The Secret to Influencer Marketing: What 8-Figure Brands Are Doing Differently With Josh Durham

Josh Durham is the Founder of Aligned Growth, an agency that helps DTC brands scale through influencer partnerships and performance-driven user-generated content. Before establishing Aligned Growth, he co-founded Weighting Comforts, a weighted blanket company that he grew to over $6 million in annual revenue before selling it in 2019. Josh also served as the Head of Growth at Groove Life, where he managed sizable advertising budgets.

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

[2:18] Why influencer marketing is not the same as paid social ads
[5:35] Influencer marketing strategies beyond product gifting
[8:15] The impact of brand interactions in consumer decision-making
[14:21] How to measure the effect of influencer marketing
[17:26] Key considerations for an eight- to nine-figure brand leveraging influencer marketing
[20:41] Examples of collaborating with celebrity influencers
[26:41] The pros and cons of affiliate links and providing influencers with early product access
[33:09] Why multi-platform reach is essential for influencer marketing
[43:32] Josh Durham shares his motivations for founding Aligned Growth
[47:24] Case studies: how Divi and Libman scaled their influencer marketing efforts
[55:56] Josh’s entrepreneurial upbringing and family life

In this episode…

Influencer marketing has become a popular tactic for brand awareness, yet many advertisers misunderstand its role and expect direct-response outcomes similar to paid social ads. How can brands leverage influencer partnerships to drive long-term growth and brand awareness?

While influencer marketing can generate sales, its primary function is to create brand interactions and organic content at an efficient CPM. Instead of relying solely on paid partnerships, brands can start with product gifting to build relationships with influencers and generate authentic content. This approach allows brands to test products on various creators while keeping costs low. Having led influencer growth initiatives for major brands, Josh Durham suggests combining product gifting with strategic paid influencer collaborations, ensuring a mix of organic and sponsored content for maximum reach. He also emphasizes prioritizing audience fit over follower count, advising brands to target influencers whose content aligns naturally with their brand rather than chasing big-name endorsements.

In the latest episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris talks with Josh Durham, the Founder of Aligned Growth, about scaling influencer partnerships. Josh shares his experience working with celebrity influencers like Tony Hawk, how to measure influencer marketing effectively, and how brand interactions drive purchase decisions.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

“The biggest mistake brands make with influencer marketing is treating it like paid social. It’s not about immediate ROI; it’s about brand interactions and trust.”
“Product gifting is the most efficient way to start influencer marketing. It lowers your CPM while generating organic content and building relationships with creators.”
“Audience fit matters more than follower count. A niche influencer with the right audience will drive more impact than a celebrity who has no connection to your brand.”
“You don’t want to be the brand that only exists in paid ads. If no one’s talking about you organically, consumers will start questioning your credibility.”
“Generosity isn’t just about giving; it changes you. When you focus on serving others, it shifts your mindset from consuming to creating real value.”

Action Steps

Shift your mindset from direct response to brand awareness when approaching influencer marketing: Influencers drive attention and trust, not just immediate conversions, so focus on long-term engagement rather than short-term ROI.
Leverage product gifting as a cost-effective way to build relationships and generate organic content: Sending free products to influencers creates authentic endorsements and lowers CPM compared to traditional paid campaigns.
Prioritize audience fit over follower count when selecting influencers for partnerships: A smaller, highly engaged audience that aligns with your brand will deliver more impact than a broad but disengaged following.
Implement multi-platform influencer campaigns to maximize reach and brand recall: Consumers engage across various channels, so repurpose influencer content on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and even paid ads for greater exposure.
Integrate influencer marketing with your broader marketing calendar for product launches and retail moments: Aligning influencers with major brand events ensures strategic amplification and reinforces key messaging to the right audience.

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 0:03

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 100 100 million and beyond as you up arrow your business and your personal life. Joining me today is Josh Durham. Josh is the founder of Aligned Growth and influencer marketing agency for DTC brands. He's a 2018 Forbes 30 under 30 alum, and most importantly, a dad and husband living in Vero Beach, Florida. Today, we're gonna be talking about influencer marketing for eight to nine figure brands. We're gonna go far beyond the basics. Josh, I'm excited to have you here.

Josh Durham 0:46

Stoked to be here. William, thanks for having me.

William Harris 0:49

Yeah, I was trying to think about who introduced us, and I believe that it was Eric Bandholz, previous guest founder of Beard Brand. But Eric, appreciate the shout out man.

Josh Durham 0:56

Shout out to Eric. Funny story, Eric actually came down to our offices in Nashville back when I was a head of growth at groove life, and so we got to hang in person, but that was like 2019 so throwback, but we've been Twitter friends ever since. He hasn't convinced you to grow a beard, though, yet, huh? You know he I'm already convinced it's just a genetic disposition that I'm fighting against. God, I was starting it off with the rose. Yeah, there you go. Sorry. All I have is a stash. That's all I have going for me. Remind me, hey, well, I'm excited

William Harris 1:33

to dig into this a little bit. I do want to announce our sponsor. Then we'll dig into the good stuff. 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 one that sold for nearly 800,000,001 that i po. You'll learn more on our website@Elumynt.com which is spelled E, l, u, m, y, N, t.com. That said, onto the good stuff. So Josh, a lot of people I see talk about how influencer marketing is struggling. They're like, Oh, it doesn't work, or whatever, they're wrong. But the reality is, you've clearly cracked the code. You've had, like, you know, worked with Tony Hawk, Joe Rogan, you've done some really awesome, big stuff. What's the secret? What are other people missing when they're saying, No, it doesn't work, what are they missing?

Josh Durham 2:18

Yeah, for sure, I think that what they're missing is they have the wrong expectations for influencer as a channel. I think that the influencer channel is a great attention channel, and it's a great channel to create content for top of funnel, but it's not a great channel that is going to be like paid social so so many directors of marketing or CMOs are coming into it thinking it's just like Facebook ads, it's just like meta where we're spending $100 we're making $500 back where that might have been the case in 2015 but in 2025 it's just a different scenario.

William Harris 2:50

So what is the scenario like? What is the right mindset to have?

Josh Durham 2:55

Yeah, for sure. So I think number one, like I talked to influencer managers in house at brands, like every single week, and the general sentiment from them has just been that affiliate revenue has fallen off a cliff Since 2020 and really what we've seen has been the for you algorithm has taken over, right? Like we no longer are swiping in feed as much. We're not no longer going to the Lincoln bio like the discount codes that's in your link is just not as an appealing of an offering. And so, but instead, we're discovering new products through creators on the for you page on the Tiktok algorithm, we're kind of in the middle of the potential band, and then, you know, of course, searching it on Google later. And so the gap here is just a huge gap in attribution that I don't think anyone's gonna solve. We have, you know, the scandal with honey, and you know, them running it up, attributing revenue to themselves with discount codes, and creator codes getting leaked to just anyone who's on the honey Chrome extension, and so, yeah, it just creates this huge problem with attributing direct attributable revenue from the Creator to the purchase. And so how can we get over that hump? Well, we can think about it through a lens of CPMs. We can think about it through just general advertising principles that we want to get our product in front of the right eyeballs at the most efficient CPM as possible. And then we can also see Lyft over time with things like post purchase surveys and seeing what percentage of consumers are saying. I found out about this product through influencer as a channel, versus meta ads, versus Google ads, and just seeing that over time, yeah.

William Harris 4:37

And if you're using a big enough influencer, then even having that as like a secondary question that you have, yeah, post purchase survey, I had Jeremy primer on here, and yeah, talking a lot about that, where it's like, yeah, okay, great, yes, it was influencer who, right? And so it's like, is it one of these five or 10 or whatever, like these bigger ones? Because then you can, if you're spending, you know, significant money with some of these bigger influencers, you want to know if there's some. A correlation there as well, right?

