Intro: 00:01

Welcome back to the Response Drivers podcast, where we feature top marketing minds and dig in to their inspiring stories. Learn how these leaders think and find big ideas to push your results and sales to the next level. Now let’s get started.

Rick Rappe: 00:19

Hey, I’m Rick Rappe, host of the Response Drivers podcast. Here, I dive deep with marketing experts and innovators to learn how they approach targeted marketing and use data-driven strategies to acquire and retain customers. We’ll talk about what’s working, what’s changing, and how we can stay ahead in an evolving marketing landscape.

Response Drivers is brought to you by RPM Direct Marketing. RPM helps marketers turn direct mail into a measurable customer acquisition channel without having to build the internal team, vendor, network, or production infrastructure themselves. Built on more than 30 years of constant ongoing testing, RPM helps you launch faster, optimize performance, and drive more sales from direct mail. Visit rpmdm.com to learn more

Today on Response Drivers I’m excited to welcome Jim Huffman. Jim is the founder of GrowthHit, a growth marketing agency that helps companies identify and remove the bottlenecks keeping them from scaling. His team has helped generate more than $250 million in client revenue, and Jim has mentored more than 150 startups through Techstars while working with and teaching teams from major brands. 

But what makes his perspective especially interesting is that he decided to put his own playbook to the test. GrowthHit had acquired the apparel company Neat and used the same growth system that it applies to clients to grow the brand roughly ten fold in under 18 months. And full disclosure, I am actually wearing a Neat t-shirt right now and I love it. So Jim is also the author of The Growth Marketer’s Playbook and his new book, The 7 Laws of Scaling, which argues that the answer to stalled growth is usually isn’t doing more. It’s identifying the specific constraints preventing the business from moving forward. 

Well, thanks so much for joining me, Jim. I’m excited to finally have this conversation.

Jim Huffman: 02:12

Yeah, Rick. Excited to be here. And thank you for being a Neat model.

Rick Rappe: 02:17

You know, the Neat shirts. I could do a commercial for you right now. But the amazing thing about them is that they shed water on the outside and don’t show any sweat or anything. So on a hot summer day like today, I can go outside and, you know, do yard work or go to the gym and you can sweat in them and they look great. They no sweat stains, nothing, nothing going on.

So it’s amazing. You can even spill food on it if you have lunch and it’s yeah.

Jim Huffman: 02:45

Go for it. It’s a nice napkin, you know, a lot of sheds.

Rick Rappe: 02:48

Yeah. You started your career in finance. So how does somebody who spends their days in spreadsheets end up becoming obsessed with growth. Growth marketing.

Jim Huffman: 03:01

Yeah. Well, first coming out of college, I had no idea what the options were as a finance major. There was like three. And so I chose one of the three doors thinking that was all it was. And I was at this very small investment bank and we would do small deals like mergers and acquisitions.

And I kept finding myself so much more interested at people on the other side of the table, like the builders, the growers of companies, as opposed to the person that’s just doing like if then statements or formulas within a spreadsheet. So that that one got me the bug. And then second, this is a time when like, you know, startups, DTC startups were coming up, media startups were coming up. And so I just wanted to jump on one of those to, to kind of build. And so I was in Dallas, I went from like this finance major investment banker to all of a sudden I’m a subject line copywriter for startup. 

Everybody’s like, what are you doing? I’m like, I have no idea. But this just seems more interesting, right? And so at the end of the day, if you can be fortunate enough to rise up at a startup, you’re in charge of growth. And if you’re not technical, usually that means sales or marketing. 

And so I just got really excited about at the time, it was called growth hacking, right? And Sean Ellis, Andrew Chen were writing about it and I just was curious. And so I started writing that wave got lucky enough to all of a sudden I’m at I’m teaching about it at in New York, at General Assembly. And then as I’m teaching it, people would come up to me and be like, hey, will you make a growth plan for me? And I’m like, sure. 

Like, how much do you charge? I’m like $500. I was really bad at pricing then. I probably still am now, but just kind of following curiosity and accidentally getting these opportunities and all of a sudden it led to me being this accidental agency owner all by being curious in writing this wave of growth hacking and growth marketing. And so at the end of the day, if you run a business, it’s like the tip of the spear is driving business and being in charge of revenue, whether that’s sales or marketing. 

And so that’s something I’ve always been excited to, to be a part of, right? Pulling those levers that can have a big impact.

Rick Rappe: 05:19

You’ve had an entrepreneur entrepreneurial spirit for a long time.

