Rabah (00:01.57)
Hello wonderful humans. We are back for an episode of the growth vault If you are wondering where the beautiful fro is and how we got such a good-looking well-dressed incredibly Articulate man on the show or person it's because we all love a you know, and you know money talks You just got to grease a little palms and here you go. You get oh you didn't get the check chased and send the check unbelievable

Aaron Orendorff (00:26.678)
in which direction does money talk? That's what I was thinking. I was like, wait, are you implying that I paid you to show up here today, but I'm supposed to-

Rabah (00:33.035)
I don't know. We're paying you. No, no, we're paying you. Of course not get out of here get out of here Cmo over at recart just the absolute killer one of the best just seo content brand humans Outside of just the brand and marketing stuff you and I have just connected on the Just a really cool philosophical psychological level. I've gotten just so much inspiration and wisdom from you. So

Aaron Orendorff (00:38.222)
Get it, that's crazy.

Aaron Orendorff (01:01.334)
Man, the feelings are ridiculously mutual from back in that first IRL picture we floated with our little chat group. Both of us look good, I had my hair did. Yeah, the little up goes back for a while. Yeah, this is... We'll try to keep that off the, you know, behind the scenes lest you lose your readers or your listeners. Look at me, I'm such a writer, your readers. God, all right, let's do it.

Rabah (01:07.102)
Isn't that crazy? Oh my gosh.

Rabah (01:12.71)
Feels like ages ago, doesn't it? Time is such a weird one.

Rabah (01:20.442)
behind the scenes. Yeah, I love it, I love it. That's a whole podcast in terms of how you write and structure things and everything like that. But before we get into that, we had, as much as we love each other, a little bit of a tiff on the Twitters, and then we gotta talk brand, right? I mean, no foreplay, nothing. This is, we haven't seen each other for a while.

Aaron Orendorff (01:42.622)
We're just jumping right into it. All right.

That was funny!

Rabah (01:48.59)
We're just, we're going right into it. The door opens. We're not even popping the champagne, baby. We are jumping into it. Okay, so I wanna, let me give my thesis first and then I want you to rip it apart because you have some really interesting counterpoints that I wanna walk through to see, am I a misunderstanding or is my thesis weak and I need to bolster it and be able to, so essentially strong man, right? Like I want,

Aaron Orendorff (01:53.294)
Yeah, let's fight.

Rabah (02:17.638)
to strong-main my argument and make sure that there's no holes and you have some really cool perspectives. So, my whole... Okay, jump in. Yep, yep. Wonderful human. Powerful Canada.

Aaron Orendorff (02:22.318)
Well, let's give a little bit of context on how this all went down. Cause our buddy Rob, Rob Frazier, Outway, um, fabulous human being also, et cetera, et cetera, he dropped about a month ago. It was what's more important brand or product? Why? Right. So you, you baited me. You didn't even know you were baiting me. So let's the listeners get a different version of history. They can go, we'll put it in the train notes. Right. Cause I came in with, I reject the premise. Right.

Rabah (02:41.978)
Oh, I did not.

Aaron Orendorff (02:52.266)
Yeah, what's wrong with that? I reject the promise. Rob asked me a personal question as one of the most thoughtful human beings in the e-comm space and you jumped in. Okay, so Rob wants to know from Aaron, say more, right? And here comes, yeah, and this is your response. Product is brand, brand is product. Okay.

Rabah (02:53.159)
Oh, that is verbatim. That is verbatim. I reject the premise.

Rabah (03:05.682)
had to.

had to.

Rabah (03:17.606)
Well, don't leave me hanging. I also, second tweeted, also miss you when Austin, but nor here nor there.

Aaron Orendorff (03:25.354)
Okay, so you tried to throw some love as a secondary thought, like a PS afterwards. Yeah, yeah, good job. Well, that's gonna come up later in this episode too. You actually are, that's like such a good. Okay, okay, so that's the content. Product or brand. You say transitive principle. They're the same thing.

Rabah (03:30.134)
This is the shit sandwich, right? Yeah.

Rabah (03:49.072)
I think it's a false premise. I don't think they're differentiated.

Aaron Orendorff (03:51.87)
Okay, now let's build your strongman.

Rabah (03:54.638)
Yeah, okay, so I think the way I think of brand, and there's actually, small digression, there's a great book called The Seven Powers of Business Strategy or some shit like that by a guy named Hamilton Hilmer. And brand's actually one of the seven powers, the foundations of business strategy. It's a little dry, but like if you guys are into this space, it is a seminal read, a fantastic read. So that was something that was really interesting because he actually can quantify.

or he has mathematical formulas in terms of how it quantifies brand because brand can become a power. The whole thesis behind the book is businesses have seven powers. You can have multiple powers and that's how you essentially keep your market share, keep your business going, et cetera, et cetera, and brand can be one of them. With that being said, I think brand is the aggregation of every customer touch point and experience that the person has with the brand. So

the brand is product, the brand is the website, the brand is people I interact with in real life events that are representing said brand. Like every single customer touch point, brand is the aggregation of all those. So if I have an incredible product experience, but I meet somebody from the team and they're like a douchey salesperson or something, that degrades the brand. But conversely, if I meet somebody in real life and I really like that person, that also elevates the brand, adds our brand. Every single...

Again, customer touch point is brand, and so to bifurcate product and brand, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I will caveat it with this. I don't think that it is possible to have a bad product and a great brand. I do think it's possible to have a mids product and a great brand.

Aaron Orendorff (05:40.578)
Say more about that before I dig in. That's interesting. Say that again.

Rabah (05:44.09)
Because product is brand, if the brand, for example, if you take, you know I'm obsessed with the luxury market, if you take like quasi luxury stuff, there's not a lot of utility vector on that. It's a lot about other status, emotional status, social status, these things that are less about the utility of the product and more about perception, how it makes you feel, these other things. So the product doesn't necessarily need to be the best.

but it just can't be bad. If it's a bad product, there's no way to have a good brand because you have this albatross around your neck weighing you down with the crappy product and you're constantly, constantly interacting with this bad product. So you're constantly withdrawing from the brand account and eventually the brand account becomes negative because those bad interactions not only count for more than positive interactions, because I don't think a positive reaction and a bad interaction are actually...

Aaron Orendorff (06:37.047)
Yes.

Rabah (06:41.446)
parody. I think that you remember bad way more than you remember good. Furthermore, a lot of people will yell more than they'll cheer. And I don't know if that's something about society or whatever. But if something bad happens, dude, almost everybody's like, fuck it, flame war. We're going to the Twitter. If I have an incredible brand experience, I'm like, this is such an incredible experience. And I might tell some friends and stuff like that. But very rarely do I grab the megaphone, which is, you know, maybe it just a

a personal slight on me, but so that's kind of the thesis. Brand is every customer touch point. Positive interactions are not the same weight as negative interactions. And if you have a below average product, it becomes a kind of fool's errand to make a great brand because you have all, you can almost think of it like in B2B SaaS, it becomes like a leaky bucket of brand.

where even though you have all this goodwill coming in, there's no vessel to capture it because that product sucks.

Aaron Orendorff (07:44.002)
You're right about the negative versus positive. So I'll highlight where you're right before I dig into where.

Rabah (07:48.357)
Okay. The shit sandwich is already starting. Oh my God, I love it.

