John Roman joined Adel Rovcanin of FlyRank AI to explore the evolution of BattlBox from a subscription service into a community-driven brand.
John is the Co-Founder and CEO of BattlBox, the outdoor and survival gear subscription he grew into a $20M+ direct-to-consumer brand with its own Netflix series, "Southern Survival." He came from a B2B SaaS background, fell for recurring revenue, and turned BattlBox into one of the best examples in all of ecommerce of winning with content, community, and retention instead of endless discounting. If you want to see how you build a brand people actually love, BattlBox is the case study.
And it's close to home: BattlBox is a brand we've worked with at FlyRank since the beginning. So you're hearing from an operator whose brand we know inside out.
What John will get into:
- How he scaled a subscription brand to eight figures
- Why community and content beat discounts every time
- How his team uses AI
- What still works today, and what he'd do differently
John is one of the most open, generous operators in DTC, so bring your questions. There's a live Q&A.
Great for Marketing track folks, and honestly worth it for everyone!
Transcript from video:
0:02 Okay. Okay. I believe we are live. Uh all right everyone. Uh welcome. I'm excited about this session in particular because today's uh we today we have a special guest and John Roman. Uh John is the CEO and co-founder of BattlBox. And
0:19 yeah, if you don't know BattlBox, you know, let me put it this way. He took an outdoor and survival gear subscription and grew it into a brand doing over $20 million a year. and they even had their own Netflix special uh called S Southern Survival. We've been working together
0:35 for a while now and he's he's been with Fly Rank since the beginning. So, it's actually a really really huge honor for me to to intro John and you know have you guys talk to him and have him tell you his story. So, John, without further ado, uh please welcome to the stage. Hi.
0:55 Hey man, good to see you dude. This is great. Yeah, it's it's amazing. It's amazing to have you and in this scenario because obviously I've been a fan for a while now and uh you know you've been uh you know doing your thing for for many years now and like honestly following
1:10 your journey has been educational for me as well. We've worked together for a while now. Yeah. Yeah. Like since the beginning of Flink so you know and then with with Allen it goes way be way beyond that. So yeah, been a fan since the beginning.
1:26 Been a fan of the journey and you know for you guys out there. It's been educational, you know, uh watching John doing his thing uh over the years for me and for the team as well with the you know now live shopping since that's the new thing. But we can get into that a bit later. uh just for as a beginning
1:44 John if you don't mind could you tell us you know more about yourself and like just you know how you how you got involved with with your life or with your career and then BattlBox uh how it grew into what it is today.
1:56 Yeah. Um so yeah so BattlBox has been been around since we launched in February 2015. So um it's it's been quite quite the journey now. It's been uh over a decade. Um, as you said, um, I've known Allen now for we're we're getting pretty close to that decade, too. I think about eight years. Um, that was the first time we we we worked together. Um, and it's been obviously a
2:23 a a great relationship and it's grown and Fly Rank in the mix. Um, yeah. So, we started off as uh subscription box, which um I don't like that that term
2:36 anymore um just because I think it was a it was almost a fad. Um but we we quickly knew that if it was a fad, we had to kind of grow grow and have additional revenue and additional vision and be something bigger and greater than
2:52 just that and and truly a brand. So, that's what we did. So, we focused on content from from the jump. If you've ever seen a BattlBox video, um you've
3:01 seen a gentleman, Brandon Curran, um goes by Curran, uh bearded gentleman that that talks about BattlBox. Um in recent years, you've seen additional creators um such as Joey, but Brandon started off as a customer of ours and he was a full paying customer. There was no deal. he was doing his own content and we identified quickly that that um what
3:27 he was doing was pretty cool and it kind of aligned with what we wanted to do which was be more than just this this monthly box. We wanted to focus on content, focus on community. Um so within a year we uh we we had brought
3:43 him on full-time as a team member and and really doubled down on the content piece. Um, as we scaled, as we grew, um, as we met Allen and moved over to Shopify and and really took the business to the next level, we continued to
3:58 double down and triple down on content, um, and started building a content team. was it's very unusual for you look at present day a business our size to have four full-time video editors in house um you know multiple multiple other people touching touching the side of content two full-time creators in house that
4:19 their single job is is coming up with cool content so we wrote that um that obviously led to our Netflix original series um Southern Survival in 2020 um at that point we uh we thought we were possibly at at the top of where we could take the business. Um well, some
4:42 of us did, some of us did not. Um I thought we could keep going. Uh my one of my business partners at the time thought this this was the top, which um spoiler alert, it wasn't. And um because of that, we had to either buy each other out or find a a suitor for the business. We ended up selling
5:03 the business in uh in in October 2021. So we were acquired by a a spa. Uh so we became publicly traded. Um day one of the deal, my business partner was able to walk away. We didn't need him. he hadn't really been doing much for the business in a couple years anyway. Um so he was able day one retire be gone. Uh the rest
