The Andrew Faris Podcast

Lots of people have strong opinions about how best to price an ad agencies, and I'm one of them. I've seen this from all sides: brand, agency employee, aggregator CEO, and now agency owner. After all that, I'm convinced that charging a percentage of spend is the best model for agency pricing, at least to a certain stage of DTC businesses. In this episode, I make the case for why, then...

Wayne Borromeo didn't set out to build a water bottle brand. And he still mostly isn't. But what do you do when TikToks of your product go not just viral, but as viral as something can possibly go? Well, you build your seize the opportunity and get as much inventory as you can as fast as you can. On this bonus episode, Andrew & Wayne talk through how Wondery's water bottle rocketed...

I absolutely loved this conversation. When you "get" ecommerce the way that Dan McCormick does, it only makes sense to start a brand yourself and see how far you can take it. Dan's creatine gummy brand, Create, is growing rapidly and turning the corner to profitability, which isn't surprising given his understanding of the space. What IS surprising is just how transparent he'...

I've come to think of scaling a Meta Ads account as happening in two stages: Stage 1: finding the creative messaging that resonates with your customers. This is primarily a truly "creative" problem. But stage 2 is very different: it's about scaling up that messaging into a never-ending stream of highly diverse creative assets. And this is fundamentally an operational challenge. O...

I've never done an episode like this ever before. Nate Lagos's tweet outlining his exact 10 keys to growing Original Grain was so good that I immediately DMed him and said, "Let's talk more about all of these." So that's what we did: from 1-10, we went piece by piece through each of the points on the list and kicked them around. This episode is good because Nate is right...

AOV is either the most overrated or underrated metric in ecommerce, depending on who you ask. So I'm here to answer the question once and for all: does AOV even really matter? It depends. Let me explain. SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE The Andrew Faris Podcast is now available on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ at www.youtube.com/@andrewfarispodcast. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS [00:02:11] AOV is not necessarily as good as...

It's arguably the wildest ride I've ever been on in ecommerce: since beginning to work with Sarah Moret and ⁠ Curie⁠ in January of this year (2023), we've seen massive, rapid growth–and it's been profitable from the start. Oh also: part of that included selling into every Walmart in the US. Just nuts. Sarah is a killer operator and entrepreneur. With a background in both Accounting...

As straightforward as it sounds: 4 steps that go into generating creative that actually performs. This is the foundation of my approach with my clients, and I've seen it produce results over and over again. Hopefully it can help do the same for you. SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE The Andrew Faris Podcast is now available on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ at www.youtube.com/@andrewfarispodcast. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS [...

About a year ago, I released the first interview I ever recorded for The Andrew Faris Podcast: an interview with Patrick Coddou after he'd officially sold Supply. Selling Supply was a big moment, not just because every exit is a big movement, but because Patrick had become a core member of the ecommerce community, regularly offering up both help and questions as he built along the way. So a ye...

A few months ago I started making a series of changes in my business. I cut work that I was good at, but not great at. I began building processes to outsource tasks that others good do just as competently as I could. And I eliminated almost the entirety of my "hourly consulting" business. The result? I'm wrapping up Q3 and heading into Q4 with the most profitable, most energizing, le...

What even IS a "creative strategy?" Very often, it's nothing. That phrase is a nebulous synonym for "ads that someone hopes will sell products" at least as applied to Meta Ads. But that's not Fire Team's Jess Bachman. As Jess says in this episode: he's a creative strategist, which means its incumbent on him to have an actual creative strategy. So on this episode...

It's one thing to have the right idea. It's a whole other thing to actually implement it into your business. In fact, sometimes listening to another podcast or reading another blog post or tweet (mine or anyone else's) can make things worse, not better, if it fills your head with more ideas to chase down that you don't REALLY know how to implement. So today I took three key ideas t...

"Serve the world unselfishly and profit." That's the tagline that Ezra Firestone appends to his work, and he's dead serious about it. As the CEO of Boom! By Cindy Joseph and of Overtone, plus the Founder of Zipify and SmartMarketer, he's one of the most seasoned and trustworthy voices in ecommerce. That is reason enough to have him on my podcast, but I am particularly interes...