Josh Durham 5:01

Yeah. I actually talked to Jeremy a while back about integrating with our SaaS platform and just having, you know, influencer and then pulling all the creators that are currently in your campaign so that they can be like, specifically like, integrated there. You don't have to do it manually, which I think would be really cool.

William Harris 5:17

I like that a lot. Okay, so let's talk about one of the things you mentioned was, like, this is, if you're an eight to nine figure brand, you're going beyond just product gifting. Is there something wrong with product gifting? Or, you know, why? Why is this beyond product gifting?

Josh Durham 5:35

Yeah, no. So we love product gifting. Like, product gifting is a great start for any DTC brand to get started and influencer, and it's actually going to be the most efficient way to start because, you know, we're basically measuring CPMs as a function of your cost of goods sold, and just if we see the impression share versus your cogs, then it's just going to be a lower CPM in general. But the problem here is we get less control over the content, we get less control over the time that they're going to post it, and we're gonna work with smaller creators. And so as we go up market, we can, we're going to have to use some level of budget to start paying a creator for the deliverables for, you know, an in feed, real plus, you know, two stories. And so I think the value of using the paid budget plus seeding is that, on the paid budget side, you know, we can work with creators who are actually driving influence, right? They have a half million followers. They have a million followers. And we can actually work with these guys and putting you on the map for your brand. And then we're also using your seeding program to bring down the total CPM. And so combining the two brings it out to a healthy CPM number that we can bring back to the CMOS and say, hey, you know, this last month, we spent 50k across your influencer channel, and we generated, let's say, like, 3 million organic views. And we did that at, you know, ballpark 15, $20 CPMs. Like, that's a very efficient spend, versus if we just sponsored one influencer that was massive and then tanked, and we're at $100 CPMs. It just, it's a quick race to the bottom. And so I think having kind of this testing methodology, just like you would on paid social but from an attention lens versus just a direct response. Lens of like, I'm spending $1,000 making $5,000 back, is just a much healthier mindset as we go into the channel. Yeah.

William Harris 7:29

So that means that you might not see the immediate impact of it, because it might be a little bit longer I had on here, Preston Rutherford from Chubbies. I actually think maybe it was just last week, because I it hasn't gone live for me yet, but by the time this goes live, it will be live. So I gotta think about when that is, but somewhere around that time, and that's one of the things he talks about, is like this 95 five rule, almost, where it's like 5% of the people who are in your tam are ready to buy now, and they when you're looking too at a direct response, even from an influencer standpoint, then you're pushing that same 5% versus reaching that other 95% who are going to think about you a month, two months, three months from now? So is that kind of more the mentality that you're going with with this reaching the CPMs, instead of going too hard on direct response?

Josh Durham 8:15

Yeah, for sure, it's it's basically creating a positive brand interaction that, you know, maybe it's not a direct sell where they include every five features that you have in your product. Maybe there's not a strong call to action with a link in bio and a discount code. But, you know, let's talk about, like, for example, apparel, right? If they just integrate your sweater that you're you're selling, and it's like a really cool guy who lives in Manhattan, who's doing a get ready with me as he he's about to go out for his day in New York, he puts on the sweater that he got from, you know, XYZ brand. It's just a positive brand interaction, maybe that. It just includes that product very quickly in like, a three to five second placement. But we're associating that sweater with a cool guy in Manhattan, right? Like we, we all kind of like, are wanting to, to be him in some ways. And so as I see that, then you're, you know, then you're clicking into the brand profile, maybe you're, you're following the brand from there, and it's just like a quick touch point. And then maybe you get an ad, and you're retargeted, and then you sign up for the email. So it's just a positive brain interaction. And I think that when I was at groove life, that was one of the things I really learned, because we did a we invested heavily into YouTube top of funnel, and so a lot of the videos that we had would be 610, 20 million views from YouTube paid, and we'd only see a 1x ROAs in platform. But when we look back at the watch time, it was like people had watched decades of our videos, and people were searching for the ad that we had made because they saw it in ads, and they wanted to watch it again because it was so funny and so and then we'd also look at you know other, you know other, more. Direct response things like search, like just looking at Google brand search, and we'd see basically brand search skyrocket at the same rate that we are spending on on this table, following YouTube ad and so I think my suggestion, as a former paid social guy is that this is just an investment into the brand side of your house. And I think a lot of brands are under spending on this side and are it's actually hurting com. It's actually hurting conversions, because you don't want to be the brand who's only recognized from ads, right? Like, if you see, if you see a brand spending a lot of money on ads, and you only see them there, but you go to their Instagram and none of your favorite followers are following them back. None of your friends are following the brand page. You're kind of like, oh, there's almost like a red flag. Like, why am I seeing these? Yeah, it's like, Why do I keep seeing these ads? But no one knows about them. And so I think that just it's an extra layer of trust by building that side of the house. I

William Harris 10:59

think about this as just to say, human beings in general, we're the same as we've always been. Like, there are changes, there are trends, whatever, but like the core fundamental of who we are. And my middle schooler, they all have these sweatshirts, white fox. Actually, I saw Philip Jackson just talk about this the other day. He's like, you know, white fox is blowing up at least, I can't say outside of the middle school realm, but I know that when Middle School daughter, she's like, Yeah, everybody has a white fox sweatshirt. Like, that's the thing. So why is it cool to her? For the same reason that it's cool to you and me for any of the other things that we buy, for the same reason that I decided to spend money on the Apple vision Pro, right? Because it's like somebody that you see, you want to emulate them. And so it's like, at school, she doesn't have social media, she doesn't have a phone, right? Just sort of clear. So sort of clear. So it's like, she's not seeing these influence posts. She's not seeing but she's seeing real life influencers. And that's hey, this person that I like, that I think is fun, has it on, and they just said it's really good. And then this other person did too. And so it's like, when it's three or four or five times, now you're like, hey, those are different touch points. You're like, I think I want one too. Even if you don't want one in your mind, you're like, I think I do want one. And it's the same thing to your point of on the influence side, I think it's too needy when you only see the ads, and you're not seeing anybody else actually talking about this outside of the advertising. But then when you do start to see these people that you want to emulate saying that, liking them, following them, 345, you might know that some of this is paid for, right? Like they were paid to be an influencer. But when you see it often enough, you start to almost ignore the paid aspect of it. You're saying psychologically, almost like subconsciously, your brain is just saying, I think I want to be a part of that as well. 100%

Josh Durham 12:33

it's almost like the cold plunge trend as well, right? Like everyone in their mother is cold plunging totally and like, what, what? Fitness creator who were all kind of aspiring to be isn't cold plunging like, I think the company plunge, they were like the ones who made this trend happen, like they were literally showing up to each creator's house, giving them a free cold plunge setup, which is like retails at three grand a pop, giving it to them for free, and just asking for the video in exchange for the cold plunge. And like having them get in, getting some videos, and then pushing that towards ads and organic. And so yeah, to your point, it's like, you see someone else do it, you want to emulate it, because you're aspiring to be them or or you like them. And so I think that the Yeah, the cycle repeats

