The $7.8B eCommerce Growth Strategy With Sabri Suby

Sabri Suby is the Founder and Head of Growth at King Kong, Australia’s fastest-growing direct-response digital marketing agency. The company has generated over $7.8 billion in sales in over 1,000 industries. As an author and thought leader, Sabri wrote the international best-selling book Sell Like Crazy and has been featured in publications, including Forbes and Entrepreneur, where he contributes articles on entrepreneurship, digital marketing, and business growth strategies. He was one of five investors on the 2023 season of Shark Tank Australia.

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

[3:03] The factors that contributed to Sabri Suby’s exponential business growth from $50 to $70 million
[4:36] Sabri talks about the resources that helped him shift from an employee to an entrepreneur
[9:53] How to scale an e-commerce business using competitive strategies
[16:28] What is the Black Tiger growth strategy?
[20:06] Case studies of brands surpassing the competition by increasing LTV
[22:26] Strategies for generating value for the customer
[26:31] How luxury brands create high-value customer experiences — and what DTC brands can learn from these tactics
[37:39] Sabri’s experience building a $500 million sales machine for MrBeast
[42:02] Developing a compelling brand story by analyzing product value
[51:19] Audience-building strategies for brand growth
[55:16] The worst pitch Sabri witnessed on Shark Tank Australia
[1:01:24] Personal work ethic and life lessons from Sabri

In this episode…

The secret to brand growth isn’t experimenting with various popular hacks and hoping something works. In reality, many brands focus on the wrong metrics. For instance, 80% of people spend 80% of their time reducing customer acquisition costs and 20% of their time increasing AOV and customer LTV. These numbers should be reversed, as nurturing your existing customers leads to lower acquisition costs. How can you uplevel the customer experience to scale your brand beyond $100 million in revenue?

With experience generating over $7 billion in revenue for various e-commerce brands, Sabri Suby maintains that you can’t scale sustainably without generating value for your customers and creating exceptional experiences. This requires garnering their attention and convincing them to purchase from you through compelling brand stories and messaging. However, you can’t just distribute a catchy slogan and logo across various social channels and expect to build your brand and audience. You must identify your target customer, market and develop messaging around their central problem, and determine a product differentiator to craft a brand story.

Join William Harris for another episode of the Up Arrow Podcast as he interviews Sabri Suby, the Founder and Head of Growth at King Kong, about his $7.8 billion growth strategies. Sabri shares what DTC brands can learn about luxury brands’ customer experience strategies, the worst pitch he’s ever witnessed on Shark Tank Australia, and how he built a $500 million sales machine for MrBeast.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

"If you're going to scale, you need to really fall in love with the boring work and the operations behind the scenes."
"The businesses that really win long term are the ones that invest in product, team, and brand alongside all the marketing optimization."
"You don't need a lower customer acquisition cost; what you really need is the highest day one ROAS and the highest LTV."
"The more that you tell, the more that you sell. If you're going to sell, go all the way."
"The moment that you stop growing is the day that you start dying. So I am very intentional about growing in all areas of my life, always."

Action Steps

Embrace the unsexy work: Focus more effort on improving operations, SOPs, and team building. This creates a solid foundation for scalable growth.
Prioritize the customer experience: Dedicate resources to innovate your customers' end-to-end experience. This strategy can increase AOV and LTV.
Storytelling is key: Learn to craft and share the story behind your products to increase perceived value. Sabri Suby stresses the power of a strong narrative in converting interested prospects into loyal customers.
Cultivate an audience: Build and nurture an audience for your brand to have a platform for launching and discussing products passionately. This fosters a loyal customer base and drives growth.
Balance life domains: Regularly audit and invest in various life domains like health, relationships, and personal growth. This philosophy reflects Sabri’s personal view on maintaining success beyond just the financial aspects, focusing on overall life satisfaction and sustainability.

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

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. Hey everyone.

William Harris 0:16

I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt 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 and beyond as you up arrow your business and your personal life. Joining me today is Sabri Suby. Sabri is the founder and head of growth at Australia's fastest growing full service digital marketing agency, King Kong. He's the author of international best-seller, Sell Like Crazy, and one of five investors on the 2023 season of Shark Tank Australia. Sabri launched his business in 2014 as a $50 venture from his bedroom in Australia's Byron Bay. The business has since grown to become a 90 strong global empire. King Kong was valued at an estimated 50 million in 2021 prior to rolling out globally, and it was later valued at 72 million in 2023 following two years of substantial growth. Sabri has amassed a social media following of 1.5 million people. He has been crowned the King of consulting by founder magazine and branded one of the best marketers in the world by globally recognized entrepreneur Mike Dillard. Sabri Suby has led his King Kong business and team to win prestigious awards over the years, including AFR best places to work. Andy is a regular on the AFRs annual young rich list with a current personal net worth of approximately 91 million as of 2023 which is the date that I have here. Sabri, excited to have you here.

Sabri Suby 1:35

Thanks for having me on.

William Harris 1:37

Yeah. So most of the guests, I have to thank somebody for an introduction. It was different with you, because I've just watched a lot of your videos and really appreciated a lot of what you were saying. I felt like we resonated a lot. I saw you wearing an EBITDA shirt, and that's been a big thing that we've talked about a lot here. And I just thought I just got to ask this guy. So I reached out to you on Twitter, and it was like, hey, I really want to get you on the podcast. You down. You're like, down? You're like, Yeah, let's do it. So I appreciate that.

Sabri Suby 2:05

No, no problems. I'm excited to get stuck into it. Yeah.

William Harris 2:08

So we're going to be talking about this $7.8 billion e-commerce growth strategy that you've got here. Before we do, I want to announce our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt 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 ipoed recently. You'd learn more on our website@Elumynt.com, which is spelled E, l, u, m, y, N, t.com That's it onto the good stuff here. So this 7.8 million billion dollar e-commerce growth strategy. You've got this marketing agency, King Kong, that you've grown to over $70 million but you started with only $50 you have a really great video on this, by the way, if anybody wants to watch it, that said, What are your three biggest factors that you think have contributed to this growth from 50 million to 70 million.

Sabri Suby 3:03

I think being, you know, able to go into the boring work and do the things that aren't glamorous and aren't sexy and aren't looking at dashboards and, you know, just writing new ad headlines and hooks, I think that it's quite easy to go from to get to a million, and then go from a million to 3 million, and then to get beyond that, and to get to 10 million and plus beyond, you need to really fall in love with the boring work and the setting up the operations and the teams and the SOPs, and becoming a leader and A builder of teams and a collector of humans, and that is the business that you get into when you want to scale. You're not in the business of being the practitioner anymore, and typically doing all the glamorous work. It's about assembling the team and building out the systems that are going to help you scale. That is, you know, the biggest determining factor. I've been very lucky and fortunate to be able to build the team that I've got and to better lead them, because if you're running an agency, you're in the people business, right? That is the product. The product that you've got is the people, and that's that's the key to get to those heights and to scale up to that.

William Harris 4:17

So I'm with you on that, books, tools. What's helped you? One of the things that helped me as a founder to get out of the doing stage and into the team building stage was EOS traction, which is really good book, and we worked with an EOS implementer. What helped you make that shift?

