Bobby Gillespie - F2F
Bobby Gillespie: Yeah, I deserve that. You need to get better sleep at night, my friend.
Chris LaFay: Definitely. It's definitely, Definitely my problem. Right? Definitely. Yes.
Bobby Gillespie: Sorry. I. I was in a bunch of meetings and I. I started doing work and then I'm late, so. There we go.
Chris LaFay: No, you're. I do the same thing. Shocker. It's how that works sometimes.
Bobby Gillespie: Yep.
Chris LaFay: If I don't have a day of meetings and I have like one here and one there, I'm toast.
Bobby Gillespie: Like, I'll do that. I don't let this happen.
Chris LaFay: I.
Bobby Gillespie: Like, I like, if. If there's a gap, like what I was working on before this, I'll be lucky if I'm able to pick it up. Pick it back up. Right. I think I will because I just started using. I had multiple AI agents and I started using Claude and I wanted, like, problem with Claude. You can't train it. It's only. It's only per session.
Chris LaFay: So, like, talk with Chris Dubois about this. You need to talk to Chris about this, dude. Yeah.
Bobby Gillespie: Because you can train it. You create custom. Okay. Huh? It says you can't. It said it. I just have to ask it.
Chris LaFay: Are you using Claude in the browser or using Claude on the desktop app?
Bobby Gillespie: It's an app. Yeah. Desktop.
Chris LaFay: Oh. Oh, that's okay. On the desktop. Yeah. No, so it.
Bobby Gillespie: It.
Chris LaFay: You have to change a little bit about how you think this is coming from a developer who's been doing this for like 20 years. You have to change how you think this is what I've done to give you an idea. It's not. It's not honed in yet. I'm going to talk about. This is more like business operations, but context applies here. So it has access to my calendar, which, if you have access to calendar, you have access to the types of events that they are, the descriptions, the email addresses, the whole nine yards. And I'm pretty decent about putting event descriptions in all my events. Two, it has access to my Gmail as well for work. Three, it has access to my CRM, where I have notes. Four, it has access to all of my, like, call transcriptions. And when at. During the day, what it'll do is it'll go. The Gmail thing and the calendar thing are very dynamic. Like, Google has a lot of really good code to make that very dynamic. My transcript thing does not. So every day it goes down and it grabs all my transcripts from the day before and shoves them into a file. It reads them and it understands. Is this a. I typically have four types of calls. Sales related Kind of like founder to founder, agency chats, catch up calls and personal calls. And it can tell based on with those four categories, it grabs the person's name and by default, because it has access to my inbox and Google calendar, it can tell who the email address is, the company name is, the whole nine yards. So now today, when I ask it give me a status report email for Consume, the Consume website project, it will look at the call that happened this morning, all the tasks that were outlined and all the project updates that we've done in the past because it has access to emails, it has access to transit the whole nine yards. And it will write me out an entire project transcript with full context in my own voice because it has access to my emails.
Bobby Gillespie: Oh, interesting. Okay, now that's interesting.
Chris LaFay: Now that's obviously business operations, but you can then take that mindset and thought and apply. It basically builds out its own brain of like markdown files. And so like I, I had it created a folder. This is a multitudes of folders. I'm not talking about like two, I'm talking about like 30 where it saves data any way that it wants to. I give it information and I say save this wherever makes the most sense. And it logs all that away. It knows all my active clients, it knows the last time that I sent them a sync email. It knows my pipeline because it has access to my pipeline Google Doc. And it's like, hey, you know Bobby G is on this one. And the last email that I have with you and Bobby G was in freaking January. So I could actually flagged it this morning of like you have a lead you haven't talked to in a month. It didn't know that we texted.
Bobby Gillespie: Oh, and it's calling me a lead, huh? A little bit presumptuous. That's interesting because I, my assistant transition into actually a creative partner. He wasn't an, he wasn't an EA after all. And like, and we all know that now. So I'm high. I'm looking for like a project manager type person. But this sounds like it could do a lot of stuff because I have Aries and then I have a few other clients that are nowhere near the commitment on both sides and it's hard to manage those right now. And I got more comment and then I got to finish my bulk and then I had this whole new, I had this whole new idea, dude, I got this whole new idea to.
Chris LaFay: Create.
Bobby Gillespie: Sort of this new type of advisory service that like they, it's a subscription based so it's it's basically my content will go from primarily writing to video based and then people can get access to my advice through that. And. But I, I got, I got the idea now I got to figure out how to make it happen. But I'm excited about that because it's, it's a, it's fun, creative stuff for me to make content. But you know, If I got 50 people paying 400 bucks a month.
Chris LaFay: I mean, that's I think what we call mailbox money right there.
Bobby Gillespie: Yeah. Huh.
Chris LaFay: Obviously. Don't get me wrong, like if you go down the content creation route as your primary form of like income like that in of itself could. Is very quickly a full time job. Like you have to be. In order to get people to actually continue paying that amount of money, you have to get people to like, you have to be given value on top of value.
Bobby Gillespie: Oh, I know.
Chris LaFay: For a long or like extended.