William Harris 13:19

itself. Yeah. So one of the things that you called out is that this is almost kind of a brand play, and I'm gonna call back to Preston Rutherford's episode here as well. One of the ways that we're looking at measuring whether or not that's effective, then at least on his side of things, and this would be both in investing in more branded top of funnel ads as well, excuse me, is this idea of looking at the brand searches, are those going up, and the brand searches, then in the in the direct response, or in the direct searches, direct traffic as well. But looking at this and saying, Are you getting other traffic outside of what you're doing on paid, if you increase paid, that's great. That's fine. It's wonderful. But like, if that's now taking up, goes from taking up 20% of your traffic to 80% of your traffic. There's probably a problem here, because you're not keeping up. On the other side of this is that one of the ways that you're measuring it and or how else are you measuring it outside of CPM? Because you can get really low CPMs from some really bad people who aren't gonna die. Yeah, exactly. So it's like outside of the CM house, you're measuring this effectiveness. Yeah, that's

Josh Durham 14:21

a good question. I think that, like, how we've measured it has been historically through like, two different functions. Number one, we can always include an affiliate link inside of stories. It doesn't always give us the most accurate data, but it does, like show us like the intent. So for the average creator, like, you know, how many average views do they get on their stories? What was like the link? Click through rate, and then we can see purchases and using a UTM discount code attribution kind of thing on that swipe up feature. So that's like, just like one signal. But then I think it's it comes down to, like, post purchase surveys, like, if you are a nine figure brand and you're spending heavily on Tiktok and on meta and search and shopping and YouTube, and you have five. Yeah, and like, TV out of home, like you are a heavy hitter. Like, it's going to be hard for one influencer to attribute back to discount code, but if we look over a quarter and we see 5% of revenue came from influencer, and we can actually kind of measure that gap of spend versus that revenue. Or, you know, on the flip side, we can get really brand marketing. We can use a metric like earned media value, which basically just assigns $1 value to the awareness that was driven from the Creator, from the likes, from the comments, from the shares, and just gives us $1 ballpark, and we can actually see the investment. So let's say we spent 50 grand in a given month, or let's even just call it 100 grand, but we generated a million dollars worth of earned media value, so we had this 900k quote, unquote ROI. I know, like all the direct response marketers, are probably rolling their eyes right now, but this just gives us a new lens to think through, like investing, and as long as we're not losing our shirts, and we're not spending in a crazy amount of your total marketing budget, and it's just like a healthy mix, then I really think that it is worth continuing to spend. Yeah,

William Harris 16:11

and it's all of those things, right? So I talk a lot about, if you break your wrist, you have to get multiple views of that x ray like so there's the AP view of the lateral view. You have to see a three dimensional view of that. And I think this is true for all attribution, for paid for, you know, influencer, it's it's piecing all those different things together. If you looked at just the CPM, if you looked at just the earned media value, if you looked at just the post purchase surveys, you're just seeing a flat, dimensional aspect of that. You have to look at how all of those are fitting together and say, Yeah, this collectively tells the right story, that we're moving the right direction with our our right efforts.

Josh Durham 16:43

You know, the best attribution, like, I always like to say, is just cash in the bank, and so we're looking at contribution dollars, and as long as that's going up, then the rest is gravy. And I just think it's treating influencer as just a part of your media mix. And because that's where the consumers are. We want to go where your potential customers are, and I know for fact that that's where I am and where all my friends are. So that's where we got to keep spending. Yeah,

William Harris 17:08

so let's say that I'm a $50 million e-commerce brand, and I'm getting into and I buy into everything you just said, and I'm getting into doing influencer marketing. What else do I likely need to know what like? What are some like, assumptions that I have that are incorrect, that I need you're gonna have to break down for me in order for us to really move forward and be

Josh Durham 17:26

successful. Yeah, for sure. Well, I think, you know, at 50 million a year, like, usually, my recommendation is starting with a 30k to 50k a month budget. And, like I mentioned before, starting with gifting, kind of as the base and then starting to leverage that paid into, like, larger campaigns. And so I think that influencer oftentimes can live on its own island, and it's not supporting the rest of the business. And so, like, what we like to do is we want to get plugged into the content calendar. Like, what is coming up for your big product launches, what's coming up from your for your big promotions. And so, like, for example, one of our clients for a long time has been pop sockets. And so for them, like, we really support them a lot at retail. We support them a lot on product launches, because they have all this great licensing with different products like Marvel and Disney and all these different lines. And so they have like, two to three product launches a month that we're a part of supporting them with specific niche creators. And so I think, I think the expectation that I would want to communicate is just integrating influencer as kind of your media on it's there to make content ready to roll. And sometimes it feels easier, because you're not going to have to just do your you're not alone in just doing your brand shoot, doing your, your you know, still images and video on your own. You can actually bring creators into it, have them tell the story for you, and it just, it just creates a much larger message, and it feels like everyone's talking about it, versus the brand speaking from their own profile?

William Harris 19:01

Yeah, no, I think that makes a lot of sense. You had talked about the amount that you should be investing. How are you getting to that number 30 to 50,000 like, what's the baseline there?

Josh Durham 19:14

At one point, I mapped this out, like, as a percentage of revenue, I think, like, the 50k a month for a 50 million a year brand, maybe that comes out, like 1% of their total just other, like, other total revenue. And so I mapped it out like that at that point. But that's honestly just kind of like the run of the mix of like, as a paid media buyer, when I was spending seven figures a month across paid social like, we would always start a new channel with like a 1k a day type budget, like a 30k a month budget. It's kind of like what you need to really see success and actually get true Lyft. And so that's kind of the same mentality that I bring here to influencers, that 30 to 50k a month type budget, just so that we can really start to see significant. Growth, and with the rates that influencers are, they have gone up over the last like five to 10 years. You know, a lot of times those are 3k a pop. So if we're spending 30k in a month, we're getting the sponsor 10 creators. You know, that's really great. But I think we want to continue to scale that up. That's a good starting place.

William Harris 20:18

Yeah, I like that. What about the different types of creators? You know, nano, micro, whatever, like, they all have their different place. But what I'm more excited about would be, like, celebrities and so, like, moving beyond your normal people. You've done stuff with Tony Hawk. You've done stuff with Joe Rogan. Are those as effective as you would expect them to be? More effective, less effective? Like, I mean, cost effective?

Josh Durham 20:41

Yeah, I think it all comes down to audience fit, right? So I think I don't know which way I want to go with this, but, like, right now. So what's something fun that we're working on right now, for a client, is we're talking to, like, kind of like a B list celeb that has, you know, I think it's close to 4 million followers on on Instagram, but they are a huge fan of this specific product. And you know, the first rate that we got back from this creator was $145,000 for one Instagram post. Wow. And so, you know, off the bat, you know, every marketers like, red flags go up. But I think that, you know, if we, like, just look at it through just a CPM lens, like the CPM is $100 plus. But you know, on the back end, what I've seen from clients spending, you know, a quarter million a month on influencer is that even with higher CPMs, the conversion rate is going to be higher. And so I think that like aligning yourself with the right audience that a creator has is, like, super important, and that, like those values are the same. They love the product organically. I think that makes a big difference. There's a really impressive case study that I was listening to on the My First million podcast was Rob dear deck, and it was basically about this protein powder that, you know, basically, it was the best protein powder you could ever create. It was basically like, like, the way, came from water buffalo and, like, Jackson line, like, it was just, like, just insane. But it was, like, super expensive, and the brand was maybe at 2 million a year. Wasn't going anywhere. It was kind of just dead in the water. And then they sponsored the Huberman podcast, and it just absolutely blew up to, you know, a multi eight figure brand. And that was like such a good, cool light bulb moment for me to see. Oh, it really is about product, audience fit. And just like thinking a little bit deeper about that, and not just letting an expensive rate get in the way of investing into the right fit creator. And so, yeah, I think it's all about that audience fit,

William Harris 22:48

yeah, and that's fair. I mean, we see that on the paid side all the time too, right, where sometimes CPM can be positively correlated with conversion rate and everything. So you're like, well, this, this can be an okay thing. What about those different channels. You know, you just mentioned sponsoring a podcast. Where does you know, Instagram, YouTube, Tiktok podcast. Where do you see like the breakdown being for again, let's just use $50 million brand. Are there ones that seem to work better for others? Is it so just product dependent, audience dependent?