5:28 of us stayed on. Um quickly found um to no fault of the company that acquired us but public markets were were difficult for spaxs and um it forced a opportunity for us to buy the business back again. Um so we bought the business back took it private again in April 2023 and uh there were there were from 2020
5:55 from the two years or one and a half years of of them owning the business there were some challenges. Uh we we didn't we we shrunk a little bit in size. We stopped our year-over-year growth. Um, but as soon as we got the business back and didn't have to follow all the rules of a publicly traded
6:12 company and and and get a little uh scrappy again, we jumped back in the saddle and continued growth. And uh here we are today where it's the largest we've ever been. Um this will be the best year we've ever had. And um you know the the membership as we call it now which is that core monthly physical box um it's so much more today than than
6:36 than just the box. It's it truly is a community. So we have a private Facebook group where you have to be an active paid member to be in there. I think we have around 11,000 of the members in there. Um we're we're constantly putting out content on all channels. We've launched live shopping as you hinted to which has gone in in we launched in
7:00 April of last year. In less than a year it became our second largest channel only behind direct to consumer our website which is wild because we had some very large channels already. We had Amazon, we had TikTok shop, we had eBay, we had Fear, we had all these additional channels and and somehow this live shopping piece
7:21 in in less than a year passed them on on uh on Run. So, I think that's kind of a quick quick summary. Yeah. And uh I guess we and I I'd love to like for the guys and girls like listening to the to the stream, I'd love to kind of go deeper into like live
7:40 shopping because you know that may be as well like a a new channel for for a few folks out there for a few brands that you know like not even considering it and I think like all the other channels have already gotten you know their attention and this one is rather new you know at least in a in a sense that like
7:57 that you're doing. So maybe in the like somewhere down the down time down time down time down time down the line we can mention that a bit uh you know more thoroughly. Uh what I wanted to kind of highlight is you or what you mentioned is uh what how you grew businesses content and community. You never mentioned like any discounts you never
8:14 mentioned like I don't know flash sales or stuff like that and especially cuz you know knowing battlBox and what it represents it's you know survival gear.
8:22 It's preparedness. It's uh you know finding people that are honestly thinking about like how are they going to uh you know in what scenarios they can they can find themselves in which are obviously some very emotional so if they can find very like-minded people
8:38 that would mean a lot you know in it goes well beyond like just the products themselves it goes into advice it goes into like just a support I guess uh because how do you feel like uh what has these communities and what initiatives have you done to bring these communities uh to these people into a community like what any specific I guess initiatives did you do?
8:59 Yeah. So it no it's a it's a great point and it becomes Yeah. I mean don't get me wrong we still have a traditional
9:06 e-commerce funnel. There's discounts in the mix. Uh we still spend more than I'd like on Meta. Um, and it's we need to um, now it serves as a little bit of top offunnel, but it's really just a lot of middlefunnel because we're we're onboarding um, these users into our ecosystem via our organic video content or our organic written content. Shout
9:31 out fly rank. Um, it's it's really just content as a whole that brings them in. Then they peruse, they read, they watch and you know at that point Facebook or a email capture or a email blast something gets them further along in the funnel.
9:51 To your question of what what we do for the community. Um so at its core is that Facebook membersonly group. Um so we've empowered um any given time about six to seven moderators. They're they're paying customers um that are with us that we
10:07 see that are engaging and and ultimately often times know the business just as well as we do. Right? There's a question from a customer and they're jumping and answering it before before our team can. So when we see those indicators of movement is a moderator. Um so we have six or seven moderators in there. So all day long, every day there's there's conversations, right?
10:29 um scenarios, someone camping, someone out with the family hiking and taking a picture, um someone running across something and asking a question. It's just it's a true community, right? It it runs on its own. Um ultimately, we don't
10:45 want to, but we could step back from it and it would still exist without us. Uh which is kind of really the litmus test of like is this a real community? Does it does it survive without you proddding and engaging? um engage baiting into it.
11:01 So that at its core is the main thing, but we do we do a lot of other stuff, right? So we'll um you know last month um Sheay who who who leads community for us um had a had a hiking event. It was near a a a there was a knife um conference and uh said, "Hey, we're going to be there. Anybody want to go
11:25 hiking?" And then on the so we do small things like that meet and greets. On the larger scale um our biggest thing outside of the the group is and it supports the group is battle games. So once a year we take 10 of our contestants. They um they're able to we put in the box this golden ticket uh once a year. We put 250 of them in there. If they get a golden ticket, um there's uh some instructions on the
11:57 back, a QR code, they submit a video, follow some other rules. We end up selecting 10, which is very difficult to only to get it down to 10, but we then fly them um to battle games. It's a full week event, several days, uh multiple rounds each day, competition, survival testing, scenarios, um and then we move them through.
