Josh Snow on Why Everyday Creators Beat Celebrity Deals

0:00 · Welcome to the podcast with Josh Snow

Nathan Smith:0:02
What's going on there?

Josh Snow:0:04
Egal, egal.

Nathan Smith:0:05
It'll get it'll all get edited. What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Why Marketing Sucks podcast. We have Josh Snow here. Josh Snow is a great friend and I'm ready to dive into this. Josh, tell the people who don't know who you are, what you do, and anything else you have for us.

Josh Snow:0:21
Awesome. Thanks, Brother. Thanks for having me on. I've been a lifelong entrepreneur. I started at 13 years old. didn't come from a lifelong entrepreneurship family or anything like that. Didn't even know what it was, but stumbled into it, started making websites, learned about search engine optimization because obviously didn't have money and real I didn't know I could, you know, create a business out of it. So I ended up creating essentially an agency that allowed me to.

Really worked with some awesome, awesome clients, some who became business partners later on as well, like Tommy Mallow, et cetera, and just awesome people. And eventually, after doing a lot of affiliate marketing as well as running my agency, and then started creating some of my own projects. after selling that business, I was undergoing jaw surgery and yeah, I'd been whitening my teeth for a very long time, and my teeth cut were really sensitive at the time. And I wanted to create something that that I wanted, you know, that that I felt like, you know, really elevating the standard from an ingredient perspective, better for you ingredients and better for you choices. and so yeah, started creating that that product and that became snow teeth whitening, which is probably what I'm most known for in terms of being a being a solo founder there and bootstrapping that business. you know, getting that business to millions of customers and helping our customers shine. But more importantly, really inventing the oral cosmetics popularity, really getting excited about taking care of your smile. and so that one idea, I tried to recruit a bunch of co founders and stuff, but nobody wanted to sell toothpaste with me. I don't blame them. And that was about 14 years ago when I first had the idea, you know, 13, 14 years ago. And then no, sorry, that was about

0:34 · Building high school web blogs at the library

Nathan Smith:2:03
Ha ha.

Josh Snow:2:11
12 years ago, right? So we've been in business now almost 10 years serving our customers and just really pushing the edge. I you know, I've created all of the products that we have in the catalog you know, during that whole time. And it was really just listening to the customers. So and then aside from that, while I was building SNOBE, I built a business in the Medicare insurance space, driving 1.5 million calls a year, internally generated.

To our Medicare partners and sold that business in 2022 for $70 million, 50 million cash up front from Media Alpha. And that was really exciting. And we were able to take care of the team. And you know, my partner would just knock it out the park with that one. So that allowed me to really burn the boats on snow and go all in in really pushing what is possible and spending a hundred million on meta ads.

So that's been the journey, but I started off as a poor kid in Phoenix, just trying to figure out how not to be poor in my future. And turns out the the internet saved my life. And so I've been coaching for 15 years. I have a TV show with over 100 million viewers, going public.com. now we're on our fourth season, just documenting and sharing stories of amazing entrepreneurs and the world's first show where you can click to invest, kind of like American Idol.

Nathan Smith:3:18
Yeah.

Josh Snow:3:38
So really just cutting edge, cutting edge in terms of entrepreneurship and sharing it, talking about it. It's all I've ever done. And then, of course, creating stuff. And then today I'm now focused on creating essentially the the Google AdWords of of humans for creator marketing, making it one click so everybody can take part in what I found to be the most amazing social commerce opportunity that I've ever seen, 20 years in being in e commerce. is is the creators connecting to the businesses, but it's so fragmented. so we're doing the work to piece all of the partners together to make it super easier for the creators to find all the offers in one dashboard. and then for the brands to match automatically to the very best creators that drive performance. So really just open sourcing essentially what I've been doing for the last 20 years from working with the Kardashians to the everyday customer and nowadays The everyday customer can drive a million dollars in incremental sales on TikTok shop or across you know media channels versus taking six months to maybe do a celebrity deal or all of that. So everybody has access to that. It's just the information. So we're working on bridging that gap, essentially the stripe for creators and giving access to everyone globally in a one-click format. And yeah, so lifelong entrepreneur, I'm I'm based in Phoenix in Nashville.

And just just love this stuff, man.

Nathan Smith:5:08
Hell yeah, dude. I mean, there is so much to dive into right there. But before we even get into all the things that you have built over the years, I want to start with before that. I want to start with where Josh, how how did Josh become like how what clicked? You said you started building websites when you were younger, you started going into SEO. Like what was that process in terms of you like what clicked and made you understand that the internet could make you so much money?

Josh Snow:5:35
Well, I was it's a good question. So I I was actually building my first websites in the Phoenix Public Library. So you get like an hour, you swipe your card. yeah. We didn't we couldn't afford a computer at home, so we didn't have a computer. So at the Phoenix Public Library, Desert Sage Library, shout out to Desert Sage, Phoenix Public Library for you know, I was walking down the aisles, just kinda hanging out there, everyone's playing games and stuff, and there was this competition.

Nathan Smith:5:42
Really?

Josh Snow:6:04
To read books and do a comprehensive test. And I found that reference books gave a 10 out of 10 score, but they were mostly pictures that the four dummies books. And so I was just blitzing through points while I was kind of bored hanging out there, winning Arizona Diamondbacks baseball tickets and just different things that they were doing there. And so I really found a liking to the web design for dummies and web development for dummies. And I go, whoa, all these websites that we we see, like I could create one.

Like I don't have to have a PhD and go to college. Like it was just sh, I don't know. Just you don't know what you don't know. And so that kind of stuck with me. And so in those hours, the one hour that I would get on the computer, I started to figure out how to create my first WordPress blog. And it was like, how do I create a WordPress blog? Let me start there. That seems easy. And then I started to, you know, as you're editing it, same thing with MySpace. I was using HTML on MySpace. Now I go, I can create templates.