Josh Durham 23:21

Yeah, I would say it's very product and audience dependent. Like, it's all about, I would say in terms of channels, like, just go where your people are, right? So, like, you know, we have the Tiktok band, we can talk about this again, but you know, typically the younger demo is going to be on Tiktok, and then maybe the older demo is going to be on IG specifically, but also what's native to the influencer, right? Like, what's their main channel? Sure, and and oftentimes, what we've seen in terms of just getting value has been if, like a creator has is primarily a YouTuber, for example, but we're sponsoring their Instagram account, the IG is typically going to be cheaper than it is to get an in feed sponsorship with their long form YouTube. And so I think just thinking through that lens of like, okay, is my audience here? Are we aligned? Is their audience on Instagram, even if it's the secondary channel, I think that those are just the things that we kind of

William Harris 24:16

think about. Yeah, I like that. What about, are there any stories that you can tell about working with, any celebrities, Tony Hawk, Joe Rogan, any of the people that you've worked with that you're like, Oh, this is a good story where either you're like, This isn't how I expected it to go, or, you know, Joe's a diva. He's like, No, I only want blue Eminem's get these green ones out of here. Anything like that.

Josh Durham 24:36

Yeah, I would just say so, with the Tony Hawk one. Basically, this was back when I was at groove life. Basically he broke his ring finger skating, and he was wearing a metal wedding ring. And so part of the big value proposition with the groove life silicone wedding rings was just that, you know, it's safer. So, like, if you're working, if you're a mechanic, you're working. On your car. You don't want to get de gloved, which is basically where your ring, like slides up the scale of your of your finger. Super gruesome, but it happens right? Like with people who are really working with their hands, or their CrossFit athletes, so there's just like an element of danger there. So that happened to Tony Hawk, and so that was just like a moment that I was with Bryant, the CMO at the time, and together, we were like, Oh my gosh, like, this is a great placement for groove. And so we're like, we reached out to his team, sent him some free product, and then it turned into a product line, right? Like it was an opportunity and a story. And so we actually got to do a full on video shoot with Tony, and being able to, like, really leverage that content, not only for organic but unpaid, and then have his own, you know, Tony Hawk rings, and so it's just like, taking advantage of those little moments, I think is, like, really cool. And I think, I don't think that many marketers are thinking that way, but when, but when you do like, the magic can happen, and you can really start to see sales skyrocket. And just taking, you know, just taking advantage of those small moments, yeah, you have

William Harris 26:07

to watch out, right like, what's going on in the in the in the market right now, what's going on in the world, and how can you, kind of, like, inject yourself into the conversations that people are already having? Yeah, 100% All right, let's talk a little bit about affiliate links. You mentioned this earlier today, but you've also said on Twitter that you think affiliate links are trash, so that is a direct quote, but they do help with tracking, right? So like, what are the pros and cons of affiliate links within with it, within this,

Josh Durham 26:41

yeah, I think, I think the pros are signaling intent like, I think that like seeing story swipe ups and just seeing signal of like, okay, the click through rate on this story was, you know, five, 10% like this customer audience match is there, you know, like, like, This is worth doing. I think when I say affiliate links are trash, oh, man, I'm so scared. What else did I tweet? Is because we do use affiliate links, or like, from time to time, we're not an affiliate. We're not an affiliate company, right? I think there's a big difference. Because I think to make affiliate work, oftentimes they are, you know, the creator that has 5000 followers on Tiktok, or maybe you're a publisher who has a big organic site following with a huge newsletter, and honestly, like, I just think so many brand owners get it wrong, where they're like, Oh, I'm just gonna do affiliate and put the percentage of Sales way high at like 15 or 20% and just expect that it's going to skyrocket. Because I've been on the other side of trying to motivate your creators to start posting for the affiliate commission. And it is so much work. It's so much work to to get to motivate them to really post and sell the product for you that oftentimes is almost like a lost cause because of the man hours that you put into it. But my other hot takes on affiliate is just that, when I was running my way to blanket company, I had a way to blanket company I ran with my mom for a couple years, and, you know, we worked with like the retail me nots of the world, and we were on all discount code sites, and we had the affiliate links there, and it was saying that was generating, you know, 70 80k a month in attributable revenue. And, you know, we turned off the entire affiliate program, and I wanted to make a bet that it wouldn't impact sales, and it didn't. And I was like, literally paying $10,000 a month for no good reason. And so, you know, I think everything here that I'm saying I need to say with nuance, and my two favorite words are, it depends, right and so. But I think in general, affiliate is a very challenging channel to make work and to motivate the creators for commission, and I my suggestion is start with a with a healthy paid budget, because they want to get paid for the content they're

William Harris 29:06

creating. Totally Yeah, because it's a lot of investment in time, like they're investing a significant amount of time and resources and potentially even money on their end for their editors and everything to put this stuff together. They shouldn't have to shoulder all of that burden on that either. The other thing I like about affiliate, to your point, I like saying it depends, as well, in nuance and everything, is that when you set it up for there are ways to do this. And I would say this is less on the influencer side, but more on the affiliate links that you would have on, like publisher setting it up so that way you're giving a different amount for net new customers versus returning customers. There is a thing where you're saying, Hey, I'm willing to spend $50 to acquire a new customer. I don't want to spend $50 to acquire that customer's eighth purchase, right? And so there are ways to set this up. It gets a little bit more tricky, but that's one of the things that I know when we don't do affiliate anymore. But back. What I used to do affiliate. I wanted to make sure that we had a way to say, Okay, I'm willing to spend this much for new customer, this much for a returning customer, and this much for a laps buyer, right? So if they haven't purchased from me in two years, whatever I've determined is a lapsed buyer for that company, I'm willing to spend a little bit more to get them back, because I know that they are a potentially good customer. And so I do think again, nuancing affiliate links could be an important piece of this as well, totally. Let's get into some of the practical stuff here. Early Access. Should you give your influencers early access? And what are the pros and cons there to like, the different things you have coming up in your marketing calendar

Josh Durham 30:36

and things? Yeah, for sure. Oh, man, that's a good question. I think yes, Early Access, like incorporating them into your launch and making sure that you know the deliverables and timelines are super clear. I think it just helps when you're launching a brand new product that's really supposed to be a really great Maybe it's like a new hero product that you're expecting a lot of, like net new revenue to come through, then incorporating your influencers who have been with you since day one, and having, you know, maybe it's just five of them posting on the same day, so just like, emphasizes the launch, then just and just helps you go, just get more reach. I think is great. I think the danger is that they leak it early. I actually have a friend who was working with some pretty big influencers, and they actually leaked the product, like three days, three days before the launch, but it ended up helping them and, like, as soon as they launched, they sold out in like 10 minutes, like, literally, like 10 minutes, because these creators had shared it beforehand, and it went viral on Twitter, and they were all talking about it amongst themselves. And it was actually around this really big band that I won't disclose, but it was, yeah, that was just like an interesting case study to see on, like, on early launches, and

William Harris 31:54

that's fair. I don't know anecdotally, personally, of any, anything that was leaked early, like we were talking like you said, like, a few days or a week early, that didn't end up still being significantly beneficial for a brand, because oftentimes, to your point, even the fact that it seems like it's leaked information, even if it wasn't, it was, you know, factitiously leaked, it just creates almost like this allure to people. They're like, Oh, I've got some inside, juicy details that I want to show that even more now than if you have, like, that day, yeah, even

Josh Durham 32:28

just teasing out the product, right? Like, I think hermoozi talks about this a lot, just like in any kind of launch, you just want to show them a small part, just give them a small taste of what's to come. And then, kind of, like, trickling that out until launch day is, is always just a great way to, like, to build buzz for the actual day of launch. Yeah,

William Harris 32:49

and that's again that goes back to human psychology again, like, that's true in relationships and everything, right? Like, we like, just that little bit too much is too much as well. What about you talked before about multi platform. Reach is key. So, you know, we talked a little bit about a couple of different platforms. But why does it matter to be on multiple platforms?

