized. And then you can say we're going to have in person activations, like, we're in Austin. We're already kind of doing that with the brands like Maddie can host an in person event in Austin, and her followers and friends will, like, want to be there for that so, and maybe it could be expanded on, like we could do these in all the cities. And the idea is, like, right now, the tangible is so attractive to people. So something like, Oh, if I join this subscription, I can get exclusive access to an in person activation, even if it's something they're not going to go to. They're just like, that sounds awesome. Like once a year, even the minimum dose is once a year in Austin, we're all going to gather at the park, and we're going to say hi to everybody, and we'll free samples of the product, sure, and we're only going to tell people that are subscribed. All of a sudden, now you have a club membership where you have exclusive access to in person events.

William Harris 33:26

I think it's very interesting. I know the yacht club up the road. I don't have a yacht, but I've looked at it just for fun, and they charge, like you said, there's like an initiation fee. Most golf clubs do. There is something about being able to be a part of an exclusive club that we're willing to pay a little bit more for. And so I see the point of where you're going with this. It's a very interesting concept. I know you said you haven't implemented it yet, but I hope that you do, and when you do, I would like to see a follow up on how this is working out, because I think this is, I don't know of anybody else that has done this yet. Maybe they have. I just don't I'm not aware of anybody.

Braxton Manley 34:02

No, I have to give credit where it's due. I actually discovered this from a brand, a new coffee brand called clue, k, l, o, o, nice clue coffee. It's like this super high end coffee concentrate in a bottle. And so basically, kind of the way they're doing it is, you get this beautiful bottle. It looks like a tequila bottle. You know, your coffee goes in. You get that on your first purchase, and it's $35 and then after that, I think it's like $28 something. And so it's, it's seven bucks less. But then you don't get the bottle, you get the coffee refill in a bag. So it's more sustainable, but also they're saving a ton of costs on that, and kind of passing those savings off to the consumer. So it seems like a win win. It'll be an interesting case study, and I agree it's a kind of a big test, and it's one to be very data, and you know, statistic oriented about. Out, because you don't necessarily want to just try that blindly and have no Sure,

William Harris 35:05

sure. Well, you will have to follow up with you and Zach on that one. So Okay, speaking of tech stuff and everything, you mentioned that you have a really interesting tech stack that's something that you like looking at and optimizing. What are the main apps that you feel like you're using that you think other Shopify stores should definitely be using, or what are the ones that they should not be using?

Braxton Manley 35:34

Yeah, all right, well, I'll tell you what the stuff we're switching to like. So we're switching back to Klaviyo, okay, from where we tried send lane. And ultimately, like, I think there's a lot of reasons why somebody could excel on Send lane, but Klaviyo is where we have the most history, and we just want to go back to where all of our data is. And like, there's a reason why Klaviyo is the biggest brand in the space. I think that, you know, we're gonna probably see a great added efficiency to just being back to the the the, you know, the platform that we started on, and that, like, we know the best. So it was a, it was a nice experiment. And, like, again, like, no disrespect to send lane, but we are just to be honest, like we tried it and it didn't work for us. We're switching back to Klaviyo, so I'm excited for that, working with a new email team. And then also, we are using one text for a tech stack, so that's new. So we're switching right now to one text. They have some exciting features, especially for subscription, because you can buy and renew in the text. You don't have to. You don't have to. You can leave it literally in the text. You just say, like, confirm send letter Y if you want to renew your subscription right now. So cool.

William Harris 36:55

Yeah, that's great. Make it easier for people to be able to get what they want out of the text. Yeah?

Braxton Manley 36:59

So otherwise, yeah. I mean, we are using replo to build our website. So that's the thing. Like these days, Dragon building is really interesting, like my, you know, our website, we've probably invested $100,000 into the Braxley website over the years, and the amount of improvements that we've made on it in the last three months, that my brother has done for like, the $100 a month repo subscription. He's literally dragging and dropping shit, and it's He's made us, like, the way, way better performing website, and it looks like cutting edge, whereas it felt like we were struggling to keep up, even though we were spending top dollar.

William Harris 37:45

Oh, that's interesting. I haven't seen a whole lot of people using replo at that level, but I think that's a good call out that not everything has to be on the most expensive custom version. There's a lot that you can do with just straight up building. Okay, I want to dig into a little bit of the backstory of you. I always like to dig into who is Braxton Manley, who is the person we're talking to you mentioned that both of your parents were already serial entrepreneurs. How did having serial entrepreneurs as a as a environment, how did that make you into an entrepreneur? Like, Were there certain things that you guys did around the table where it's like, hey, let's talk about business ideas. Or, like, what is it about having entrepreneurs as fast that you think made you an entrepreneur?