I can probably do this, right? And so I was, you know, some of my first ideas, MySpace template websites and all these things, but but blogs. And I think what clicked is I added before Google Analytics, I added a platform. It's still around today, statcounter.com. Just a free little stack counter. Literally, it tells you all the countries people are visiting. It's Google Analytics. that blew my mind because I was like, my gosh, I'm a freshman in high school and I've got people in you know, India, New York, visiting these blogs that I'm writing with pseudonyms. And I would run over to the magazine rack and read, you know, the best articles, whatever I thought, rewrite them. And those would go on the blogs. So typing as fast as I could, a couple blogs go out, and then hope that it ranks a little higher, seeing the traffic. And then one day I Googled, how do you make money on the blog? And it said, well, AdSense.

And so I then I was like, okay, I've got to convince my dad, because I'm not 18, to get an AdSense account. because I got I want to try to put ads on there. And so that was what truly clicked was the first time I made money in my sleep, 10 cents or whatever for a click. What clicked was a click. And they clicked on my ad. And and then it clicked for me. And I go, Whoa. And I remember sitting there freshman, freshman year and in math class, and I'm just writing down 10 cents a click times a million clicks.

Nathan Smith:8:16
Yeah.

Josh Snow:8:28
Is 100,000 a year, then I don't have to go to college. Like it was this whole thing. I can help my family out. I can get a car. Tired of taking this bus. Like that was the whole thing. And then I was like, all right, I gotta figure this out and I gotta get a computer at home because I'm I don't have access other than school and at the public library. So one day I was in the public library and or sorry, the school library, and librarian walks by. was like, What are you doing? looked like I was like hacking or something. I was like editing a blog.

And on WordPress and I said, Well, you know, I'm editing a website, making a website. Wow, could you make one for me? Could you make one for I have a friend that I go, I guess I could I could. Like I'm like building my blogs, but I could do that, you know? And it's like I'm making, you know, peanut butter jelly sandwiches and I've got all the stuff I can you make when I was, sure. Like I'm already out. Okay. So that's how it felt. And so I said, and they said, Well, how much do you charge for that? And I think the first one was like five hundred bucks or something. and so that was like, dang, money. I've got these ads. If I rank an SEO, eventually I was like, who's advertising on my site and paying me per click? Why do certain blogs make more per click than others? And so I'm kind of seeing that as I'm creating these blogs. And then I found a a a website called sitepoint.com and they had a marketplace which became Flippa. And so sitepoint.com slash marketplace through their forum.

I started listing these blogs for a multiple because I saw people were selling stuff. I go, whoa, you can I can build this in library, put some ads on it, get it to rank, and then I can sell it. And so the first one I sold for 4,000 bucks, bought my 1992 Toyota Camry, so that as soon as I got my permit, I didn't have to take the bus anymore. And I went to Fry's Electronics locally with my dad and had just enough money to buy the PC. And then the second step was the monitor and came back.

And my dad was like, You you down to you down to split this internet bill? Like, how are we gonna figure this out? I said, Let's let's do this. I'm telling you, I'm on to something. We're like, I can do this. And so you know, the rest was history in terms of I spent all of high school building sites, affiliate marketing. I eventually found out forty dollars a sale instead of 10 cents a click. I like that. And then eventually, of course, I'm like, who's paying $40 a sale? I want to do that, and so

Nathan Smith:10:50
Yeah.

Josh Snow:10:54
Moving up the food chain, right? But earning my right through over delivering, just really taking care of the clients, banging out five websites on a weekend, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, going to school. And then I graduated Valedictorian and then went on to Arizona State University. So my dad and I said, you know, my parents were like, I don't know what you're doing other today, but you gotta get like school is very, very important. And I was like, all right, fine, I gotta keep my grades up. So I got straight A's and graduated and then went to ASU.

And the honors college as the first in my family to to to go to university that was important for me and for us. So I said, man, I gotta, I gotta get in and out. So I graduated in 24 months from Arizona State University, the WP Gary School of Business and the Barrett Honors College, Simma cum laud, top of my class as well. And then recently I was honored to to be inducted into the the hall of fame at the business school there. and so it just kind of It was Josh running away from not being broke and doing whatever it took in order to build a reputation that that kid knows something. He can, he can do some stuff. So I felt like Harry Potter in my teenage years because I could just be like, boom, you rank number one. Boom. Good. Then I learned about Google ads. Once I started having a little bit of cash, I could start to maybe run some ads on Google to my affiliate offers that are on my SEO blogs. Could that work?

And then clients were like, I'll pay you monthly if you can run my Google ads instead of just once for the website. I go, that's good. So then I found, you know, websites like freelancer.com. So while I was in school, on Skype, they were, you know, I check on my little iPhone at that at that time. And I had maybe 16, 17 people all around the world, Pakistan, Ukraine, US as well, Canada. And they were build one was teams building the site, one's doing reports for the client.

So while I was taking my calculus test, my Skype teams were working. and so that's how I that's how I built that business. And eventually that led to more and more. But what clicked was the that first click at night really changed my life because I said, Wow, there's something here. You can make money doing this. I thought it was just like fun and like a project. This could change my family's life. This could change my life. This could, this could be everything, you know. And so,

12:17 · Transitioning into Google ads and early agency hiring

Josh Snow:13:19
Twenty years later, I'm still that obsessed with it.

Nathan Smith:13:23
Dude, that's such an amazing journey. So starting with a library, how to build websites for dummies, to selling a website for four thousand dollars, getting your first computer, and then just scaling it from there.

Josh Snow:13:31
Yeah.

Josh Snow:13:39
Literally. Yeah. And then of course all the ups and downs and stuff that happens inside of there. But pretty much, yeah. You know what I mean? Like pretty much, yeah.

Nathan Smith:13:45
Stop it.

Now I because we both have an SEO background, I do want to ask you this. How easy was it to rank shit back?

Nathan Smith:13:59
Like compared to today. Yeah.

Josh Snow:14:01
I would say definitely easier, right? Like definitely easier because an EMD, an exact match domain with seven thousand forum links, you might be number one pretty cool pretty quickly, right? So like nowadays it's like Harvard Mayo Clinic, and you're like vying for that third spot or whatever, but you know, it's different now. You know that now. But back then, yes, and CPCs, right? Like I ran a solar solar business.

Nathan Smith:14:12
Yeah.