Josh Durham 33:09

Yeah, I mean, the simplest answer is, because that's where your customers are. Is like, I'm engaging on, you know, if I delete Instagram off my phone, guess where I'm going? I'm going to YouTube, shorts. That's like, that's my behavior of I turn off one thing, I delete, I'll even delete Twitter from my phone, and then all of a sudden, I'm opening it up on, like, Safari on my phone. That's, like, such a terrible habit, right? Like we're I think so many people behave that way. And so I can even think about, like, one of a really great brand that I follows is Huck Berry. And, you know, I don't know if you've ever watched Huck Berry's YouTube channel for their dirt series, where they basically, you know, they go to Alaska. And his name is Josh Rosen, and, you know, basically, go to Alaska, basically meet with locals there, like, get a he'll basically go shopping. He'll go he'll go eat with them. He'll go drink with them. And he basically collects, like, a small food item from each different section, like on this trip of Alaska. And so maybe he's going to salmon fishing, maybe He's then going to a whiskey distillery, then he's going to a farm, and he's just like collecting like, different, like recipes. And then at the end they, you know, they have, like, a big feast together with with all the local merchants and stuff like that. It's this really cool storytelling thing. And so number one, like, I engage with huckberry on YouTube, but I also follow them on Instagram. And so on Instagram, the content obviously isn't long form, but a lot of times I'll get notified that there's a new dirt episode on on the huckberry YouTube because of IG. And so I think that just thinking through what, what's the job of each platform and where you're trying to drive people on social really matters.

William Harris 34:59

Yeah, like that. What about for reaching influencers? Then you talked about you mailed some stuff out to to to, you know, celebrities and everything. But what about, like, reaching other people? One of the things that you mentioned on Twitter is you said that Instagram DMS fail for reaching influencers. Why is that? And what should we be doing instead?

Josh Durham 35:20

Yeah, for sure. So nuance here also, I'm not saying it's like, always a failure, but I will say that oftentimes, like the Instagram DM inbox is so messy now, like there's like a primary, there's an other, there's like a brand request one, there's, you know, then you have your hidden DMS, which are an absolute mess. And so just think if you had, you know, I have, like, less than 5000 followers on Instagram. Like, think if you had 300,000 followers, and how many, what your DMS would look like. And so I think a lot of people like, Oh, I'm just gonna DM 100 influencers. And like, sometimes that can work. But if you really are serious about your influencer partnerships, we just found email to be a lot more effective and just efficient at scale. So there's so many tools that we can use for following up if they haven't responded. We can see who's opened it. We can see who's clicked. It just gives us more room to play with versus using a Instagram DM and maybe a Google Sheets. You know, we can actually have, like, a CRM of moving someone from outreach to product was sent to they've posted, and then following it with them to post again. And so I think that it just it creates structure for teams internally to actually leverage that as an outreach tool, versus, like, doing one to one on Instagram DMS,

William Harris 36:45

yeah, to a point, you know, as you get to bigger and bigger influencers, they likely have at least one or two people that are managing a lot of those coms for them, and so getting into their email, it's a lot easier for their, you know, assistant or whatever, to look at this, or their agent, or whoever they're working with, to be able To be able to say, Yeah, this is a good opportunity for us. Makes it a little bit easier for the communication side. What about just showing up on their doorstep? Is that a no, like, don't just, don't just show up? I

Josh Durham 37:10

don't know. I think normally, I was actually just on a webinar with Anna Barker from hex cloud. She's like, their head of partnerships, and oftentimes, you know, her suggestion there on the flip side and I agree with, is just to get intact with in contact with their agent. And like, the agent handles all their free product, and so as long as you're serious, and you have, like, a potential paid budget, then you can get in contact with the agent, send them the free product, they will get it to the celebrity, and then you can go from there. So I think that's, that's my suggested thing, versus, you know, I actually funny enough my rental property that I have, we actually had an influencer who was renting from us, and then she left, and we had to find new tenants. But literally, every week, the new tenants would get all these packages the Creator, and I think a lot of those are from brands that weren't getting consent to send them, right? And so like, you know, you might have gotten an address, but there's no promise that they still live there. So anyways, from one, from one landlord to brands, just note that, you know, the the address might have changed, so get in contact with your agent and send them the product, yeah, go

William Harris 38:19

through the gatekeeper, right? Like, sometimes they're there for a reason. And so if you can butter up the gatekeeper their agent, and their agent's like, Yeah, I like this. This is good. Yeah, a better opportunity, too. And I

Josh Durham 38:29

don't know if you've ever seen, like, unboxing videos where, like, there'll be an influencer that has, like, literally, 30 boxes that they have to unpackage. And so like, just think if you're one box of those 30 and having to, like, stick out, like, you definitely want to have some kind of communication over email before that goes out.

William Harris 38:49

That's a good point. You also do some other things that I would say seem to be counter intuitive at first, like, using female influencers for a male brand. You told me a story about that. I don't know if it's a story you could share more about. But like, what gave you the idea to do this, and how? Like, how does something like that work out? Yeah,

Josh Durham 39:09

good question. Yeah. So basically, like, the use cases, like, if you're a male based brand, then you've probably experienced this, but there are so much fewer male creators out there. And so what you have to do, so basically, what's happening is low supply, high demand, high cost. And so it's really expensive to work with male creators. And so I think what a lot of brands are looking for out of their program is high scale out of their influencer program. And so the way to do that has been that I've suggested to a lot of different male brands that we've worked with has been to spend hard ad dollars on the on the male creators. So work with the best there, and, you know, pay them their dues. But if you really want to get volume of content and volume of posts getting posted organically, then going after the. Uh, female significant others who happen or basically going after the female influencers who have a male significant other that might not be front facing all the time on their IG, but that can be included, then all of a sudden, instead of just the placement, like the female creators might have fewer spots for your product. Maybe it's not just apparel. Maybe it's like, maybe it's like a shoe brand, for example. And you know, maybe they don't want to, they don't want to plug all the shoe brands that contact them. And so basically, just gives them an opportunity to earn money, or just even just free product. And so we can gift product to the female creator and putting that on their male significant other, because at the end of the day, a lot of women drive the purchasing decisions in the home, and so I think that's just like a natural placement for a lot of brands.

William Harris 40:47

No, that makes a lot of sense. We've even seen doing things that are completely outside work well and paid. And I'm wondering, if you've ever tried something wildly outlet, there was a beauty brand that we worked with, and we don't do this as much anymore, right? This was back when audience interest based, audiences were still much more prevalent thing. Yeah, but we ran like a like an interest in bicycles, and part of it that was so interesting to it, it performed so well. In our hypothesis on why it performed well is because, if you're a beauty brand, everybody's saying an interest in beauty. And so then it's getting hit with the same people, and they're already seeing like, 800 runs, 800 ads for other products. But if you are all of a sudden interest in bicycles, that doesn't mean that you're not interested in beauty, either. You're just maybe not actively searching for it or looking for it right then. So when we showed it to you, you're like, Oh, hey, that does sound interesting. That is something I'd want to do. And so it worked very well. Have you tried anything like wildly outside of the realm of what you're initially targeting?