Sabri Suby 4:36

Yeah, I can't say like, I'm I'm like, not like, I'm kind of very pigheaded in terms of the way that I approach things, and with a lot of the different trajectories that I went through, it probably would have been a lot easier for me to go out there and read a book or do a course than do it. But I don't know what it is that's inside me, but I always typically go the hard path. So. So for instance, when I got started in sales, you know, and I sucked really bad, and then I became the top salesperson at every company that I ever worked that was before that I'd ever read a sales book, and it would have been a lot easier and a lot quicker if I had just gone out there and got that information. And I can say the same thing for the operations of my business and building up my business. I didn't like work with some CEO whisperer, or like read the EOS book or have some practitioner to come in. I just like, and it's the worst way to learn, probably, is through trial and error, but that's effectively how I did it. I think I was spinning so many plates and running so fast that I didn't look for that outside information, because there was so many things that I had to do within my business. So it was just by trialing and trial and error. And I think that it's something that you go through the process. Everyone has a different path to get to that outcome. And I think knowing what I know right now, I definitely would have gone out there and read those books and got that information, but it wasn't my journey, and I said that it would, I would be lying. Well,

William Harris 6:09

you are the outlier in that case, and I think that that's great, though. That being said, it hints at something else that I think is important, which is, if you are an entrepreneur, a lot of times we don't trust our gut enough. We get into this point where we're like, No, I have to look at just what is data backed or what has been done before, what's been written about this. I had a guest on before, Will Leach, who was ex Pepsi, and he talked about the different processing speeds of our different minds. And there's the one mind that's processing things, like our conscious mind that's processing very, very slow rate. And then there's our non conscious mind that he said, is processing it, you know, 100 times that rate. And what's interesting is, I say that's our gut like, to some degree, like your gut feeling, and you're like, I just feel like I need to try this. And sometimes the best thing is to just trust the gut, trial error, see if it fixes things. I tell people, This is what your doctor does. A lot of times, your doctor says, Great. 80% of the time you have these symptoms, here's the medication. This is what you have. Here's the medication. Take it if it works. I was right. If it doesn't work, then let's go down the path. But sometimes the most diagnostic thing you can do is to just make a decision and go with it. Yeah, I think

Sabri Suby 7:22

that's something that I inherited from my mother. She always told me, like, let your conscience be your guide. And I definitely think that I'm very in touch with my intuition. And a conversation that I was recently having in my business is that, like, you know, I was in a room with all of my managers, and we have all of these, you know, dashboards and datas. And I've got, like, you know, data scientists that are going through it, and it gets to a point where people, they just keep on wanting more information and data to support their decision. And I had to just be like, Look, enough is enough. Like, we've got enough data to support this. Guys like, and a lot of the time, you know, the trap and the double edged sword of the time that we're living in, where you can get all this data, and we're in digital and you can look at to track everything to what specific ad did, what it's like, we just get so, like, anal retentive with it, and we don't want to make decisions until we have all of the data to support that. But, you know, Money loves speed, and a lot of the time that if you were to put all of the data aside, and you were just to ask, like the founder, like, what do you think is the right decision to make here, they don't need, like, six months of data to get statistical significance in order to make that decision, and that just slows everything down. So I have all of that in my business that runs in the background, but one of the things that I have just been relying on even more than ever, is just letting my intuition also run it and then further validating that data and course correcting it with the data if I need to in the future, but not letting that just bog me down and think like it's not that difficult, right? You just look at it in its simple terms, and you boil it down to its first principles. Most of the time, we know the things that need to be done. We know the conversations that need to be had. You don't need a dashboard to tell you that. You just need to go and do it. So I think that that is the guiding light that has helped me throughout my business journey, is just being very in touch with my intuition and having, like, that sixth sense of knowing what it is that needs to be done. Yeah,

William Harris 9:27

so that's what's helped you grow the agency. But I want to shift into what do you find to be the biggest keys to success for growing just e-commerce stores in general, because you've you've done a very good job of growing a few very notable brands. When you look at all the different tactics and things you're trying, what do you find to be the things that set the winners apart?

Sabri Suby 9:53

I think that in early in my career, with growing e-commerce businesses and helping people go from. Know, zero to one, and then scale up to, you know, 250, a billion dollars plus in revenue. Is that your you get caught up in, like, all of the growth hacks in the beginning, and you start thinking about, like, how, how do you gamify? What's the ad account structure? How much money's going to tofu? Mofu? Bofu? Is it no target, all of these different nuanced things, right? And then I started to also, then see some anomalies of people that don't do all of those things and just have, like, a really strong fundamentals of the business, and have a very solid value proposition, and have lots of a deep catalog of products that they can on sell that to get a higher LTV with strong branding, and all of those other factors. And they're the things that are going to create a moat and get you, you know, beyond $100 million in revenue because all of those other things that we all these drop shippers and like Teemu and all of this stuff like, if you're just looking for those little hacks, like those moats just get dissolved like that, right? And the businesses that really win long term are the ones that invest in product and invest in team and invest in brand and are still doing all of that stuff. Like, if you've got two competitors and one's doing all of those things, and then you've got one that's doing all of those things, plus doing all the growth hacky stuff and the optimization, they're going to crush the other person, but it's the person that doesn't have all those fundamentals in place, but are doing all the growth hacking and optimization and, you know, shopping cart optimization and all of those kind of things, and upsells and down sells and cross sells, like they're Going to get absolutely slaughtered by the person that does the fundamentals. So the thing that I have always, like seen that works really well with founders is, like, you know, having someone on their team that is just incredibly product focus and really, really wants to invest in that experience and surprising and delighting people. And if you look at where the whole online marketing e-commerce world is going with AI and leveraging AI and these ad platforms taking away all of the power, and it's going to be like a very even playing field, so all of the growth, hacky stuff is going to be redundant, like all of the best account structures. That's all going to get removed, right? Ultimately, Facebook and all of these platforms want it, so just the mom and pop operator off the street can go there, put their credit card in, sign it up, and then the ROAs just rains from the sky. And anything that stops that happening is simply a constraint on their business from unlocking a much bigger Tam. So if you know that to be true. Then, if you focus all of your time and energy on areas to grow e-commerce brands that have a very short half life, ie, the way that we buy ads now is very different to how we buy ads two years ago, with everything that's changed so that advantage is gone now, all of the time that you invested in understanding how the the ad platform worked at that stage, not the fundamentals, but the technical components of it. They're all gone. Now you have to retool, and that is going to continue to happen. And the control is going to remove, be removed. So then it all really comes down to like, the messaging, the copy and the creative of what it is that you're going to do, and then leveraging the AI and all of these platforms to kind of get that throughput. And that's one component of it. And then the one component, the other component of it as well, is, is this going to be better feedback mechanisms of people that are doing things that aren't a great shopping experience? And we've already seen it, and it's going to even happen more and more and more and post purchase surveys from these platforms. And so the companies that have a big emphasis on service and product are the ones that are ultimately going to win. Yeah,

William Harris 13:56

you reminded me of there's a guest that was on the here Britain lad. Me, this is about a year ago, but he talked about how, let's say, in the very near future, 10 years even, maybe from now, it won't even be the human being that's going and shopping on your website. Your website is a moot point at that point in time. It's your AI agent that's going to go shop at all of the different websites, bring the data to you and just basically present you with, like, the top two or three choices that are within your price range that you already like, etc. And so, you know, even the way that we believe that we are shopping now that's going to change in the future. And so to your point, focusing on the things that are outside of those hacky things is the key to success.

Sabri Suby 14:39

Yeah, and just making sure that, again, coming down to the fundamentals, right? Forget all the data, forget everything. Just put all of that crap out the window for right now. And just imagine, if you boil it down, right? You boil down what's happening. So first of all, like a transaction takes place where value exceeds price. So. The product that you're actually selling needs to far exceed, like the value of it needs to far exceed the price that you're charging. And then what happens once you receive that product? Right? What happens next? How does a box come? How does the whole flows happen? How do they surprise and delight you,

William Harris 15:18

and how do they educate you?

Sabri Suby 15:20

How do they educate you? How do they make it where it's like, wow, this is was an incredibly pleasurable experience. The product got shipped faster than they said on their website. I expected it to come in some crappy, non branded mailer directly from China. And it was a whole experience that in itself. They sent me some free samples. They gave me this coupon right along offer all of this stuff, right? That is what it is that you would want to experience as somebody that buys a product, yet most people don't even just look at it, just in those fundamentals and just thinking, what would you need to do from the moment somebody gives you their credit card to surprise and delight them, to where they would want to come back. They would want to tell their friends about you, and they would want to have, they just have an incredible experience, and keep on buying from you into the future. And it's

William Harris 16:11

easy to say, hard to do. We're hinting around this. Is this black tiger, like you talk about this, this $7.8 billion strategy that you call Black Tiger, is this the piece that is missing that a lot of people are not focused on this, or what are the different components that make up black tiger?