Josh Snow:14:29
With one of my clients. They couldn't, they didn't have any money left over in their startup budget for a website. And they gave me fifteen percent of the company instead. And that business ended up being, you know, a a really exciting ride, and very, very lucrative. But those were dollar clicks on Google. And I was like, let's run a dollar. We need inbound, because back then we were buying CD ROMs of list to run through the dialer. And it was like, it seems so like wasteful to do that. And I was like, why don't we just wait till someone says they want a quote and it's a dollar a click. I remember literally I was like at Applebee's or Chili's with my two partners. They're double my age, right? I'm 16, they're 30. And so we're sitting there making, you know, $80,000 a day while I'm in school. And we've got this whole call center and sales team. And I'm like, guys, what changed from us about to go bankrupt? was we added in inbound marketing. We're started to rank for solar energy quotes Phoenix. We need to buy some domains. They're five bucks on GoDaddy. And so like building those microsites was a way to circulate. Nowadays, of course, it's so much more advanced. And so, but back then, yeah, Google ads were cheaper. SEO is cheaper, less competition, lower CPMs. Now we're in like the bubble of the next social network kind of it feels like Like in terms of CPMs on Facebook, you know, a hundred dollars and they're they went up twenty two percent revenue. How? And you go, well, their CPMs are up twenty two percent. Like and you can control your rev you know, your Q one results. and people will keep spending, but that's why it's so important for SEO and AIGEO and creators, which all work together. If you got a hundred YouTube videos coming out every day and you have your SEO team giving the creator the title. the you know, things to put in there and their link internal linking to a blog post from YouTube as well. That type of stuff is is so, so important. But yeah, back then forums, I mean, there is all kinds of stuff that you could do back then. And now nowadays you just you got to do it the right way nowadays. Like you there's all it's expensive now, but it's worth it more so because I feel like back then everybody was trying to do a lot more SEO. Yes, it's gone more advanced, but I feel like it's that much more lucrative. And when we talk about AI,

Nathan Smith:16:34
That was cheap, yeah. That was cheap.

Josh Snow:16:50
And and all of that agentic, because your agents are going to be running your business, right? you would just deployed a bunch of grockbots this morning and they're gonna be running your business, they talk to each other. So you know, that to me is the most important thing. Do agents know that snow has vitamins in its hydroxyapetite toothpaste? And how do we make sure that they know that? And so that's really to you know, our conversion around Chad GPT is.

19% or whatever on any brand. Like it's very high when someone says, What's the very best? And it says this one. And then you look at the sources, and the sources are still crap. Like it's a forum from 24 years ago. So you're like, that's the source. And then just people are blindly buying it. And so I think we're we have this SEO renaissance. And we have this affiliate renaissance where creator is the new affiliate, humans.

And so it's like it's different now, but it's it's more exciting, I think more scalable. And the brands that do understand how to invest in the it's it's branding, it's positioning in the AI world, they will they will do better than than the the other brands. It's just the truth.

Nathan Smith:18:01
yeah. And that's what like getting brands to understand is like the most important thing is it does cost more money now. It does take a little bit more time. But like if you're not gonna do it now and everybody else that you're competing with is already doing it, you're just gonna spend more money in the long run. And you're already gonna be behind. And you have to be showing up everywhere. And you have to be doing X, Y, Z and A, B, C in order to win. And that's just kind of how it evolved. And I definitely wanna be I want to break down how marketing in your world has evolved, especially with Snow, from like the time you started to like how you've grown it with affiliate marketing and stuff like that. But before we get into that, I'm also curious of like how did you scale when do you when things did start to click and you were starting to make money? Like when when did you first start to hire a team? What did that look like? And like what did the actual scalability of your businesses evolve into?

18:14 · Scaling SNOW and delegating roles to a team

Josh Snow:18:54
Yeah, I mean, it's it was different in the teenagers because I I was in school, so I had to lean on, you know, dozen, two dozen freelancers, contractors. So that was pretty immediate. It was simply out of like there was no way for me to accept this cash if I couldn't fulfill on it. And I'm full time in school. I was still playing football, track and field, student body, academic decathlon.

So there's like a lot going on. And I needed, I needed the freelancers. So that was it was very quick to I need a web designer to help me web design. I need a web developer. So it was very needs based back then. I think with Snow, it followed the same path because I started it at home, not knowing how big it would become. there was the hope, you know, and the dream. But people were like, You're gonna go sell toothpaste. I'm like, well.

I have two best friends. I started the first bed in a box company called Tough the Needle. And you know, we shared office space for years. Those my best friends. And I believe I wanna I wanna take that route as well to this D to C revolution happening. And so that became, yes, out of need as well. I can't do all the customer support. I can't call, you know, talk to every customer on the phone. So I need someone for that. You know, it kind of became that initially.

I was still handling media and the website or things like that. But then through scale, soon as cat on both sides, when I was a teenager, cash started coming in from the clients. That forced me to think of how you know, how am I going to be able to scale this agency? Well, it's through people, especially back then. Now it's more agentic, but it's still people, people. Where do I find these people? Because I'm in high school. So that was that need based. This one was I'm in Phoenix. I've got this direct to consumer.

Challenger disruptor brand called Snow. We want to bring better for you whitening to the market and oral cosmetics. And so as Facebook ads started doing better and better and scaling those, then I needed someone to help me with supply chain. Cause it's like, are we ordering in the right time? Are we even forecasting? What are we doing here? So it's very chaotic, I think. And nowadays, how I start and run companies, I think it's a lot different. but it was really like build it.

Josh Snow:21:16
while the rocket's going. And if someone's not, you know, if someone's not contributing, hopefully you hire enough of the right people. Usually I always hire like a right hand, you know, operations manager, project manager. Their job is to take as much of the stuff off my plate, including going on upwork, hiring people, recruiters, et cetera. I made a mistake in in in snow at one point in hiring too much, right? Too many products, too much. That was a good lesson in terms of, you know, huge office, you know, 70 people on the team. Then you're in meetings every hour. And that's when I realized that I pro you know, I'm I'm much more of a an entrepreneur than a CEO, really. And and that was hard for me to really accept that this season, because I had imagined having, you know, 5,000 team members and we're global. And so that's when I said maybe I'm I may either I'm not the person to be the CEO of this business. You know, you go through all these thoughts, right? Of every business, you know, imposter syndrome, all that stuff. But really, I'm a first principle builder. I'm a builder. And so for me, I like to be around other builders. And because I'm a visionary, I like to zoom out. And then it's like, what do we got to do tomorrow in order to do that? but the team focus is usually need based and then eventually becomes strategic. Then we're looking at okay, we're going into retail.