Braxton Manley 38:39

Yeah. I mean, my dad would always have, is it CNBC on TV, like, the news, like, just like the business news, I was just watching, like, you know, what's, what's the random daily thing, even it was like, five minute glimpses where I didn't even know what was going on. Like, that's like, the first thing that came to mind was just, like, thinking that business was interesting. And then, like, I think that then led to, like, yeah, really talking about business. Like I was really crafty. So like, I would sell paintings actually, and like I would sell other random, your own paintings, yeah, somebody else's my own paintings. Yeah, that's cool. Like, I, like, was an art student, so like, I was actually, like, really artistic, and would make some interesting stuff and still do but so much of that energy now goes to actually using my art at the products and the brand art direction is usually all done by me. But yeah, obviously then just like, really liked the idea of of of having freedom and like, I realized I wanted to be wealthy. And like, I didn't, I didn't want, like, I kind of scared me to like, I was like, Okay, I want to be in marketing. I think I want to do something around, like, creative, brand, design, marketing, brand stuff, fashion maybe. But like, I was like, I just really don't know how to, like, I don't want to work for anybody to do this. And then the more I kind of grew up and got educated in college and business school, I was like, Oh, I get it. I have to, like, actually, just come up with, like, a business plan and then figure out accounting. And sure enough, you know, you, you can just start a business. Sure,

William Harris 40:17

I like that. Um, speaking of challenging and pushing yourself, uh, one of the things you told me is that you have this odd quirk where you like to push yourself to stay up to like, 3am or later once a week. Why that sounds miserable?

Braxton Manley 40:37

Yeah. So I am definitely a naturally, more of like a night owl type. So I know some people get this crazy burst of energy, like, at like five in the morning, if they if they wake up like before the sun rises. Like, sure that's when like the like writers will do their best writing. But there's also half of the world of writers that find that extra burst of energy of like creative flow in the late evening hours, when everybody's asleeping. It's like, the idea is, when the world feels like it's asleep, whether that's in the early hours or the late hours, there's you can sense the quiet of the world, and then I feel like ideas flourish. So give yourself a weekly either super early morning or super late night where you literally are doing it intentionally for ideas.

William Harris 41:38

I like that somebody fact checked me on this, but I believe one of the reasons why that method works is because it shuts off dopamine to the frontal cortex of your brain. Dopamine in the frontal cortex, from what I understand, causes you to be very task driven. This is what needs to get done. Stay on task. Stay focused. The same thing that coffee ends up doing when you're feeling a little bit tired of Rocky, but staying up late at that point in time, double meaning has been shut off to the frontal cortex, and you're allowed now to have your brain kind of go through a lot of other different types of thoughts and less about like, what's more productive, which I think allows for a lot more creativity

Braxton Manley 42:17

I Can Yeah. So, you know, it has worked for me. You know, I think that I have gotten a lot of my most like Abstrakt business ideas, whether that's even like, coming up with the idea for mystic like, and then further more, like the branding, like, all that came up. Like, I was, like, two in the morning, I was listening to, like, The Rolling Stones and like I I've just really liked the lip logo that they were using, and I realized, like, It all clicked in one one moment where we were trying this, like Pegasus branding for mystic, we were trying to make it mystical, like almost Lord of the Rings style. And then I had this epiphany where it's like, that's not the direction to go with it, like, Mystic gum is a beauty product. And then, like, you know, so now our logo is, you know, is lips. And it's, it's, but it's, it's lips done in a way that is a little bit evocative of the Rolling Stones. So it's not like full blown feminine lips. It kind of feels more like rock and roll lips and so it's I've thought all this through because it's so important to figure out day one, so that you know who you're trying to really speak to as a business.

William Harris 43:32

Yeah, I totally agree with being able to figure that out a lot more early on, and speaking to the right person. Branding and positioning are something that are highly undervalued in a lot of areas of DTC, where it's just based on performance, and I think that we just we fail to see the qualitative impact that good branding, intentional branding, can have. Yep, I understand that you once got to meet Mark Cuban, and you got him to try on one of your Apple watch bands. Getting to meet somebody you know of Mark Cuban status is cool, but actually getting him to try this on. How did this happen? Were just like, Hey, Mark put this on. He's like, Sure, sounds good, Braxton, no problem.