12:21 There's eliminations just like a traditional um game show and uh the winner gets $25,000 in cash. Um so we've done two seasons. Our third season we're filming in September. So it's it's definitely uh definitely unusual for a
12:37 brand to do something like this, but um it's just it speaks to kind of your point earlier about building the community. 100%. And obviously you know me and you know us working with you know a few brands here and there and like obviously over the years you get exposure to to a
12:52 lot of brand owners. Uh only a few kind of think about going beyond like the website itself and ending the products and obviously the packaging should be nice and so on but only a few like think about like how to nurture these people into lifelong fans of your brand of your work and sometimes even of of the brand owner you know itself like you mentioned you know you
13:18 were uh I forgot the name but the the your your guy that went from your customer into your content creator Brandon. Yeah, sorry, Brandon. Shout out. Shout out Brandon by the way. You know, like I assume like bunch of people be will become fans both of you and Brandon and bunch of guys from uh you
13:35 know, bunch of the team members from BattlBox, which is honestly amazing and something that we want to do at Fly Rank as well. Uh you know, for the guys and girls watching this stream, uh Discord is coming. I know we've been saying this for a for a few days now, but it is coming. And uh yeah, hopefully you guys
13:51 will be able to talk there, you know, exchange information and like like we mentioned in one of the previous streams, find your co-founder there,
13:59 find your, you know, business opportunities there, maybe, you know, spark up some ideas and conversations and that's what this thing is uh all about. Uh but yeah, back to to the to the topic.
14:11 I I'm I'm excited about about [clears throat] that, too. Like that that'll be that'll be cool. Discord's great for that. You you you'll get an invite soon. So, but yeah, please yeah, folks here at internship have been waiting for a few days and asking like, "Hey, isn't is is
14:25 Discord coming?" And we are always like, "Hey, it's coming. It's coming." But yeah, uh you guys have to understand this we have to run a full-time business, but yeah, it's coming. I promise. Uh anyways, back to to BattlBox. So, you you when you started 2015, did you what was the plan? That
14:41 that's my question. Like what was the plan? And did you in could you imagine that like where this journey journey was going to take you and my I guess in addition is what what were the expectations in terms of like I'll do
14:55 this marketing channel or I do this marketing initiative and this will be the outcome whether that worked out or not then I guess that that's the question you what were the expectations in terms of like input and output so yeah maybe it's a long one but so no great question so I can sit here
15:13 and tell you that that we knew what we were doing, but we didn't. We just we just we just went. We just did. Um so we had uh we we launched um obviously very centric on our one offering. We only had one offering, the subscription box. We came up with four tiers. Same four tiers you see today. Pricing is not
15:35 the same, but same four tiers. Um, and our assumption was that the most popular box, most popular option was going to be the basic box. It was the most affordable uh lowest cost. Um, at the time I believe it was $25 a month and the Pro Plus, which is 1701 175 now. Um,
16:02 uh, plus plus sales tax depending on your area plus shipping. So around 200 um USD. Uh we assumed, you know, maybe someone might might select that one. Um we we didn't know what we didn't know.
16:18 We we thought it would probably fall like a waterfall. The basic would be the biggest, a little bit less in the advance, a little bit less in the pro, and then maybe a handful in the pro plus. Um from the jump it was it was pro plus was the most popular. Um, so I think initially we had probably about 30%
16:41 35% that were in the Pro Plus. So it was the strongest one. Now as we fast forward a a decade later, um, typically around 50% opt for for the largest largest one. And in hindsight, it's it is the most there's the most value there, right? you're getting [snorts] so
17:02 much more than um than what you would at the at the lower tier because they stack on top of each other. Um to your question on on the initial marketing plan um 100% Facebook that was it. we we we didn't know what we didn't know and you know launching a Facebook ad um anyone can do and if you're you know not
17:25 sure what to do um there's a a million YouTube videos to watch and get a quick quick uh lesson on on Facebook ads. Now, I will tell you anybody can run a Facebook ad, but really um the so the barrier to entry to be able to run one yourself is pretty low, but there's the the the people with the skills that that are top level that have that have put in the 10,000 hours on it that are that are paying attention to to the changes in in
17:58 uh the algorithm, the roll out of Andromeda, um that are next level. And you know, I'm not able to do that, right? I can go in there, I can launch a Facebook ad, but I haven't put the 10,000 hours in to to be at that level that that uh luckily we have partners that are. Um, but that was the
18:15 assumption was we didn't know any better. So, Facebook ads and that's it. It wasn't until uh we had a uh really scary moment um about uh six, seven months into the business where our Facebook account got shut down. and 99% of our traffic was was coming was was Google Analytics source uh Facebook. So,
18:42 it was at that moment um after we were running and we literally just hit a wall dead in the water that we were like, "Oh, well, maybe we should have um not all of our eggs in one basket." And uh we we quickly diversified. We um at that point we weren't even f we hadn't focused on content yet. We were
19:04 like okay well what else do we need? Oh well we need Google. Okay well let's launch some Google ads and okay should we try at the time Twitter? Should we try Pinterest? Uh where where else do we want to go? And um several months later
19:20 we came up with the strategy of of content. Um also watching you know Brandon as a paying customer putting out content and people liking it. Um, yeah.
19:30 So, you know, we we measured we we got it close enough on the initial um where all of our pivots afterwards were were smaller pivots um over time, but at its core, you know, it those four tiers were were seemed to be correct. Um and unfortunately, Meta is still a large
19:53 amount of our spend. Um it's tough to get away from them fully. Yeah, I I can I mean obviously that's uh if what's working what is working so you know why why move away from it. Yeah.