Aaron Orendorff (07:52.042)
And you write about not only the external, what I do with that information outside of myself, but it's all the more true internally. This is true in relationships, right? This is like, it takes, I gotta give five to 10 compliments, positive, atta boys, atta girls, way to be a human being, sort of like, it takes a lot more positive affirmation than it does to tear that down with a negative experience, a negative comment, et cetera. That's so true emotionally and relationally.

Rabah (08:01.315)
Oh, yep.

Rabah (08:19.538)
Totally tracking.

Aaron Orendorff (08:21.03)
and true too with products. I think the, so where I come out, what I, the, I think brand is word of mouth, and word of mouth is what people say about you when you aren't in the room. And that can be what somebody says about you to themselves, what they're thinking, but especially what they say about you to their friends, to their family.

If you ask them to be a referral, if you're talking about, you know, what do you say on social media, especially in response to something. When you're not watching, when you're not there, because people are also pretty polite for the most part, we're gonna say about you in the room. And here's the crux of matters, I'm gonna be like layers. Brand is word of mouth. All right, word of mouth is what people say about you when you are in the room. And be determined in fact, when what people say about you in the room comes down to equation between, what was my expectation versus my experience?

Rabah (08:59.439)
Yes.

Rabah (09:03.554)
Love layers.

Rabah (09:17.07)
Yes, I would 100%. I'm in total agreement so far.

Aaron Orendorff (09:21.422)
That delta to me is far more useful than saying every single touch point. And that's what I think about when I'm really trying to nail in. So where can I actually go to move the needle? If I wanna move word of mouth, so I can do one of two things. I can lower expectations, which is actually like a legitimate sort of tactic. Like don't over promise, right? Under promise, over deliver.

Rabah (09:40.89)
Yes.

Yes, 100%, 100%.

Rabah (09:48.69)
100%.

Aaron Orendorff (09:48.866)
But the most dangerous thing, and this is where it becomes really, really practical for marketers, people that are good at marketing is it when you outpace the thing you're selling, you can win in the short term and it is going to bite you in the long term heart. Eventually, that delta is going to get created and it can be churn. It can be lack of repeat orders. If you're thinking about SAS, if you're thinking about consumer products. Right.

Rabah (10:08.25)
Yes.

Yes.

Rabah (10:17.691)
Yes.

Aaron Orendorff (10:18.326)
That delta, and so dangerous when you are good at the upfront stuff, the out for, whether it's making ads, writing landing pages, you're just really good on social media. That is one of the most dangerous places, man, I keep doing like a little triangle. That delta, right? And this was a hard one lesson at a couple of places I've been at before where the marketing was fucking screamingly good and the fundamental problem becomes I get on the inside, I start experiencing the thing.

and it can't possibly live up to those expectations. And it's not a bad objective experience is the thing. It was still above average in the sense of like, okay, did the thing you paid perform better than the alternative that you had paid for before? It doesn't matter if that's a yes. What matters is do I think I got more than I was going to get?

Rabah (10:54.787)
Mm.

Rabah (11:04.806)
Well...

Rabah (11:10.49)
Yes, I think that the former example that you gave isn't relevant because people will quasi relate to, like going back to relationships, people will quasi relate to their past relationships, but to your point, it's more prescient to relate to the expectation that was given to you, which is established by the branding. So I'm in total...

I love the idea of, because what I say here, furthermore, I think the delta between expectation and reality isn't brand, but the measure of the brand's impact on the business are setting out of the way. This is the measure of the brand equity and affinity. That doesn't make any sense to me. So I don't know why I wrote that, but I like the idea of the closer together the expectation and the output is that cohesiveness is a great brand.

the farther that gets, like the dissonance between expectation and output, that is almost like a negative correlation, right? Like as that displacement gets bigger, that's a terrible brand versus if you know what you're gonna get. And so a perfect example of this to give people an easier mental model is franchisees. So the whole reason you do a franchise is because you get to run somebody's playbook. So I figure out where to put the store. You don't have to worry about the inventory that you're gonna sell.

All you have to worry about is making sure that experience is as cohesive and up to the standard and expectation that you have. So if you go to a McDonald's or a Starbucks or what have you, there is a certain expectation that you have. And if that expectation is worse than or if the experience is worse than the expectation, then there's brand degradation. Like you're like, God, man, McDonald's is really falling off. I can't believe I did this than the other. And this is coming from a guy that I did McDonald's in 10 different countries.

when I was in Europe and it was all like a, you know, a great experience. To be fair though, the expectation is not Michelin star, right? There's a certain expectation of like clean, fast service, a Big Mac tastes the same in Hungary as it did in the Czech Republic, as it did in France, et cetera, et cetera. But I've kind of been talking a lot, I'm kind of off in the weeds. I have yet to find the divergence though in our thinking because I'm still 100% on board with you.

Aaron Orendorff (13:31.534)
I think it's a matter of clarity in what you aim at. That's what I wanted to drive towards because it's such a hard thing to wrap your hands around. And people get caught up in, I think the knee-jerk reaction to a word like branding is storytelling about the founder and or product itself, the aesthetics of the brand. And sometimes people will put things like the unboxing experience that surrounds the product, the CS and CS experience that surrounds the product, these sort of intangible, in a lot of ways,

Rabah (13:33.698)
OK.

Rabah (13:46.95)
Yep.

Rabah (13:52.622)
Yep. Yes.

Aaron Orendorff (13:59.33)
qualitative versus quantitative, although you've got NPS and you can measure these sort of things for sure, but it's trying to really nail down like for example this I think is one of the deep ironies of Ecom D2C's love of really good, but scripted UGC and There's an obsession out there too of how much should you be paying for it? How do we get good UGC and by and large?

Rabah (14:03.898)
Yes.

Aaron Orendorff (14:27.33)
90% of it is all about how do we find good creators? Right? Not how do we identify what people are really using our product for and what they love about.

Rabah (14:30.396)
Yes.

Aaron Orendorff (14:38.274)
I've got an agenda I want to push, so I'm going to help this creator and the creator's job is to do it in a believable way, but the crux of that matter is what I believe about the product itself. And it's, I'm trying to create an experience that's believable that I think is real that can translate into an ad that can translate into someone buying it rather than starting with what is the actual experience of the product. That's someone. And so I think the UGC thing is a really good example of that where it can get really sideways.

Rabah (14:38.29)
Candid.

Rabah (15:04.306)
great example. It's a great example.

Aaron Orendorff (15:06.754)
If you get banger UGC, you might have a killer ad and a whole batch of problems on the backend.

Rabah (15:14.886)
So this is a perfect example of this actually. And this is such a great, you're so good. See people, you see what we do for you? Only the best, only the best for you guys. Avi actually just had a huge issue with this. So Avi during the vid, during the covids, they found this really amazing influencer. She was driving.

all this revenue, it was amazing. And then as the economic climate shifts, the Stimmy bump goes away, et cetera, et cetera. The people that they were acquiring weren't actually necessarily aligned with the brand, they just really liked this influencer. And so they were seeing like, oh my gosh, who we taught Facebook, our ICP or ideal customer profile.

is like not really our ideal customer profile. We brought in a bunch of group owners that were actually loyal to the influencer, not necessarily the brand. And furthermore, these people didn't have the, and not to sound elitist, but the demographics necessary to back into the economics needed for the company to be profitable. That was nicely said, right? Yeah, that was nicely said. I'm not shitting on people. You are where you are, and I want everybody to make money. But.