Jim Huffman: 05:23

Yeah. But, but also like super cautious. Like whenever I launch this quote unquote agency, I had three companies sign a six month agreement that they would work with me to offset my salary. And so everyone’s like, oh, you’re so risky to start a company. I mean, you, you get it, right?

You probably hear that. But like, I was so cautious when like jumping into it, like already having paying clients and I worked way too long before hiring because I was so afraid of getting fired and having to get a real job. So I think fear was a great motivator.

Rick Rappe: 05:58

Yeah. When I started RPM, it took me several years before I felt like I was like, I was confident enough like, okay, yeah, this is going to work. You know, I can do this. It’s like, it’s real.

Jim Huffman: 06:08

It’s happening.

Rick Rappe: 06:09

You’ve worked with lots of start-ups and major brands in your own company. What separates the marketers who are constantly, consistently good from the people who are simply good at the latest tactic?

Jim Huffman: 06:25

Yeah. And I think anytime you start calling yourself an expert, it gets a little bit dangerous because that means you kind of know everything. And then you get out of that growth mindset because, I mean, today more than ever, it’s like you have to have that growth mindset to adopt new tools. So I think first, it’s like, I want someone who has a growth mindset where they’re always learning to, they’re adaptable and they’ve proven they can learn new tools and Technologies and not kind of be overly precious with their framework, with what they do. And then the third component of that is kind of getting lost in your own sauce, in the sense that you kind of overoptimize for your system, your process, and you lose sight of what matters.

And it’s driving results because I’m, I’m constantly impressed with people that are supposed to be really impressive, but they don’t have a full grasp of what moves the needle for the business, as opposed to someone that really understands the business where they could run circles around the quote unquote, experts. So those three things I think are crucial to kind of be at the top of your game.

Rick Rappe: 07:39

Yeah. The growth mindset. And if I want to unpack that term a little bit, you mentioned that people with a growth mindset are just willing to continue learning. They’re willing to question the status quo. They’re willing to not be too Stuck on any one particular idea.

Anything else that comes to mind that would help describe that growth mindset?

Jim Huffman: 08:01

Yeah. And I think it’s just you have this idea of like an early adopter, fast follower and lagger. You don’t necessarily have to be an early adopter, but a little bit of a fast follower to, and that means it’s okay to not be perfect, to try some new tactic or channel that could flutter out, but really just always have your eye on what’s coming up because that that is what is needed, especially in the game of marketing, where it’s kind of an arbitrage play of finding the latest and greatest channel tactic or move. And in doing that, until everybody else exploits it, right. And then you kind of go on to the next thing.

Rick Rappe: 08:41

Right, right. In some of the stuff that I found online, you have emphasized experimentation. So how do you tell the difference between intelligent Experimentation and a marketing team that’s simply, you know, throwing things against the wall.

Jim Huffman: 08:58

Yeah. It’s funny, I it’s so good. Experimentation comes down to one thing and it’s insights, which is another way of being, being data driven. So what impresses me is when you’re going to run an experiment, what’s driving that experiment or campaign? Is it your gut?

Is your industry expertise? Is it this competitor’s doing it so it has to work for us or is it an insight? Is it data you got from a cohort of customers from a survey from Hotjar. Heat map analysis. And you get that insight and you let that drive this experiment. 

And it’s the companies that start to flood themselves with these insights because they’ve built that data machine to collect it. So that’s where I get excited where people are like, oh, here’s all the stuff we’re tracking, here’s our learning log and here’s how it’s creating a hypothesis for us because if you can do that faster than your competitors, you’re probably going to run circles around them. And that’s something it took me a while to do, even as I run Neat. Sometimes I just, I want to go with my gut and sometimes that works. But other times you just have to put your ego aside and be like, okay, what’s the data telling us? 

And how do we use that to drive our experiments? And the other tough part is it’s counterintuitive. You have to slow down to do that because it’s so fast for Rick and you and me to be like, oh, change the landing page, do this, let’s go. It’s slow to be like, hey, let’s wait two weeks and get some insights and then update the page, then update the experiment.

Rick Rappe: 10:35

Yeah. When you’re in the, you’re doing a lot of things in the digital marketing space. So things are very quick in my world in direct mail, things have a long cycle to create them, to get them out in the mail and then to read the results. It takes quite a bit of time. So in our world, things do move a lot slower, but.