Who can I bring in who has target retail experience or, you know, that. So then we're headhunting. I'm on LinkedIn, finding people, asking for referrals, sometimes paying for recruiters when it's an urgent need and you need someone at that level. so that kind of becomes eventually the model. And then you break apart what I was doing myself, becomes like five people each.

So, like, or an agency. So, like I was doing SEO for the site, that becomes an agency. Right. And then media buying, that becomes an agency or an internal media buyer. We've done a hundred variations. We've hired every agency I I think at this point. So honestly. And so, you know, we've done so much. And I think that's helped me in coaching entrepreneurs because it's not that I know everything, it's just like

Josh Snow:23:33
The amount of blitz scale and how many things we were testing from Pinterest to connected TV to billboards to man, just a lot, right? A Kardashian, a 9-0 influencer, TikTok shop. So so much that we were we were testing. And so in sharing that, it attracts also a lot of great people. And I'm very proud of, you know, people don't buy the snow products because of me necessarily, but The you know, hundreds of thousands of people that follow me who are entrepreneurs have seen for the last 10 years me sharing and documenting with the community, all of that. And that does help. That's why I always tell founders, do do some personal branding, whatever that looks like for you, be yourself, but it does attract incredible people. When when we get counterfeits, it's like an army, you know, they'll they'll come and tell me like.

It's really, really sweet and and and a great benefit of sharing transparently, like I have. So I would say do that, focus on needs first. It's really taking, do a I always do this time audit. And it's like, what am I spending time on? And sometimes you have to when you're running running a business, sometimes you have to do a lot of things. And sometimes you have to fill those things. And even now, sometimes I have to jump in and fill roles for different brands. But ideally, you hire great people, you get out of their out of their way.

And I like nowadays specialized. So the KPIs are built in. So your job is to send email or like whatever, like the more specialized, because then the KPIs come built in. It's easier to get rid of non-performers, see the performers versus you are the CMO. Do it all. And that has been a little bit that's a little bit more risky, right? Because you're really trusting a budget with that person. You're trusting them to hire those people that they're going to be great.

I found I like to do it myself nowadays. Like I wanna do it. I wanna hire. I wanna be involved because with AI, we don't need as big teams. and I'd rather have someone for five years that I can trust than someone in and out. And so it's changed a lot of my tonality. But back then it was like anyone with a pulse, we're doing a million this weekend in sales. I need everyone I can get to the warehouse. So like that was need based. And after a while you go, okay, you know, the people that

Josh Snow:25:54
were there, may not be there five years from now. And so as a solo founder, I'm really one of the few left in terms of that. The cool thing is though, is you launch careers, people go and find amazing careers in other states and there's all this stuff. And they have that snow experience on their resume. And depending on the the year our years, right, I know kind of what type of champion that they've built and mastery in challenging.

How do we double every year? And blah blah blah. We launched 12 retailers in one year and then 70 SKUs. So it was just like, whoa. And so the challenge of that, I give a lot of credit to each season that I had great people work with me. And still today, the ones that remain from those earlier days are like bulletproof. Like they're literally bulletproof, some of them, right? Eight years into the business, six years, Jessica, who.

Nathan Smith:26:32
Okay.

Josh Snow:26:52
Who heads up customer service, she's seen it all, you know? And so that's someone that you can trust. And it's really cool to elevate people through your company, you know, and start off as like, you're just gonna handle ticket support and like to see that growth and enable that is so cool. And I love my offshore teams as well. so you know, just a tighter knit style, but it's really people who are supporting you as the founder to take things off your plate that you should have been focused on at the moment.

To support you, not to like take things off your plate to or whatever. It's more like we are a team. I am his EA. I always recommend an EA operations assistant, someone that is helping you maximize your time. And I always say hire someone AI enabled nowadays, because with Grokbot and Screenpipe, like two or three tools, they will replicate you as CEO and all this monotonous task will be they'll handle. the agentic side of that in like five minutes. So, but you need someone like a scribe, you need someone there when you can pass that on. I think I wait, I used to wait too long to do that. And I I still think in coaching thousands of entrepreneurs, they wait too long to ask for help. and I would say that one great hire can change your entire business trajectory. And it includes agencies. One great agency, one great consultant, one great coach, one great mastermind. Like truly, truly

Nathan Smith:27:56
Yeah.

Nathan Smith:28:18
Why do you think it is that people take too long to make that higher? Cause I mean, I've been there, I've done it I've done it too.

Josh Snow:28:24
It's scary. it's I have to, I mean, you get it, right? But I think it's I don't know, it's delegation, right? Like, you know, Gerber talks about you know, the e myth, e myth revisited. I love those books because I remember in running my agency, it was if even with my freelancers and team members, I couldn't let go of certain things. And you know, then as soon as you let them go a little, you go, that's why I have to do it all myself. If it needs to be done right, I need to do it. And there's this kind of like defeatism inside of that. And it's really a limiting belief.

And I need to become the type of person that that can lead better people. And so if we look internally, we attract who we are and what we put out there. And so I do think to a certain degree, that's a that's a signal, at least for me it was. It was like, why do I keep resisting that help in the way, you know, I have high standards for it? The truth is if someone can do it 60, 70% out the gate. that's why I like specialized, because if we're looking for TikTok shop listing CRO.

