Dylan:

How many tattoos are out there right now?

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

Over 25, for sure. I've met about a handful of them.

Zach Johnson:

Whoa. But what's the main product that you sell on your Facebook ads? Are you just straight selling stickers?

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

Yeah. Actually, stickers, I would say, are kind of the backbone products, but they come in sticker packs. So one of the things about stickers is that they're super cheap and not great margins if you're selling one or two, but our sticker pack has 16 stickers in it. Six are four inch stickers, and then 10 are the two inch stickers. And so that's one of our main ones. The Live A Great Story flag that Dylan rocks behind him in most of these is another one. That's another higher priced item. So I'd say that's one of the better ad running sticker products, and then ... well, really a lot of them. And one of the cool parts is just trying to find what the best product is with the best margins and the best overall price point so that we can run ads as a loss leader or at least a break even to get people into the brand, and then kind of upsell them along the way.

Dylan:

Heck yeah. Oh, man, and I remember we were looking at your return customer rate sitting in that 35% range. So, I mean, people come back for all these goods. So I'd imagine that LTD is pretty juicy.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

Yeah, that's definitely one of the coolest parts. I mean, our email marketing is awesome, and then even branching into text messages recently is just ... people love the message. And as soon as you put a shirt on or a hat or sticker somewhere, people comment on it all the time. And so a lot of people get a taste of that message. And they're going on a hike, and they're out rocking the shirt on the trail, and everybody's talking about it, pointing at it, commenting on it.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

And so it just creates this viral effect of them spreading that message to other people, and then them reinforcing it in themselves. So it's like, here's a new shirt or here's a new color flag or here's leather wallets, even things like that. People just keep coming back and want more and more of it, which is pretty awesome.

Dylan:

Hell yeah. It makes it nice when your audience is, shoot, 20 plus at 65 plus.

Zach Johnson:

Dylan, have you ever bought stickers online?

Dylan:

I don't know.

Zach Johnson:

[crosstalk 00:04:41] sticker online.

Dylan:

I don't think ... they usually come in all the products I buy randomly. I got a fridge full of stickers, but I don't think I bought a sticker pack online, to be honest.

Zach Johnson:

I know. This will be interesting. Yeah. I want to know what it takes to sell some stickers.

Dylan:

Well, unfortunately, this rich ad is all flag related. So let's go ahead and take a little segment into this rich ad. So beautiful image, got the flag blowing in the breeze, got the beautiful AirAsia flying above us, but, hey, take my picture while I stare at nature holding this awesome flag. You on your next trip. When's the next adventure? Don't forget this flag. So it seems like one of your killer items, 650,000 views, a ton of comments, likes, and shares. I mean, this is a killer ad right here, Zach. So go ahead and tell us the whole story behind it.

Dylan:

(music)

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

Yeah. So the cool part about this is that people send us photos like this from everywhere, right? So this happens to be somewhere in Asia at one of those low landing airports on the beach, but this is actually part of a slideshow, so I took about five, eight, I can't remember how many, of these equally cool photos and just native in the app, just uploaded them into the Facebook slideshow and put it, I think, at 0.5 seconds. So when you see this, it's pretty catchy, really fast. So by the time that you scroll on it, you've already seen maybe one to three photos, of really epic photos from mountain tops or just different places. I think we have Zion on there. We have, somewhere, another one in Utah. We have that photo. Definitely some mountaintops, Angel's Landing. Really, really cool photos.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

And so it also has a call to action. It kind of puts ... I think that title with the quotes makes people think a little bit, so it makes them read all the way through, and then it puts the viewer in the shot, right, like it actually enrolls them in this idea. They're like, "I want this shot at my next trip." And so I think it kind of accomplishes a lot of interesting angles here where it's catchy, it's fast, it's definitely attractive to the adventurer or the traveler, our demographic, people that are doing cool things and really just sets them up for a good experience even once they click onto the website because then there's that cohesiveness between all those photos from the ad being on the actual product page, too.