Sabri Suby 16:28

Yeah, it is. 80% people spend 80% of their time focused on how do they reduce their customer acquisition cost, and 20% of their time on how to increase their average order value and increase their LTV of a client. And that is completely wrong. Those numbers should be inversed, because your ads, guess what? People just go to Facebook ads library, swipe all your crap, chuck it into chat, GPT, regurgitate it, copy your creatives. Run everything that it is you're running. Look at your PDP pages, set up all of the stuff that you're doing. I can get that done in a day. That's absolutely zero moat to your business. But the things that can't is, what happens underneath the iceberg that is submerged under the ocean? How deep does that go? What are the systems that you've got set up? How do you treat that? How do you cross? Sell, upsell, educate them through, get referrals, and increase all of those key metrics that really matter, because you don't need a lower customer acquisition cost. That's not what you need. That's what you've been told by all of the gurus and all of the agencies out there to try and get your ad dollars from you. But you don't need that. What you really need is the highest day one ROAs and the highest LTV to be able to fund that trap that that trough that is created between customer acquisition cost and LTV, right? That's going to limit you from scaling really, really aggressively, and to surprise and delight your customers, so that they spend more with you than anybody else in your market, so that you can afford to spend two to 3x what they can on the front end to acquire that customer. And that's easily said, but not easily done, because in order to have a very high LTV, you need to have a deep product catalog. You need to need to be realistic products that people would want to buy, if it's not something that is a replenished product, where they have to keep buying it from you, like skincare or protein or whatever it might be. And that comes from somebody that is product focus, and a founder that is product focused and understands they have a vision for their business. They have a vision of, how do they solve this problem for the customer? They're not product sellers, right? Because, you know, a business a business owner, they make a sale to make money, right? Where a business builder, they make a sale to start a relationship. And so many e-commerce businesses are focused on, what is the gadget, Gizmo or goop that I'm going to sell to make money? They're not focused around. This is the problem that my business solves, and in that ecosystem, there is a lot of other things that I need to provide that customer into enable to realistically solve that problem. And the people that can do that and build those catalogs, they're the ones that win, because they're not just focused on, you know, what is it that I can do in terms of creating scarcity and all these other things on the front end to make my conversion rate higher?

William Harris 19:29

So who's a who is an example of a brand that you think is doing this very well? Because I'll say that we've found, even within our own client list, when we work on optimizing the AOV, the first purchase AOV, the lifetime value goes up. That's intuitive, but a lot of brands like you said they're not thinking about that. But if we can increase the AOV, the first purchase AOV, we can increase the amount that we're willing to pay to acquire that customer, still increase the profitability there. We've increased the LTV now for that customer as well, the overall long term profitability of that customer is significantly through the roof. Yes, is there a brand, though, that you work with, that you could think of that you're saying they do this? Well, yeah,

Sabri Suby 20:06

I think that you know a category and a business that does this incredibly well is high smile. They are somebody that you know were kind of getting their ass kicked by, like snow, teeth whitening and a few other players out there, and then they made the decision, like, let's just invest in product heavily. Like, let's just absolutely smoke all of these people on product. And you look at what they've done now, right? It's like they're absolutely beating the pants off everybody in that category, and they're not slowing down. And that is hard to catch. Like, it's, it's a big moat, right? It's a lot of infrastructure that you have to invest in, in a brand in order to be able to do that. And, yeah, good luck. Like, just, it's not like just copying somebody's email flows, right? Or like this little thing that they've got underneath their CTA on their page, or any of those things. It's, it's something that you need to build a team. You need to build a whole department in your business, you need this regulations around launching these products. You need to go through all of that and get all the certifications that you need in order to sell it, and then you need to work with pharmacists and all of these people to build out all of the like, it's just, it's a huge moat. And that's the thing where, you know, there's a there's other businesses out there that are doing that, but it's when you're in a very competitive market, and all other things are created equal, and you have the same access to the same talent, and you're building a good team, and all of those things, then you have to just ask yourself, without the data, what is going to make the difference? Is all of our ads are dialed in. Is all the creatives are good. Everything is really dialed in from that standpoint, what is the edge that I'm going to be able to get as a founder?

William Harris 21:47

Yeah, so you said that the value needs to be greater than the price you're charging, and I agree with you, but I would also say the perceived value, just to make sure that we clarify, the perceived value has to be there. The value should also be there. But there's a lot of brands where maybe the value is greater than the price they're charging, but the perception of the value isn't there. And I see a lot of brands maybe get now too focused on features or things that the customer doesn't actually care about. How do you shift brands out of that mentality to be able to create the right, winning ad strategy that is actually drive. How do you create that value in the customer's mind? I guess is what I'm getting to

Sabri Suby 22:26

Yeah, and that's a great point that you bring up, because there are a lot of great products out there that still get absolutely murdered. So it's not the best product wins. That is not the case at all, because you can have the best product and nobody knows about you. It doesn't matter what the customer experience is, right? Most people think that they have a brand, and they sit around drinking almond lattes and they're like, this is my brand, and look at my lookbook, and it's such a vibe, and it's like, that just drives me absolutely crazy. I hate that crap because they don't have a brand. They have a logo, right? In order to have a brand, you need customers, and in order to get customers, you need a distribution. And in order to get distribution, you need to be able to go out there and spend money to get attention, to get customers, right. Or you need to use not money, and you need to use human capital and create organic content at a large cadence, which is not free. So it's not organic free marketing. It is all paid marketing. It's just the lens that you look at it through. In order to be able to get that and so in order to be able to do that to complete strangers, you need to be able to convey your message and your product in a compelling way that can take a complete stranger off the street and get them to whip out their credit card and to buy. And the analogy that I like to use is think about the mall close to your home, right? And if you're running ads on Facebook, it is the equivalent to going down, parking your car in that mall, walking up into the food court and standing on the table and screaming out at the top of your lungs. Who is interested in this right? And if you can't get a good amount of people to raise their hand, then cold traffic is not going to work for you. And so as a marketer, then your job becomes, how do you stand on that table in that food court? First grab people's attention with wild hooks and visual hooks and things are going to disrupt what they're currently doing, and then get a large majority of those people to raise their hand and be like, I wasn't really interested. I was kind of on the fence, but that's freaking cool, like I didn't even think about that. And then educate them and make them compelled, in a way, to make them act and you're right. A lot of people sit down and they think that I just have a great product, the customers will come. I learned that the hard way, right? I learned that very difficult in the start of my career, I was selling water filters online. And, you know, I in Australia, there is a large perception that it is completely healthy and fine to drink the tap water, and so you're swimming up. Against this raging river that is the current of your marketplace, and you are trying to have a convincing argument to convince people to buy your product, rather than having a compelling offer that you're serving to a starving market that is absolutely ravenous for what it is that you've got. So you really need to focus on the messaging and finding out what is important to your market. And it comes back to what we said before, of what is the problem that that market is trying to solve. They don't buy the features. They buy the problem or the status or whatever it is that your product on unlocks, and so you want to be, you know, focused much more on the end outcome that your product unlocks, rather than the features and the thread count. And then it comes from some secret silk up in the Pyrenees. And like it doesn't, you need to be focused on them and what it is that they want.

William Harris 25:56

So I totally agree with you on that. I want to shift into something else that you talked about, actually just a couple of days ago on YouTube, that I appreciated about luxury brands, because this is about perception, right? Like about the perception of the value here, but how luxury brands are brainwashing us. You actually, you dressed up in costume. You roar The meta Ray bands to record this event. I mean, like this was a quite the ordeal. What did you learn from doing this?