Braxton Manley 44:23

It was South by Southwest, and we were, it was our first year there, and I don't know, South by these days isn't quite the same thing it used to be. But we were one year out of college, and it was like, Hey, we are at South by Southwest to, like, really make a name for ourselves. Like we heard it was like, where to get discovered, like all these things, like you could just, like, throw this out by Southwest, and something big could happen to you. And so I had a backpack full of watch bands, and me and my buddy grant, we went to this Mark Cuban fireside chat. And. Was doing with a VC lady, and there was probably 500 people in the audience watching. And I was like, Okay, I remember telling everybody. I was like, I'm gonna get this watch band on Mark Cuban. You know, he's like, how are you gonna do that? And I, like, more than even just listening to what he was saying during the chat, I was focused on like, how am I gonna get this on his wrist. And I realized that there was probably gonna be a Q A afterward. And if there's a Q A, somebody's gonna be passing around a microphone to the somebody in the audience and like, so I saw the stage hand from across the way. I was like, I'm gonna go stand right next to the stage hand guy. And sure enough, goes into Q&A stagehand guy is like, you know, ready to go. He's like, any questions? And I was, like, the first guy to raise my hand. I was right next to the stagehand guy. So I had the first question of Mark Cuban, and I remember just asking him. I said, Mark, I see you have an Apple Watch on. I make the most comfortable Apple watch bands in the world. I have one right here in MAVs colors for you. It was a blue band, nice. And so he, I remember him saying, he goes, I'll try anything once. And then in front of the whole crowd, like, tried it on. Everybody's going crazy. And then the Austin Business Journal, like, wrote an article about us that that's all that whole thing. And it was a really fun, like, publicity thing that happened to us early on. I so I

William Harris 46:18

love so much about that that I want to call out, because it wasn't just by accident, right? Like, you went there and went there intentionally with this in mind, um, you knew that there's going to be a question and answer afterwards. You positioned yourself ready to be able to ask the question. You you had the band ready to go, and you knew enough about Mark Cuban to say, like, and this is in MAVs colors, right? Like there was something like there was so much behind this that it could seem like it was like a random luck of the draw shot. But you, you architected this to make it happen. And I think that's what I like most about this. Yeah.

Braxton Manley 46:50

Thank you. Yeah, yeah. It's that was probably five years ago now, and we actually did give him a band a second time at South by Southwest another year. So we haven't heard from him, by the way. Okay, he at least has two watch bands now on two separate occasions. I think on the third one, he'll, he'll want to make us a deal. There you go.

William Harris 47:13

Um, so apparently he'll try anything more than once too, if it's, if it's something he likes, and it's in mouse colors, right? Um, there was a quote that you mentioned to me the other day when we were chatting that I really liked that you live by Leonardo da Vinci said, to develop a complete mind. Study the science of art. Study the art of science. Learn how to see, realize that everything connects to everything else. This is a great quote. Why is this a quote that you feel is like one of the ones that you like to live by? Yeah, I

Braxton Manley 47:48

when I first heard that quote, it really spoke to me, because I felt like I understood what he meant by that. On a deeper level, the learn how to see part to me, doesn't necessarily, obviously means learn how to learn how to see it means, like, learn how to see things for what they are, and learn how to see some vision in what you're doing. And and, like, for instance, like, you know that that quote, what that means to me is in the Mark Cuban example, like, learn how to see the way to get the ban on Mark Cuban. And so I love that quote from Da Vinci. I think that it speaks to me as an artist.

William Harris 48:26

Yeah. I think that's good. And I think to your point, then, you know, or to Leonardo's point artist science and science is art, and you have to see them both for what they are and how they are interchangeable in many facets and areas of life. And I think that's,

Braxton Manley 48:40

that's good, yeah, everything is connected. Part is so key to and, like, I that one is very, you take that in a really deep way, but like, there's, like, you know, this saying, like, there's, like, a law of reciprocity to the world. It's called, I think that the traditional word for it is, I, me. And so think about the law of reciprocity, meaning, like, whatever you give is what you will receive an equal value no matter what. If it doesn't seem like it, it is and so like, for you know, the whole saying, like, put good in, get good out, it's, it's kind of synonymous to karma. But think about that with your customer. Like, if they feel like they feel like they got ripped off, they're never going to buy from you again. What you want them to feel is that you over delivered. And that's challenging. You know, for us, for instance, we sell a $39 Apple watch band made out of the best materials in the world. It's really a great band, totally originally designed by me. We put a lot of love into it, but it's a $39 band, and we're now competing with knockoffs on temu and Amazon for $1 Sure. And so, you know, think about how great of a challenge it is to feel like. A customer is getting over delivered to when, when you're facing competition like that, and that's the new that's the new era of the American DTC brand owner, that they're dealing totally, totally,

William Harris 50:12

I think a lot of what we're looking at then is the quality of the ingredients that go into it, you know, the product, etc. I think I've even seen a lot of things that are on team who have high amounts of certain chemicals that are, you know, known carcinogens. And you know, we at least trying to do better by that. We're trying to make sure that the way that they were produced or produced by people who, you know, aren't, you know, factory slaves. And I mean, there's all these different things that you can do that, I think, like you said, like over delivered in every area now, so over delivered to the customer, but over delivered to the person who's producing the band, over delivered to the materials that are going into the band. And I think all of those things have a have a place. Yeah, I got one more that I really liked, because there's a there's a good moral to the story. On this one, I understand that you sang brown eyed girl in high school and you forgot the lyrics. What? What happened here? Come in the story?