Dylan:

And it probably helps its own having a girl in the bikini on that first thumbnail. I mean, that's thumb stopping right there. That's the magic of it all. So this has a ton of views. How much do you think you put behind this ad? Four figures, five figures?

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

Definitely four figures, probably even into five figures. I was just looking at it when I sent it over, and I realized that we don't run this one. And I was thinking about it probably because of right now it's the middle of COVID, so no one's traveling. So we sell a lot of travel gear. We have passport covers and luggage tags and some different things that are more travel focused. But I think I kind of paused this just for being not tone deaf when everybody's sitting at home wanting to travel. But yeah, definitely, I mean, this is for sure a staple ad and has been running for really heavily last year. I think we're selling, I don't know, maybe 500 flags a month or something off of this, so pretty, pretty intense there, so definitely, definitely five figures I would say.

Dylan:

And what kind of return was this sitting on? 2x, 3x, 25x?

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

I would say most ... so one thing that I've learned through ads is that there's the ad, which is a big part of it, but there's also the products and the backside of it, right? So it's like you can have a great ad, but have a bad landing page or a bad website or product page, all that stuff, or even a badly priced items. So this flag used to be $20, and I actually upped it to 25, but then I was like, "This is worth it." And that's kind of the stance I've taken is I'd rather sell a slightly higher price product and get that margin on it versus not. And so I think that that obviously helps.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

And I would say I'm sitting at like a two point something, maybe a 2.4 to 2.8 on this one because I'm paying somewhere between 12 and $15 to get that lead, that sale for a $25 product. And then also there's a one click upsell on it, so then I sell them on a sticker pack or some buttons, which obviously bumps up that AOB.

Dylan:

Oh, man, Zach loves those one click upsells. Well, snap, that's quite a rich ad, with a ton of social engagement. Let's go ahead and navigate to the dark waters and check out this very, very shitty poor ad, y'all.

Dylan:

(music)

Dylan:

All right. So Zach, I just sent this over to you on Messenger. Go ahead and take a peek at it. Now, let's hear that initial reaction. We're all big fans of money in the bank, but this is a very different kind of money I'd say. So immediately-

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

Oh my gosh. I can't believe that. That's crazy.

Dylan:

And it's an actual ad. This was, in fact, running.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

That's insane. That's encouraging people to break the law.

Zach Johnson:

Where our counterfeit bill ... where our counterfeit bills can be used. Oh, they're selling counterfeit bills.

Dylan:

Hey, they have at least options so you know where you can use these at the end of the day, but just so everybody has some context: it's a counterfeit dollar bill company, and, "Hey, you can use these at McDonald's, attraction parks, really anywhere, but our bills bypass everything, counterfeit pens, and don't forget, machines." So yeah.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

They can be used in the bank.

Dylan:

Yeah. It's a hundred percent safe there. This is a very shitty ad here, y'all.

Zach Johnson:

Oh my gosh. I can't believe this. This is mind blowing right now. I can't believe ... how are these people not in jail?

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

How did that even pass Facebook?

Dylan:

They had to have been some black hat stuff. I don't know. This is just ... cloaking? Who knows, but. Yeah.

Zach Johnson:

And they were targeting you, Dylan, right? That's right.

Dylan:

You know, I get hit by really weird ads, man. And sometimes, I convert, so I mean, hey, their placement wasn't too bad.

Zach Johnson:

You guys are literally [crosstalk 00:11:56].

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

[crosstalk 00:11:57] drone.

Dylan:

Yeah, man. Drones have costed me nothing.

Zach Johnson:

[Docummentor 00:12:05] I love the double M. What's up with that? Documents.

Dylan:

Well, their other burn page that got banned only had one M, I would say. [crosstalk 00:00:12:13]. Yeah.

Zach Johnson:

Our bills bypass everything. Counterfeit pens and machines can be used in banks.

Dylan:

Hey, but you got to admit, they do have the best holograms and duplicating machines, so they say.

Zach Johnson:

That is mind blowing, man.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

Oh, what a trash ad.