Aaron Orendorff (16:21.302)
You talk about making it practical, you just drew it like one level down into really.

Rabah (16:29.678)
So he nuked his whole account. He started a whole new pixel, everything, and now it's screaming again. And so I think to your point, that was, it's just such a really spot on way to think of that. And I think the way people go about UGC should be more of that. And that's candidly, and I wanna give it back to you, cause I'll get off my soap box here, but.

I think that's why UGC was actually so awesome in the beginning, because it wasn't necessarily UGC in the sense that we know it now. It was like, dude, this customer is getting value out of this, they have a really cool story that's relatable, that's alignable. The job to be done that they've identified is something that we hadn't thought of yet, and it's coming from a place of empathy, it's coming from a place of like, hey, I am you, there's relatability, and that's what really hits in the UGC, but.

to your point, it got to a place where people were trying to arbitrage it, where it's like, oh, cool, here's the script we want. Let's get a great actor and let's make this up out of fiction, where I think the best UGC comes from literal users, you know, ideally evangelists that are high usage love, literally love the product. There's not a reason you need to pay them. They're like, dude, I love your brand. Just send me some product or something. You don't need to pay me to make these videos. And once you get that financial

Aaron Orendorff (17:28.451)
Yes.

Rabah (17:49.862)
Like I think there's business transactions and relationships transactions. And once you get into the business transactions, which are fine, but they get this like flaccid, I'm so obsessed and it's like, it just doesn't land for me.

Aaron Orendorff (18:03.478)
We'll have to track this one down too, because Dave wrote about this, Dave ReCook from Bamboo Earth, about the performance of real UGC in their ad account. And it was such a great example of, I think my snarky retweet comment of it, or re-axing was breaking news. We're re-axing? Reposting? I don't know what we're doing.

Rabah (18:09.856)
Dave's the best.

Rabah (18:19.374)
Hold on, hold on, is that what we're doing now? Is that, I mean, I don't hate it, I don't hate it. We'll have to do a whole nother diverge, maybe we'll bring you back on to do, I think that was the biggest branding mistake ever by possibly one of the best branders ever, which is like this really counterintuitive, yeah, no pun intended, let's go, Zach, okay.

Aaron Orendorff (18:37.194)
That is such a good yeah, you just got meta with it right there. But it was like one of these like hey breaking news. Guess what? Real UGC crushes right now. Now here I'll make it like not just running on other people's parades or taking shots, throwing stones, glass house sort of thing. But I'm guilty of this myself as well. And really live example is one of our biggest customers

re-card. They just, they'll go to bat for us anytime I ask them to. It's amazing. And the catch is this person is always going to tell the truth. So they like us, they're always going to tell the truth. They never actually craft anything quite the way I want them to craft it. Like the last one we got, this was just about a week, or just previously this week, where someone asked them three questions. And the first question was,

What are the technical differentiators between Ricard and any other SMS platform? And this dude wrote back, there aren't any. I was like, you're breaking my heart, dude. I tried to build a homepage. I've tried to build landing pages. The whole thing is like, no, there's five things you can do with Ricard that you can't do with any other SMS platform. And they're true. And he's like, no, it's not really. They all basically the same. But what I had in that moment, and then he goes on to actually talk about the thing that does, like what makes a difference and why we're sticking around.

is their team executes for us. We're not gonna hire a SMS dedicated anything. And we don't even have to worry about, they'll come up with ideas if we're short, we send them ideas, they basically put it into the account and off we go. And the lift off our plate for that, plus their technical savvy, really helpful. But it was like that, that's what it was to me, of like, I had that realization of two, of like, what if I leaned into that?

Rabah (20:23.217)
Yes.

Rabah (20:27.812)
Yes.

Aaron Orendorff (20:34.93)
I wonder if that's how a, and this is like $160 million brand and growing in rough conditions and growing. If that's how the leader thinks about it, maybe I should actually lean into that. Maybe my tact of like trying to create this like expectation of it does these things that other people don't do. And when you get in it, you'll experience it. Am I setting myself up for no, it's pretty much the same. And I'm like, no, but look at the fine tuning on this and that. It's like.

Rabah (20:39.322)
Yep.

Aaron Orendorff (21:04.246)
But, or is the thing, like, just tell folks when you're talking to them, like, listen, everybody's gonna try to get you with, hey, we do this, we do that. I got my own shtek, I think they're real. I can rattle them off, but we're basically all the same. Like, what, was that disarming and just too honest? Like, let's, but that's where I wanna make it like real. Then that creates the brand experience of, what is the thing that they're actually getting out of it?

And I would never have put that, like if a team member came to me with this person's email, I'd be like, you can't say this. You can't seed the ground. You can't retreat. You got to push into, no, we do better on this and this. And is it just white noise? And worse than that, is it creating an expectation that when someone gets in there and they experience it, they go, not the same. And then that's what I've hung my hat on and it's not good.

Rabah (21:54.27)
One, thank you for being so vulnerable and telling that story. Two, you're spot on. And so this is why I'm such a big believer, and I try and tread with that word lightly because belief can lead to dogmatic views, but I am so bullish on jobs to be done. Or the job to be done, so for people that don't know, if you haven't listened to any of the other podcasts I do where I always riff on this, the...

It's a little bit of a complex thesis, but you can boil it down to the TLDR of people don't buy products, they hire them to do jobs. And once you identify, and people might hire your product to do different jobs, but once you can start to identify those jobs to be done, that's how you build your marketing around it because that's what people care about. And so going back to taking the example from Erin, what I would do is definitely hammer that tack home. Because the other thing is not only is that job to be done.

really, really relevant, it's also incredibly hard for your competitors to mimic, which is exactly where you wanna go. Like you're not gonna be able to go to Klaviyo or Attentive or all these other people and get the service and the white glove treatment that you guys can offer. So not only is it their job to be done, that's why they're hiring you, you're actually really good at it, and you can be like, yeah, dude, you can go there to these other places, give them more money, and you're never gonna see, you're gonna basically get the equivalent of a meta rep.

of like this person that's just gonna call you when they want you to spend more money but have no actual impact on your business. So that I think is really interesting, but where I would even add another layer to it is I know you guys' product, it's really fucking cool and there are some really interesting differentiators. However, that's when you hit them with the surprise and delight where they don't know about this, they don't necessarily need it, they come for the managed service and then they stay for the product differentiation.

And that's how you do it because they're not gonna come for the product differentiation. It doesn't really matter to them. That's not why they're hiring you. But if you can surprise and delight them, and that's the thing though, you can't tell them about it. You have to surprise and delight where you can say, okay, by the way, we did all this managed service stuff. And you know, we have all these really cool AI things and flows, et cetera, et cetera. We went ahead and set them up for you. Would you like me to turn them on for you? This is what they do.

Rabah (24:13.862)
That, I think, is the through line of get to the job to be done, and if you do have these product differentiators, or these other, we don't even need to be product, these other differentiators in your brand that can actually cause surprise and delight, add those on, but those aren't the reason, they're not the bait on the hook, if you will. What do you think about that?

Aaron Orendorff (24:31.374)
And that is probably the hardest thing to do for marketers of any, in any vertical, any category, is if you know it's good, like delayed gratification, do hold onto it, do wait for it, wait for it. It's gonna hit so much harder. You don't even know like, yeah.