Bobby Gillespie: It's a, it's a balance between content creation and then have them having like charge enough that they're committed. Right. So if you charge too little, they won't, they won't care about it. You charge too much. Like it's not accessible. You gotta find that sweet spot and. But based on what that sweet spot may be is how much content I have to produce. But the good thing is, Chris, I'm creating content constantly.
Chris LaFay: I mean, you just basically. I mean, is it just because of your like charming personality and you just have a phone with you at all time recording everything?
Bobby Gillespie: Oh, no, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not doing like UGC type stuff, but like, like I'm writing and designing and on camera basically all day.
Chris LaFay: And you're recording all your, I'm assuming you're recording all your meetings and all that kind of jazz too, anyway.
Bobby Gillespie: Yeah, some, sometimes. But like it's just, it's just a natural spot for me. And there's people that have done it through the years and you know, you know, but then, no, no one's done it. Like I will.
Chris LaFay: I mean you could, I mean you could say that sentence about almost anything and it would be true. Nobody has read a book like I do. Nobody knows how to listen to music like I do. Nobody.
Bobby Gillespie: Well, all these things are true, but like they're also not. There's a, there's a. I know there's an opportunity and there's a certain attraction, magnetism I have for some, not all. And all I need is that some. And I think about like before COVID when people would just show up at my office and hey, you know, like, like wanting to meet me for happy hour, for lunch, for this come. Like so many people love my advice and, and I had, I had to figure out a way to offer it. And you know, I don't think I would do 400. I think I would do like, like 250, 300.
Chris LaFay: And this is what you, this is what you have to figure out. I read an article recently, it was, it was a, it was a good article about, about pricing mechanisms and levers. And part of the article had a deep dive interview with, I forgot the name of the, the app. It was a phone app or actually it probably was a phone app and a, and a desktop app. And this guy was being interviewed about, about pricing and one of the questions Was, you chose 7.99 for your app. He was like, why did you choose 7.99 for your app? And the guy answered, because mentally 7.99 is five bucks. It's like you think something, you're like, oh, it's five bucks, it's the largest number, that's five bucks. And like that's the. I was like, that's so stupidly simple because if it was 8.99, that's 10 bucks.
Bobby Gillespie: Like 10 bucks.
Chris LaFay: Like that, that's, that's 10 bucks. Anybody will pay 5. But like if, if you think that it's cool, you're probably willing to pay five bucks to give something a shot.
Bobby Gillespie: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: Especially if there's no like subscription on the back end and all that kind of fun stuff. So like what my pricing is.
Bobby Gillespie: Pricing is positioning and like, you know, you gotta price the value, not the cost at, but like it's gotta feel like a no brainer. And who I want to target for it are like people who want to build like a personal brand or like build their company brand. I have it all written out. So like, Yeah, the pricing's gotta feel like, oh, you know, it can't be too low because if it's too low they're gonna think it's not worth it if it's too high. It's not, they can't, they can't approach it.
Chris LaFay: Yeah.
Bobby Gillespie: So what would you pay? Right? And like, but also you have access. So like you know, say it's, say it's know 400amonth and you know, I have 50 people in there. Well, what would you pay for a one on one, right. Like where I'm actually working with you, one on one or per hour, what would you pay? Right.
Chris LaFay: I think whatever your monthly Cost, work.
Bobby Gillespie: Work in person, fly out to you. What would you pay? And yo, I know what people would pay because they pay it. It's a nice amount of money. But the, the thing is I can't. I can't over extend myself and compromise what I'm doing with Aries because that, yeah, that is worth all. All my attention. Yeah, but like these other clients, I have good. Like, it's basically what I'm doing these other clients, but instead of doing one on one and they're paying me like 4 to 5k a month, like, they're, they're getting the same type of guidance and advice through video content and writing, you know, for, for 1 10th. So like, you know, you remember, think that, that.
Chris LaFay: Do people still think that? I'm gonna oversimplify, but only video content and writing is worth paying 4 to $5,000 a year for from a single source person that. I don't know. I don't know. People will put it in the same rep. This isn't a, this isn't a challenge by inserting the imaginations where my head.
Bobby Gillespie: No, no, no, no. It's. It's a devil's advocate. It. Yeah, but it's a worthy, Worthy. It is a worthy challenge because you just got to figure. You just got to figure out what the market opportunity is. How big is the market for this? And it's not for companies. You have to be a solo or an individual or a student or an employee. If you come in trying to get the needle moving stuff from it, you, you, you'll be disappointed. But also you're trying to gain the system.
Chris LaFay: So then, Mike, then the question is for you. Okay, so I'm gonna call this something that you're not gonna like, but I don't know what else to call it, so I'm just gonna call it this. So if the things that move the needle for you are the fractional CMO jobs, and I realize you don't like that, but that's okay. Which is kind of what you're doing with Aries. Revenue growth, whatever the freak you want to call it on car brand. All of those things.
Bobby Gillespie: Yeah. There's no title I wrote about titles being meaningless this week or last.
Chris LaFay: I know exactly. Yes, 100. Which is why I totally caveat that whole thing before you lit me up.