Braxton Manley 51:12

Yeah, this is a, this is a great one for for people in e-commerce and live business, yep, if you don't prepare for your presentation, it's not going to go well. Like the people that are actually the most prepared are the ones that make it look the most effortless. Like when people say, Oh, they made that look easy. That person, for sure, practiced it for 10,000 hours. Yeah, and so, yeah, I basically, you know, had that lesson learned where I went on stage at the high school talent show thinking I was, I was so smart at the time I was going to be able to do brown eyed girl. I planned on it the night before, and I realized right before I was about to go on stage, I'm like, I don't know the second verse. And sure enough, I manifested that reality. I go out on stage, I start singing the first verse, knowing at some point it's about to get bad, and then all of a sudden, like, the words in my head, they slowly stop. And then I'm like, All right, we're going back to the chorus again. And then I'm gonna walk off stage, and I'm gonna be like, really embarrassed, you know? Yeah. And so, like, the lesson there is, like, in business, for instance, like, if you say, have a product launch, and you launch, and then all of a sudden you realize, like, the description isn't done properly. You're like, you're not, like, ready for it. Like, product launches are such a big deal. And we've also seen that before where we weren't ready for a product launch, but we were like, We're gonna launch Friday, you know? And it's like, it's Monday, and we're like, we have plenty of time, we have four days, and all of a sudden it's the day before. You're like, whoa, we have a lot to do still. But email team said Friday, like, they already have it queued up, ready to go. Like, I guess we're launching Friday. And like, in reality, that probably would have gone so much better for the company if they launched Monday and spent the weekend with a few extra days. So I guess the other lesson there is, like, probably don't give yourself hard launch dates. Like we've, we've always been pushing back and being flexible with timeline, knowing that unforeseen delays always happen, and you got to just stay flexible with not just everything, everything in business, yeah, flexible with what your expenses are, flexible with what your timelines look like. Like. We're working a little slower now than we used to, because we have three businesses, but it's, it's still working, like it's better, like, I know there's some stuff. I'm like, I'm not gonna be able to get to that this week, and I just have to accept that. Like, I'm balancing everything the best that I can, and that thing can wait till next week. It's not a big deal.

William Harris 53:58

Yeah, that's, I think, the idea of preparation, you know, you you flip that, and obviously you have learned from that, and that shows in that Mark Cuban situation, where it's like there was preparation. There you had the bands with you. You knew about his team, you You prepared. There's so much more about that that I think is it's good to have to go through some of those easy failures. Alex Ramos, he talks about this that I really appreciate the idea of you want your kids to be strong, but you don't want them to go through things that make them strong. You want them to be patient, but you don't want them to go through the things that will make them patient. It's like you want them to be prepared, but you don't want them to have to get up in front of the stage and sing brown eyed girl and realize they don't know the second verse going to make them want to be prepared, right? It's like they have to go through those things in order for that to become a core thing in your in your mind.

Braxton Manley 54:44

Yep, that's it.

William Harris 54:47

So you're a singer. Are you gonna serenade us? You're my

Braxton Manley 54:53

brown I don't know any of nice No, no, that's good. I

William Harris 54:57

didn't expect you to actually say and the spin. I love it. We really, we really lucked out today, folks, Rex, it, it's been absolutely amazing talking to you today. If you had people that wanted to work with you, or if they want to follow you, what's the best way for them to connect with you? Stay in touch with you.

Braxton Manley 55:17

Twitter is some or x is a platform. I'm definitely trying to, like do my, most of my networking on, so check me out, Braxton Manley on X. I'm Braxton Manley on any other. Instagram's great too. Just Yeah, feel free to ask me a question, and I'll get back to you. And I hope this was valuable to anybody listening.

William Harris 55:38

Yeah, I love it, and I do follow you on X, and we interact there, and you do share some good stuff, so definitely worth a follow there, if you guys are on X, otherwise, I appreciate you jumping on, sharing your knowledge, your time with us today. Let's go. Thanks for having me on. Thank you everybody else for tuning in. Have a great rest of your day.

Outro 55:56

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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