Rabah (24:37.351)
SuperHard.

Rabah (24:43.542)
It's the hardest.

Rabah (24:49.403)
Can't tell them. It's very difficult. It ruins, it takes all the excitement away from it. And it's almost like that, like you can't tickle yourself. Somebody else has to tickle you. Cause tickling is a expectation and you know what your body's doing. And so like to be able to do that, you have to have that element of surprise, but man does it land. And the other thing too is, I'm a, again, a huge,

a thesis around if you can help somebody either feel smarter, feel better, get their boss to brag to them, there's some sort of emotional impact on their life from your brand. Woo, baby, that's a big deposit. That is a big, big deposit.

Aaron Orendorff (25:31.21)
And it's the same true in when I get compliments on like a dope hat, right? That that's the, that's the piece or like socks. Like if somebody that that's the equivalent of it, of your boss in the work world with the B2B SaaS stuff of somebody giving you a it's the exact same thing of like that unsolicited. That looks good. Those are cool. Oh, it's yeah.

Rabah (25:35.803)
Yep.

Rabah (25:53.191)
It's everything.

So I joke around and say people shouldn't, or like I get my haircut at a barber shop, barber shops shouldn't charge in USD, they should actually charge in compliments. And so do you want a two compliment haircut, a four compliment haircut, a five, and that there is some sort of, you know, what am I trying to say, conversion from those amount of compliments, because when you think about it, at the end of the day, what's the job to be done?

for a haircut. It's not really like, unless you're like super dirty or something, you've been camping in the back country for a while, it's not necessarily really hygiene. It's all about confidence, feeling good about yourself, and what's better than getting a compliment. And so to take it even a step further, I would have hired like people outside that barbershop to like just look like plants. It's like, dang, Aaron, or I don't even know you, but sir, that haircut looks really good on you. And that again, goes back to.

If you can nail the job to be done, everything else illuminates the path on how you can actually improve. Because I know you have a ton to say, so let me throw it back to you. But the one thing I would say is, the worst place you can get into is where you stopped yourself, where it's like, I know this is it, and we're gonna put more product features. We're gonna do the, where it's like, dude, actually, the product's in a great place. We just, we should scale up our managed services. People love it.

They're giving us more money. That's why they're hiring us. They're not hiring, the product is a manifestation of that, but they're hiring, the job to be done that they're hiring us is like, we want SMS, but we don't wanna deal with it. Just print us money. You will give you money. And as long as it's arbitraging in our favor, we're there. We don't care that you have the best AI in any SMS product ever. That doesn't matter to me. I'm not hiring you for that. And so the last thing I'll say is these are the, when you have these types of interviews,

Aaron Orendorff (27:44.343)
Yes.

Rabah (27:48.206)
and you can run a job to interview properly, this is what you get when you said something really smart at the beginning, where brand is what people say when you're not in the room. What did they tell their significant other? What did they tell their friend? What did they tell their partner? Like, dude, I'm printing all this money on SMS and I literally, I get an email from this guy named Aaron, who's awesome, he tells me what the initiatives are gonna be for the month, and I tell him yes, no, maybe, and I go on and run my business, and I just see all this money coming through my SMS channel.

Aaron Orendorff (28:16.558)
The compliment piece is such a good way to think about it in, yeah, I love that idea of having a chart on the thing of how many compliments do you want. But the other really important piece of that is who. Who needs to compliment you for you to feel good about this?

Rabah (28:23.728)
You right?

Rabah (28:33.557)
That's interesting. So say more. That's interesting.

Aaron Orendorff (28:35.146)
I just hit me now. Well, so this is gonna segue into like, I think what probably our next topic is gonna be lightning round on the whole like, know your enemy. You also have to know who is the person they're trying to impress. Whose opinion matters?

Rabah (28:47.814)
Very well put. Okay, okay. I'm gonna make that note. That's interesting. That's a really interesting.

Aaron Orendorff (28:50.954)
Yeah. And that would be such an interesting question. I can't help but now think in terms of like doing a pitch and just asking the person in the discovery call, right? Like, like a barber. So who in your life do you, who does this compliment most need to come from? Is it your significant other? Is it your kids? Cause I'll tell you as a dad with now teen and preteen daughters, they're, they're almost edging their mom out with like, with whom, whose

Rabah (29:09.486)
your friends.

Aaron Orendorff (29:20.33)
And so that Barbara then is the expert who's like, oh, that's who really matters? Oh, that's a different haircut entirely. All right, okay, you want that one? But just to know that also opens up a big window for, one, it makes the conversation more relational. Be a sick angle for any sort of product consumer ad or SaaS, like who needs to compliment you?

Rabah (29:31.986)
Really good.

Rabah (29:38.13)
really good.

Aaron Orendorff (29:46.67)
Mmm.

Rabah (29:47.915)
That is really good. I need some more time to chew through that, but that's really good because it's even more potent because you're right. There definitely is, so it's interesting. So I was just out the other night, had a really great dinner, and then there was a little ice cream parlor called the Bake Bear. Me and my friend, we went there together. She got a cookie, I got a cookie, blah, blah.

and this guy came running up to me. I had some, as we do, had some heat on the feet, some pretty fancy ones, gotta impress people. And the recognition of that, because these are also, I like peacock sneakers, but these weren't necessarily the peacockies, they were the if you know, you know kind of thing, you have to be in that. And so that's so interesting to me because that compliment meant a lot because these aren't, like I have those crazy Swarovski ones, right? Where it's like, even if you're not in Seekers,

who's this fucktard with these crazy diamond sneakers? It doesn't take a lot of understanding of that domain to really get that compliment, whereas these insanely expensive shoes, but you wouldn't know it unless you're in that industry. And so for me, going back to your thesis, compliments matter, but when I get the compliments from the sneaker heads and you see the aspiration and the excitement of like,

300 of those out there and you're just wearing them out casually? Tell me more blah and so that's so interesting it that's so interesting

Aaron Orendorff (31:17.646)
And it goes into, because that example you just used, is there's such a difference between if somebody reports into founder CEO, where that is gonna be, did you make my life easier so that I can, like the compliment from them is, I didn't have to think about this month. Right, that is like, whereas if versus large organization where somebody is reporting into a head of growth, a head of acquisition, a head of retention, they're reporting into a head of retention,

Rabah (31:36.124)
Yes.

Rabah (31:43.59)
Yes.

Aaron Orendorff (31:47.51)
the compliment is very much related to the customer experience. If they're pointing into a head of growth, then we're going to lean into things like incrementality. Do we need to talk about holdout testing? Where it's like, if I was trying to talk about holdout testing and incrementality to the person that's reporting into the CEO, you lose because that's not a shared language between them too. That's never going to generate a compliment. Right. So yeah. And it just gets you deeper into the relationship with the person you're trying to talk to.

Rabah (31:51.93)
Yes.

Rabah (31:57.627)
Yes.

Rabah (32:09.306)
I will put. This is.

Rabah (32:14.81)
So what do you think of this thesis? I also have this thesis that unless you're the founder or CEO, the only thing you care about is making your boss happy. That's your only goal. Because if you think about it, right, like a happy boss never fires you.

Aaron Orendorff (32:28.554)
Yeah, that's the god honest truth right there. No, that is.