Zach Johnson:

What a trash ... hey, I love it. Let's jump over to the financial principles aspect. Zach, you've got quite a bit of experience with a lot of the different alternative growth capital providers and lenders out there in the marketplace from Shopify Capital to PayPal LoanBuilder to ClearBank. And you're also a master of credit card travel points, which does not surprise me given your brand and expertise in travel. So what advice do you have for, in your case, other eCommerce businesses that are thinking about taking out some debt to scale up, what would you encourage them to do? What would you caution them to do now that you're on the other side of it, and you've been working with a couple of these lenders for a few months now.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

Yeah. I would definitely suggest really getting your finances dialed in. So much of it is knowing, that's for sure, a basic principle of business and knowing even your ROAS and being able to calculate all of that in your return. I saw the funny TikTok the other day, he's like, "I made 30 grand drop shipping this month." How much profit? He's like, "But I made 30 grand drop shipping." So definitely if you're going to run a business, you got to have that dialed in. But what's really cool that I've found really last year as I started scaling up pretty significantly was how much people want to give you money when you're doing numbers.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

And so I've definitely taken out a couple of rounds of funding and scaled up the offering, I guess, for what ... starting with Shopify, and I think also PayPal, but I think on my Shopify, I ended up taking out, altogether over the three loans, about $77,000 because I started branching out into more options last year. So I hosted a conference. I was bringing on team members and didn't quite have the revenue generation to scale the team. And so I waited and looked at my options, and it was really cool to have that. Basically, with a push of a button, they'll just deposit serious five figures in your account and with not too much interest, but I definitely realized in hindsight, the difference of the interest. So I ended up paying about twice as much for my PayPal loan as the Shopify one.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

So that's for sure something to be aware of. And then also thinking about your margins, right, you're paying. The way that those work is that they skim off the top of your sales, of your revenue. So they give you that money upfront, and then every month or every purchase that goes through the processor, they skim off 5, 10, 20%, I guess, even up to 30% is an option. And so really when you're thinking about ... most businesses don't have a margin that high, especially once you're spending ads and really scaling. So that can be a pretty serious situation to get into if you're not totally dialed in on your numbers, knowing exactly what your profit margin is and your runway and how much you can afford to pay back on a daily basis because it can actually reverse and get you under water pretty quickly if you're paying, and then you're running ads on top of it. So you're spending money there, and you are not profiting enough to both pay back that loan, and then also pay for your cost of goods sold and everything else.

Zach Johnson:

Now, what kind of revenue do you think you would recommend somebody to entertain this, right? The whole idea is use debt to grow your business faster. And where do you think the businesses mature enough to be smart about debt versus stupid?

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

Yeah, I'd say you either ... one of the things ... so I own Live A Great Story all by myself. So I don't have any partners. I don't have any co-owners or investors or anything. So I make decisions all on my own really. I mean, obviously, I have friends and people I run a lot of stuff by, but for this, I got bit because I kind of just made some impulsive decisions and needed cashflow pretty fast. So going through that ... I guess, for the maturity standpoint, it helps to have, I guess, multiple shareholders invested in the finances so that you have those checks and balances to balance out what you're doing.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

I also think that what's good about these systems is that, more or less, they don't give you too much to where you get in trouble. I said, I took out, I think, a $7,000 loan from Shopify, then I took out, I think, a 15 to 18, and then the last one I took out was like a $45,000, right? So I pay the first ones off really quickly, and I was doing really good numbers. And then I was like, "Well, they're going to give me this big chunk. I might as well take it and go for it." And that would have been probably all fine and dandy except for some of the other surrounding circumstances that kind of resulted in this.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

So from a maturity standpoint, I definitely think be a savvy business owner. If you're one of these 19-year-old kids on YouTube trying to drop ship stuff, probably not the best idea because it can definitely undercut you really hard, and then put you in a serious situation. But practice savvy business awareness. What are your books telling you? What's your CPA or ... I have a fractional CFO who helps with a lot of this stuff, so we can run numbers and do analysis, but even to get to that point, I've been in business for years to even understand how all this works. So it's kind of a tricky one, but definitely not for newbies or amateurs.