I want someone that just does that. That's their piece. But I think you it delegation is scary. Change is scary. Delegation is scary. You're hiring. So you're spending money in the business. It's scary when you're in the infancy. But that is unfortunately a limiting belief because there are amazing people everywhere and they want to help. And I think for me, I struggled with asking for help because I felt like I had to do a lot. you know, myself growing up where there wasn't that help that I maybe was looking for or, you know, whatever. I had YouTube, I had Google, and then I started to, you know, meet clients and they would tell me about their businesses. And then at 16, I started I met my longest mentor and I started meeting mentors. And so that kind of, you know, helped. But yeah, man, I would say it's it comes down to the fear of trusting someone else to do something that is so vital to their business that it could destroy it. And that fear

28:40 · Overcoming the fear of delegation and hiring a VA

Josh Snow:30:22
that holds most people back. And then they get reinforced when they hire someone, you know, and they don't do the right job. Or I'm gonna have my cousin do it and they mess up. That's why I can't trust anyone. That's why family businesses stay small, family restaurants, because it's it's that. But I I do believe ultimately it comes down to realizing Elon Musk has I don't know how many employees now, but we have the same 24 hours. The only way to buy time is to give someone else the opportunity to show you.

That they love spreadsheets. And it's true. Like I you find someone that I'm like, I hate doing this stuff, but I have to do it. And then someone's like, literally, I love that. Give it to me. And you're like, what? And so I really recommend Upwork, Freelancer, these online jobs.ph, all of these great, amazing, globalized, especially for small business, you're starting out. Find a virtual assistant or something, you know, part-time, even 500, a thousand a month.

That is going to go a long way for you because it will allow you to just offload. And that person clearly knows how to use upwork. So as soon as they notice, boom. So our the our bots do the same, right? Our grok bots, et cetera, do the same. They recognize there's too much load. They're pulling our plot every day and things like that. They can see my whoop, I didn't sleep well today. So the bot's gonna go and re-um schedule some coaching calls on my behalf. But you need, and before we get there, give it six months and everyone will have those. But Not for me, just everyone have them, but more about that AI enabled virtual assistant who's AI excited, you know, like I want to look at these tools, you know, because it's not like your AI replaces their their job. They get elevated. Lead people to higher value work in your organization. That's how you keep great talent long term. And you got to start with one. And who is that one person that can help you in a few hours a week? And you start to feel that relief.

And and and and don't give up, right? Like get fire fast, right? Hire slow a little, but like hire someone and get that feeling. I'm gonna task grab it, you know, like literally task grab it. I we use task grab it. I was like, we got ten thousand dollars in orders and the family's not available to help me pack orders. And so task grab it, you know, you give someone opportunity to come make a few hundred bucks and you go, dang, while they're doing that, I can focus on CRO and the website, or I can check on the ads, or I can check on the customer tickets.

Josh Snow:32:50
So you start to move to higher value work and it is very empowering when you ask for help. It is a superpower. And if you want to go big, you you do have to utilize some people, but you don't spend a lot of money. You don't have to go hire a hundred people. I'm telling you, start with one and come and if it's not great, go back to the river, grab someone else and see if that's a good fit. But but a VA would would change your life. I think anyone's life, you know, in general. But a VA and when they realize it's, you know.

Part-time 500 month, and then have your VA setting up the grok bots or, you know, the automations so that she stays or he stays agile to work on other stuff. Hey, can you help me with this? Can you check this out? we might need to hire this next person. Okay. Can you create an upwork listing? Show this. So it starts to enable the entrepreneur to think beyond just, I'm bogged down. How am I ever going to catch up? If I hire someone, we don't have enough.

Profit to hire someone. So now making less money. It's taking it out of our income. So it's very, it's difficult, but I do believe, you know, charge more, get better, and deliver better results, even if you're doing it yourself, burn the midnight oil and then ask for help, even from people near you. If not, hop on upwork and you'll be just blown away by how willing and how expert these people are. And, you know, some of have been with us, like I said, since the beginning. And snow.

And we still have our offshore team, some of our team members there as well. And same thing there. We had so many tickets come in. It was overwhelming. My internal customer support was freaking out. And I go, let's hop on upwork. I know that we can get help quickly here. And they end up becoming supervisors and like level two, level one. Like it's just really cool. It's really cool. So I I would say I struggled it a lot because I was the wonder boy. I can build the website, I can SEO it, I can sell it.

Why do I need help? Or I'm scared to hire someone. but hiring hiring the right people and firing the the the ones that aren't a good fit saves both sides a lot of time. So, you know, you'll practice. You have to practice, you know. And in order to practice, you got to start with one. And you will be impacting more lives too.

Nathan Smith:35:00
I definitely like I I'm right there with you in terms of like, I mean, you know my my you know my agency and like what I'm good at. And you know you've met Janelle. And I literally met with her this morning because I hired Janelle to take a lot of the things off my plate, but then I realized I'm still kind of doing a lot of those things and I didn't necessarily fully pass pull fully pass it off to her. And I literally met with her this morning and I'm like, listen, this, this, and this I need you to own. Like, I'm not doing it anymore.

Josh Snow:35:14
That's right.

Nathan Smith:35:27
But I need you to tell me what you need from me in order for you to be successful in the way that I need you to do it. And so she's gonna get back to me and like give me all those things. I will give her what whether it's an SOP or whatever it is, of like exactly this is what I want you to do, this is how I'm doing it. and then she's gonna own it. But I've I mean, she's been with me for what, like four or five months now? And it just hit me the other day that I'm like, I'm literally didn't let her own her role that I am paying her to do. Like she's doing

Josh Snow:35:34
That's right.

Nathan Smith:35:56
eighty percent of her role like perfectly. But then I'm like, I'm still doing the things that I wanted her to take over for me. So it I mean, that's really

Josh Snow:35:56
yeah.

Josh Snow:36:00
Right.

Josh Snow:36:05
It's hard, man. It's hard. You have to but you're but you're aware of it, right? So like that time audit is so important because in fact, that's why I recommend tools like, you know, Obsidian, Screenpipe, you know, that record what you're doing encrypted on your device, but at least it's a report of you might not even know that you're spending it. Cause I I I lose track of it so much. I spent two hours looking for a domain name. Or like, you know, it's just Certain things and you go, like, but I enjoyed it and but not for two hours or whatever. And you go, okay, maybe I have, you know, Janelle look at those next time. What would I do better in that scenario? I would just send over what I'm looking for in a voice memo or loom. She may or may not have questions for that. We've got an internal Josh AI. So like if I'm on a plane, I don't have, you know, whatever, my team can at least, you know, get answers in terms of how I would think about this. And it'd be a lot closer than them waiting. And it's like, is it perfect?