Rabah (32:34.146)
It is what it is. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. It's just I've stopped to see the, I try not to look through the lens of right and wrong because one, that's rooted in judgment, which I don't find very useful a lot of times because it's gonna be personal bias, your own experiences, et cetera, et cetera. And then two, right and wrong is again, super relative to a lot of people. And so right and wrong isn't the thing, but again, if my boss is happy, I know I am using my time in the way that

is meaningful to them versus if I have a ton of output, but my boss might not care about said output, again, it goes back to that job to be done. I think the job to be done for everybody that isn't a founder CEO is to make their boss happy. And how you untangle that is obviously a lot harder, but to your point, you just laid out the perfect way to do it, of like, certain people care this, certain people care that, and I loved what you said there in this shared language, because if you don't communicate,

at the level and the fidelity that the person has and the expectation and the dialect, it's pointless.

Aaron Orendorff (33:43.474)
We're all like that though. This is where you and I, we start moving into that philosophical, just us talking kind of situation because that's human existence. Human existence is I want other human beings to approve of me because we are a tribal, I'm a tribal inescapably relational human who finds my judgment, who finds my value in other people's judgments. And I can spend all day looking at motivational posters and trying to decouple my soul and my identity from those other things.

Um, but the better way to do it is actually just be really selective about who, who you spend and give your time to and make sure like, cause you're just, you're so inescapably that you're way better off engineering the who in your life than trying to decouple yourself from the who in your life.

Rabah (34:28.146)
Ooh, that's a bar. I will push back a little bit and say, I could care two shits less about people I either don't respect or I don't think have the requisite domain expertise on the subject because I can't, you can't care. So I used to be a quasi-decent photographer and it was great to get, it almost goes back to who are you trying to impress? Because like all the, you know.

My mom she passed away, but she was still alive when I was doing this and like she would always cut You know motherly love right? Oh, what a great picture boy She has no clue about aperture about all these things and like obviously I want my mom's Compliments that really was meaningful to me But it was more so like when I had a photographer that I respected or somebody in the space I was like Rob, that's a dope shot or like wow You really nailed the lighting on this that was meaningful to me And then you know there's other people chirping from the cheap seats of like oh my gosh

What a silly picture, this is dumb. All that stuff didn't matter, but it's so interesting how clarifying, it's almost a layer deeper in that job to be done. Find that job to be done and know who they're trying to impress and then give them the stories, because I think people experience the world in stories. Give the person the best narrative to then feed the person they're trying to impress to then initiate not only the compliment, but also when you start succeeding for people.

Trust is inherent. Trust is a function of exposure and success, in my opinion. And the more you succeed with somebody and the more you're exposed to somebody, the more you trust somebody. Or at least, I mean, I know you've built out a few teams. That's how I dealt with it, where it was, hey, we would try and get this mind meld. I would ask people, okay, what do you think I would say? What do you think I would say? And once those answers started to become my answers, then I...

Aaron Orendorff (35:54.019)
Mmm.

Rabah (36:13.85)
Go run man. I can go use my mental cycles there and I'll tell you the real kicker when you hire the real killers You'll say okay. What would you think I would say and I know that's actually not what I would say But you know what? That's a better answer than I actually had and that's when you know, you hired the real killer We're like gosh you understood the assignment and you are surpassed like you don't need me anymore Come come ask me for budget resources. We'll check in once a week and go run baby. Go hunt

Aaron Orendorff (36:39.498)
There's no, there are few feelings that are better than that. Dead on. So is brand product, is product brand? Yes, no, maybe, it depends. I'm still sticking to the delta between expectations and experience with a little sprinkling now of compliments. Who are you trying to impress? Brand, brand is, yeah. I think that's a really visceral, that's a great cut to the center of it.

Rabah (36:44.148)
Yes.

Rabah (36:48.172)
Bring us back.

Rabah (37:04.462)
It's so good, Aaron. It's so good. It's so brilliant.

Rabah (37:12.546)
I think it was the missing piece, because I think I inherently understood it. You ever have those things where you have those thoughts in your head and then you either read a book or a podcast or an essay and you're like, fuck, that was the thing I had, but people could coalesce it with words? That's it for me. That's the link that when I try and tell people jobs to be done, they kind of glaze over. They're like, oh, I kind of get, you hire a product, you don't buy it, blah, blah. This is the missing piece. Like this is, I'm hiring it to then,

give myself the ability of like, babe, I'm so smart because I bought this, or babe, look how brilliant I am, or look how rich I am, or whatever it is that they're trying to do, and then that message has to be on, again, the same wavelength packaged in the amount of time they wanna spend, et cetera, et cetera. And you're essentially, and maybe that's really the core of it, of the brand marketing, is really being able to give people these message packets

that are really easy to understand and then deliver them to the people they want to impress to then solicit that compliment that really makes them feel good.

Aaron Orendorff (38:22.006)
What? Yeah, this is some like pretty chest stuff. That's really, but it's practical. I mean, I can see how I'm going to start contorting this.

Rabah (38:28.39)
This is, it's such a great mental model, bro. You know, I love it, cause it also is really aligned again with that jobs to be done, because somebody will have X job to be done, somebody who have Y job to be done. Those are gonna be totally different narratives that you need to give, especially if the people that are gonna be, the job to be done might be different, but the person being, the person that you want to get the compliment from might be the same, but there might be this other vector where the job to be done is the same, but the person you want the compliment from is different.

where to your point of going back to the haircut example, like if you go to a wedding and you get your haircut before the wedding, even if I kept that random person out there, like that's gonna be meaningful, but at the end of the day, you want the compliments from the people you care about at the wedding, whether it be the bride, the groom, your date, what have you, and they're the people that you wanna give the, and so anyways, that's a fascinating expansion on my kind of theorem. I told you I would get something out of this. I knew it, every time, every time.

Aaron Orendorff (39:23.178)
It's the exact same here. It's a cycle. It's a virtuous circle. We just fly- we just fly-wheeled the crap out of each other, is what we just-

Rabah (39:27.17)
Oh man, that's so good. We did, we did. Oh man, that was very, very good. Okay, we have a few minutes left. You wanna talk a little bit about kind of partnerships, enemies, anything like that. Well, I shouldn't put partnerships and enemies in the same. That was a total misnomer. But more so, well, I guess I can just lay the groundwork for you and you can kind of tell me where you're headed here because one of the things that I've found, so read a ton of business memoirs, much like you.

And there is this really interesting angle of always having like a shared enemy for the company. And so like at triple, we really were, you know, North beam kind of coalesced into that where it's like, dude, where we're going after North beam, you know, Nike was Adidas, the big high up at Nike left for Adidas. And it just absolutely nuked the bridges there for Apple. It was Android.

And I, cause you're happy go lucky like me, but do you think there's any validity to, and again, you don't necessarily need to make this public. This can be an internal thing of like, hey guys, this is who we're gunning for kind of thing. But I've just found it's really healthy for team morale, for cohesion, for not necessarily goal setting. I don't think you should set your goals based on competitors, but more so those softer skills of like, and just going back to my younger days, when I was a runner,

There was a guy that I had a picture of in my locker that I'd look at every day, because I was only going to race him twice a year. And I was like, dude, everything that I'm doing is to beat this guy, because I know he's working just as hard as I am, so I have to work even harder. Is there any validity to that, or is that a little too negative?