Along the lines of what you were talking about, we have to be really intentional about writing down and understanding. What’s the question that we’re trying to ask and answer through our experiments, and then making sure that the test is structured properly to like, answer that question. I mean, I don’t know how much you do ahead of time to say like, this is the hypothesis, this is the hypothesis that we think might be true. How do we design an experiment that will specifically give us an answer to that question? Or is it more like you’re looking at all the data and just looking for insights that kind of pop up to the surface?

Jim Huffman: 11:33

Yeah. For, for us, if we’re doing like a campaign that has like ad creative and has a landing page, we’re absolutely doing a hypothesis around it. Like so, for example, with our brand, Neat, we saw that these emotional ads were working where it wasn’t about like showing how it protects water and sweat. It was the emotional side of like, I’m embarrassed to go out and show pit stains and that I did well. So the hypothesis was if that led to an emotional first landing page website experience, rather than just hitting them with features, is that more cohesive and have a lift, right?

And then be like, all right, let’s take it live. Give it two weeks to, to really cook. So it’s, I like it when they’re more singular and focused with the hypothesis first approach.

Rick Rappe: 12:14

Yeah. Right. And it’s always important to structure your testing so that you’re testing sort of one variable at a time. And you can actually read the results from that one variable, rather than changing 3 or 4 things and wondering which one really did have the biggest impact.

Jim Huffman: 12:29

I mean, yes, I know sometimes we will do the multivariate because it’s like such a low volume experiment where we’re like, we just got to get wins. But you’re right, it does muddy the if it wins, you’re like, wait, which of the four things was it that won? So it’s yeah, yeah. Pros and cons.

Rick Rappe: 12:46

Yeah. Years ago I was working with DirecTV and we were we developed a framework for their testing strategy, and we always carved out a, a percentage of their big direct mail program for swinging for the fences.

Jim Huffman: 13:01

Oh, cool.

Rick Rappe: 13:01

You know, just creating things that were wacky and wild and not worrying about one variable at a time, but just do whatever crazy ideas we had, we would draw them and, and they, and then you could always unpack those later and start testing like, well, what if we take out the insert? Or what if we add a brochure? Or what if we change the wording here or there? Yeah. So I want to ask you a few questions about The 7 Laws of Scaling your new book.

Yeah. In that book, I think you’ve argued that companies don’t need necessarily need more tactics, but they need to find the constraint that’s holding them back. Was there something that happened in your own career or in your own experience that where you realized companies don’t grow linearly and that they they often grow faster by finding one main leverage point.

Jim Huffman: 13:54

Yeah. And it kind of came to like, we work with so many companies that will hit seven figures, and then they just hit a wall and they can’t scale. And I was like, this is interesting. I was like, let me go deeper on this. And then I saw the stat that it’s like only 5% of companies hit seven figures.

And then of that, only 0.4% hit eight figures. So basically getting to 3 to 5 million in revenue is essentially the valley of death where most companies go to die. And so I was like, why is that? And the truth is these companies didn’t scale to seven figures. They would swell to seven figures and they got there. 

But it wasn’t sustainable and it wasn’t sustainable because maybe they didn’t have their cash conversion cycle figured out or their positioning isn’t good and they’re in a sea of sameness. So they have to then just win on price. And as I started to break it down, the reason these companies couldn’t go from six to 7 to 8 figures is they didn’t have these foundational elements in place. And you might be able to will yourself to seven figures on the back of founder mode, but you can’t do that to eight figures. And so I took that cohort. 

But then we had these other companies, we had companies go from like six figures to eight figures. We had a company that raised from Jason Horowitz that went from fundraising to 100,000,000 in 5 years. And we see these success stories and we’re like. What’s the difference? And some of these a lot of these were bootstrapped. 

And when I kind of would like be the Monday morning quarterback, I started to see the common things of like, oh, they had the foundational pieces of they chose the right market and the right product within it. Oh, their positioning is amazing. They have a mini monopoly and oh, they get paid up front, high margin. They can reinvest in growth. And then, oh, they have this arbitrage for customer acquisition. 

It’s not just paid and so on and so on. And that’s where I would look at these founders that built these 50 million, $100 million businesses with a little bit of envy. I’m like, wait a minute. I’m like, they’re not that much smarter than me. They aren’t working three times as hard. 

They didn’t raise all this money. They just, they just stacked these leverage points on top of each other. And I think compounding is the hardest thing for me, anybody to understand because it’s just so exponential. But when you see it in a company, it’s, it’s really impressive. And so that that’s what I’ve been obsessed with over the past few years.