20:07 But yeah, definitely the topic of diversification was something that we touched upon in one of our previous sessions last week or the week before where it's like obviously super important like having meta is amazing
20:21 and you know a lot of business a lot of people build their like drop shipping businesses just uh you know on the back of meta ads and like running you know successful campaigns obviously doing the 10 thousand hours that you that you mentioned that then you know they have like I they find like the winner product, the
20:39 winner ad and they make a lot of money and then you know if it gets you know shut down then obviously it's a huge huge issue. Uh for you I guess at the
20:48 time like it was 2015 2016 maybe you know I I'm sure that there was a a lot uh less resources on what to do in those situations I guess. Yeah. And yeah we got we got we got super super lucky that we got our account back. I I would say I would say most would not
21:08 have gotten their account back and that would have been the end of the business. We pure luck. one one of our customers worked at Facebook and um knew we're the the cubicles of the um the department that kills kills
21:28 accounts and and and literally we had a a a battlebox forum.com at the time which was like a white labeled pro
21:37 proboards um Reddit style and uh he was like hey I work at Facebook do you want me to go talk to the department for you. And we were like, "Yes, that would that would be great." And he went and talked to him, came back, reported to us that, "Hey, I talked to him. They're going to review it and turn it back on." And it turned on. Wow.
21:56 Um, pure luck. I think without that, probably wouldn't be here today. That is an astounding level of luck and yeah, happy for you obviously. But yeah, guys, by the way, this doesn't happen a
22:12 lot. So, and there are there are I I'm you know moving in these ecom circles you tend to learn a lot of these like you know maybe grey hat strategies uh but yeah there are services like you know unbanning your meta account. So in case in the future if you ever like you
22:28 get your meta uh account banned for whatever reason it may be there are resources there are people who could reach out and then provide those types of services. I'm not saying you know I'm endorsing it or anything but yeah I I know that there are so yeah but
22:45 it is it is tough like you basically depend your entire business or majority of your business uh you know on the thing and you maybe make uh one or two mistakes that uh you you didn't know it was just due to you know lack of knowledge okay this particular messaging this particular creative does not work
23:02 so yeah uh especially like in the and I mentioned this in previous uh video like in these your money, your life uh type of categories where it's either your financial uh well-being or your you know health or your general well-being. Uh those type of products have to be really really carefully advertised. So yeah, just uh that's a reminder for these guys
23:24 and thank you for bringing bringing it up. Uh what I wanted to also ask is like since the pricing stuff you know like basic plan was underperforming compared to your expectations and the the pre the premium plus plan was obviously overperforming and that's amazing. What do you attribute um that success to? Like how what how what do you believe?
23:45 Obviously, the value is there, but for the people that are just getting to know Battlebox, they're still not subscribers, maybe first time, you know, why do they why did they opt in uh for the premium plan? Did you talk to these people? How do you get feedback?
24:00 Yeah. So, it it it truly is. Um so, when people when people come in now, um I'd like to say that all the additional value we provide is is part of the reason. And I think it is part of the reason, but at its core, it is it is the
24:15 physical box that that provides a lot of the value. And it it's it's it's truly that though. That's that's the the main thing is that it's just so much more um bang for your buck. Like we provide a lot of value outside of the box. Um obviously the community aspect is is a exists and it's very important. It's
24:37 tough to put a dollar value on on community. Um and but we have a lot of other things. We have the battle vault. So think um you know once once you're a member and you go to a certain part of the website, we have 600 SKs um all priced at the not just the lowest you can buy anywhere, but
25:01 like significantly um lower than anywhere else. And it's uh we're we're not we're not running it we're not running that um as revenue profit profit generating. We're running that as retention. Um so we have little little tools like that. Um but they you get access to the battle vault even at the basic level. Um so you would think that if it at some point it might hurt us on on the the breakdown of basic all the way up to pro
25:31 plus. It's it's truly the value. Um, it's the the the higher the tier, the more bang for your buck you get. Um, you the basic ends up being uh multiple items um not a single item. And when you're in the higher tiers, pro and pro plus, it's typically one larger item. Pro Plus is always one premium knife.
25:55 Pro is normally one premium piece of gear. and and that's the attractive piece because you're getting that huge buying power of us getting the buying power and and and passing it on to the customer. So, I wish I wish there was more of a secret, but it's just just it's it's a better product, a good
26:12 offer. Yeah. Yeah. uh definitely um one of the future uh lectures and I keep referencing like the internship but there in the curriculum I'm just trying to like help you know folks kind of understand like what uh we're going to talk about and you're touching upon all
26:28 of these things um like good offer how to create one and uh we already had one assignment like that so you know we we're still looking through through those but yeah I appreciate every single one of you that submitted uh those uh to us uh cuz yeah we wanted some help with
26:43 the fly rank offer definitely. Uh we do have like you know to talk to folks who are just like hey I get it and I want in and some of the folks need more I guess you know persuading and like more just talking to them and explaining the whole process and what it looks like.