Josh Durham 41:48

Yeah, I would say, like our version of that is, with each brand, we typically start out in the middle of their target market. So like, to your point about like, a beauty product, then we start with creators who are doing makeup tutorials on YouTube and on Instagram. But then maybe we expand. So like for Hex clad, for example, we've been working with them for almost three years now. You know, we start with, like the chefs that are on Instagram and Tiktok, but then we go out inside the next step, which is like mom influencers who are cooking dinner for their families every single night. And then we go out a step further to fitness influencers, who, you know, typically are making a lot of their own meals to hit their macro goals. And then we'll go all the way outside of the target to gamers, for example, yeah, so, like, just going outside of that typical demo, and like, we want to get audience expansion, and if your tam is that big, right, like a gamer would use, is probably going to use some kind of cookware, right? Like, they might not be our target demo of a high income earner who's, you know, 35 to 55 that's like, maybe the typical demo there. But they still are using the product. And so I think that thinking through that for those influencers, because it's, you know, as you go outside of the circle, there might be less intent, but it also might be cheaper to work with them, because they have more opportunities and placements on their IG or on their YouTube for different types of products.

William Harris 43:19

Yeah, yeah, I like that. And I really appreciate that idea of thinking through, like, basically started from the bull's eye and then worked your way out. I think that's a really smart approach. I want to talk about Aligned Growth a little bit. Why did you start your company?

Josh Durham 43:32

Wow, that's a big question. Why did I start Aligned Growth? Well, I had to run a like I mentioned before, I ran away to blanket company with my mom for five years. That's really where I started to cut my teeth on e-commerce. I scaled that business to, like, 6 million bucks a year, and then it tanked. Then I went in house to groove life as their head of growth. And honestly, I just, I've always just loved entrepreneurship, like, from a young age, I've always been, you know, selling stuff. I used to flip iPhones on Ebay. I used to do all sorts of I used to sell, like, fake NBA jerseys, from, from on, I want to say Etsy, but like, from Ali PABA on eBay, like, just, like, all sorts of different things to make money. And so just being self employed for me is, is, like, super important and and, you know, just being a business owner, I think, gives you also the unique opportunity to be generous. And so for me, like being generous with my team and my employees is super, super important for me, and just building great bonus incentives and stuff like that. So yeah, for me, it's just, it's just what I've always known. I've been self employed for most of my life now, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Why

William Harris 44:48

is being generous such a big deal to you? Is it something you saw modeled, or is just something intrinsic?

Josh Durham 44:54

Yeah, for sure. So for me, I'm a Christian, so I've always just believed in being. Generous, like there's the spiritual principle of tithing. And so I always give away 10% of my income every single month and every year. And so I think just, you know, outside of, like that spiritual lens, just to think about is oftentimes giving doesn't just change the people that you're giving to, but it changes you. And this might sound selfish, but sometimes giving allows you to release the hold that money has on you. And how many times do we become so self absorbed, of thinking of ourselves, of consuming, consuming, consuming. I need to, like, find more resources. I need to make more money. I need to collect more and it's just like a It's a terrible cycle, right? Like, I think the worst thing in life is to be selfish, and so by giving, by giving away money, giving away time, all those those things, I just find it really rewarding. I think it's better to give than to get.

William Harris 45:52

I'm going to take this way back to probably even before your time here. I think, okay, there's, I'm also a Christian as well, and there's a group called Mary, Mary, and they had a song that was a real big hit when I was in high school. That was, you took the shackles off my feet so I could dance and and I think about that idea, though, that's like there are shackles we don't recognize these, these other more spiritual shackles that could be honest, but that that love of money can be a shackle. Your point being able to give is more for you, almost than it is for the person receiving. Not that you should do it for that reason, but like you will experience that. And I think the same is true for forgiveness, that forgiveness, it's not hurting that, like the lack of forgiveness isn't hurting that other person, it's hurting you. And until you can actually forgive that, once you do, it's such a freeing thing for you as well. So I think that there's a lot of things that that's true for.

Josh Durham 46:37

Yeah, it's like, what's the saying about forgiveness? It's like holding unforgiveness is like you drinking poison and thinking that it's going to hurt someone else, but it's really just hurting you. And so I think the same thing goes for for generosity and just and just being a giver. It's much more fun to be known as a giver than a taker. Yeah,

William Harris 46:56

no, that's good. I like that. What are some other case studies you mentioned a little bit there, with hex clad, you guys have obviously worked with Gordon Ramsay. It's another big celebrity that you've worked with. What are some other case studies you can share of applying these tactics to, let's say, you know these, these types of brands, 10 million, 100 million dollar brands who are working to grow and build and scale. And where you'd say this is a key piece that people need to be able to look at to understand, this is how you help them grow.

Josh Durham 47:24

Yeah, for sure, I would say the first one that comes to mind is our client, Divi. And if you if you're not familiar with Divi, it's a hair care brand. It's started by Danny Austin. She's a really big influencer. She's like, og influencer. And it's so funny when you know, you get approached by a brand like that, they're like, wait, you want us to help you with influencer like you guys are already crushing it, right? But I think for them, you know, a lot of those relationships that they have, of like the products that have been promoted, are kind of like Friends of the Creator, and oftentimes they just need more capacity and firepower added to their team to really scale up the program, and so they set a high bar. They came to us, and they're like, hey, you know, we want to, we want to go seed 500 influencers every single month, and we really want to get product into the hands of these creators, and we just simply don't have the time resources or talent to do this in house. What do you guys think? So we put together a proposal, and basically, in the first three months, we seeded out 1500 influencers. In three months, it generated over 4 million organic impressions. Think it was like close to 130,000 likes, you know, 8000 comments, like, 1000 shares, something like that, and a million dollars worth of earned media value. And the CPM on that, I think, was in is about the $14 range. And it was kind of cool to see, because, you know, even with them being an influencer first company, a lot of their ad dollars have been going to more story based direct response content. And like the CPMs on that was super expensive. And so I think opening up the flood gates a little bit with gifting and just measuring it versus cost of goods sold kind of showed them the impact of like, Oh, wow. We're like, we're generating way more organic views than we were with our story only placement and like, our, you know, our founder pushing it. And so I don't know. I just think that's like, an interesting case study of, like, what of, like, just what something simple as adding more manpower, more firepower and having the right strategy in place can

William Harris 49:29

do? Yep, I love that. So hex cloud. I get divvy I get Libman mops, though, like, yes, how do you do? How do you do impulsive for something like a mop company,

Josh Durham 49:42

yeah, for sure. So Libman cleaning is really interesting case study as well. So for anyone that doesn't know Libman cleaning, if you go into your kitchen right now, and you go to your pantry, and inside of that pantry, you see a green broom, I'm 90% sure. That it is a Libman cleaning broom, or maybe it's a Libman cleaning mop, and it's so crazy once you see it, you can't unsee it. Literally, when I first started talking to Libman, I went into my bathroom and like our toilet bowl scrubber is literally a Libman cleaning toile, like they're everywhere. And so this is nearly a billion dollar retail first brand who approached us who really just wanted better content, and so they gave us a healthy budget, and so we started allocating dollars to like families, like really, like family based content. That was, you know, we're obviously not trying to do a hard sell on the benefits of a mop and of a broom. But what we want to do is tell really fun stories and make it fun and engaging. And so we had videos that have gotten, you know, 3 million views on Instagram reels, or 900,000 views on another Instagram reel. If you go to their Instagram, you'll see there's a very clear distinction between what their content is now versus versus what it was, you know, a year ago, just because it's like, it's fun and entertaining, and we're just getting in front of other families who are taking in that content. So I don't have any kind of special recipe there, other than let the Creator create. We want to work with people. We're not trying. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. That's the beauty of it. Is like we can come up with some fun, creative concepts, but, you know, at the end of the day, I don't have a million followers on Instagram. That last time I checked, William, you don't have a million followers on Twitter. But, uh, you know, we want to let the Creator create and just and let them have fun with it. No, I love

William Harris 51:35

that. Yeah, that's the biggest thing. Is to get out of the way. Let them say it in a way that makes sense to them and to their audience. Let them be authentic to that. Okay, so there was another thing that you cite I like talking about, like, let's just say, obstacles to growth within businesses. And one of the obstacles that you have tweeted about before is you said, if your potential client is above using a Calendly link, just move on. Lol. Why?