Aaron Orendorff (41:12.686)
I don't think it's too negative. I think it's galvanizing, a common enemy.

Rabah (41:15.578)
Galvanize and that's a great perfect term

Aaron Orendorff (41:18.622)
It's powerful. Yeah. And also to know for your organization, your team, to know who are we really up against. Big, because that also changes. I mean, it just changes the pitch. It changes the battle card. It changes the versus. I mean, really, it gets very practical about the more you know about that specific enemy, the better you can frame the, argue the opposite or, you know, where are their differentiators. But what I've been obsessed with recently,

Rabah (41:19.983)
Yeah.

Rabah (41:28.817)
Yes.

Rabah (41:35.451)
Yes.

Rabah (41:39.579)
Yes.

Aaron Orendorff (41:48.182)
When I talk about know your enemy, what I feel like I've come up against just over and over again is it's not a specific competitor. And I'm not starting to think this is true in almost all things. It's not really a specific competitor that you're ever up against. The main thing that most people are selling against is doing nothing or doing the same thing. That's all it comes down to. Cause the easiest thing in the world to do is nothing. And the second easiest thing in the world to do is the thing you've always done. That's...

Rabah (42:08.154)
Yes.

Aaron Orendorff (42:18.13)
And so you're up against not actually someone picking an alternative, but them staying the course. It's yeah. What? Yeah. Go for it.

Rabah (42:28.026)
No, it's just so crazy because you, I know you're not super classically changed for jobs to be done, but you're implicitly explaining it. So it's crazy. Again, I know I might be hammering this to death, but I'm telling you, if there's two frameworks you learn as a marketer, learn jobs to be done, and then there's a really cool behavior model by a guy named BJ Fogg called, it's behavior change only happens when motivation, ability, and prompt.

are together simultaneously. If you can figure those two things out, that'll unlock so much marketing for you. But anyways, going back to you being so smart where you know the book without having to read it kind of shit. So in job...

Aaron Orendorff (43:07.726)
Well, so the place that this hit me, it came alive to me when I was trying to decide if I wanted to get a Lomi. And I didn't do a single competitive search. I didn't go to see what else is on the market that I can put my compostable trash in. Does it look better? This or that. What it came down to for me was on the landing page as I was scrolling, there was a before and after shot, but the before shot was,

Here's the gross dirty bucket with that leaky, biodegradable bag sitting on your counter right now versus this glorious thing. And that was, that was not, hey, we're going up against somebody choosing a competitor. That was, we're going head to head with the present reality. Them continuing to do what they've been doing. How do we make the thing you're continuing to do so repulsive that you can't but choose now to do something else?

Rabah (43:55.01)
Yes.

Rabah (44:05.89)
Yes. So just to kind of cap everything off, there's two ways these jobs can be done in reviews. One, there's the timeline, which is super, super helpful. I won't go into it because it's a little bit elongated. So just for brevity. But there's another way to think of it as well where they call it the forces diagram. And so you have pushes, pulls that will take you. So if you think of it like the current ways here, the new ways here, what is pushing you away from the current way? What is pulling you?

to the new way, so the push might have been for you, like dude, that bag of compostable stuff, I like composting, I wanna be a good human, I really enjoy this way of life, man it sucks. It's dirty, it breaks sometimes, it gets my house dirty, and then you see this pool to the new way of like, oh my gosh, so you're saying I can just put in this thing and all that stuff happens, and then the other side of it is you have anxieties and inertia.

right, that are holding you back from the new way of like, oh, maybe I don't want to spend the money or oh my gosh, how many, does this thing have bags? Do I have to clean it? Is the, is me cleaning it going to be more time than doing this? Oh, the anxiety, what if it breaks? Do I get a new one? What happens when it breaks? Where, how am I going to compost? And you have all these things and then you can really understand. And the too long didn't read there is a switch only happens when the pushes and pulls are actually more than the anxieties and the inertia.

And so you have to push them over. It's so good, Aaron, I'm telling you. The jobs to be done needs to be, Bob Mesta and Clayton Christians are incredible. But what's even crazier is you basically just explained it without not even having the concept. You're so brilliant. You're so...

Aaron Orendorff (45:42.314)
I read Christiansen, innovator's dilemma, all of that. No, no, listen, I've been there. I'm not the one to like act like I'm coming up with these things off the dome. But what I will add to that is also bear in mind, the initial push away from the present state.

will often not be enough to overcome if you don't address the anxieties.

Rabah (46:06.634)
or the inertia of like, dude, I already have like, for example, credit cards, a good example, right? Where it's like, okay, I have my credit card, but look, I can get 0% interest, I can get off. Okay, but how do I pay the credit card? I already have my bank payments set up. I already have this like, there's that inertia of the current way. Like for example, you, you know, I mean, you, uh, you're, my already have the family chores built around the bag of composting. Or it's like, okay, well, who's going to do it now? Like all the, without the push pool.

being more than the anxieties and the inertia, you won't get anybody to change.

Aaron Orendorff (46:37.074)
And you can't continue to, so like, for example, if I had to come in, the push was away from the present state because it is, it's just, it's my job. It's gross bugs come in at least once every six months. There's these things of like, it doesn't look good when company comes over. But if that had been the be all and end all, like if they knew they'd hooked me with the push, right? And I showed some trepidation and all they did was double and triple down on the push. But the real issue was I've got to be able to justify spending this much money.

Rabah (46:42.351)
Yes.

Exactly.

Aaron Orendorff (47:06.402)
That's where you're uncovering the, okay, who's the enemy now? Right, that's the digging one level deeper into, and I think I've just experienced this as well, where like you just, it's so tempting to wanna grab ahold of that initial push, the thing that repulsed them away from their present state and keep going back to, oh, it was this thing, remember this thing, this thing's bad, and what the person eventually says in not so many words is, you've convinced me, that's no longer the issue, I know this is better than garbage on the counter.

Rabah (47:09.913)
Yes.

Rabah (47:22.363)
Yes.

Rabah (47:32.317)
Yes.

Rabah (47:35.771)
Yes.

Aaron Orendorff (47:36.934)
Stop talking to me about that. Tell me why I can actually explain spending so much more.

Rabah (47:38.577)
Yes.

Rabah (47:45.01)
So well put man, so well put. Focus, once you, cause a lot of times too, the pushes will be self-evident. Like people will convince themselves for the push by themselves. The pull is really where you need to concentrate on or lowering the anxieties and the inertia to make the pull towards the, or the force towards the current way less. So even though the pull towards, or the force towards the new way isn't super strong.

Aaron Orendorff (48:04.663)
Yes.

Yes.

Rabah (48:13.622)
as long as it's more than the force of the old way, you're still gonna get a switch. And so it's such a brilliant way to look at it in terms of where you're talking about how you can bring people along, not only this life cycle of a sale, but also where you concentrate on, because I think that's one of the challenges is you put so much effort behind something that fails. And that's like, it's just a fallacy. Just because it took you a long time and you put a bunch of work into it doesn't mean it's important.

Aaron Orendorff (48:40.942)
Yeah, sunk costs right there, let him go.

Rabah (48:43.61)
Let him go. Oh my gosh, this is so good, dude. This is so good. What else I got for, are you got a nugget? You got a nugget for us? Are you gonna fill in for Chase's little nugget? You said you got one for me?