26:59 Uh but yeah thank you so much for the background and everything that you know you told us so far. Uh moving forward and like I guess moving in the present uh day a lot has changed I assume. So yeah, what would you say like uh what's the biggest change for your team, your
27:15 marketing process since the emergence of AI and especially in the latter years where it's like AI is basically really really good you know it's really intelligent it's less hallucinating doing more things autonomously so yeah how how would you say describe like 2026
27:31 compared to like you know to 2020 for example or you know some sometime before it's it's changed it's changed a Um, so our our approach towards it the whole time is um is not the doom and gloom.
27:49 We're all going to everyone's going to lose their job. I I I've never looked at it in that lens. I look at it as how how can I use it as an enabler, right? How can I take what I currently do and 10x the the output, 10x the the quality? And I think that's exactly what
28:10 it is, right? So, um, we've continued to hire more people, right? Um, but what we've seen is, um, each each person, the people that truly embrace using it. And to be clear, there's not using using it is not the same for everybody, right? So, I have a I have an
28:35 example of of someone that had to answer questions to customers and they were literally taking the question, screenshotting the question, putting it in a chat GPT, getting the answer, copy and pasting the answer to the customer and they were
28:52 doing that for four hours a day. That is not good use of of AI. uh when you when you use AI like that, your four hours of your work is not needed because you can build a quick script to do that. That that's not that's not using AI correctly, right?
29:11 Using AI correctly is enabling it to support you, right? Um where if if I had a team of 10, what would I have them do, right? What would I have them do to support my mission, my vision, my value, my goals? and enabling and and and
29:28 creating under that lens is is the key. And when you start doing that, um I think that's the real unlock. And we've seen it on on a lot a lot of our a lot of our teams. Um, you know, we were uh for for a while we would, you know, we we create constant landing pages, right? As we're
29:54 testing new new iterations and new copy and new pitches and new hooks and traditionally creating those landing pages was a was a big lift. Um, but you know with AI we were able to streamline it faster and what would take weeks now takes takes an hour. Um, and that was that was a a really cool unlock. Um, a
30:19 lot of stuff that another example um just because we're doing it this week. So our head of sales, head of partnerships um he we we need to get the ssales activity up. So we basically treated, okay, well Chuck, if you have
30:37 this team that's not physically there, agents, AI, like how would you if you had a team of three, what would you have them do? Well, I would have this one doing research, researching potential brands for us to reach out to for battle games and I'd have I'd have this one
30:54 working on emails and getting the copyright and testing messaging and cool. Well, let's let's build that. So, every morning, um, Chuck goes in, boots up his computer, and in the middle of the night, um, we have one agent doing research on brands, adding him to HubSpot, which is our CRM for sales. Um, we have another one validating email
31:19 addresses, checking multiple places, and we have a third one that takes that information, puts drafts in his Gmail account. Um, so when he wakes up and oh, and and one creates the HubSpot leads.
31:32 So he comes in, he has these 12 drafts every morning, he reads them, make sure they're right, hits, they get added to the CRM. The CRM has already been built with that lead. And that would traditionally take him to work on those emails, even if he like was copy and pasting and like
31:50 making shortcuts and not personalizing them like he should. But that those 12 emails might might easily have taken three, four hours with research and validating the emails. It takes a while and making sure the emails are all right. But now he comes in in the
32:06 morning and you know, he might tweak one of them, but they're normally all right. He's just opening up. Yep. Send. and he'll get to a point where he'll trust what he's built well enough where he won't have to check. Um it's just not there yet, right? Um so it's little it's little nuances like that. Um
32:28 it's it's you know for all of our videos and ideation of our content. We have this content calendar and you know the
32:35 team is taking the concepts and they're they're leveraging AI to come up with the scripts. They know our voice. They know how we speak. We've we've trained
32:44 the LLM on on what what it should be for Battlebox, what it should be for Brandon, what it should be for Joey, and um it just it just saves time. So, I think I've said it a bunch of different ways, but it's all the same thing, right? It's it's not how do you use AI to do your job for you? That's the wrong
33:06 lens. It's how do you use AI to to have a team of 10. Yeah. And and when you when you when you switch it the lens like that, you can accomplish anything. And I think that's what we look for when we're hiring now.
33:21 It's it's people that are able to to understand AI and how to harness it. Um because if you if you figure out how to harness it and look at it in that lens, the world is is especially right now in the next few years, the world's your
33:37 oyster. Like you can create like you could never create before. Um you're basically coming into an opportunity with a with a team of 10 behind you supporting you.
33:48 And I would say that even like the since the content creation or not content creation but rather like uh this product creation has been commoditized almost uh that gives marketing that much more
34:02 importance. Uh since you know everybody can now create stuff where previously it was uh only reserved for the engineers that were you know capable of doing it.
34:13 nowadays, you know, you know, everybody can do it. Maybe not that to the level of, you know, whatever the the the engineers can, but at least like the
34:22 MVP, you know, the the stuff that get just validates uh the product and the the idea and then marketing is what determines who gets successful uh and who isn't.