Josh Durham 52:04

Why? I don't know it's just controversial. I like to tweet controversial things just to get the shock value. My other takes is just around around oat milk. And how, how I hate oat milk. I tweeted this morning, if your founder drinks oat milk, you probably have a low net profit. I know, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I'm I'm sorry. I'm so controversial, getting it canceled for my oat milk takes, yeah, but for the call leaves, I just, you know, I, I'm a very organized guy when it comes to my calendar. Like this week I've had probably 30 hours plus of zoom meetings, and so I have to structure it so like, Tuesday, Thursdays are my day to talk to new prospective clients. Tuesday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday are kind of like more of my internal meetings. And so my call day links are dialed in and synced to that schedule. And so I don't know, just like, I don't know why it's so controversial to send a call me link, for some reason it is, but that's just the way I live my life, and I'm okay with it. Well, what

William Harris 53:09

I have to laugh about is there's a very big, you know, let's say, nine figure brand that their CEO also tweeted, or, I don't know, maybe, maybe a week ago or something similar. But on the opposite side, they were like, if somebody sends me a Callen Lee link, they're done immediately, right? There is such a there's such a strong reaction one way to another to call in the links.

Josh Durham 53:32

I know actually Callen Lee, at one point, was pushing ads with a tweet that I put, I said, I I send Callen Lee because I love you. And yeah, they, like, they put that out, like, it's like, been running on like, Instagram ads for like, a year. But I always, you know, my typical thing is, like, hey, like, shoot me times that make sense for you. Otherwise, if it's easier, here's my calendar link. That's always what, that's what I always do. And 90% of the time they just use the calendar link, because it makes it so much easier.

William Harris 54:04

Anyways, it's just fun. I'm on your I'm on Team calendar link, so we're good 2024 though, was a big year for you. So big life milestones, including the birth of your first kid, but I think the milestone that we're all the most interested in is that you sent your very first facts. And so tell me about it.

Josh Durham 54:24

Get into this? Oh, gosh, I don't even want to get into this. The fax thing was, I was dealing with some, like, just issues with a state government. Let's just say that I had to, like, figure something out of the state government. And it was literally like, it was like, you can, you know, you can either mail us, you know, this document, or you can, and it'll take, like, a week, or you can send us a fax at this number, and it can be here today. And I was like, I guess I have to send in my first fax. I'm i. I'm 30 years old, and I sent my first fax. So I have no idea. Like, I didn't really expect that to happen in 2024 but it was a life changing moment for me.

William Harris 55:09

Yeah, congratulations. Thank you. For those who are listening and you do not know what the full word for facts is, I'm gonna pause. Pause this for one second, see if you can guess what is the full word for facts. Facts is an abbreviation for something, okay. Pause. All right, yeah, it is okay. So for those who are watching, I figured you were probably young enough that you might not know either. It is for facsimile, right? This basically means almost like a copy of it, kind of thing.

Josh Durham 55:33

What that is? Crazy. Wow. My life just changed again. There you go. I had no idea. All

William Harris 55:40

right, so I do want to get to get to know Josh Duham A little bit more on the personal side then as well. It's always fun. You talked a little bit about your running the business with your mom and in your childhood a little bit. But how else has your childhood helped to shape you into who you are today?

Josh Durham 55:56

Wow, big question. I think it shaped a lot of things. I grew up in a middle class family, not to steal kamalas quote, but I, you know, grew up. I was born in Nashville, but I moved quickly to northwest Iowa, in the frigid north, which I know you're familiar with. And, yeah, just like grew up in a really small town, less than 10,000 people really grew up with a sports background, so I ended up running track in college, and so I guess just, you know, like, some big events, that really affected me was my dad was like, laid off, like, laid off twice within five years. And so that really showed me, you know, just around, like, the job market and like, you know, you never know what can happen. That really motivated me to become self employed. And so, like I had shared earlier, you know, as even as a college athlete, I was flipping iPhones on eBay to make money for gas. I was selling NBA jerseys, I hope Mark Cuban doesn't hear this, and selling NBA jerseys on eBay to make money. And so I think that just growing up, I had to kind of grow up quickly, and just like provide for myself, like I put myself through college, had to earn scholarships, and at the same time as running, when I started the weighted blanket company in college, you know, I would be waking up at 5am for track practice. I would go to class all day until three, and then, you know, might do some homework, and then I would go home, and I would ship 20 pound blankets in my garage with my mom until like, 10 or 11 at night, and then wake up and do do it the next day. And so, yeah, I don't know. I just think that that's just how it was. And sometimes I think when, when your pack is up against the wall, it just, like, it just teaches you things. It wasn't even anything I really chose. It just was, like the obvious choice. And so, yeah, I think that that that grit and just like that hard work, has just translated into the online world where, you know, but now I have it pretty cushy, where I take eight hours of zoom calls in a day. And, like, recently, I did manual labor in my yard. I built this, like, big rock path. I bought a saw Nice. So I had to, like, build this rock path with my neighbor. And it was back breaking work. Like, I put in, like, 20 hours of work into this rock path. And I was like, Thank you, God, that I don't have to do manual labor for a living. Like, thank you that I get to take zoom calls. Like, this is a much better life, and so I don't know. I just have a lot of things to be thankful for now, just being married, having my daughter and and getting getting to do the work that I get to do.

William Harris 58:35

Yeah, that's so true. There's so many pros and cons to the different types of work, and it's easy for us to only see sometimes maybe the cons of the type of work that we do, but gotta jump into other people's shoes and see what's going on in their lives, too. I think it's important to do from time to time. Absolutely. Okay, so you've been an entrepreneur for a while. You dabbled in a few other things. You also told me that you are not a crypto guy, but you did turn $50 into $50,000

Josh Durham 59:00

oh my gosh, totally forgot about this. Do I need to break down the story?

William Harris 59:06

I mean as much of it as you want, or as little as you want, or we can skip it if you're like, No, let's not.

