This year was an AMAZING year of podcast guests.

Today, I wanted to reflect on and recap 12 of my favorite lessons from this year.

1. Creative Thinking as a Competitive Advantage - Million Dollar Mindset (Ep 231)

This episode was the most shared episode of the year. It ended up in a few forums and got a lot of love. 

What helped Will and the team grow Organifi from $18M annually to over $100M? It wasn’t just hard work. It was creative thinking and problem-solving.

Learn the secrets of Moneyball, the Hollywood Black List, and more!

2. You Can 13X Through Creative, Data-Driven Marketing - Brendan Bannister (Ep 221)

In a similar vein to the podcast with Will Hughes, this interview with Brendan Bannister was a banger. Brendan ran paid media for William Painter during their years of meteoric growth. We talk about the power of design and simplicity. 

3. What You Don’t Know About Your Customer Is Costing You. The Missing Piece to Your Attribution, CRO, and Marketing Is Customer Insights - Trevor Crump (Ep 250) / Jeremiah Prummer (Ep 262) 

I’m completely sold on the idea that when done properly, customer surveys uncover tremendous insights that will shift how you advertise, position, and optimize your products. I cover my 4 favorite questions to ask in post-purchase surveys. 

4. Why Your Price Is Likely Wrong and What to Do About It - Byron Myers (Ep 255)

The way you set your initial price is not the way you determine your optimal price. There’s an optimal price for rev maximization and one for profit maximization. 

How does demand and conversion rate shift when price increases or decreases? After you get some data, you need to get scientific. Chart out your demand curve and conversion rate to find your ideal price. 

This isn’t static, though. You should be testing at least 2 times per year or likely every quarter. 

5. Customer Value Optimization Trumps CRO Every Time. And It Informs CRO. - Drew Sanocki (Ep 245)

Not all customers are created equally. You have some whales (your most valuable) and some minnows (your least valuable). 

What’s more important than almost anything else you do is identifying whales and attracting more of them. 

This is a key part of understanding that there are only 3 ways to grow your business:

1. Get more new customers
2. Get each customer to spend more (raise your AOV) 
3. Get customers to buy more often (increase LTV) 

6. Organic Growth on YouTube. 3 Types of Content. - Liz Germain (Ep 234)

YouTube is the 2nd most visited site on the planet. 

Users spend a TON of time on the platform. If you’re good at creating content, you can build a large following and drive awareness and traffic for your brand. 

In this episode, I talk to YouTube pro, Liz Germain, about the 3 types of content you must create to build an organic following.

7. Brand is Everything - Person Rutherford (Ep 260)

Want a huge exit? Want all of your advertising efforts to improve? Want greater retention and higher LTVs? Want to charge a premium? You need to focus on brand building.

The good news is you can do this profitably.

If you want customers to seek you out by name, tell others about you, and feel pride in associating with your products, you need a BRAND. 

Preston Rutherford, one of the co-founders of Chubbies who had a 9 figure IPO, knows all about this. Brand building can’t be done overnight. It’s a long play, but it compounds over time. 

8. You Can Achieve Exit Velocity on YouTube - Jacques Spitzer (Ep 243)

This was the episode I personally heard the most comments about. It’s PACKED with ideas on how to think about YouTube and how to make it work for your brand. We discussed a bunch of important concepts. One is “People don’t have short attention spans; they have short consideration spans.”

9. Amazon Is Trying to Go Beyond Search for Product Discovery. Maybe They’re Making Modest Strides. - Liz Saunders (Ep 253) / Brandon Young (Ep 251) / Gracey Ryback (Ep 249) 

Product discovery is still primarily driven by search. With the Amazon influencer program and initiatives like the Inspire tab on the Amazon Mobile app, Amazon is trying to “inspire” new product discovery. It seems to be going OK, but just how much new product discovery this generates is TBD. 

10. Stop Obsessing Over Vanity Metrics. Focus on Core Metrics. - Rabah Rahill (Ep 222) / Preston Rutherford (Ep 260)

What are vanity metrics? How about ROAS and Revenue? Both important to be sure. We look at both metrics all the time. But they aren’t CORE. So, what is the core of your brand? Well, Preston Rutherford lays it out! 

11. Retention Marketing Is Your Key to Stability and Profitability. - Nick Flint (Ep 248)

Few things can impact your brand as much as email and SMS. In this episode, we covered 8 email tests to make, plus one of our favorite all-time emails that a client ran. 

12. Are you experimenting with AI? - Steve Chou (Ep 233) / Fred Vallaeys (Ep 256) 

AI likely isn’t replacing members of your team. It shouldn’t be replacing you. But it should be assisting you. 

• Writing better email subject lines
• Working on better SEO titles and bullet points
• Transcribing and summarizing meetings and more