34:34 That's at least my opinion on it. You know, I can create an app that is, you know, while like basically your fin tracking your finances and your
34:41 spending, you know. I can create it and then an engineer can create it but who's going to do who's going to have more users at the end of the day you know so it's uh it's definitely you know getting more competitive but at the same time the the competition is changing I would
34:57 I should say like the field of competition is is changing humans aren't humans aren't going anywhere though like it's you really aren't like you're still needed right like to your point on the the engineer right yeah I can I can vibe code something and get it to
35:12 here, but like at the end of the day, I'm going to make mistakes um along along the way, right? So, so really figuring out what excites you and what you want to focus on, whether it's whether it's marketing, whether it's development, um you know, there's so many different different avenues to go
35:30 still focus on that and get those core competencies and then have AI support you because then the day you do need to look at it, you do need to tweak it because you'll have the vision for what what's needed. Mhm. Yeah. 100%. Uh what I also wanted to ask uh content creation
35:46 process both in terms of uh you know creating YouTubes, creating uh organic social posts, but also in terms of ads uh do you did did the process change and I mean I believe it it has but uh how did it change like what tools did you start to use? Do do you have any
36:04 specific tools? Does it even matter what tools do you do do to use? But that's like the general question that we see. Um, so it the process has changed. Um, but
36:18 nothing's nothing's been replaced. Um, we're just able to have more iterations faster. We're able to edit stuff faster. um you know, we might we might leverage um a a tool to build uh thumbnails, but sum we're you know, and and it might and we might use AI to to cut something down, but not not do a full edit. So
36:45 again, it's it's the same thing where um it's changed the but the process hasn't really it's just we've been gotten faster and more efficient with it because we're leveraging we're not replacing like I I don't believe that um there's some scenarios podcast for example the the finished product is pretty good but there's there's not a
37:10 lot of worlds where the AI tool can take it from A to Z fully. Um, there needs to be an orchestrator in there. Um, which is which is you, which is me, which is everybody watching.
37:22 Like, um, yeah, I'm I use a I use I think about all the tools that I use and it's it's a lot. I'm I'm impartial. I use probably Claude Co-work the most. Um but but I
37:38 use Gemini sometimes and I you I use I've been using chat GPT for some image editing um which I never thought that I
37:48 would I would be using that but it's it's as of late for image editing. Chat GBT has um has been performing better for me than than typically Gemini would be where I would go. Um, and just to define like light image editing. Um, yeah, taking a, you know, it's easy with with mobile devices now, you can you can take you can kill a
38:11 background really quick, stuff like that. Um, but it's still a couple tests and then if I want a new background, I've got to find it, put it in there.
38:20 Um, I can do it all for mobile with with a multitude of apps. It's not rocket, even native apps. Um, but it still takes a few minutes. Um, and you know, if I'm able, if it takes me six minutes, I can toss it in chat GPT to change the
38:36 background to this, which it creates, and I have it in, you know, 45 seconds. So, yeah, I bunch of bunch of tools. [laughter]
38:48 I mean, that's the the whole point. we get the questions and especially the the machine learning track or the back end track like the technologies itself like you know what what do I use should I use this or u that's our point is like it doesn't really matter because it changes
39:05 so often so yeah you can't yeah yeah it's it's either you know you can't be too oblivious of like I'm going to use claw for the rest of my life because it's the best it's the best at this field for now and maybe you know in a month uh chp PT
39:20 comes up with something else which kind of is you know doing better stuff and like creates better content or creates better code. So you can't be u too too sticky I guess with too choosy uh but using finding a good mix between all or different tools and then services again
39:37 there are many uh amazing agencies creating amazing ads or crazy creating amazing edits of videos. So yeah those are still humans doing it. And fun fact, for the last video for on this channel, um I I did the thumbnail and I just put my image and said like write this to the
39:53 left. It's for YouTube thumbnail and it was one prompt in one sentence and yeah, I put that in like leg legitimately that
40:00 image I put it as the thumbnail. I'm not saying it's good, but it was just that easy. So, but it worked, right?
40:06 Yeah, it's it's there, you know, and the the alternative was for me to send it to someone to to ask them or me just doing
40:14 it, you know, personally spending like five, 10, half an hour, whatever it then putting it there. Maybe at some point, you know, there there is there are differences in how how you create YouTube thumbnails, but even like u a
40:29 year ago, I couldn't create YouTube thumbnail that good within one prompt. it wasn't possible but it would always like do something something crazy and you know only the prompt itself if you put YouTube thumbnail it does the you know the highlights and the emphasis of certain things and I just tried it because uh yeah I feel it's in the
40:49 nature of this program to kind of use uh AI and sometimes it will be visible visibly AI you know and some folks might not like it but the the point is hey let's just create stuff let's make it good and if we don't have time. Let's just do it and then we'll fix it later.
41:06 That's kind of the whole point of you know using AI just like okay let's try it and maybe people don't like it so we know now we had data and now we
41:14 can act upon that data. Uh that would be I guess one one of my I guess final questions because I know you have other things to attend to today. So I would like to ask you like in terms of data and like how you analyze data with your team whether it's uh you know email open
41:30 rates whether it's uh meta data from meta campaigns uh your sales how do you analyze that do you have like a process and like how do you come to conclusions based on those based on that data and how and do you use of course AI to help you with those with that process? Yeah.