Bobby Gillespie: But like, but like, but you know that like, people need a label for some context, right? Like, so I, I, Yeah, so I, so I get. I know that. But also that, like, it's, it's mo. Mostly because there's people out there, I see all the time who this package is for. And they're the ones who are like, there's no jobs for creatives. And I'm like, well, with that attitude, Sunny, you're right. But like if you're creative director with the type, if you're saying creative director, copywriter, storyteller and all you. And that is your label, you're none of those things. None of those things in fact. And you're saying things like, oh, there's no jobs for creative people that are 45 or older and that aren't good looking. It's like, well, you're not a creative director, nor are you a copywriter, nor are you a storyteller. Because none of that actually it's telling a story. It's telling the story that everybody stay the away from this guy. Do not hire this guy. And that's who this is for. Like, I'm, I'm speaking at the Advertising Federation, whatever the it's called. Next month they're starting a podcast and I'm one of the first people on it. And it's going to be, it's going to be all this, it's going to be like, how do you create, how do you design the life that you want and then create it? It's not by applying for that job. You apply for a job you already lost. You already lost.
Chris LaFay: So, so going back to my, my point from.
Bobby Gillespie: Right, your point.
Chris LaFay: You got me going five minutes ago that I was gonna get you.
Bobby Gillespie: Right.
Chris LaFay: Which I basically did anyway. So if you're, and I might not, I might not know your like long term goals. And that's perfectly fine if your primary clients are more angled towards the like larger business where you sit in kind of that like fractional seat working with the CEO and you want to create a community of, for lack of better terminology, we call them creators and, and smaller businesses or whatever you want to.
Bobby Gillespie: Refer to that as micros and solos.
Chris LaFay: Micros and solos. There we go. Yeah, these two things are vastly different. So my question for you is, are you intentionally targeting two very different buckets in a way to diversify or is it actually a, I'm gonna call it a bad play because like if you're, if where Bobby G. Makes money long term is kind of in this upper echelon of working with larger businesses and being that, that growth advisor to the CEO and you're over here basically playing around with the tiny micros that's not going to get you your next Aries. So does that make does that make sense, what I'm saying?
Bobby Gillespie: Yeah. No, no. I got this. So my next. So not. Not to be arrogant, just to be optimistic, there will need. There will not need to be a next Aries.
Chris LaFay: Okay.
Bobby Gillespie: And there may not need to be anything else. We will see. Interesting. But I have a couple other clients outside of Aries, and there's only so much I can give. And to be a little too transparent, I want to match my fee from Aries from sidewalk.
Chris LaFay: Okay, that makes sense.
Bobby Gillespie: And. And so I just. I just stow away one of them. But I think that when I was envisioning this and thinking big and writing about it, I realized that there's opportunities to make money that could equal to or exceed that situation where I'm doing client services essentially with less effort. And while I'm building that brand up of me and more people know me and how I roll and what I say and what I believe and how that makes a difference and the impact it has on businesses, well, I want to start a little bit grassroots on that because. Market share is measured in popularity. So the more people that know who Bobby G is and have been touched by him, the greater market share I grow. Market share translates into revenue. So if five businesses pay me, you know, Five to 20,000amonth, then that's only five businesses. But if I have three businesses paying me that, and I have a hundred people benefiting from my work through my community that they pay to belong to. My books, my podcasts, all this other media I'm creating, YouTube, then. The opportunities will just come because I'll be like a Marty Niemeyer. I'll be, you know, Seth. Seth Godin, but way cooler. Way cooler.
Chris LaFay: You could be like.
Bobby Gillespie: And I could kick his ass, too. So there's that. And so, like, when I. When I started on this pivot, man, let me tell you, I. I was dreaming as big as I could. And I felt like it was not nowhere near. Nowhere near where I could go. And what I'm thinking now is even bigger. And I know that nothing can stop me.
Chris LaFay: This dovetails really nicely into the random email that I sent you, which I'm now realizing in this moment about a month ago, where I was like, hey, thinking about making some changes about some things and this.
Bobby Gillespie: Yeah, we talked about it a little bit.
Chris LaFay: You. No, we never did. Because I did not reply to that. I wish I did. I. That was one of those. It was one of those emails. Oh, I'm sorry.
Bobby Gillespie: Oh, I thought we talked about it, like, ever so slight. I thought because like, you messaged me before the new year. We're like that. Oh, next time we talk. Dude, I thought we talked about it.
Chris LaFay: We did, we did. You were so. Hold on. So time out for a second. So last year you were not in your. So we did talk last year about some of the changes I was making about like, reducing my like full time employees down to zero. That whole nine yards. Yeah, we chatted in the, the middle, like the crux of that transition process. So, like right at the, like the tip of that, like, move. Because I remember you were not in your office. You were outside somewhere. I don't know where you were, but I remember you were not here.
Bobby Gillespie: I was at my house probably.
Chris LaFay: Maybe. So you were. Yeah. And so. And then earlier this year in January, I had some thoughts and ideas around like, sitting more in that creative strategist seat more often. Very kind of. Not, not exactly the same as what you're like, doing with Aries or anything like that, but like doubling down on like the soloness of the company, obviously still having some contractors and stuff that I push stuff out to, but being more like being more intentional about it. And I forgot what I, what I asked you then. It doesn't really matter. But it was something around this. And then you mentioned, because I specifically remember you said, I think just now you said, I solved it. And you said I solved it in the email. And that was the random phrase that connected in my head the last 30 seconds.