In a straightforward, tactical advice episode, I make the argument that more ecom stores should consider using quizzes as a core part of their customer acquisition funnels. Quizzes are fun, engaging, yield loads of customer data, capture email & SMS info at massive rates, and maybe most crucially, are highly effective at guiding customers to the exact right product for them. What's not to...

Nasrin Jafari is the founder, designer and CEO of Mixed By Nasrin, a Brooklyn-based fashion company that's recently hit a 7-figure run rate and continues to grow rapidly–and profitably. In my first ever "Opening The Books" episode, Nasrin and I essentially recorded a coaching call. That is: she gave me access to all of the platforms & numbers in her business, and then we spent 2...

I might be more bullish on Jack Rubin's Purdy & Figg than any other brand on which I've personally worked. That's because not only does the UK-based natural cleaning product brand have the core financial markers of a successful subscription brand (ridiculous repeat rate, low churn, good margins), but it's co-founder and co-CEO, Jack Rubin, has all the markers of a successful ec...

If you think forecasting is primarily about inventory planning, think again. Taken seriously, forecasting forces you to stare your business's financials in the face so you can design your PNL for profit. That makes it a fundamental skill in operating an ecommerce brand. In today's episode I make the case for forecasting as a key step in designing your PNL for profit, then planning, executi...

Dave Rekuc is the current President & COO at Bambu Earth, the skincare brand that 4x400 contracted to focus on. He's one of the smartest guys in ecommerce, especially when it comes to thinking through the financial mechanics of running an ecom brand. In this wide-ranging episode, Dave and I talk about his recent bout with testicular cancer, why he was taking work calls during chemo session...

When Gregg Carey hired Lara Guevara to lead operations and supply chain for his ecommerce brand, Section 119, it changed the trajectories of both of their careers. That's because Lara is not only a killer ecom professional; it's also because she lives in the Philippines, and their partnership at Section 119 was a light bulb moment that led to the founding of More Staffing, a staffing agenc...

It's one of the most common questions I get: "I love the idea of Bid Caps, but every time I try to use them, they just don't spend as much as I want them to. How come?" There are a lot of potential answers, and today on the show, I've got 7 of them for you. SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE The Andrew Faris Podcast is now available on ⁠YouTube⁠ at www.youtube.com/@andrewfarispodcast. EPIS...

I'm convinced most ecommerce brands have a massive cost center that they have no idea exists. In fact, they probably think it's a profit-center. In this episode, I explain how deeply understanding the value each dollar your ads are creating saves you from acquiring mass amounts of unprofitable customers–and how Meta Ads has a tool built perfectly to solve this problem without you ever havi...

Panagiota Hatzis is an HR & team leadership professional, the founder of Kati Kalo consulting, and the former VP of Differentiation (a twist on HR) & partner at Common Thread Collective, where we used to be colleagues. I had Panagiota on a couple months ago to talk through how to scale a team with operational intelligence. Which got me thinking: as I start to add employees, what if I used...

Here's a conversation that everyone in DTC has had too many times: Agency: "What's your ROAS target?" Brand: "Well, what's a good ROAS on Meta?" That conversation is broken on both sides. Great agencies help brands determine that answer; great brands know it isn't as simple as that. In this episode, I'm helping you answer this question the only way you reall...

There once was a time when being a great media buyer was all about the ability to allocate budget, target customers effectively, and analyze & optimize the performance of each ad in the account. Those days are behind us. Which raises a question: what do media buyers even do anymore? Well, they still do a lot, and Andrew maintains that media buying is actually harder now than it has ever been....

Everything was going great for Bobbie Baby Co: the venture-backed startup disrupted a duopoly in the super-highly regulated category of baby formula and exploded to over $100m in revenue in two years, due in part to the leadership of this episode's super talented guest, Bobbie's VP of Growth (and former Director of Strategy at Common Thread Collective), Cherene Aubert. But then the baby fo...