No, it's not me, me, but it's close enough. Internal, all of our internal docs and stuff on my personal brand, they they have that. And so it helps a lot with my team when I'm on a coaching call or whatever, you know, traveling, they've got access. So I think empowering your team members like you're doing and then realizing it and then just saying, How do I, you know, next time around, I'm gonna make that a a request and I'm gonna rem remind myself that. But if you're not tracking it, you won't know. And that's what has caught me months into it and I'm still in there doing media buying or something. And it's like, what am I doing? And is this my highest value lever, even though I enjoy doing it or whatever? So yeah, you have to break the habits. And it's so difficult to do so, but it's so worth it. And then eventually you get to a point where now I know I've got a, I know my role as, as founder and CEO for for my businesses, but I'm excited to hop on

Nathan Smith:37:36
Yeah.

Josh Snow:37:58
upwork, talk to a recruiter, hop on LinkedIn, and I go, wow, this brand's doing incredible. Who does their design? And I want to have a conversation with them. And so it's just, you know, that kind of nowadays I couldn't imagine, even though we've got bots and agents, et cetera, we've got some, you know, awesome people on, you know, on the Snow team, on the personal brand team, you know, all my brands, but affiliate marketing.com are A Engineers. And I think it's I think it's important to have You know, even if you have five to fifteen people, if you're in a digital business, having really good people around you, I think it makes a big difference. And learning, like you said, with with that scenario with Janelle, that happened to me at least a hundred times before I and I still do, I still do it, man. I still do it. And I go, dang it. Or even Amanda will come in and she's like, Are you still editing the pixel or something? And I'm like, I'm almost done. She's like you said that two hours ago. It's like I'm like, dang it.

But then you then there's this trap of like it's due tomorrow or it's so important. And by the it takes time to go set up a Grok bot or it takes time to go to upwork and create a job post five minutes, but like it takes time. So I'm just gonna finish this one and next time I'll hire someone. And that freaking trap, man.

Nathan Smith:39:07
Yep. Yep.

It is a drought. Well, I definitely want to get back into like how you have how marketing has evolved with especially snow and just like all of that. But real quick, just for like, because I'm sure people struggle with this. Once they build a brand and they start scaling, and you've called it out a few times, like you've had people with you for over eight years. And it's really like marketing, you don't you can't really scale a business. You don't have a business if you don't have marketing, you can't do sales, but you also don't have anything if you don't have the team supporting it.

So like what is your kind of secret sauce in terms of like the culture you've built to get people to stay with you for so long?

Josh Snow:39:45
Yeah, I mean it's my philosophy around it is you people people build the business, you know, as we were talking about there. But I I think, you know, marketing, you know, marketing for me is it's creating that demand, you know, and it is the awareness, right? Great, great products without distribution, we know, just don't get the love that they deserve. And we see other brands, whether it's canned water, take over the internet, that great marketing is so It's so it's so so key, right? But I don't know. I think from that lens of of how things evolve. I mean, when TikTok shop hit, you know, I couldn't get my team on board as much as I needed to. And I th you know, from a first principle basis, you have the fiduciary responsibility as the the owner of the business to it's not a charity.

It's not a just a sports team. It's not the military. This is real life business, real people's lives are at stake. Our customers, like there's just a lot in there. And so I think the the way to to drive longevity with a relationship is to really understand if this person's path, even in the next one year, like you know, are you looking to gain a lot of experience here at Snowed? Maybe go start your own thing. Are you looking to Really understanding that and knowing that not everybody has different answers, they might not have an answer at all. They just like, look, I'm I got bills to pay and this seems great. And I'm gonna do whatever I can to do my best here. And you're like, okay, hey. And for certain certain roles, that makes total sense. And for others, they might say, I see myself as the CMO of this company. Okay. W then what needs to be true in order for that to happen? And so really dream management, and I love this. this idea that I learned from Tommy Mallow and he has a dream manager that is in charge of connecting the company's initiatives, if possible, to a person's initiative. If someone's like, I want to be the CEO within a year or I want to make 200 grand a year within a year, I just started. You're like, Well, let's see. Well, let's see, are you in the right department? Should you be in sales? are you good on the phone? Do you want to try that? You want to learn? So you give people that.

Josh Snow:42:08
That opportunity. And then I always cr triple train. I learned this from John Paul DeZoria from Paul Mitchell and Patron Tequila. He he triple trains you know his people so that in periods of contraction or whatever's happening, they can switch over. And so like you don't necessarily have to teach the media buyer to be an accountant, but like the media buyer can also media buy on Google as well as Meta, as well as learn Snapchat, because you either train them.

Right, and they leave or you don't train them and they stay, which is worse. And so you want to hire the right people, you want to train them, and then you got to check in on them to make sure that you know, blitz scaling. So if you're growing a company fast, you got to check in on your people because you know, I've learned the hard way in terms of the effect that massive growth can have on people, right? It's you gotta remember everyone's got a life. Like our job is my job there is to make sure that the company. can, you know, do what it needs to do. Everyone's getting their salary, et cetera. Like my job is to customers are happy, investors are happy. That's our job. But I think for eight year, 10 year, you know, people that I've worked with in one way or the other for 15 years is you know, really leaning in as a leader into their vision of where they could go. And if it matches that, we tie those KPIs on a a monthly, quarterly basis and then internally support them to hit those goals. So like, hey, I wanna, you never know. Like sometimes they'll share with you and and and real life stuff about, you know, my mom, yeah, I want to pay off my mom's house or I want to pay off my student loans. I think about it every night. I, you know, these are real things that that they're there, you know? And so if you can uncover those through through conversation and getting to know your team of you're spending one third of your life or one third of your weekday with these people essentially, right? They're your team. but we have a mission. We got to be profitable, we got to grow, X, Y, Z. But also the people that are rowing with me, I also got to ensure. And some want title, some want maybe a little bit more cash, some want to be CEO, some want to start their own thing one day, some want to just be the best at AI GEO for this brand, and they wanna spend as many years just doing this to obsess with it. So instead of just everyone gets the same bonus or everyone has the same track.