Bobby Gillespie: Mnemonic advice.
Chris LaFay: Yeah, I don't understand how my brain works. But you said I solved it or used the word solved. And I was like, email. I didn't respond. Anyway, that's okay.
Bobby Gillespie: Email is a terrible form of communication. In fact, it isn't a form of communication. It's a means to transmit information. So like, so we know that it's incredibly flawed. Despite our expectations. Texting is better as long as both parties do it right. It has to be a back and forth. I mean, if one person's texting and you're not hearing anything back, you're like, what the. You know, then you can only speculate. But I, I figured out, I mean, so like my personal reinvention was both internal and external. The internal part was figuring it out and being emotionally ready for it, being psychologically confident and then showing up with, you know, that sort of fearless, effortlessly cool confidence that, that like I can generate, which, which is very easy to buy. And what I realized is what, you know, my whole career, they were never buying, you know, even when I worked at Other agencies and I was a creative director, they weren't buying that agency thereby me. And when I started proper, I refused to accept that. I, I was, it was, but it was to be humble.
Chris LaFay: I'm gonna keep, keep going. I'm listening. I'm just gonna fill my water bottle up. I have my EarPods.
Bobby Gillespie: Okay. So yeah, so I knew when I pivoted it was, it was, it was being honest with myself about that. And then I had to reinvent myself in the market as post agency. And I just, I just had hundreds of conversations with people, group calls, all kinds of. That were all experiments on how to talk about it until I got close enough to it to where I just kind of, kind of got swept up by the, the rushing waters and went with it. And really what the biggest thing was, like I knew what direction I was going and I didn't know where I was going. I knew my. Just like when I started the company originally, people were like, you know, I left that agency and they're like, dude, what are you going to do? I said, I don't know. I'm really excited about it. And I had that feeling again. And once I got pretty close to it and I, and I knew what, what I would say no to and I knew the minimum of what I would say yes to, like within the minimum criteria, it all kind of started falling into place and it took less than a year to completely reinvent myself. And it took. I mean I would have to go back and look at the numbers, but I think I'm pretty sure that I'm more making more money now than I ever have. And that's even. There might be, there might be a year or two there and proper where I was just killing it. But, But this is certainly more successful in all the, the metrics except for headcount, which I don't give a flying about. In fact, I like that I have no employees. So like figuring out is just simple, man. Like you gotta like, you gotta write like a list down in like your notebook or something. And this notebooks, this brand sucks. It's falling apart. But like write it down your notebook, all your best clients, favorite clients and like you know, then write down all the, all the things, like what size were they, who you worked with, who hired you, Was it profitable? How much did you make? How much did you pay you up front? How much they pay you over time? All. All the things, right? And then connect the dots. See, See, we're fortunate man. We're really smart and creative and like, dude, I'M telling you, the world is ours, right? And we can do whatever we want because we're really smart and creative, and the curiosity is the key. But then focusing that energy on what the hell it is we want to do is, is the game changer. So, like, once you have all the. The situational conditions written down for each client, put a spreadsheet, right? So you have all the same columns and you can look at them, and then all of a sudden you can match the patterns. That's it right there. Once you see the patterns, the answer is in front of you. The answer to the question is, I do X for Y, and I don't do all these other things. So what I realized was I work with the CEO. The CEO hires me. I serve a leadership role adjacent to the CEO, and it can go up from there. I'm not working with. If I work with the marketing director or the team, they are beneath me. And it's not as. It's not an ego thing. It's that I'm an executive. So I am a proxy for the CEO to handle the side of the business. So, like, I've done project work, redesigned a website for a brand and did this project for another brand that I, you know, this I've been adjacent to and I've known. So, like, it wasn't like a flyer on me. They knew what they're getting. And I asked why they're hiring me. They said, because we don't know how. We don't know what the hell to do. And you do. All right, who's owning this project? You are. All right. I. My fee says. And they're like, go. So like that. Those little things bridge the gap between the start to later when it. When it all kind of coalesced. Beautiful word. I try to use that word every day. It all coalesced. And when it coalesced, it was not what I imagined. It was better. Better. And. It only got to this stage because I thought big. So now I'm thinking big again. And. And once again, I feel like I'm not thinking big enough.
Chris LaFay: So how much easier life is when you have a North Star to, like, point everything to. And then once you start inching closer to that North Star, you realize there might be another, a different one that's in the same general area, but. But farther along in a different way. And so, yeah, but then if you don't have that to start off with, you're just like, huh?
Bobby Gillespie: I mean, I. I'm a visionary guy, and I assume you are too and like when I. Before I pivoted, even when I started pivoting, I lost my vision for anything. I was directionless. And I remember feeling like I was the captain of a big oil tanker in the ocean. I had no idea where we're going. And as a visionary person, that is, that is the darkest place.
Chris LaFay: Yes.