Zach Johnson:

Now, what do you ... let's talk about rate and pricing for a second? What do you see as ... there's a lot of fixed fee products out there. There's a lot of APR, interests, revolving interest. What would you say, "Hey, here's a good rate and here is a stay away from this rate," kind of thing?

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

So my Shopify takes 10% of my revenue, which is pretty good, right? And I think that it costs me about 15% interest on the loan amount. I'm not totally sure of those numbers off the top of my head right now, but, which is decent. It's a pretty significant number, but also, it's hands off. I'm not trying to balance stuff and sending checks to the small business loan people, SBA loans, and trying to figure out how to pay back investors and things like that. So it makes it a lot more simple. But then, like I said, that was on Shopify, but the PayPal one was almost double that. So I think I paid up to 20% interest on my initial chunk. And then also to pay that back, I'm paying 20%.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

So I'm balancing basically a 15% margin that I'm paying back to pay off those loans on a daily basis, which is crazy. Let's say I do a hundred grand, that's 15 grand off the top that I'm just writing a check to PayPal or Shopify, which is pretty crazy to think about because it's a serious chunk of money at that point where I'm trying to get out of that. And once I pay that off, that's all profit, which is a cool finish line to look at is that as I'm scaling, I know that my balance sheet, I'm just constantly writing these checks back to PayPal and Shopify, but soon enough I'll be writing checks in my pocket, right? So I don't know. I mean, it's a little bit ... I don't have the exact numbers on how much I ended up paying, but like I said, it's probably, off that principal, I guess, it was about somewhere between a 10 and 20% interest to acquire that. And then on a daily basis, it's taking out about the same chunk to pay back.

Zach Johnson:

Yeah. And how long are those loans out for? Do you know how long PayPal ... the term that you took those out for?

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

Well, I mean, it takes a certain chunk, right, until you pay it back. So for PayPal, it's a 90 day minimum. So you have to pay 90 days minimum. I think it's 3 to $4,000 every 90 days. So you could take years to pay it back if you had to, and then with Shopify, what ended up happening is the way that, which I still haven't quite figured this out yet, because I both have a Shopify checkout Shop Pay, and then also PayPal, it diverts people to different checkouts kind of randomly. I really don't understand how it does that.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

And so it ends up diverting way more people to PayPal versus Shopify. And so I'm actually not meeting my minimum spend for Shopify's loan or whatever the repayment is. And so they debit that from my account once a month, at least that minimum chunk, on top of the other 10% that I'm paying off. So there's not a time period on it. They just want their money back, but obviously if you stop paying it, then it gets into some serious ... I got emails like, "Hey, we've got to talk about this. Where's our money," type loan shark deals.

Zach Johnson:

Yeah. Some good experience, man. I appreciate you being so transparent about your lessons around dealing with these different partners that you've taken money from. What did you use the money on, if you don't mind me asking? Did it actually help you grow? Was it more just to support cashflow and a burn rate?

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

So, yeah. Good questions. Yeah, no. So last year, was doing really good revenue and scaling pretty high numbers. So I got up to almost about six figures a month in revenue for a couple months straight. And so I was basically just scaling. And at that point, I wanted to ... I was doing all of it and wanting to grow more of a brand. So I wanted to bring on content creators. So I was like, I need ... at that point, you exhaust your ads and content in general. So I was like, "I need more. I need to be making more content to make more ads to sell more stuff," right? And so that mixed with just also different team members was another part, and then the biggest thing that bit me was influencer marketing.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

I ended up paying out a serious chunk of that, too, for about a three month test on influencers, which was a total, absolute 100% waste of money. I just bankrolled some people's lifestyle for about three months. It was absolutely ridiculous. If anybody wants to talk to me about influencers, I'll shoot down your influence, your aspirations for days because I was like, "Dude, these photos ..." I'm savvy with the camera. I've traveled a bunch. I've shot all these photos and things. And so I could have flown halfway around the world multiple times over to shoot the exact same content that these guys shot and not paid for it. So that was part of what ended up happening.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