Aaron Orendorff (48:51.95)
I get a nugget you have a nugget too or is this only chase this job? Oh Okay, my nugget is Beware of opening any relationship Especially if it's related to sales or marketing with a neg What I mean by that is I get these constantly and I had a friend Dump on me a whole bunch of like basically cold emails and cold DMs that they've been sending out where with the best of intentions what they were

Rabah (48:54.672)
I do a product.

Rabah (49:15.502)
Yeah. Yep.

Aaron Orendorff (49:20.106)
what they were doing was opening with the card of, hey, hello, here's all the specific things that you're doing wrong with Blink product, with Blink app, so to speak. And this person is really well-meaning and they're legitimate things that people are messing up. But they were like, why is this not getting the success that I want it to get? These are all like, if they would let me fix this for them, they would do better, they would make more money, they would get the compliments that they want. All right.

Rabah (49:48.666)
Yes.

Aaron Orendorff (49:49.866)
And I just, as I looked at it, I said, it's, you have to establish that good positive experience first, earn the right to say, Oh, and here's what you're doing wrong. Or what I've started experimenting with is just baiting, baiting the bat. Where what I do is I just send two screenshots or like three screenshots. Uh, and then I write something like, you're kidding me, right. After two screenshots or three screenshots. It's the bait. It's the hook of like.

Rabah (50:06.886)
That's a bar.

Aaron Orendorff (50:19.062)
Maybe they see it and it's a little embarrassing, or maybe they don't and they wanna ask the question of what it is, but it's like this lighthearted entry into, yo, you're messing this up, let me fix it for you, but the bait works so much better than just the hammer.

Rabah (50:35.17)
Oh man, so eloquently put and I really, man, that's just so spot on. The other thing that I've found with that as well is it does nothing. Like you either A, come across judgmental, or B, these people are like, yeah, I have these problems, you don't think I fucking know I have these problems? How are you gonna fucking fix them? I don't care, I'm not about problems, I'm about solutions. So I think one,

The baiting is actually really interesting because that's a nice little way to bring them into a conversation. Or two, it's like, hey, we've worked with a ton of brands of yours. If you want, we can look at your account, blah, blah. That's terrible? Okay, give me it. Give me it. Give it.

Aaron Orendorff (51:15.635)
No. You know what the really giving thing to do is?

Here's how you can fix it with the tool you're already using.

Rabah (51:23.974)
Don't hate it. I don't know if I'm super into it. You can build some goodwill, but I don't know if I'm super into that. Give me another one. I'm not super into that one. Not super into it. Okay. I'm not, yeah. I don't mind that. I think it's more so in the fact of like, cause then that also convolutes, like I don't need to win goodwill with this person if I'm already talking to them. I need to get them to the compliment. And like judgment's not gonna get them to the compliment. Me telling them they suck at using their tool and this is how they should use their.

Aaron Orendorff (51:30.178)
That's the only one I got. I'm Mr. Goodwill though.

Rabah (51:51.686)
current tool better, doesn't get me to the compliment. What gets me to the compliment is like, hey, I have some really awesome ideas. One of the things, and going back to that job to be done, like one of the things that whatever business I am at, these are the things that we're really good at. I think there might be some opportunities for you to grow here if you have some time or whatever, and none of it, because the other thing is, depending on who you're talking to, it always needs to be framed in a sense of time commitment or cost and value.

And so it's like, hey, you know what? If you guys have some time or I don't even need your time, if you want, you can sign up here or whatever, and I'm happy to do a really quick audit for you. We can jump on in 30 minutes and I'll show you how to improve your business or something like that. Because my whole thing is the cognitive load is too high. When you get judgment, you just tell that person to fuck off. Oh, cool, you told me what to do with my current tool, but who's gonna do it? Like this isn't an intelligence issue, it's just a fucking.

Aaron Orendorff (52:38.262)
Yes. Yeah.

Aaron Orendorff (52:45.678)
Mmm.

Rabah (52:46.094)
resource constraint, so cool, thanks for bringing something up where it's like, I get it, but I don't have any fucking time to do it. And so if you can frame that in a cost value where you make it an IQ test of like, hey, just doing some quick back of the map numbers, I think with these three things that I can implement for you in under two days, if you come on the platform, we can generate X amount lift in your revenue. Is that something you'd be interested in? And that you can get to a cost.

Aaron Orendorff (53:12.526)
There.

Rabah (53:14.074)
value equation and then you get closer to the compliment and there's not a lot of ask. I think the challenge with these negative things or these judgmental emails is either A, it's too, the cognitive load is too high or the ask is too big because I don't know what the value is. You're like okay cool I need to fix all these things but what does that mean? The higher you get the simpler need to be. Like I just want to either make more money, I want to reduce OpEx, like I

there needs to be one easy takeaway and going back to the narrative building. Like, okay, cool. Yeah, man, actually I got this amazing email. They said they can fix these three things within a week that could generate Y amount of lift for Z amount of dollars. Like that's an easy story to tell your boss and then you can make that clear. And the boss is like, yeah, so it's gonna cost us $1,000 and we're gonna make $5,000 and it doesn't give you any more work? Yes, do it.

Aaron Orendorff (53:53.426)
Where it is.

Aaron Orendorff (54:05.762)
There it is, that piece of these are the things number. In this amount of time, dates for this cost to generate this return.

Rabah (54:15.814)
simple right value equation and the more you can make that value equation IQ test where it's not even a decision where it's just like how it's like the TJ Maxx's of the world right like I have this affliction I can't go in like TJ Maxx's or any of these like markdown stores so I'm like it's like a $400 product like I bought like a hundred dollar rug in there but they have the price sticker right it's like 400 bucks it's only $100 now why well I don't need it but it's economically irresponsible not to buy this those are the best offers

Aaron Orendorff (54:17.876)
Bye you.

Aaron Orendorff (54:43.182)
I'm actually making $300!

Rabah (54:45.038)
Yeah, exactly, I'm making $300. Exactly. That's a really good nugget, man. That's a really good nugget, I like that. I have never been sold on the judgment or the negative. I think it's a really hard sell for all the reasons we just discussed, and I think the path that you laid down. To be fair, I do like the bait thing, but I think the bait is more of getting them back into the communication loop, and then you hit them with the value equation.

Aaron Orendorff (55:13.573)
I'm going forth with that. That's great.

Rabah (55:15.17)
Yeah, I love it. Okay, my product of the week, to be fair, I haven't super, super tested it. To be fair, this Lomi looks pretty cool. I have a friend that she's really into composting, but we're in an apartment building, so this actually might be really, really interesting. This is soup, because she has to take it over to Whole Foods across the way to drop it off there, and there's basically the back porch is the only where you can put it, so this is really interesting. But my product pick of this week, it's called Matter.

How do you keep all of your, because I know you read a lot, you do, how do you kind of centralize all of your intellectual diet? Like, is it Notion, is it just Apple Notes, is it pen and paper? Like, how do you centralize everything? Okay. Okay, I actually like that a lot. That's a smart, I think there's a certain aspect of tool masturbation sometimes where you spend more time on trying to find the perfect optimal system versus

Aaron Orendorff (55:56.798)
It's Google Docs and it's slacking myself things.