Josh Durham 59:11

No, no. This is, this is a pretty funny story, all right, so basically, back in 2019 or 2018 my buddy Zach, told me that about Dogecoin. And basically he was, like, the kids are starting Dogecoin, and I believe in the kids, like, you should invest in this. So I, like, signed up for Robin Hood. And I think at the time I had what I think when you signed up back then you got like, a $50 credit or something like that. And so I signed up for that, and I bought Doge, and I just forgot about it. And then on Twitter, I saw Doge trending maybe, like, a year later, maybe it's during COVID. And I checked my Robin Hood account. I didn't even know that I still had it. And inside of my Robin Hood account, I had $2,500 sitting there from Doge. So I turned. It was, like 50 bucks. I did 2500 I was like, okay, nothing life changing, but this is, this is pretty sweet. Anyways, at the time, I had someone book a call with me on my website who had just kind of been getting started with their econ brand. And I thought it was a really cool product. They were really early, like they were less than, you know, a million dollars a year, which is like way outside of our kind of threshold for clients. But anyways, I we had a call, really, like, the guy, and I, like, look back at my $2,500 and I was like, what if I just fronted the ad spend for the first $2,500 I have this free money. What if I just, like, tested this so anyways, I was like, Hey, why don't we? Why don't you let me from the ad spend. I'll spend my own money, 2500 bucks, and we split the profit, 5050, if anything comes of it. He was like, deal sweet. Spent the 2500 that ended up doing like a 5x ROAs, and did really well. And then from there, we built a profit share. I was like, Hey, I'm no longer gonna front the ad spend, but I'll manage this for free, and we'll split the profits, 5050, and so basically, from there, we went from a store doing like six grand a month to over q for doing like $300,000 in sales, 50% I think I don't even know what it broke down to. It was basically 100k I think it was like 30% net. So it was like 300k revenue, 100k profit, 50% of that was 50k I got a 50k payout in December of 2021 so that's how I turned $50 into $50,000 basically over like a one year period.

William Harris 1:01:37

That reminds me of the Craigslist paper clip. You know what I'm talking about. You know the story with that? Oh no. Or somebody basically created a clip, paper clip, they traded it for something on Craigslist, and then they kept trading up until they ended up with, like, a house or something. Yes,

Josh Durham 1:01:53

this is what we used to do this like, like, I told you, I grew up in a small town. It's called bigger and better, and we literally do that for, like, a church youth group thing, like, they give us $1 and we would just, like, trade it up until we got something crazy. I think we got, like, a snowblower out of it or something. I

William Harris 1:02:10

haven't done that probably since church youth group, but you just reminded me of that. Literally forgot that phrase entirely. Yes, I

Josh Durham 1:02:16

did too. Thanks for bringing that up for me too. That's like a great thing for kids. I feel like that's like that's like a good little entrepreneurship thing to do. Like, hey, I'm gonna give you this can of Lacroix, and you need to trade it for something else that someone has in their

William Harris 1:02:29

garage. I have a 14 year old, and I know what project I'm gonna have her working on next week. Let's

Josh Durham 1:02:34

That's amazing. I'm gonna have to remember that too. The last

William Harris 1:02:39

thing I want to talk about is just like your own, let's just say passions and things that you enjoy. And I know that when we talked before, you had talked about, like, one of your biggest passions is your family, and you've got a new daughter and your wife and everything. So tell me a little bit more about your family. Tell me a little bit more about like, why you're so passionate about being a dad and being a husband.

Josh Durham 1:02:59

Yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah. So my daughter, her name is Ruthie, and she's about a year in four months now, and we actually have, I don't know if you saw this, but we have a boy on the way, coming in June 2025, so super, super stoked to have a boy. I'm not prepared for the boy energy and not like, I'm like, my daughter so sweet and chill. Like, I'm like, I'm so interested to see how it plays out. Like, did I just get a good kid? Or am I a good parent? I think it's probably I got a good kid. So we're gonna see how things go. But yeah, just like, I just love family life. Like, work is so much fun. I love getting to do what I do, but like, it fails in comparison to just the joy I get from being with my family and my my wife and I were actually just in Mexico for our company retreat, and just got to spend some time with just her and our daughter hanging out on the beach in Mexico. And so, yeah, I just get to get, I feel super fortunate. I get to spend so much time with my daughter working remote I spend every morning with her from seven to nine, hanging out with her during lunch, and then from five to seven before she goes to bed. I like, and I see her throughout the day. So I'm not, like, commuting an hour each way. I'm not gone, and I've lived that life where I was commuting an hour a day and all that fun stuff. So yeah, just love, I just love the dad life. I just, I've never it's just brought so much joy into my life. And I think, you know, back to what we were talking about with generosity. And like, service, it takes the focus off of yourself. And so like, serving my wife and serving my daughter takes the focus off of me and onto them, which is, in itself, just a gift. And so yeah, just love those guys and just feel super blessed. I

William Harris 1:04:45

totally agree with that being a gift as well, but the time that you're spending there that takes intentional focus, and I say that can be a very challenging thing. When you talk to other entrepreneurs, it's not easy. So how have you been able to carve out time? And you know, part of this is, like the mental making it a priority. But aside from that, like, you gave a little bit of an example of this, where you just say, you know, hey, no calls scheduled from this time to this time. Or, like, what are the ways that you've gone about practically to make that a reality in

Josh Durham 1:05:14

your life? It's all about using Calendly links. It's all about,

William Harris 1:05:20

hey, hey, honey, I'd love to go to date with you. Good time.

Josh Durham 1:05:26

Absolutely no. I just think it's rhythms. I just think it's like rhythms and boundaries and like, we're a Google Calendar family, like we have everything blocked off from vacations. And I don't know if you've seen Jesse itsler's, uh, big ass calendar, I have it right here over on my wall. So we have our whole year planned out of the big things that we want to do together. And so I think it's just, you know, being intentional and proactive about the things that that you want to do, and then at the same time, like, taking care of yourself, of like, like for me, my me time is like getting coffee with a friend, going surfing, playing pickleball. And so those are all things like Wednesday and Fridays. And Fridays. I know those are kind of like my mornings to go do those kind of things, or maybe go to the gym. And so I think it's just being really intentional about about your schedule. And if you don't schedule it, someone else will. And so I think that, yeah, just blocking it out and being intentional with it is will put you have 90% of people, yeah,

William Harris 1:06:22

I'm with you. I actually have a calendar invite on my own calendar, partly, so that way other people can't block that. But it says, hug kids when they get off the bus, right? It's like, that's one of the things. It's like, Okay, at this time I'm done, I don't have meetings during this time. I want to go say hi. How are you? How was your day? Like, I'm so glad you wrote. I do have some more meetings, but like, you know, welcome home. Yeah,

Josh Durham 1:06:43

that's awesome. I'm gonna have to do that when my kids get older. That's a good one. Yeah? Good to see all that.

William Harris 1:06:49

Well, Josh, it's been amazing talking to you today, learning from you. I feel like you've shared a lot of wisdom, not just on the professional side, but on the personal side as well. If people wanted to work with you or follow you, what's the best way for them to do that? Yeah,

Josh Durham 1:07:01

for sure. So I'm most active on Twitter, so if you want to check me out at Josh J Durham, feel free to send me a DM. I'm always checking them, but yeah, if you're if you want to have a conversation and chat about getting help with your influencer program, you can go to AlignedGrowthManagement.com, book a call, and if you're not ready yet, we have a free influencer marketing guide that's like relevant for 2025 it's at AlignedGrowthManagement.com/guide, it's like a 33 page PDF. It's actually a free email course that we put together. It's like a five day email sequence, and in each each day you get a new lesson for influencer marketing. So as you're starting the week and can just read through those, we provide some case studies in there and just some thoughts that we have around influencer. But yeah, that's just a way to get connected. And I'm always on LinkedIn, although my hottest takes are on Twitter instead of LinkedIn, so you're missing out if you're not on Twitter. Yeah,

William Harris 1:07:57

yeah. Well, that's great. I'll put those links in the show notes as well. So if you're listening and you want to just click on it, you can just go ahead and click on that there, Josh, again, thank you for jumping on here, chatting with me, sharing your time and wisdom with us.

Josh Durham 1:08:09

Absolutely. Thank you, William. Thank you so much. This is super fun. Yeah. Thank

William Harris 1:08:13

you everyone for listening. I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Outro 1:08:15

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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