Also, a good chunk of it went to product, right? So I was doing these pretty serious numbers, and I was kind of forecasting, "Okay, well, I had a crazy Q2, Q3. And my Q4 is obviously going to be even bigger than that because it's the holiday season. It's the biggest one of the year. I got to stock up on stuff." And so I stocked up. I was doing marketing. I was scaling up and basically hit a point where everything just flipped and inverse happened. And I was just not selling anything with so much inventory and paying people. And so all of it just kind of flipped in November, late October and November. And shit just hit the fan. And it just went all negative.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

So wrapping up 2019 was a pretty sad time, and I've still been trying to crawl out of that. I still have all these loans. And now, obviously, with COVID, I got trigger shy about running ads. And once you're spending ... I was spending, definitely, five figures on ads, probably 15,000 a month at some point, it's like, "How do you go back to that when you have such a big red number?" It's like, "I don't know if this is going to work again." So wrapping up last year, I mean, I've definitely learned a lot of really hard business lessons in the end of 2019.

Zach Johnson:

Yeah, man, that's the dark side, the ugly side of leveraging debt, right, is leveraging at a time when things just take a turn, right? And you're supposed to be investing that into growth. So what did you do, man? How have you been doing the last couple months? How did you go about scrambling?

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

Yeah, I mean, definitely for a while I pushed pause. I got to the point where I was talking with my CFO, and she was like, "The way that you're spending on acquiring new customers, for every dollar you're spending, you're losing X amount of dollars." I was running these ads and with the repayment and everything and the other costs of the business, just regular G & A costs just to run, I was going further into the hole. And so I was like, "Well, that's obviously not going to work. I got to figure something out." So I pushed pause for a bit, was just selling less, but even slowly, slowly inching forward versus going backwards.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

And so what ended up happening is I, obviously through COVID, was still just trying to crunch stuff and figure out how to do things. And eventually realized that a lot of ... because I still do all direct to garment, so print on demand for all my apparel. So it's not great margins on my shirts, but all of my accessories have really great margins. And so I'm like, "Okay, well, how can I sell more accessories and less apparel and get that AOV up through accessories because those are 80, 90% margins on that?" And so I started basically toying around with different options there and finding that sweet spot of, "Okay, cool. I can sell these like ..."

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

I mean, I can give some examples, but long story short, I started realizing that these are the products, if I can sell these, it's getting rid of inventory that I have stored in the warehouse. I'm selling through inventory. I'm having great margins on them. These are our best selling products. How can I push these first versus pushing apparel, which are my lower margin items? And so, yeah, I mean, I'm still really not paying myself through Live A Great Story because I'm just trying to do as much as I can to get out of this debt that I owed to PayPal and Shopify, but literally writing them like 5, $7,000 checks every month, clawing my way out so that I can get back to a profitable business. And then now I'm, "Okay, cool." My CFO, we're like, "Okay, this works now. You've corrected this equation so that you're actually profitable and making money." And so now it's like, how do you take that next step? And so that's still solving that problem.

Zach Johnson:

Yeah. I've heard this a couple of different times on this podcast is really business owners, entrepreneurs relying on their CFOs to really help them understand the profitability of their advertising, right? It was just a few years ago that the agency, right, was enough, right? It was just like, "Hey, here's what's going on on your Facebook ads. Here's what's going on on analytics." And it was scaling, and it's really good to see more CFOs at the marketing table and CFO's starting to wrap their brain around the world of advertising. I don't think that they ... I think that as an industry, CFOs are getting more educated, which is great and helpful, especially in your situation, right? They totally pointed you towards a north star of profitability.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

Yeah. It was crazy when she was like, "Yeah. Okay. So let's plug in all your numbers and look at how you used to sell stuff." And then it's like, "Okay, well here's ..." I'm like, "Can I just sell my way out of this?" And she's like, "No. If you pour back in the money that you've been doing the way you've been doing it, you're just going to keep digging yourself in a hole." And that was a come to Jesus moment. I'm like, "Oh man. I fucked up."