Rabah (56:10.17)
just do something simple and be able to get it and then you can figure out, because I'm actually a Apple Notes guy and then I will level up into Notion just because I have some systems in there, but I've found if I go from Spark to Notion, I lose. Because I'll get in the, and then it's too complex, versus I can go Spark, Apple Note, get the kind of meat and the bones on it, and then as I flesh it out. But there is this really cool tool, because the other thing is I listen to a lot of podcasts and it's hard to keep that

Information because unless you have the transcript or stuff like that. It's hard to you know, piece up those little Audio clips so there's this uh company called matter If you go to hq.getmatter.com and we'll put it in the show notes Not only is it kind of like a pocket or uh, like a reader where you can read all your stuff highlight all your stuff So almost like a readwise But they just now added readable podcasts. And so now when i'm listening to a podcast on there

I can highlight and snippet stuff out of that podcast and then drop it in, because I get so many nuggets, but a lot of times I don't archive them or write them down and then I lose them unless I rediscover them.

Aaron Orendorff (57:21.038)
And with that, I don't know if you realized what you just did. You literally brought us all the way back around to my opening stumble. Readers, listeners.

Rabah (57:36.966)
Good, this guy's got, I told Chase we were gonna lay down the heat, I told him we were gonna lay down the heat. It's it, it's it, oh amazing. Aaron, how can people get more involved with you? How can they get on the most awesomest SMS platform on the planet, ReCore? This time's yours, my friend.

Aaron Orendorff (57:40.501)
Shut it down. Anybody who makes it this far, shut it down. You're welcome.

Aaron Orendorff (57:55.89)
Aaron Orndorf find me on the X find me on LinkedIn. There's only one Aaron Orndorf in marketing in the world. I own all the search results sports too. So I'm super easy to find. You can go to recart.com check out our five differentiators on the home page.

Aaron Orendorff (58:13.386)
And you know that none of them are actually real. The kind of are. I know that, but yeah. And hit me with the DMs. That is just, I'm still low hanging fruit. We talk about those compliment things. Man, you consistently like and comment on something of mine on either one of those two platforms for like a three, four day period. You come in, I'll talk to you.

Rabah (58:14.622)
Oh my gosh. I love it.

Rabah (58:31.858)
We'll hang, we'll hang. Are you a mentor pass or anything? Oh, let's go, yeah, pay for some time, let's go for this, get some time with AO. I'm telling you guys, he is not only, again, one of the most awesomest humans, but dude, you're Mount Rushmore of just content brand. The way you see things in...

Aaron Orendorff (58:35.054)
I am usually yeah.

Rabah (58:53.734)
You're such a rare breed in the sense of you do have kind of both brains if you want to oversimplify where I know a lot of really great creative people, but they have a hard time getting across the bridge of analytics of data to kind of support their narrative. Even though their narrative is actually correct, there's going back to those shared languages. I think there's like marketing language and there's leadership language. And to find somebody that can speak both as fluently as you is you fall in that game changer quadrant of high agency, high talent. And

Go get some time with this man, he's fantastic.

Aaron Orendorff (59:24.406)
This is why I spend my time with you. Get out of here. There's the check. That's how you put a bow on it. Get the hell out of here.

Rabah (59:26.946)
Let's go there's the check there's the compliment baby we got the jet There's the there's the job to be done Okay, folks, we're gonna sign off chase will be back next week, but we'll probably bring Aaron back every three or four shows We really love him We'll sprinkle in some guests chase and I'll probably do three and then we'll sprinkle in a guest every month just to give you Guys some variety Are you doing you doing Sun lane you going out to the Sun lane event San Diego? No

Aaron Orendorff (59:52.366)
Oh, breaking my heart. No, I'll be at Austin though. No kidding. I'm gonna be coming out to marketing land in October.

Rabah (59:58.358)
Oh, in October, okay. That just got on my radar, okay, amazing. Well, worst case, if I don't go to that, I'm taking you out to dinner. What else we got? We have a Newsy, I don't think a Newsy's launched yet. Maybe it is, I'll have to check with Chase. But we possibly Newsy, the YouTube channel's coming to be spun up, and then we're still working on some cool community events. Chase obviously moved over to Heatmap. I have some...

Stuff I got to get sussed out too, but we really want to do an event with you guys We hear you we want to bring a bunch of really amazing people together and just jam so we'll get you more deets there Hey, oh, there's no other way. I'd rather spend a Friday. Thank you so much for the time and then shout out to Louie Adam Cart Blanche hats really cool to see what they've been able to do with that brand It's it's amazing and boy if it if it's on your lid I mean if it's a lid in a owes collection, you know, that's a

Going back to who do you want the compliment from? I mean, you're the hat king. Let's be real. You're the trendsetter when it comes to the lids in DTC and you are now part of the club. So Chase is gonna be a little angry that he's still, but I think he reps dad gang, but you got dad gang too, right? Yeah, you got, yeah. Bart's killing it. Bart is killing it, dude. Powerful Bart. That's it.

Aaron Orendorff (01:01:09.794)
Oh, yeah, I'm across the board. That it's a yeah. No, compliments, compliments. That's how you do it.

Rabah (01:01:18.178)
Alright brother, thanks again for everything. I'll ping you with all the stuff when we launch this. And this is... Way... I knew it was going to be incredible. This was one for the ages. I had some really... Huge epiphanies. That who you want the compliment from is something that I'm going to steal from you till the end of my days. That is... I don't know. It was so good.

Aaron Orendorff (01:01:34.87)
I didn't have that thought when we started. And maybe you're editing this last part out. That's great. I didn't, I, that thought didn't exist in my head until after this last 45 minutes. So I'm getting it too. This is so helpful.

Rabah (01:01:46.334)
It's so clear. It's so, the clarity that it brings me and it gives me again that secondary layer that I think I was missing with the job to be done where figuring out that job to be done is huge. I know how to do that but now that second layer of, because it also informs not only your targeting but again those narratives that you package within those targets. Where it's like certain pockets of people are going to care about certain things and if I can give them the correct narrative because I know they care about again the retention or their.

Their founder led so they need to talk their founder like it's brilliant stuff man. Brilliant stuff. You did not disappoint Alright folks. Well, we'll see you all next week again. Erin. Thank you so much. Go get Erin's time. Go follow him He has a fantastic feed candidly and to be fair you do some decent work on LinkedIn I don't know why I'm such a LinkedIn hater. It's like a decent platform I know people doing numbers over there and I just I have yet to make the Trump so I need to I need to get Over there, but both of his feeds are fantastic. And then definitely go check out Ricart

Have a great weekend, Ayo. I can't, what? So I'll see you in like a month then. Oh my gosh, my day is just getting better and better and better. Amazing. Thank you so much for your time, brother. Enjoy the PNW. I'm sure the weather is getting really nice now. You're not in that cold yet, and it's just, it's glorious up there. I need to make it up to Ben. I heard Ben is one of the most magical places on the planet. I have a friend, a fellow, Oregonian? Is that proper? Yeah, Oregonian, and she said Ben is nothing. It's just magical, the park.

Aaron Orendorff (01:02:46.658)
Yep. Yep!

Aaron Orendorff (01:03:01.71)
weeks at all.

Aaron Orendorff (01:03:05.506)
That's right, Oregonian, down there.

Rabah (01:03:12.474)
the waterfalls, everything up there. So enjoy all that. And that's it, folks. That's another growth fault in the books. Thanks again, Ayo.