Sabri Suby 26:31

A lot it's, you know, a lot of the time, people are aware of the psychological biases that they have, and they understand to some degree what makes them buy. And I love it, because a lot of people, like a lot of people that buy luxury brands, and everyone has a friend that, like our marketing doesn't work on me, sure, and then I'm like, Okay, why is that protect on your wrist, bro? Like, why you surely don't need that to tell the time, like your phone tells the time. So don't give me that bullcrap. So, you know, the thing that I really like to look at is you've got the very in your face direct response style marketing that is very apparent with kind of what is happening, and you're very aware of that sales cycle. And then on the other end of that spectrum that you have, like the brand marketing. And a lot of the people that buy into those brands don't think that marketing works on them, and they are marketed to in a much more covert way. But it's very, very powerful also. And so when you actually go in and, you know, I went into Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, and you're very aware of what it is that you're looking for and what's going to happen. And then you just see everybody in those stores that have been trained very, very well, and the whole situation has been orchestrated to happen the way that it does. And it's just a funnel, right? It's just a funnel, just like you have in EECOM, or, you know, in lead gen, but you're just applying it in an in store environment. And it comes back to those fundamentals. Them greeting you with sparkling water. Them assigning a personal shopper to you. Them asking what brought you in here. Them wanting to build a relationship with how many products that you've bought you have. They have a CRM that has your name and your details on it, and they bring up everything that you've ever purchased, so they know not to show you those products. And then they show other products that you may like. So yeah, it's like, it's there. They're just using all of those cycle psychological triggers in the flesh, live in the flesh, in person, to run you through that whole experience. And it is designed in a perfect way to maximize day one, AOV and LTV, well. And I think,

William Harris 28:53

if I remember correctly, you were looking for this wallet and and, you know, the first store didn't have any in stock. You go to this other location, and they're like, Yeah, this is the one that we have in stock. And whether it actually is or not, the whole point is that scarcity mentality. What are, what are some things that we could take away from the in store experience in luxury that you've experienced, that we can bring into the D to C space?

Sabri Suby 29:22

Yeah, it's a good question. So a lot of the things like scarcity and whatnot, like, people think that they're scammy or very, like, surface level, tactical. But then when you ask that person, okay, you've got, like, this latex bed in stock, right? How many of those do you have? Oh, we've got, like, 150 so there is limited stock, sure, yes, there is, okay, cool. And so there's going to be a period of time where you put in a purchase order, the stock is going to get low, and then you're going to replenish that stock is. That at all displayed to the user, or is that something that all just happens on the back end and no one knows it but you? And they're like, Oh, no one knows it, but us. Okay, well, just showcasing that, or showcasing that you have three more in stock that is going to improve your conversion rate across the board, and so that's why those luxury brands do it, or having a limit of how much you know certain products that people can buy. So I tried to buy the Chanel bag in there, and I've got three daughters. I was like, hey, I want to buy these three bags for my daughters. And they were like, Oh, I'm going to have to see about that. Let me go speak with the manager. I'm gonna have to get manager clearance, because you're only allowed to buy one per person, and then it's a whole song and the dance, and then they come back, okay? Because you have two bodyguards with you, will allow you to buy three of the bags. And it's just the experience of, first of all, creating scarcity, whether you like it or not. It is fundamentally in human nature to drive conversion rates right and to get people to want to buy. If there's limited supply of something people want it, if you make something hard to get people want it more. If you look at, you know, the dating analogy, partners that are hard to get are going to be the ones that are going to be more desirable. And so you can arm and are and try to deny it and roll your eyes all you want, but it's just fundamental human nature. And so if you have products that are exclusive, that if you have, you know, you're going to do a product launch, rather than increase just having all of the product on your website for the launch, you would have, you know, join the wait list for that product, and then you would drip feed it out, and you would put scarcity around this product. We've put this product aside for you for the next 36 hours in the launch. If you don't buy within that time frame, we're gonna have to remove your spot, right? How Apple? This is something that Apple took from the luxury brand market, right? How you when they launch an iPhone, and you're there, and you call them up, and you're like, yeah, do you have any of these in the one terabyte? And they're like, No. And you're like, when are you gonna get it? And they're like, We don't know.

William Harris 32:14

They don't know, right?

Sabri Suby 32:15

We get a delivery every day. We don't know. We don't know what's in it. But I got one right now. Okay, I'm gonna buy it right now, give me a credit card. Bang, right? So it's it's even like assigning product to people when you're doing product launches, another thing that you can do is valuing your highest LTV clients who have bought from you from your e-commerce store. So when you do launch a product that they're first in line that they get open access to a cart three days before it goes out to the public. They get, you know, assigned a personal shopper. Maybe LTV hits more than $1,000 if it's a product. And they get a call from somebody at the company, Hey, I just wanted to you call. We noticed that you've been, you know, buying this product. We really appreciate it. I see your business coming through. And I just wanted to give you a call, because we're going to send you out a free gift, and I just need to know when your birthday is. Like, imagine what that does to create evangelists of products and brands and get people. They're like, wow, they recognized it. They saw it because everybody's got those customers, but people will use plugins to see which influencers are buying their products, but they won't use plugins to see which of their clients have the highest LTV and create like 1000 raving fans around their product. I

William Harris 33:30

love that. I want to touch on the stock out that you talked about too. We had a client. They had a shipment of product that didn't come in on time, so they sold out faster than they had planned on it. And initially they were mortified by this. They're like, Oh, this is terrible. We don't ever want to sell out there. You know, still a startup brand, I want to say, maybe doing like five, 10 million, somewhere around that number. And I said, this is actually okay. This is going to work out very well in your favorite now, yeah, you don't want to stock out, but I can tell you that as a small brand, it's a whole lot worse to have extra inventory on hand than it is to sell out. Because even now, at this point in time, we can use this in the next batch of ads. So the next batch of ads we have says this sold out in three months, right? So now that it's all of a sudden that opportunity that has manifested itself from something what that was less opportune?

Sabri Suby 34:23

Yeah, and so I worked with an e-commerce brand when they were getting started called koala, that are in America as well now, and they had a situation where they sold out of their their first production run, or it may have been their second production run, and they were flying. We helped them go from, you know, zero to 13 million in their first year, and then they scaled very aggressively off the back end of that, and they sold out of their mattresses, and we were running all their ads and doing all their creatives. And this was at the stage where my agency was just getting started, and I was like, in there, in the kitchen. In, and so I I created an ad for them, which was ridiculously comfortable. Mattress is available after months on the waitlist, and that thing just absolutely pulled its head off and went completely batcrap nuclear, and was SK scaling with insane ROAs. But that is a situation where you're taking something, a real event that did happen, it did sell out. It is ridiculously comfortable, because people are saying that in the reviews, there has been like, you know, a two month wait list in order for because they were low on cash flow and blah, blah, blah, right to get the stock. So why, as a marketer, would I not use that? Why would I just upload the product and then start running my normal ads like that is the most ridiculous thing that I could do. So, you know, there's a place in my city here in Melbourne, and it's called Loon, and they sell croissants, and they have a line around their block in the middle of winter when it's one degree outside, at five o'clock in the morning for people buying these croissants, and then you go in there and set up like a boutique, right? And it's like there's a whole story behind it. There's a whole story about the croissants, and that's how they can charge $13 for a croissant. Is it's the same water, flour and sugar, right? But it's the whole experience, creating the scarcity, and then having the experience of when you walk in there, controlling how many people go into that store at a time. It's, it's the whole thing. And if you're, if you think you're too good, and if you're on the high horse, and you think that you don't want to engage in those shenanigans, then you're gonna have a very difficult time going up against people that have a great product have, you know, a deep product catalog, but then still get involved in this, because there are much more examples of crappy products with great marketing that absolutely wipe the floor With people with great product and terrible marketing. So you cannot just focus on only those fundamentals, but not get the tip of the spear sharp, which is the sales and the marketing. Because if you don't have sales and if you don't have marketing, you have nothing. You don't have any customers, you have no brand, you have zero, zilch. Nada.