Josh Snow:44:32
it's good to know at least that they've got their own internal track. And that's, I think it's career development, personal development is very important. inclusion into the business where they feel that their voice is heard. and really leaning in and giving the opportunity to not just earn more, but to learn more. And that's really very, very important. Most of my team members that have been around for a long time, they're in the Josh Snow business, not in the brand itself. They They know me. You know what I mean? So I think that's it's relationship, you know, being real and follow f following through, I think is super important as well to your team members. even in blitz scaling and there's so many things going on, just ensuring that you're checking in on your on your people because they mean everything. And even if they leave, et cetera, you want them to you want them to have a career propulsion moment because of the experience that they've gained, et cetera. And I can say that I can't.

Think of a time that that hasn't happened through Snow's growth where that, you know, that experience was very, very enhancing to their career, not just from on the resume and stuff. It's just like they actually got that autonomy. You know, they got that autonomy to see. And I love seeing the look on their own face, you know, and they go, like, whoa. You know, it's like you give them that autonomy versus you're the paperclip person. Like, why can't?

The pay-per-click person, be the pay-per-click person. Why not? I didn't know anything up some point. So you like give people those opportunities, you believe in them. you know, take care of them. And the learning piece, there's always learning there, I think, for the growth minded, the really like heavy growth minded. They want to be there because they trust you as a leader, they know you're benevolent, and they know that you are doing something big and they want to help. And most importantly, they're there to learn. So that's the combination.

No, answer, I guess, for me.

Nathan Smith:46:29
Yeah, no, I mean it's a fantastic answer. I've I've learned a lot of that over the years and I've built that into like my team too. So we do I literally do quarterly one on ones with everybody. I learn what they're making. I obviously I know what they're making, but like, where do you want to be? And then a lot of it is like also do you want more responsibility? But then I also learn about their personal life. Like you said, do they have student loans they want to pay off? Do what do are they is their mom moving into their house and they're gonna be taking care of them? Like what is their actual life look like? And that is but I think one th what drives the most success for people to stay with you is like if you treat them like a human, they're gonna treat you also, well, one like a human, but somebody they if they can rely on you, you can rely on them. But no, that was a fantastic answer. I appreciate that.

Josh Snow:47:15
No, thank you. Thank you for asking. People are so important. And it is, you know, you it's difficult when to constantly like when a company has constant turnover with people, it's the most expensive thing you can have, essentially. And so you wanna you wanna be that company that takes care of people and does the best to the ability no matter what happens. You at least as a leader, right, you have those conversations and even in those difficult conversations. but we always, you know.

We always do the best that we can. When you're going to business, you can't do everything, right? You you're there, this salary's there. The you can lead a horse to water, you can't make drink. But at least you know that that that does speak volumes to the type of organizations that you build is a place that I'm gonna have a fair chance to rise in this organization and I'm gonna be given a challenge. And some people I remember they've been like, This is too hard or then this is too difficult. And they and I appreciate that, like I'm not doing this.

That's okay. You know what I mean? And like that was okay. But we built this like, you know, in the blitz scaling days, earlier days was like, we're moving and like, you know, we're not asking questions, we're just doing it. If it needs to be done, we do it. And that that pulled a lot of like entrepreneurial, just savvy, scrappy. And I'll take that over anything versus someone telling me, What if we do this or what if we do that? And it's like, that is how you move because, you know.

I'm in charge of if I'm coming up with these ideas and and and I want to hear feedback by the way that you want a team at all levels that they feel completely open to share those things, but also not groupthink. So it's just like a leadership management thing that I've spent so many years trying to really designate when I'm in managerial mode and I'm in leadership mode, and you're leading as you're managing and you're managing your leadership, but like there's a slight differentiation. inside of there and I found that I enjoy the leadership more than the management because I have you know I have always high hopes for everyone and so I get frustrated and I end up jumping in to help them because I I have to and I want to. But I rather get out of their way and let them, especially with AI, I love seeing them solve so many things, man. It's just it's so cool to see. And I think that's the best part of leadership. You just see

Josh Snow:49:37
people in your organization, learning new things, all that stuff. and then you reward them well for for company progress. But yeah, man, it's been a journey and without people I I I couldn't have done what I've done to now and and what we're doing today we certainly can't do alone.

Nathan Smith:49:53
Yeah. Well, if you don't mind me asking, I want to shift gears a little bit in terms of like how you've scaled snow on the marketing side. What has grown Snow to be a hundred million dollar brand?

Josh Snow:50:08
I think, you know, it's been net new products, really thinking about like our toothpaste powder. you know, not everybody wants to switch from Crest Colgate, you know, whatever they're using is is what they're using. And I and anyone would say I'd rather have them brushing than not, right? But instead of trying to force everyone to switch from our toothpaste, creating a sprinkle powder they could use with anything was a lot more inviting.

And a lot more warm of an entry to that market. So I think really combining wellness, cosmetics, and oral care and really creating from that basis from from day one of ensuring that the products are something you're proud to unbox, you're proud to put on your shelf. The product must work. you know, we have thousands and thousands of before and afters and testimonials and all this stuff. The product has to work. and our return rate is, you know.

Evident of for years that and we've only improved the formula. So I think product, very, very important. the differentiation, the uniqueness, and the agility to launch net new world first formats is so, so important. your world's first first water drops, water floss or drops, right? And so low hydroxyapetite, some mint, you blast your teeth, and you're good to go. So I think not changing consumer behavior very much, but adding value without changing consumer behavior, very, very important in services and in products, even in apps. and then I would say monetizing attention. So turning our customers into affiliates, referral partners, affiliate marketing since day one, of course, with Snow, but more recently, all of the creator verse and being able to drive, you know, millions of views if we're switching to a new product or we're launching a new product.

There's a new color, a new flavor. So the mass distribution through creators plus the ability and the trust that we've had for almost a decade in you know our products work, what do they have, what's in stock, and then our core cohort of ensuring that we're constantly improving based off of the reviews. I I prefer the bad reviews because we can learn. Like I want to learn from the customer.