Bobby Gillespie: The lights were off, man, and it was really hard to crawl out of there. But now all I could see is these future states that are like, just awe inspiring and you know, amazing things that I know I could reach and the potentials there. And my favorite thing is they do no harm. I don't need to destroy to win. So the idea around the community thing, whatever we're going to call it, is to give away more at a reasonable rate, more of my stuff. And I think that will both set me up for untold opportunities in the future. There's not one. We, we know this for certain, right? No matter where we're going, Right. You see the mountain there? There's no mountain here, by the way. It's Baltimore with hills. That mountain there in the distance, that's where I'm going. But what. Okay, that's good. What's the journey look like? You have no idea.
Chris LaFay: There ain't no map quest for that one, buddy.
Bobby Gillespie: Nope. You don't know. Yeah, I mean, you don't know anything about it except for that you want to go there and you're ready to go. So that journey takes you all the place. So the journey to create a generation of Bobby G. Fans. I don't know if that's the right word. You'll have loyalists. I don't know. Bobby G. Give a shitters. Give a shitters. I'm gonna give a. Are you a give a. That's like some Tim Robinson skit. But, but, but listen, I mean, you think about, right, how stupid and silly that sounds, but why the hell not, right? And if there is, you know, if there are, if there is a market for, you know, there, there's, I don't know, 20 million small businesses in the United States. If, if I, you know, just using those round numbers, if I have for this, build this community, that, that is worth it. And people are paying, you know, 3, 400, 500 bucks a month to be in it. And there's 30 million. How many do I need? 50amonth.
Chris LaFay: You'd be toasting.
Bobby Gillespie: There's not even, I mean, that. Dude, that's, that's a micro fraction, a micro fraction of what's out there, you know, and you know, the Next book, it will be done. And that when I get on podcasts that aren't related to Aries, I'm going to be talking about this, and I just got to get it kicked off. So that's what my. My former assistant's helping me do. He's a videographer too, editor, so he's going to help me figure that out. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But it will. It'll make me money somehow, you know, and, like, there's so many interesting tools right now.
Chris LaFay: Yes.
Bobby Gillespie: I mean, really, it's unbelievable. Just choosing which ones and then handing it off to people to, you know, I mean, I could straight up create ads for this and spend a couple grand a month on meta and just feed ads to people being, like, sick and tired of not getting the job you want. Sick and tired of not getting the fees you want from your clients. Sick and tired of, you know, Profit margins under 10%. Sick and tired of trying to get hired instead of being in demand. Like, there's people out there paying $18,000 to go get humiliated and sprayed with a hose at alpha male camps. I think they could pay me 400 bucks a month to actually tell them how to get their together and. And own their life. Yeah.
Chris LaFay: On a vastly different note, because I do have a hard stop here in about, like, 10 minutes. Shopify.
Bobby Gillespie: Yeah. So what's so there?
Chris LaFay: Yeah.
Bobby Gillespie: No, but that's the point. And we. Dude, I'm telling you, like, it's. This is actually really hard. I met with it. I met with a videographer, an editor who I know locally on Friday. And I was like, bro, I need someone to help me edit ads. Ads. Straight ads, the contents created. I'll give you all the direction. And he. I was like, just tell, go back home this weekend. If you're down, tell me what your fee is. The motherfucker quotes me $2,000 a day. I was like, two ads a day? A thousand dollars an ad? We would be out of business in no time. Where did you go to get. Where did you get this advice from? Because it was a yes. If you came in at like, 50 bucks an hour.
Chris LaFay: Yeah.
Bobby Gillespie: I'll be like, yep, let's do it. 250 an hour, right? So tell, we need help with our site. We need support here. I need a dev partner to clean up projects. Clean up. Help clean up the site. So an ongoing thing to do. Project work.
Chris LaFay: Define cleanup.
Bobby Gillespie: It's maintenance. And, like, the site's big. It's huge. Like, we're constantly Adding to it, there's tons of images. Like, there was no creative director before me. So there's. There's. There's four Meg photos on there and like that. So that we need to just prioritize and tackle different stuff and make sure the site's functioning. You know, it. It does a significant amount of money. Like 30, 40 mil a year. Like, that's a. You know, average order value is probably 200 bucks. So high. High AOVA. We just need to make sure things are functioning because we're driving all this traffic to the website and something's broken. That is a lot of money left, right?
Chris LaFay: Yeah.
Bobby Gillespie: Support. Right. Hey, guys, we need a landing page spun up for this. Can you help that? Right? And then just helping us. Our homepage has been pretty static. Like, let's. Let's do some stuff, right? We did we like a B testing and stuff. But you don't have to be a crow agency. Like, test this. Let's test that. And we need to redo the blog. The blog is just standard Shopify. The template sucks. There's not enough style in the library for pull quotes and different things. I'll create the whole design system for that. But we just need help rolling that out and then some custom dev work. You don't have to do all these things. This is the buckets of stuff we need help with. Custom dev, meaning that we got this interactive map done by a body of mine, and it sucks. It doesn't perform. We can't use it. We lost all this time. It was supposed to be ready around the holidays. We have this Aries effect page that's supposed to be pulling all these testimonials and content. Not a review page. But what's your experience with the Aries effect? So people can upload videos or text testimonials for a little bit of a credit. And we build this, like, infinite page. Like think of a Pinterest style page. An infinite page of overwhelming real world people giving testimonies that. We could drop ads in there. Or we could put some premium content from, like nascar, ufc, from some of our partnerships there. Those are the things we want help with. We need help with. And I'm curious of what. What you can do.