William Harris 37:21

So let's talk about the Sales Machine, not croissants, chocolates. You built a $500 sales machine for mrbeast. You were talking about this. Walk us through what is a Sales Machine? That's a $500 million sales machine that you built for Mr. Beast. What's this look

Sabri Suby 37:39

like? Yeah. So it's about focusing on, first of all, telling the story of the brand of the product. And in that example, it was, you know, we had a look at what mrbeast was doing online, and we had a look at all the traffic that he's getting and then just murdering all of that money by sending them to a basic Shopify product page with very short form copy that said nothing about nobody, right? There was nothing on it. It was just like, here's the products. It was like, two line description, and that's it. There was nothing of where the cacao beans are sourced, how they're responsibly sourced, what makes the ingredients. Because I bought that product. And I was like, okay, here is another crappy product from a YouTuber, but then you try the product and it's actually great, right? Like, I was actually surprised that the product is actually good, but none of that comes across at all in their funnel and in their messaging and the way that they convey that. And these are people like, he's the video guy, right? He's the number one video guy in the world, and there's no video on the product page. It's not a landing page. There's nothing going on at all. And so it's like, you know, we have a saying, like, the more that you tell, the more that you sell. And if you know people, Oh, who's gonna read all that? Who's gonna watch that? The buyers are, though, that's who's gonna watch it, right? The people that aren't going to read, they're not going to even read anything if they're not the buyers. So you don't want to focus your marketing on those people. You want to focus on the people that are going to buy. And if you if you think that this is like just some internet marketing stuff, just look at Apple's product pages, right? Every product that they launch, the page gets longer. Why do you think that they do that because it's cool? No, it's because it drives conversions. There's a whole story in it, right? That they're telling everything. So with the Mr. Beast example, is just taking the what they were doing. And there was no quantity breaks, no price breaks, there was no cross sells, no upsells, no no story about what the product is, no showcasing of, you know, social proof of all the people. If you go to the feastables page, you go to tagged images on their Instagram, and you see all the people that are buying their product and showing the photos and the social proof that this stuff must be good, because a lot of people would have had the same inclination that I have, is this is not good and it is trash. And then showcasing. The reviews. And there is, you know, selling is seduction. There is a certain format that you have to go through in order to do it. And most like, if you're gonna sell, go all the way. None of these half measure nonsense, of these really small product description pages with, like, just the specifications filled out, and the price like that is that's not how you want to do it, right? You want to go all out. You want to do the whole hog, because your product page, your website, your funnel, that is your salesperson that never sleeps is up 24/7 you know, doesn't call in sick or anything like that. And you want to make sure that they are well dressed. They're presented well. They greet every customer in the best fashion. They tell the story of your brand in a compelling way that that gets you to pull out your your credit card and buy in unreasonable quantities. And so there's always a story, there's always a hook, there's always an angle. And nine out of 10 e-commerce companies do a absolute horrible job at this. Yeah,

William Harris 41:07

I would agree with that. Did Jimmy reply?

Sabri Suby 41:10

No, he has not. He still hasn't replied.

William Harris 41:12

Yet. I've been waiting to see if he actually did

Sabri Suby 41:16

well, funnily enough, they actually they, it looks like that. They, didn't heed my advice, and they closed down their online

William Harris 41:23

store. No kidding, yeah, so well, so they missed

Sabri Suby 41:27

out me. You know, Jimmy, if you're watching this, you know what you need to do. Holla, at your boy, we'll get you dialed in.

William Harris 41:33

There you go. Why do you think let me? Let me change that. How can people do a better job of telling that story if they feel like they don't have a story. Because I think a lot of brands, maybe they went into it without having a story. Maybe they went into PE group said, Hey, we're going to sell headphones and we're going to outsource some cheap headphones, but we need to have a good story. How do you shift and get them to come up with a story, even if there wasn't one there in the first place.

Sabri Suby 42:02

So a good way to do it is to first look at, you know, what are the ingredients that make up the product that it is you're selling? And we'll use ingredients because it's a very cut and dry example, but it's headphones, whatever it might be. There's always you can take this same approach, but you say it's, you look at the ingredients, okay. You start looking at, okay, what are the Latin words for those ingredients? And you start to break it down further. Break it down. And then you like, oh, like, Okay, this product has got rice water in it, right where? Why do people use this rice water? Oh, because it comes from this ancient tribe in China that have you been using rice water to wash their hair for centuries, and they have the longest, most luxurious human healthy hair that exists. And then you start to think about, okay, well, what is, what is that angle? And then that becomes your story, right? One that I did this for was, you know, there was a product out of India called Shikakai, and it was, what, like, a lot of people's like a berry or a seed that they kind of grind up, and then women wash their hair with it. And it was like a hair mask. And then the hook was, you know, that 80% of all human hair wigs in the world source their hair from India. So what is it that Indian women are doing to make their hair the most luscious and luxurious at any other race on the planet? And there is a 3200 year ancient recipe that these people are using right that until recently, has only been recently rediscovered. So there's a story, or it's like, who's the engineer that developed those headphones? Right? Understanding all of what is the process? How do you create these? How are these different to this? What is like, where do you get the copper from? Whatever it might be, there's always an angle and a path to go down. And a lot of the time, people just like to throw their hair, their hands in the air and go, there is no story, right? And so if you don't believe that, there is a compelling story that just jumps at you straight away, or there was a problem that the founder had, and then they solved that problem. Then look at the ingredients, look at the process, look at, you know, who is, who has been using a product like this for many centuries, right, or for a long period of time. And what are some other benefits that those people experience from using your product and showcase that in a way that is still really paramount and important to your end user? A great example of this is the most expensive bed manufacturer in the world, right? Heston says they build beds for the royal family of Sweden, and they make their beds with human horse hair, and they sell their beds for 120,000 US dollars. And you could just go on and talk about. Up, like how we use human horse hair. And then they talk about how human horse hair was used under the armor of knights to transport air through their whole armor, to keep them at a good temperature. And a lot of people would stop there, but they don't. Then they just keep layering it on, layering on. And talk about people spend more on their parking in a year, then they spend on their bed. And you spend 1/3 of your life in bed and your sleep. It affects your immune system, your quality of your relationships, the decisions that you can make. And you look at all the justification that has to happen in order to sell a bed for $120,000 yeah, and it's a story. It's not. Here's $120,000 bed. Like it's got the best ingredients in the world. Buy it? No, no, it's the royal family. We've been making beds for the royal family. It's everything that goes into it.

William Harris 45:52

That's brilliant. So that's an example of a YouTuber who came with a product that you like, right? Mr. Beast, there's another YouTuber who came with a product that you dislike very much. You actually went off on Prime energy drinks recently. Why do you dislike prime energy drinks so much?