Zach Johnson:

Yeah. I love it, man. I mean, I don't love your story. I just love how you're keeping it real and sharing a lot of insight with people on just all the intricacies that go into leveraging debt. I think there is a positive side here in the sense that when you did take those out, when shit was hitting the fan, I'm sure that that debt was helpful from a cashflow standpoint, kept you afloat for a little bit longer. And it went from growth capital to burn rate capital pretty quickly.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

Yeah. Yeah. And it was just really easy. I mean, I still own a hundred percent, so I'm thinking about kind of what's next. And I'm getting through this, so if I get through this and turn this around, and this ship becomes I've learned from my mistakes. I'm like, "Okay, cool. Well, I messed up, but if I didn't mess up or I did the same things without the mistakes that I made, then I'm sitting on a really amazing business." And so now, there's been a couple of times, especially in the depths of all that, where I started like, "Well, I need money from people like ASAP because this is really a negative situation," but then you're going into these conversations with all these red numbers, and the sharks are just like, "Yeah, sure. We'll take X amount of percentage of your business for pennies on the dollar because your hands are tied."

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

And so definitely now looking at it, I'm like, "Okay, cool. We're going to be profitable with a pretty decent margin and a really great brand and great numbers and great return customers and all these really great balance sheets and everything else, P&L's." Well, shoot, now I'm like, "The tables are turned." It's like, "I'm not asking for people to helped me out." I'm like, "You want to get on board or not because this is a rocket ship at this point because it was like we went through the trenches."

Zach Johnson:

No. Oh, that's awesome. Zach, you've been an amazing guest on the show. Thank you so much for keeping it real and sharing all the awesome, awesome insights. Tell everybody how they can support you, what you're looking to do next, how they can get in touch. We've got an audience here of advertisers, brands, investors. If you're looking to raise money on the equity side, on the debt side, throw it all out there. How can people support you?

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

Yeah. I mean, definitely, if this all is interesting to you, I'd love to chat about it with anybody. Good stuff. For sure grab some stickers from the site, Live A Great Story is a magic phrase. If you put a button on your shirt, wear Live A Great Story hat, you take a flag on your next trip, it's magic. And people will ask about it and comment, and you'll have some really cool conversations. So there's a reason that people have it tattooed. But yeah, I mean, I'm definitely looking for e-commerce partners.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

I think I'm more on the vision and high side, like high flying overview, but I'm at a point where there's definitely some on the ground, operations things I'm very much looking forward to bringing everything in-house and building an all inclusive business, so getting away from print on demand and outsourcing my fulfillment to all in-house, and in that process, expanding to wholesale because it's a big area of opportunity that with the right kind of infrastructure can scale super seriously because people that find this in stores absolutely love it.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

So that's the next chapter probably going into 2021. And then a big part of this also that we haven't really touched on is just Live A Great Story, there's a million Live A Great Story stickers out in the world. And so I'm realizing the opportunity for stickers, and so many brands and businesses mess up their sticker marketing. So I started really the first and only sticker marketing agency that helps brands use stickers to build a community of raving fans. So I launched, this is called Stickyyy Marketing and basically help people understand how to leverage, basically, these 10 to 25 cents stickers for building customer relationships, bring people down in the funnel, LTV.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

I mean, all of the marketing stuff can be accomplished through strategic sticker marketing. And literally, nobody talks about it. It doesn't exist. People use stickers or they make stickers, but no one really uses stickers the right way. So that's definitely something that if you're running an eCom brand, you have a brick and mortar store, or even you're trying to build some sort of digital audience. Maybe you're an infopreneur with a course or something, you need stickers in your business. And that's something that I would love to talk to anybody about.

Zach Johnson:

Oh nice, man. That's super cool. Very cool. Awesome. Well, there you have it. Thank you so much, Zach, appreciate it.

Zach Horvath (Zoom):

It was awesome, Zach and Dylan. Appreciate it. Y'all are rad.

Dylan:

Hell yeah. Thanks for coming on, man. Have a good one.

Dylan:

(music)