Chris LaFay: Yeah. So let me. So let me. Let me share my screen. I'm gonna.
Bobby Gillespie: Me. I'm gonna eat this protein bar so I don't talk anymore.
Chris LaFay: No, that's. You're good. I'm gonna share my screen with you really quick. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna pull up the Magic Spoon site. Now, I'm going to tell you that Chris Le Fay, as a human, is not the wildest e commerce expert out there. You're going to work with a guy on my team named Andrew, and he runs all of this stuff for Magic Spoon.
Bobby Gillespie: Okay.
Chris LaFay: So we are. We work with Magic Spoon in two different ways. One is they do have a Crow agency that I know. That's how we actually got Magic Spoon. So we do a lot of the. The winning Crow stuff for them. Oh, Acadia. They're down here in Atlanta. Fantastic people. I know the main Crow, like the lead over there for that whole team, Brittany. She's delightful.
Bobby Gillespie: Okay. She makes them more money.
Chris LaFay: They have been. Magic Spin has been working with Acadia for at least one. We've been working with Magic Spoon for a year and a half. And I want to say that Acadia has been working with them for at least a year. Longer than that. So, yes, they make them money.
Bobby Gillespie: What does Magic Spoon do annually?
Chris LaFay: That I don't know the answer.
Bobby Gillespie: Any idea?
Chris LaFay: I mean, they're in a ton of retail, I would guess.
Bobby Gillespie: Oh, they do retail too. Okay.
Chris LaFay: Yeah, They're. They're. They're in retail. Like, this is new. So, like, their target availability is brand new. So they were in Walmart. I think I've seen them in Walmart and Kroger and maybe even public. So, like. Yeah, I want to say they're doing. There's some information about them online because I think that they are. I want to say they're north of 30 mil.
Bobby Gillespie: Okay.
Chris LaFay: Could be wrong about that. Please don't.
Bobby Gillespie: Etail. Or both.
Chris LaFay: Like, I think. I think combination.
Bobby Gillespie: Okay, that's fine.
Chris LaFay: And I want to say I met with not.
Bobby Gillespie: They're not like, they're not like a million dollar company. They're.
Chris LaFay: No, no, they're.
Bobby Gillespie: They're.
Chris LaFay: They have. They have multiple levels of marketing leadership at their team. I met.
Bobby Gillespie: Really?
Chris LaFay: Yeah, they. They. They have a lot. Like, I met with the. Our main point of contact is. Oh, frick. I'm having. I know her name. It's Kieran.
Bobby Gillespie: That's okay.
Chris LaFay: Anyway, they have a number of people in their leadership team. This is not like a five person operation.
Bobby Gillespie: By the way. We do that much and we have eight people. That's it. Eight. The entire company. Eight.
Chris LaFay: Let me see. Maybe. Am I just not like I could have.
Bobby Gillespie: I mean, you look at. You look at liquid death. I think it's five people. The entire company.
Chris LaFay: Liquid death is fire. You serious?
Bobby Gillespie: Yep.
Chris LaFay: Dang, dude. That's nuts. Your magic spoon on LinkedIn.
Bobby Gillespie: It could be done.
Chris LaFay: Oh, I know. Oh, trust me. Oh, I know. Like especially you're going like direct to consumer and stuff.
Bobby Gillespie: Like.
Chris LaFay: Absolutely. Yes. They have 10 pages of LinkedIn team members, so that's 100, give or take. So.
Bobby Gillespie: Damn, that's a big ass company.
Chris LaFay: Yeah. Holy.
Bobby Gillespie: You know that, that dude, they're, they're like, they're. If they're a 30 million, they're barely profitable at all. Okay, sorry.
Chris LaFay: Anyway, we, we spin up landing pages for these guys on a regular basis. The. The talking about custom functionality. We had built this, we built all of this. So this is what they call their bundle builder. And so we've done a number of iterations on these things from the, from their CROW team that basically adds like discounts.
Bobby Gillespie: What do you use to build it? To build the bundle?
Chris LaFay: Oh, I want to say it stay AI because there's a subscription piece to it and I could find out the other technologies we use for it. It just curious. Okay, yeah, my.
Bobby Gillespie: How many SK do they. They have a lot of sk.
Chris LaFay: How many. Let me see. Hold on. How many SK are in Magics? My leads in a meeting at the moment, but simply put, let's just see. So we got 4, 8, 10, 2 dozen, 12. But each of these have. Each of these have. Actually no, these actually these are all the different flavors. So yeah, probably about two dozen if I had to guess. I was gonna say they have about five to seven product lines. Which one of them is cereal, one of them is bars etc. But each of them have about five to six flavors within each. So yeah, we built all of this stuff. We work with Stay AI to like build out their subscription platform as well too. Through State AI, we build out landing pages from them. We don't do a lot of design work for them just because they have design house and so but we basically just. We migrated. I don't know if we migrated a subset or if we've officially finished the entire migration, but there's been a tab. We've migrated I think the cart and product experience from Shopify 1.0 to 2.0. And then there's another small set of pages and functionality that's still sitting on 1.0 that we have to then migrate over. So we've done all that migration within their custom coded theme as well too because that's been highly.