Sabri Suby 46:11

I think that there is a wave that is coming, and it is going to crash like a tsunami on the marketplace of DTC, and that is influencer brands that are doing the cash grab of products that don't have strong congruence with their audience in order to go out there and to just make as much money as they possibly can. With the prime example, you've obviously got Congo brands, right? Who are the real people that own that business, and then you've got, like the puppets, like Logan Paul and that, who are just the puppets on the front end of that business. But they're not the operators, and that's not the first business that you know, that Congo brand has launched and all of that jazz. But the thing that I am against is when you know, the reason that I said that this wave is going to crash is that you have all these influences. They thought, What is a product that I could sell that has the largest tam possible? Forget about it. I'm passionate about it. That doesn't matter. I just need to sell lots of this thing, right? And make as much money as I can. And there's no emphasis on product. But they have the audience. So they've got 1516, 50 million, whatever it is, like their audience, and then they launch out to that with no emphasis on product. And this is a great instance where the marketing in itself is not going to be enough. And yes, you have instances where it's like, Yes, they've had a great run and they're exploding in sales, but there is an underbelly that is coming, and that is already popping up in the news and children, and this is happening. Yeah,

William Harris 47:42

we saw it all the time. Sarah Jessica Parker, just closers. That's like another one. Kristen Bell closed hers, right? Like they went under more or less. There are some that are doing this. Well, Ryan Reynolds seems to be one of the few that can crack the code, but he is very, very, very intentional about, like you said, the product and the way that he's marketing that product, whereas I think a lot of them are just using their influence to try to get to people to buy a product that they maybe weren't necessarily as invested in. Yeah,

Sabri Suby 48:10

correct. And I think that the future of influencer and DTC brands is having somebody that is irrationally passionate about a subject and has tried all the alternatives that exist out there in the marketplace, and has legitimately created a superior product than anybody else in the marketplace because they are irrationally passionate about it, and then they use their audience to give them a terminal monopoly on that market and deliver on the promise that they've got, right? Like, if Joe Rogan launched a sauna brand, it would be the best sauna brand in the world, because we know that guy loves to have a freaking sauna, right? So it's like, he's not going to build a crap sauna. And just like, This is my sauna brand. That's crap.

William Harris 48:58

Yeah,

Sabri Suby 49:00

exactly it would be for like, the Roman Gladiators, that's what they would have used. And so then you're gonna get those people, or it's a Huberman, or any of these people that are, like, broken down, looked at ingredients of supplements, and have wanted to create the best product, and they're gonna use their audience as the platform that is going to allow them to launch the best product and have maybe a lower margin on the product because they've used the best ingredients or the best construction to build that thing, but because they're going to put that extra margin back into the product that most brands would use for marketing, because they don't have the platform. That's when you get a flywheel and that those things just absolutely explode because it's a superior product, you know that you're irrationally passionate about to using your audience, and then the word spreads, and then that's just when you just take over a whole market. And so I think that what you're going to see is like a renaissance period after you get all of these crap. Cashing brands, people are going to be a lot more hesitant to launch their own brands, and they're going to want to have a lot of belief in the product, because what's happened is, you've got these people that have got these audiences, and they've monetized those audiences in the traditional way of being a spokesperson for other brands, and then they've realized, hey, we can make way more money if we launch the business ourself. Yeah, business is hard as crap. It's hard as crap, right? And so you can't just create like, it's not, yeah, it's good that you've built your audience. It's not like, I've built the hard thing. Now just let me build a crappy product and launch it, and then there's going to be a lot of recourse, and a lot of people's audiences are going to be very upset with them. And then the next wave is going to come of, like, people doing things that they're really passionate about, that there is a tam for and that the unit economics of selling direct to consumer makes sense for that business model.

William Harris 50:51

Yeah, you talked about building an audience. It's a good place for me to transition into your audience. You've got the gold records in the background there. You've built, you know, over one and a half million followers you've got. I could be wrong about this, but the analytics that I got pulled said over 8 million views on YouTube. Correct me. If I'm wrong on that, it might be higher. But you know what? What have you found to be the biggest success in building up your own audience?

Sabri Suby 51:19

I think that, like the area that I operate in is like you've got when it comes to building an audience, there's kind of two different schools and two different groups. You've got educational content that is just talking head, sitting down and giving people answers to their questions. And then you've got the spectacle, Mr. Beast, the Arax, that kind of market where it's entertainment and it's just picking the widest things and just doing thing as a spectacle. And so you know where the I'm trying to sit my my strategy in the middle of those two things, and it's like, there's only so much talking head videos that you can watch. Do you just tune out of that person. And you just like, Man, this is too heavy. Like, this is just like, like, you could go in there every once in a while, but it's like, you're not going to be eating chocolate mousse every night, right? It's like, you know, once in a week, once in a month, kind of thing. So I'm trying to fuse those two worlds of how of picking these, these business content and things that, you know, is educational and providing value, but doing it in an entertaining way for my audience.

William Harris 52:26

Yeah, I think that's key. You know, we talk about sometimes the target, and if you look at the target, there's the bullseye, the Bullseye is exactly who you're trying to reach and why. But then there's the content that you need to create that's a little bit more outside of that, that's more entertaining. And I think a lot of brands forget about that. We had a brand that does very well on YouTube, e-commerce brand where they sell, like fish supplies, reef supplies, saltwater, you know, care for fish, and they've built up a very, very good YouTube presence. And a lot of that, it's educational, but a lot of it's getting into just the entertainment aspect of as well. And they've got millions of followers. One of the things that I think was interesting about their case specifically, though, is you talk about monetizing that audience, there's monetizing that audience all the way along, and I think that's something that a lot of e-commerce brands should be focused on, and being able to create that audience and monetize it, but there was the monetization of it when they sold. So when they sold, we were able to help them drive up the multiple that they got for the business because of the YouTube presence alone, looking that almost as a separate entity. It's like, what is that, in and of itself, worth outside of what it's driving for the business? How is that? What's the monetization of that? And I think that's an important piece for e-commerce brands to be considering when they're looking at, hey, you want to sell a brand, you you could run ads, and you should run ads, and those things are good, but you also want to be able to build up this, this, this, let's go beyond thought leadership, but this, this entertainment aspect of what the brand is as well.

Sabri Suby 54:01

Yeah, I think it just comes down to also, what do you enjoy? What do you enjoy doing? Because content is is a grind, and a lot of people get like, fatigue from doing it. So I also just look into the lens of, like, I gotta have fun, right? Like, at the end of the day, like growing channels, making money, having net profit. Like, none of that crap matters is I'm not having fun doing it, and I'm not laughing my ass off and having a good experience, because that is all I've got. Like, when I look back on this time, you know, in 510, years time, like the thing that I'm gonna remember is the memories of doing this stuff and having the fun. And I think that when you create content that you enjoy creating that comes across. So that's all that I'm trying to I'm trying to do. I certainly don't have it perfect, but that's the place that I'm trying to get

William Harris 54:47

to buddy of mine, Sujan Patel, used to call that the foi. What's the fun on investment? There needs to be some type of a fun on investment as well, not just the ROI. What about Shark Tank Australia, speaking of fun things that are also building up an audience. You were on Shark Tank Australia, what was probably your favorite pitch that you witnessed there? And maybe, or if you don't have a favorite, what was the worst pitch that you witnessed? Oh, there

Sabri Suby 55:16

was some doozies, because it's television, obviously the producers, they're picking the things that are going to be the biggest entertainment value as well, and then they sprinkle in the good ones, right? So I think that there was a fantastic pitch that came on for a product called contour cubes. And they sell like a ice thing, an ice facial kit, and they had the Kardashians and everything, and it was just the founders were very, very dialed in. They had spent a lot of time on TikTok and creating organic content, and they had a phenomenal story to tell, and they had gotten a lot of reps in. So for a lot of people, they haven't, they haven't been in that situation a lot, and while they hadn't been in that position of presenting to investors, they had certainly been in front of the camera and knowing how to tell a story, and so that's exactly what they did. They told a phenomenal story. The founder came in, spoke about her and her mom and how they used ice cubes, and they'd hold the ice cubes up, but it would freeze their hand. And then they showed the social proof of the Kardashians using it the viral TikToks that they put out, and that was a pitch where it's like all of us were fighting for that one, like everyone was by putting their hand in the ring and made them an offer. And that comes down to one, you have to have a big, bold grabber to get people's attention to start with. But then once you've got their attention, you have to retain it, and you have to convert it. And they did a phenomenal job at doing that. I did a breakdown on their pitch, on on my YouTube channel. And then there's this products that are just completely wild. I think that we're living in a time, and that is very interesting where, you know, typically, organic was always a slow burn, right? And you had to just put, you had to lay each brick of the building one at a time. And then along came TikTok. And it just did not matter how many subscribers or followers that you had, you could just put out a piece of content that would go viral and that you would make lots of sales off the back of that. And there was this one woman that came in, and they had this set right us as the sharks. We're all sitting down. It's exactly like you see on television. We know nothing about the product at all. It's all behind a blanket. They take us in, they sit us down, then they remove the blanket, and then in about one minute, the entrepreneurs come out, and there was these, I could hear these chickens clucking, and they removed it, and there was these chickens in these wire orbs, these balls, and she came out, and I was like, Is this a joke? Like there were, it was like a mobile chicken coop. So the chicken walks around the orb, moves with them. They eat the grass, but they don't fly away because they're in the metal orb. And then she's like, Yeah. And we went viral on TikTok, and she had like, a reel that went it got like 20 million views, right? But that's like, it also gives the people a lot of false positives, because they get so much attention, and then they make sales off the back of end of it. They think that they have a business that makes sense. It might make sense when you're getting 20 million free views on a reel, sure, but it might not make sense with the unit economics and having that all stack up when you actually go, I have to go out there and start buying that attention. So we