41:47 So, we're we're um very very very data driven. So, at the end of the day, um we're we're data nerds and that's that's that that's the truth. Now the thing about data is it can take a lot of time to go through
42:03 comb through I think you know you asked me the question earlier about things that have changed from 2020 to to now and in 2020 I was maybe pulling a an export out of Shopify pulling an export out of Recharge pulling an export out of Clavio um spending hours marrying them all together having to Google certain Excel formulas to to pull
42:33 this from here and it took it took a while right it would take hours and hours and hours um to get the data how you wanted so you could analyze um now that's vastly changed right with uh
42:47 again um you know as of right now because who knows that might be different in a year um but right now there's some great um MCPS piece for Claude, co-work for Claude where I can connect Klavyo in, I can connect Shopify in um and and with that I can I can have it do all that heavy lifting um and and
43:11 present. I literally yesterday I had it take um I I had it basically create um this was something for battle games was pulling data from video submissions. Um it was then pulling data from Shopify, creating this spreadsheet uh with um this grading skill we came up for these for the contestants with three different
43:35 five different uh cells for each of the three judges. So 15 points and it was creating a formula on another tab to
43:44 automatically stack rank them with with their ratings. And like that would have taken I would have had to marry two different um CSVs. like that would have that might have taken me a whole day. Um, and now it took 20 minutes. Um, it took 20
43:50 minutes for for uh for Opus to to pop it out, but it popped it out and and it was it was right. So, I think that's that's been a major game changer. And to your question, I think so many times and I think so many people are guilty of this is wanting wanting all this data. I want to see this dashboard. I want to
44:22 look at this. I want to know this KPI, this metric. Um, and I'm guilty of it as well. And what I'm guilty of, um, and
44:30 I'm conscious of it, so I work on it constantly. But I think it's a problem for everybody is data is only great and data only matters if there's actionable insights from it. If you can't take something from what you're seeing and
44:45 actually apply something, then it's just noise. And I think that's the biggest mistake people make. They're like, "Oh, I can get all this data now because of these MCPs, and look at this huge dashboard.
44:57 I'm going to spend 30 minutes looking at it, but I didn't have to spend six hours building it. Look how fast and efficient I'm going." But if there's no actionable insights from that dashboard, if you can't say because of this, I need to do this. Then what are you doing? Why are you even looking at it?
45:12 Um, that's my that's my hot take for the moment. [laughter]
45:18 vanity metrics as they call it. So 100%. Yeah. Thank you so much. If you have like a few more minutes, I'd love to I'd love to go through these some of these questions that the folks asked in the chat. Uh so first one and coincidentally called brain box. So similar to the bellbox I should say is Roman with your
45:37 experience. How should we get folks to pay for our service when they see our ad? Uh it's a bit of a uh yeah it's a bit of a maybe I guess if you you can go like for in the example of battlBox what did you feel uh how what to what type of messaging do people respond in terms of like your products obviously?
45:57 Yeah. So to your point I think it all it all speaks um every demographic's different every buyer's different depending on your ICP. Um and I think really really testing a multitude of of options. Um, I think you can use an LOM to get concepts on the different types of messaging you should do. Um, traditionally speaking, um, if you can if you can put messaging that connects
46:26 and makes an emotional connection, plays on some sort of emotion, those tend to typically work work better. Um, in fact, I would argue that any ad that converts well, whether it's blatantly obvious or not, is attaching to some sort of emotion um to push the purchase along.
46:47 Yeah. The closer I should say, the closer you are to the to getting banned by meta is usually the that's the indicator.
46:56 Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Thank you for that. Uh, we have another one from Hamza. How much of that content is actually AI now sversus a couple of years ago? Uh, and AI and has AI ever written something so good it beat your own team's version?
47:12 Um, so so how much of the content is actually AI? So, um, from a from a video perspective, none of it is. None of it is. We might use AI to kind of do some editing. Um, for the most part, um, and when we do tests pretty often where we'll spin up some some AI edited videos to to run across our traditional videos, our normal stuff
47:42 still outperforms um AI, a full-blown AI video. I will say the only exception, we had some um UGC videos, right? Our customers using the gear that we ran as ads and we did a um Brandon who we've talked about. We did
48:02 uh we created his AI voice sounds very similar to him. We fed it a script and the UGC script for a couple of weeks when his voice outperformed all of our other acts. And we were shocked because to me I know Brandon and I was like it doesn't sound enough like him. It's not
48:24 really him. I can tell. But other people couldn't tell. Um eventually it stopped performing well. where there was a few weeks span where it was it was our best performing ad and it was literally UGC video content that AI could absolutely
48:39 edit together and a AI voice over. We fed a script that was AI uh written by AI but it did perform with the best. That's that's amazing. Yeah. often times uh we we see ads and there's a familiar voice and with it's a random brand like
48:56 it can be even like a unknown brand and you see like a hear like a Jordan Peterson voice or Joe Rogan voice and these people know what they're doing like copying their voices using 11 Labs or some other tools like that copy someone's voice it's super cheap as well
49:12 so you can copy someone's voice and just basically use it in your own 11 11 Labs is what we used for or too. Yeah. And 11 Labs and you know for you for folks that are not familiar is the leader uh in terms of like the the
49:28 the quality of voice and the the range of voices they offer. So yeah, but there are really good alternatives as well. Uh but yeah, I'm not saying like there is
49:36 some legality to it and you should always, you know, use your likeness and and stuff like that, but they're really, you know, good strategies where you can,
49:43 you know, be close to like what's uh you know, what's working and then but still remain, you know, fully owning owning this this voice or this thing that you know, you were doing your your image, for example, your likeness. Uh but yeah, the the voice stuff, the voice cloning
49:59 is amazing and yeah, it it kind of gets you into multiple places at once. Uh okay, I think we we have time for one more. Um okay. Uh what do you think? Okay, so this one.