Bobby Gillespie: What do you use? Like, do you use like the page builder features or do you use both?
Chris LaFay: So now that they're this. I'm a little out over my skis. Here as well too. But if I recall correctly, the Upgrade to Shopify 2.0 and the. The core theme that they started with, that then enabled the updated page builder, which now allows them to have more drag and droppable components as well too.
Bobby Gillespie: Yeah, okay. Okay.
Chris LaFay: I'm fairly confident with that answer. I'm not 100% confident.
Bobby Gillespie: You'Re lead dev on this. Andrew, He's the subject matter expert.
Chris LaFay: He's been doing Shopify for 15 years. He's been our lead for Magic Spoon for the last year and a half and he's an entrepreneur as well, so.
Bobby Gillespie: And does he farm out or does he do it on himself?
Chris LaFay: He does. So we have basically we divide and conquer. We have Andrew, who's the lead, and then we have another developer on our team and they basically tag team the appropriate work. So if it's simple work, then my intermediate, Samson gets it. If it's high level thinking work, then Andrew will do some of that work. They basically, they've worked. They have worked together like this for the last like two to three years. And so they. And then creative. We got a creative person as well too on our team named Claude that does most of our design work that.
Bobby Gillespie: You can handle design work too, if, if needed. Okay. How do you structure engagements, Chris?
Chris LaFay: Typically speaking, if we're going to be doing regular work, then we what? The way that I try to organize it is I want the, the logical minimum for a retainer which is. And then with the ability to go over that when there's more work that's going, that's coming in. I would rather, I would rather not scrape for finding work. I would rather more consistently be like, hey, there's too much. Do you want to fit it or do you want to pay extra? And so I would rather do that than the opposite.
Bobby Gillespie: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Same. It's gotta work for both.
Chris LaFay: Yeah. And then we do. So we do. All of our engagements are quarterly, so we'll basically lock it. They were annual contracts with a quarterly opt out basically. And so then within that quarter we can then not within the quarter, but quarter to quarter we can adjust. So I like to start with about 12 hours at 160 and then we can decrease that down to about 140 with more.
Bobby Gillespie: What is that per month?
Chris LaFay: So 12 times 160 looking at about 2 grand a month minimum.
Bobby Gillespie: Okay. We're looking at 3 to 7k spend on a dev partner. And.
Chris LaFay: To give you an idea, let me give you a flavor for like Magic Spoon. So Magic Spoon spin is about 9, 500amonth. They're getting about, they're getting about 50 to 60 hours every month. And we kind of wiggle about 5 to 10% month over month just to like, we don't try to pull all the hours. You know how this stuff works. You don't want to.
Bobby Gillespie: What's your hourly rate? Just give me your hourly rate again.
Chris LaFay: We, we go, we start at 170 and then we drop down as low as 140.
Bobby Gillespie: Okay. Based on how many, how big the bucket is.
Chris LaFay: Yes, exactly.
Bobby Gillespie: Okay. And I don't care if you guys have to outsource. We just want a us based person to own the account. So if you guys got to like bring in some additional muscle at any point, we're okay with that. Having a design resource is helpful. We could talk about how I can exploit them on another call. So I, I think we did a good job of getting done by four. I did rapid fire questioning, so that's fine. Just, just for the sake of our time and you know, I'd rather for 40 minutes to talk shop for 15, bro. All right. All this makes sense.
Chris LaFay: And we have the ability to start pretty much whenever. Both Andrew and my intermediate dev are fairly like. Andrew has a little bit of a heavy season at the moment. He's probably two weeks away from having more availability. We have a couple launches happening within the next two weeks.
Bobby Gillespie: So I would like, I would like to talk with him and what, and, and I guess he would need some access to see what he's dealing with before, you know, do. How do you guys kick off usually? Is it like a little evaluation before we agree to work, which I would recommend if you don't. Is that, is that typically.
Chris LaFay: Yeah.
Bobby Gillespie: So basically let's do work and we'll look at it first. Excuse me, we'll look at it first.
Chris LaFay: So basically what we do is Andrew is of the mindset of know as much information ahead of time as possible. And so he is willing, if he knows that there's work coming up, he's like, I'll, I'll dig in for a couple of hours and like look at the actual fricking code and figure stuff out ahead of time. So I would like my point of contact. So it'll be. Andrew will be your creative point of contact. And then I'll also have a project manager who's there to just take notes and make sure this stuff gets organized from all the chaos.
Bobby Gillespie: Who do I talk to to say that this is a priority, we need it done fast or.
Chris LaFay: And Andrew and Don will more than likely be your pm. Okay, so Andrew and Don. Don's been with me for a decade.
Bobby Gillespie: Okay.
Chris LaFay: And then I'll pop questions.
Bobby Gillespie: You have. What questions you got for me, homie?
Chris LaFay: I mean, I know your personality fairly well. Obviously we haven't worked together yet. And so I, I don't. Andrew will have a lot more technical questions for you that I just don't know what to ask. And so I typically have him lead. If I didn't know you, Andrew would have been on this call. But I also figured we would be talking crap for 45 minutes.