William Harris 58:29

have chickens. I've actually brought a chicken on the podcast before one time. I'm somewhat tempted to go look this up, though. Now I find this very interesting. We have, you know, dogs, cats, and sometimes they get one of the chickens. So this could be interesting. That said, Were any of, either you or any of your co hosts, divas, the idea of, like, I only eat blue M M's, please have that in my green room for me, or anything like that that you can remember? No,

Sabri Suby 58:56

we were all pretty chill. It was definitely like, a, you know, a very good experience when we had, like, Robert from the US Shark Tank as well with us, and, you know, he's a seasoned veteran. He's been doing the show for 17 years. But no, there was, there wasn't anybody on there that's like, you know, Beyonce. And like, says, I want my whole like, dressing room to be, to be white, or anything, anything like that. A lot of the entertainment came from the people that were in front of the cameras and the entrepreneurs. If

William Harris 59:27

you were gonna be a diva, though, is there something that you could be a diva about that you're like, Yeah, I only eaten all white quality

Sabri Suby 59:34

coffee, right? Yeah, that's one thing that I'm definitely a diva about. I love my coffee, like I have one black coffee a day. And when you have black coffee, there isn't any hiding. It's like a crap bean or the like been roasted like four weeks ago. You can't mask it with sugar and milk. So that's something that I really appreciate, a good double espresso. And if anything, that's something that I. I'm a bit of a diva about I

William Harris 1:00:01

love it. Is there a brand that you want to shout out that you are like, this is the brand of my

Sabri Suby 1:00:05

all I will say is that I have split tested, I have traveled the lands to find the best coffee that exists, anything that I have. It's like, I'm a minimalist in the things that I acquire, but I am a maximalist with the quality of the products that I like. So if it's anything that I do, it's, I want to get a large sample size of lots of different things. If it's black T shirts, I'm trying, you know, 20 different black T shirts. Same things with coffee. And my taste for those things change over time. But yeah, I always appreciate a good roast and a good bean. And I don't assume that what I have tried the first time is the best. I like to keep on testing stuff. This

William Harris 1:00:47

isn't one of those coffee beans that a cat eats and poops out, right? Copaloo, that is okay. No, we're talking about the

Sabri Suby 1:00:55

fermented beans that go on in the in the limo, the monkey's stomach. It's not. None of that stuff. I'm not, I'm not that fancy. Okay,

William Harris 1:01:03

sounds good. This is a good transition into this section, which is just getting to know who is Sabri Suby. I really like getting into the personality of who you are. You've talked about this a lot, but childhood, what in your childhood, has helped to shape you into being the entrepreneur that you are today.

Sabri Suby 1:01:24

I was raised by a single parent mother in a small beach town that has a population of 15,000 people called Byron Bay. It has hence, then since become very popular, and you got a whole bunch of these celebrities. And you know, Chris Hemsworth, because of you living there, yeah, yeah, because of me, solely I take all responsibility for it, no, but it's become very popular. It used to be very popular for hippies and smoking weed and stuff, and now it's become, like a little bit bougie and trendy to be there. But I was raised by a single parent, Mother me and my sister. I watched my mom hold down three jobs to really provide an incredible upbringing for me and my sister. And I used to wake up early in the morning before school and go to job number one with her, which was at a cafe. And I used to at six o'clock in the morning before school. Then I would take all the tables and chairs out for my mum, and then she would be doing all the other stuff within the cafe. And then she would go to Job Number two, and then job number three, and then eventually job number four was to come home to me and my sister and cook us a healthy dinner and do all of those kind of things. And she never once complained. And I call that single parent mother work ethic. And she that was ingrained in me from a very young age of anything that you do, make sure that you do it to the best of your ability. And most people, they go through like that's simple advice that most people don't hate. Most people, very rarely give something everything that they've got. If I sit down with people and I say, well, what's the last thing that you really emptied the tank on that you actually did the best that you could possibly do. And it's very, very rare people just don't do it. And so that was the guiding compass that, you know, my mother told me a lot of things. She put a lot of principles into me. Let my conscience. Let your conscience be your guide. You know, if you're going to do something, do it properly, all of those things. But I think beyond all of those things, and the love that she gave me and nurtured me with, is that single parent, Mother work ethic, and that is something that has served me and continues to serve me, and it's the only thing that you can control, is your effort. There's a lot of different things and luck and timing and stuff that comes in, into running businesses and the opportunities that come your way, but the thing that we all have is the ability to make the decision of how hard we want to work.

William Harris 1:03:48

I love that story because it's something that you and I can actually relate a lot on. I was also raised by my mom in a rough neighborhood. I was the oldest of three boys, and my mom taught me again, that really tough work ethic and doing things to the absolute best, not just the best of your ability, the best that it could possibly ever be done by anybody, right? And I can remember one of the things that my brothers and I would joke about is we're out raking leaves. We had to get every leaf. And we'd be like, Mom, I think there's a leaf still up on the treaty when we climb up there and get it right. So like you got every leaf and there was nothing to be left undone. It was had to be done flawlessly. And she actually had a sign on her door. She was a teacher, a music teacher, band director, that said, practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect. Practice makes perfect. And that's kind of what she demanded and expected out of us.

Sabri Suby 1:04:37

Yeah, and I think that it's something that I'm not I'm gonna sound old when I say is lost in this generation, because it's not just in this generation. It's lost in a lot of generations. It's just people wanting to be exceptional at something. And for me, the type of people that I like to hang around and I like to associate with. Are people that are just unreasonably passionate about something, and it doesn't matter what it is like. I was recently in Italy, and there was a guy called Gino in my hotel, and he was unreasonably passionate about coffee and making the best double espresso that it possibly could be. And just anybody, I don't care what it is. It could be ballet. It could be bonsais. It does not matter, as long as you just are completely passionate about it, and you want to be the best ballerina in the world, or you want to create the best bonsais that are on planet Earth. And it's that passion and that will and wanting to make something the best that it can possibly be that's infectious.

William Harris 1:05:42

Yeah, you mentioned that you have three daughters. I have three daughters as well. How do you feel like the way that you were raised impacts you as a father.

Sabri Suby 1:05:57

I think that you know my my mother gave me so much love, and she always pointed me in the right direction, but did not force me to go in any direction. And having that freedom to choose the path that you go, make sure that I think that you stay on that path for the longest period of time, because you are the person that chose the path, and you're not like what am I doing on this path? Right? If you want to put, like, you know, a lot of different pressures on the path that you want your children to go down, then that's, that's your path. That's not their path. So that's something that I'm going to be very intentional about with with my daughters, is more so giving them like, the smorgasbord and the platter of things that they can discover and things that they can try and see what it is that they like, and then just nurturing them on the path that it is that they want to go. I think that as business owners, a lot of us are like control freaks, and we like to like dot the i's and cross the T's, and we've got a certain vision in our mind that we want executed, and that's the way that we're able to run our businesses right. Because it takes an incredible amount of planning and precision and effort to run a business, and that is something that is completely the polar opposite with raising children, because then you just become like a drill sergeant, and you're not shaping like that child. You're basically imprinting your biases into them, but every person is different. So yeah, I think that having the freedom and having the ability to allow your children to explore those things and encourage them on the path that it is that they want to go down, because it's just excellence. Excellence is the thing. It doesn't matter what path that they go down. The things that I will try to instill in my children are the same things my mother instilled with me. Is, like, it doesn't matter what you want to do. I will always support you, just do it to the best of your ability.