50:11 What do you think is the gap in the modern AI applications and how you envision the future to look like? And this put your engineering hat on and yeah, answer this one if you could.
50:22 Um so it's a great question. I think I I think honestly there's there's a lot of gaps right now. I think I think there's a gap in in every every aspect of it. Um I haven't found a single there's not a single piece where it's it's perfect,
50:40 right? Um so I I I'm not sure if it'll I think it'll consistently improve. There might be some parts when you look at the whole thing that get pretty seamless and perfect. Um but we're not there yet. And I I don't think we're going to exponentially get there. I think the the future is um is us humans as orchestrators um as as as managing and guiding the the
51:15 handful of AI applications. Um yeah, I don't I don't see that part changing. I think it's going to get exponentially better, but it there's still going to be that gap and and the gap's going to exist in most um at least for the next several years.
51:36 And the better it gets, I guess people will gravitate towards the real thing more, you know, because the when the differences uh between real and and AI
51:45 gets blurry, uh people will gravitate towards real more. So, you know, finding people like yourself that talk about your brand like that show how to survive like in in in wilderness situations that the the AI can't replicate Bellbox's community for example.
52:02 Correct. And AI AI can't can't truly replicate what you and I just did for the past hour either.
52:11 Yeah. There's there's been attempts. Hopefully not not soon yet. Yeah. there there's been attempts but like it is nowhere near where it would need to be. Yeah. No, that's uh something that uh we agree here at Fly Rank and this is part of the you know vision behind and the
52:29 goal behind Flyank AI internship is okay you know AI is you know doing its thing but rather than being scared by it let's just embrace it and let's work with it to 10x our performance to 10x our efficiency to harness you know yeah harness it. Exactly. Uh John, uh I Yeah, somebody said, "Okay, this one is a fun one, so I I'll just put it in
52:51 there. Uh favorite bellbox product of all time. Show us if you if you got one on hand." Oh man, it's a tough question. Oh man, that's a tough question. You might have stumped me. There's been so many so many products. How do you choose a favorite child?
53:13 Yeah, we've Um, we've we've sent we've sent thousands of products out. Um, let's see. Is there I I have like I I go through like specific products where it's my favorite product for um a period of time. Let's see if we've actually
53:39 I didn't mean I didn't mean to put you on the spot, but uh yeah, actually no, it's a great it's a great question. There is I would I just want to you know tell everybody that uh John is an amazing uh person to talk to in in you know beyond like battle box and asking for advice and stuff like that and you know like I said we at Flanking have learned from him and you know over the years as well.
54:03 Uh he is running onlinequeso.com. Uh so please head to that website, subscribe to the newsletter and you know uh see any stories he puts out there. He
54:15 publishes regularly and folks that he works with publish there as well share amazing advice and yeah uh other than other than online queso. So do you have anything to plug?
54:26 No, I'm keep I keep thinking of this this item. So, I received I received these as a gift which I've been using. Um, one's actually one's from Cevivi We Knife, one's from Fox Knives. They're both very similar. Um, it's just these little tiny mini corambits that uh
54:48 and and what I why I like them is when I'm opening boxes or opening up a an envelope. Um, we haven't ever put them in the box, but they're also they're just sitting right here.
54:59 I guess I've the last couple months I've liked them enough to keep them keep them right by my my [laughter] desk.
55:04 Uh, no online queso. Um, super super present on LinkedIn. Okay. So, make sure to follow him on LinkedIn, like the posts and everything.
55:16 And yeah, you'll see John at his best like doing his everyday tasks. And yeah, honestly, John, what you're doing is somewhat what we try to do with Allan and what Alan is trying to do is publish like the story of like just, you know,
55:30 our day-to-day work and sometimes people will find it valuable, sometimes not, but you know, yeah, it costs nothing to do it. It's just like a few minutes out of the day. So, uh, yeah, thank you for that inspiration as well. And thank you for all the support over the years. It's been nothing but a pleasure to work with
55:46 you and, uh, to to have thish conversation. Hopefully the team uh enjoyed it and you enjoyed it as well. This was fun. Thanks so much for having me. Roy appreciate it. Good. It was good talking. Somebody said share your LinkedIn, John.
55:58 We'll send you an email after after the stream with the John's LinkedIn and online case. So So yeah, you'll get that. Thank you so much, guys. Thank you
56:06 so much, John. And yeah, catch you catch you soon, guys. Take care. All right. Cheers. Cheers.