50:21 · Product catalog expansion and listening to customer feedback

Josh Snow:52:28
How quickly can we make the cord longer? Can we make it more minty? Can we make it more foamy? And so you do that, you know, every few months on the product itself. Then, you know, you have products like our gold wand that nothing's perfect, but like we've iterated so many times on that formula, the packaging, et cetera, that it's pretty near to a hero skew perfect that it can be. But that's through iteration, listening to the customers, using the customers, Feedback in ads as well. Those are angles. Like we're hearing how customers are using the products. And then again, product expansion started with a teeth whitening kit. And now we've got toothpaste and toothpaste powder and toothbrush and toothbrush heads. So that way our customer has more to experience in the world of snow, which means they're also getting better benefits from all the products by stacking them. So that was part of it. And then of course we spent $100 million on meta-ads. So med-ads, and we were working with. you know, hundreds, thousands of celebrities, influencers that had more reach in the earlier days, people buy from who they like or trust. And so we were able to get an advantage by working with the right influencers to talk about you don't have to hide your mouthwash underneath the sink when people come over. This is something that you can put proudly. Here are the ingredients. And that, you know, one thing led to the other. We take the top 10% of content, run ads, enhance the funnel, add new products.

And then eventually we added Amazon and then subscription. And so that kind of repeats, but ultimately it's in monetizing attention, MedAds, Google Ads, SEO, now AIGEO. and then TikTok two and a half, three years ago changed the game for us again because it opened up a whole new batch of creators we could work with on an affiliate basis. So that's been kind of the the model across the board for really all of my companies is finding the wedge and for the purple ocean.

And for us it was in the beginning bridging oral care and cosmetics. And then we added wellness by infusing vitamins. So really seeing that, knowing what the market is asking for, know what your customers are asking for. What's missing in the market if you added this and this and this that could solve all the needs? And now a customer buys just one thing like IMA health. So I think that consolidation is super important as well. Lots of things, right? But you know, retail, PR. but I would say like fantastic media buying.

Nathan Smith:54:48
Yeah.

Josh Snow:54:53
incredible products that work, uniqueness, world first innovations, and then an awesome creator crew to, you know, tell everybody about it.

Nathan Smith:55:06
Has there been a shift in like you mentioned in the beginning of Snow? and I know we're gonna wrap up here soon, but like in the beginning of Snow, you focus more on like visibility with celebrities and people that could get attention instantly, pretty much. Has there been a shift in the marketing world in terms of just like just everyday people now work better than those higher paid celebrities?

Josh Snow:55:21
Yes.

Josh Snow:55:27
Yes. now I can't say that generally, right? Because you never know, but I would say having done it for so long, I would say that the price has gone so high up for celebrity and the algorithmic reach organically has gone in the inverse. So the pricing is overpriced in in a lot of scenarios. It's the other way around with everyday people. There are, you know, 70,000 top 1% creators.

You don't need six months and 500K to do that deal. So the speed, also the realness of those people, you you can't come up with those hooks. They're using it, they're coming up with it. So you're crowdsourcing with that same 500k you might spend on a big celebrity, you could drive 50 to 500 million organic views from 70,000 different creators or you know, whatever, 7,000, lots of different people. And then take the top 10% and run partnership ads to a funnel. And so like You get way more out of the algorithm with quantity and r real normal people, non-celebrity. And then you sprinkle in, there's a place for a celebrity. You sprinkle in the David Beckham, I am it health, you sprinkle in the Rob Gronkowski snow, like you sprinkle those in, those are your community seeders. And just like we do with large YouTubers, et cetera, still today, that's a seeding initiative. you're not looking to immediately make profit from that. So, but the truth is you can get for as low as a dollar CPM.

Compared to 100 on Meta Creators, content syndication. Like there's just so much more to do without leaving your chair than waiting on one celebrity that may or may not even break even because of the price is really high. 500K is a lot to hit, you know. So it has a place in it. I recommend it at certain points for certain businesses, but it's a lot more strategic than it was before of spraying prey to celebrities and see which ones work.

Now today we'd rather work with our customers and affiliates. And yes, they are more way more profitable because it's like, you know, the the budget on that two hundred dollars is, you know, the upside is just so much higher.

55:34 · Why everyday creator marketing beats celebrity deals

Nathan Smith:57:37
That makes perfect sense. I do have one more question for you in terms of we've been talking a lot about what's been working, what does work. What doesn't work anymore? Like are you still investing in SEO? Are you still running as many ads as you used to in terms of like the dollar amount? like what doesn't work anymore?

Josh Snow:57:55
I think just slamming meta definitely doesn't work anymore. I think create cr with Andromeda, creative's the new, you know, targeting. So you need mass creative. I think just running a few ads, not gonna work. you need hundreds of ads in your ad library. That's why creators are so important. I think that again, celebrity getting one post on Instagram is not going to make you millions of dollars. Potentially, it's just not that. SEO, yes. I think you know.

Google AdWords for for a lot of keywords, certainly. but in terms of the old school stuff, it's definitely shifted. I think you can't just hop on TikTok shop, give samples, and hope that you're go you go viral. you know, it takes it takes a lot more strategy nowadays in order to hit that flywheel. But the a lot of the stuff's still the same. It just requires a lot more agility, a lot more creative, a lot more creators. and I think a simple funnel or sending to your, you know, PDP.

You have to really treat that meta spend like it's your last dollar in order for it to work. and over to work. Yeah, it's just too expensive now. That's the that's a problem. Anywhere that there's advertising, the CPMs are just gonna keep going up. So that's danger, danger, which means your conversion reoptimization is important, your SEO is important, your creator crew is important, your your top seeders and top creators are important. So that kind of wraps all together into things are kind of the same. They're just a little more advanced now in order to succeed like we used to.

58:08 · Marketing channels that no longer work for scaling

Nathan Smith:59:25
Awesome, man. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Appreciate you taking the time. Josh, before we jump, just for anybody out there listening, where can people find you?

Josh Snow:59:28
Thank you, brother. Of course, brother.

Josh Snow:59:37
At Josh Snow, the best place, you'll find everything. Or Google Josh Snow, it's probably the best.

Nathan Smith:59:43
All right, Josh, I appreciate you taking the time for everybody listening. Thank you for joining the Why Marketing Sucks podcast. And we'll see you next time.

Josh Snow:59:46
Thank you, brother.

Josh Snow:59:52
Thank you, brother.