William Harris 1:07:56

Yeah, I like that. I would say that. I want to clarify. There are some biases that are worth imprinting in our children. The things that you fully believe are absolutely true, like hard work or do it excellently, right? Like that is a thing that is like that might not be true to every single person, but it is something that is so true to you that it is worth saying. I really want to make sure that you understand this, because this is a really important piece of what I believe is is going to make you the most happy, the most successful in life.

Sabri Suby 1:08:27

Yeah. And I think the distinction is it's not like a sitting down and imprinting that verbally you need to show them by your actions. So I understand that I have three daughters, and no matter what I do, good or bad, I am going to set the bar of what my daughters will accept in a man. And so I need to be the example of how I treat my wife, how I conduct myself, what time I wake up, how I work, what I choose to eat, how I choose to speak to people. And they're all the things that you know you need to teach people through your actions. And a lot of people are, you know, the overweight personal trainer that are trying to give people advice and tell their children to do things, but they're not doing them themselves. So like, if you're like, telling your children to eat healthy and not do this, or don't eat lollies and ice cream every day and all of those things, but then you're overweight and you're doing those things, you have no right to even have that conversation with them. So for me, it just places a disproportionate emphasis on living and being that person, and not talking about being that person or talking about what you should do, but showing my daughters through my actions of what it is that I think that you should do, I love

William Harris 1:09:44

that. And that brings me to probably my favorite thing that I like to talk about on the podcast. Literally, the namesake of the podcast is up arrow, which is a mathematical thing for making numbers that are way bigger than exponents. And I like. The idea, though, of how do you up arrow your personal life, and so are there areas in your personal life, not work life, that you are very intentional about trying to improve, whether it's health, relationships, spirituality, whatever these areas might be that you're like, these are things that I'm focused on improving

Sabri Suby 1:10:20

100% I deem success as being what I call a eudaimonic polymath, and that is effectively somebody that has all of those different areas in their life in check. A lot of founders check the bank balance. They don't check the health balance, the relationship balance, the passion balance, and all of those kind of things. So yeah, like I have put, you know, there was definitely the start of my business journey where I put a disproportionate amount of emphasis on growing my business and growing revenue and growing the profits and all of those kind of things. And my health did slip by the wayside, and I did put on weight. And so I, you know, have gotten those checks and balances definitely more in line. Now, you know, I work out all the time. I hit the sauna, ice bath. I spend time with my wife intentionally. I go for walks in natures. So, yeah, I'm always somebody that's looking in growth in all areas, always. And it's never just, oh, I just want to focus on this. It's whatever I do. I want to do it properly. Like, if I'm going to have a coffee, I want to find out, like, go on and watch, like, YouTube baristas, championship baristas, and find out what it is that they do, and do it to the best of the ability, right? Either I'm optimizing my sleep or my health. I want to have a look at, like, what are the best people in this field, doing and constantly like that's the things that keeps you engaged and to keep you passionate. The moment that you stop growing is the day that you'd start dying. So I am very intentional about in a lot of different areas of my life, in always getting better and having dashboards and having ways that I can gamify those things and measure them and make sure that I'm always growing

William Harris 1:12:04

there's a an illustration that I really appreciate about a vase with some rocks and pebbles and sand and water. Have you heard this? Do you know where I'm going with this? The

Sabri Suby 1:12:12

rocks of sand and the stones and like, people let the sand get in the way, but, yeah, it doesn't all

William Harris 1:12:17

fit, right? So it's like, if you put the sand and the water in and then the pebbles and the pebbles and the rocks, it won't all fit into the vase. But if you put the rocks in, then the pebbles, then the sand and the water, same amount of content, and it all fits in. And that's the idea where you know you have to make the rocks the priorities first. And so to your point, it's like, well, and I try to do this in my own life, my relationship with my wife, has to be a priority. It has to be to the point where it's like, I'm going to schedule that date night, because if I don't, it's so easy for something else to get in the way of that work, or whatever that might be. But it's important to say, what are those priorities, or you mentioned, like these different bank accounts? What are these different bank accounts that I'm going to make sure that I'm investing my time, my energy, my intention into setting those up, knowing what those are, scheduling them up, making sure that they're on your calendar. They have the time dedicated to them. Otherwise, it's too easy for us to just become a product of whatever is the most urgent seeming thing within our life.

Sabri Suby 1:13:17

Yeah, and the thing that's going to become the most urgent is if your health ever falls by the wayside, right? And so business is the most competitive sport in the world. However, unlike all other sports, we reach the prime in the latter years of our life. So just if you just look at your favorite sport, and whoever's listening to this, and just go on a Google and type in average age of an NFL player, of an NBA player, and you will be very, very shocked by what that number is. Yes, you've got outliers, and you've got older people the average age, right? And most athletes, depending on the sport. It's around 25 years old, sure, and that is, that is the typical age with entrepreneurs. If you look at compound interest, and you look at most of the entrepreneurs that you look out, that you admire, and you have a look at where the most growth comes from. It's it comes from the latter years in your life and throughout your career, and we keep on growing the skills and the the mind maps and the mental models and the attributes that it takes to be successful, and we use them like lattice work, over over a note over each other to grow as We get older and we if your health is there, that is the thing that allows you to stay in the game. And so that is the area, that is the foundation that everything sits on. You know, I believe that the people that have the most energy make the most amount of money, and you need to look after that energy source and make sure that. That energy can burn for a long period of time, and you can stay in the game for a long period of time, if you want to play this game for a long period of time.

William Harris 1:15:09

Yeah, I love that. Sabri, it has been absolutely amazing chatting with you today. I've appreciated getting to know you personally. I've appreciated learning from you if people wanted to follow you, work with you, what is the best way for them to get in touch or stay in touch? Yeah, you

Sabri Suby 1:15:27

can go to my website, which is King kong.co or you can check me out on any social media platform at Sabri Suby. There's not many people with that name out there, and if you happen to not find me, I will find you with my ads.

William Harris 1:15:41

Yeah, that's fair too. No, I really appreciate it. Any last bit of advice that you would give to people that are listening, that want to continue to grow and be successful in life,

Sabri Suby 1:15:52

I'd say, whatever business that you're in, whatever pursuit that you are on right now, whatever chapter in your journey that you're on is we get caught up in focusing on what is on the horizon. But the horizon never comes when you when you just want to get to a million, and you hit a million, that a million is not important to you anymore. You're then you're looking at 5 million or 10 million, or 100 million or a billion, and that game does not stop the horizon. You never reach the horizon. And so wherever you are on your journey is to one make sure that you're focusing on excellence and doing the best of your ability of where you currently are as an entrepreneur, and constantly investing in yourself and getting those skills to up level yourself and keep on just focusing on, how do I do this to the best of my ability? How do I do this to the best of my ability? And then the second thing is just to make sure that you don't get too caught up in that, that you lose sight of the main thing, which is to enjoy yourself and to have fun, because we all get one life, and if you go through it and you don't have a good time, it's gonna be a waste of a life.

William Harris 1:17:08

Those are wise words. Well, Sabri again, thank you so much for joining me on the up arrow podcast today.

Sabri Suby 1:17:14

Thanks for having me on.

William Harris 1:17:15

Thanks everyone for listening. Have a great day.

Outro 1:17:19

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.

‍