Bobby Gillespie: Yeah, you would.
Chris LaFay: And I was like, I'm just going to get the basics and make sure that we're not, you know, make sure that we're in the right, the right range here first. And then I'll, I'll, I'll get Andrew connected with you, but I'll shoot, I'll shoot you guys an email today, get you guys connected. Andrew's a, Andrew's a chill guy. Andrew's a very chill guy. And so.
Bobby Gillespie: So like the basic, the basic understanding for the culture and how we operate is just move fast and you know, but, but we also know that. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. So. But we, we move fast on stuff and you know, having, having a daily touch point like, you know, whether it's Slack or Glue, something like that, where we're like, hey, we got this, hey, let's get on a meeting, you know, tomorrow, that type of stuff. Are you guys cool with that type of relationship? Basically you're like an outsourced dev team for us. Is that something you'd be comfortable with?
Chris LaFay: We would want to talk about how we handle that communication so we have some of our longer term partners in Slack. It's not a problem. The downside with Slack is that it becomes very noisy very quickly. So.
Bobby Gillespie: I know.
Chris LaFay: So we want to make sure. So there would need to be probably a bit more of a minimum spend than that $2,000 to be able to do that. So that I can have my project manager make sure that if there's stuff happening in Slack that it gets prioritized and organized well. Whereas the 2k a month is a little bit more on the, the reactive, not reactive side of things, but like, hey, these are the things from our to do list that we talked about. We're going to go heads down and do those until we meet the next time. So.
Bobby Gillespie: Okay.
Chris LaFay: We would need to be at a little bit higher price point to make sure that, you know, to be like reactive, like that, but that's definitely a possibility then. So.
Bobby Gillespie: Yeah. Okay. Right.
Chris LaFay: Because we typically don't charge for project management. So if we're going to be doing more of that reactive work in Slack and things like that, we just need to account for more of that project management time.
Bobby Gillespie: Well, we can adjust. This is how we were dealing with the guys we're working with now. We can adjust and they're just not, they're just not like doing it for us anymore and we want to make a move. So what I would, what I would want to do is talk with Andrew and also bring in Josh, our CEO to get on the call and see what's up. I would maybe sigh as well. Who's kind of managing some more of like he's kind of like the mortar between the, the bricks at this point. So he's managing like some marketing from all points, you know. And then at some point you'll meet the other five people. Dude, small and mighty.
Chris LaFay: Uhhuh. Yeah.
Bobby Gillespie: And we have, we have a pretty significant tech stack as well. But I'm sure it's nothing that serial brand isn't done with something similar. So let me do this, Let me see if I texted him having her back from. Yeah, let's coordinate a call with, with the three of us. He is super swamp this month but I know we wanna, we wanna move on quickly so I will be talking to him.
Chris LaFay: Do you want to just schedule some time with Andrew one on one to start off with so that you can gut check him? Does that make sense?
Bobby Gillespie: Let me see what josh wants to do.
Chris LaFay: Cool.
Bobby Gillespie: He. Yeah, I mean, Yeah, I'm not sure what he would want to want to do. Like I, I think I, I, I suspect it'll probably be. Let's get on. He's more technical than I am because he's more of the technical side of marketing and he would probably have different questions that I wouldn't think of. And I think like just getting on with with him and seeing his presence different than mine in a good way. Yeah. So I would suggest this get to know a little bit about the brand Aries. So on the home page there's a podcast that Josh was on with Gary Brecke. Go listen to that and up your game. So you come in familiar with stuff, look at the website, come in with some. Noble, what the hell do I call it? Noble contributions.
Chris LaFay: AKA ideas.
Bobby Gillespie: It's like, hey, I saw this. Have you tried this? Hey, I saw that. You know, or hey, we've done this. Other brands like that type of thing because, like, we don't want. I mean, you know me, man. I don't want doers. I want people are going to be like, yo, you should do this. I got these ideas. What about this idea? Like, I want that. And that's how, you know, we work with people for a long time. So, yeah, why don't you send an email with, with to me or have your people send an email to me and Andrew and I'll rub Josh in and get us scheduled.
Chris LaFay: That all sounds good. I will do that. That'll probably come tomorrow morning because as soon as we hang up now, at this point, I am going to be walking out the door with my wife because she has improv classes that I'm going to go down to Atlanta for, so.
Bobby Gillespie: Oh, exciting.
Chris LaFay: If we wrapped up it, if we wrapped up at 4:00 or even 3:45, I would have sent you that email today. But I'm gonna be about 9 o' clock or so tonight, so tomorrow's fine.
Bobby Gillespie: Actually, tomorrow is better because of all the emails between now and then, yours won't get buried by them.
Chris LaFay: Oh, there we go. Look at that. So first thing tomorrow morning, bada bing, bada boom. I'll be number one.
Bobby Gillespie: So I'm talking about in my heart and in my inbox.
Chris LaFay: That was the appropriate response.
Bobby Gillespie: All right, brother. Appreciate it, man.
Chris LaFay: Have a wonderful day, man. Catch labor.
Bobby Gillespie: Yeah. Late.