Rick Rappe: 16:25

Do you see that in those companies that get from seven figures, that’s what, $10 million up to $100 million? Does that usually require the founder to get out of the way?

Jim Huffman: 16:39

Yeah, I call it. You go from founder mode, and that gets you to an idea to seven figures and then from seven figures, like 1 million to 10 million that systems mode. And then to go beyond that, it’s culture mode, right? Because like you can do founder energy and you can will that company into existence, but you’re going to pass out, right? And then it’s like, oh, let me fire myself.

Let me delegate, not task, but let me delegate systems instead of being like, hey, do you send this email? Send five of them a week instead, you’re delegating, you’re doing the cold email outreach program that needs to generate $30,000 of pipeline per month. But then when you can delegate culture, then you’re creating systems builders. And that’s the thing that there’s also the principle, what got you here won’t get you there. And a lot of times the superpower of the founder or the entrepreneur becomes the weakness of the company because the company didn’t have to do stuff because you’re such an amazing closer or you’re so good at the strategy for, for direct mail where other people didn’t have to do that. 

So it’s also a little bit of just self awareness too. And it’s hard to have that when you’re so deep in your own business.

Rick Rappe: 17:54

For sure. Yeah. That hits. That hits home for me because I’m an expert at direct marketing and I’ve been, I’ve been removing myself from a lot of the day to day work because I’m building up other other leaders and letting them, letting them take the driver’s seat. Yeah.

So it’s a lot of fun. It’s challenging for me to step back, but it’s important.

Jim Huffman: 18:16

This is easy advice to give and hard to take. Yeah, for.

Rick Rappe: 18:19

Sure, for sure. Your money lore in the book talks about how quickly you get your acquisition dollars back. What do marketers misunderstand about payback period and and how can why can a company growing revenue rapidly still get itself into trouble?

Jim Huffman: 18:39

Oh my gosh. Yeah. So this is where I think some marketers can go wrong is if they’re not friendly with the CFO or having any conversations with the CFO. And so the real question here is do you understand how money flows through the business? Right.

And we can talk about where that goes well or not. Well, I can’t even give two examples like the agency model. So when I started my agency, we would close deals and I had, oh, pay after the first month and then there was 30 day payment window. So we would close business. I wouldn’t get money for 60 days. 

And that is stressful. And they’d be late. Oh there’s procurement. It would take like 120 days. So on paper it looks like I’m growing. 

But in my, my, my bank statement, I was not growing. So it’s like, what does that mean? That means, oh, let’s do upfront payment pay right away. Discounting for paying a quarter in advance. All of a sudden you’re flush with cash. 

So you can invest in people and ads and whatever that is. And same with Neat. When we acquire Neat. The big issue there was they were doing one off t shirt sales. It was $39. 

We raised the price and then we defaulted to bundles because we really wanted to educate people to stock up, overhaul their closet. And the other thing was, if you’re going to scale to eight figures, what channel are you scaling on? We’re scaling on paid ads and cost per acquisition is going up. I need to be able to spend up to 50 bucks to acquire somebody. That only works if my average order value is triple digits. 

And because we did that, we literally tripled sales instantly by switching to bundles. And it gave us that flexibility. So understanding how cash flows through your business and you need to be high margin product. And so like with Neat, usually most products have like a 70% gross margin. So you have enough to spend on customer acquisition costs and rebuy inventory. 

And so that’s why we raised the price. That’s why we push for bundles. But yeah, those things because if you’re going to scale to eight figures, are you going to do it organically or do you need to have an infusion of capital? And I would go organically all day long. So you keep the equity and you can control things. 

But that’s tough to do if you don’t have the right margins and you don’t have the right cash conversion cycle. And if you as a marketer, understand that and you can design an offer to make that better, that’s even better. And you’ll just get more buy in from the executive team.

Rick Rappe: 21:08

That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I remember hearing about businesses that grew themselves out of business because they’re the cash flow. The cash flow wasn’t right. And they literally, you know, had to take out more bigger and bigger loans to fund the company as it grew.

Jim Huffman: 21:23

And we’re feeling right now, we’re doing lines of credit and like we just did a quarter million line of credit. And as an agency owner, this is a different game. Like we have working capital, we don’t have big debt, but it’s those lines get bigger and bigger. And my stress level goes a little bit more and more each time. Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 21:44

Well, you make an interesting distinction in your book between owning traffic and renting traffic in the under the law about reach. Has digital marketing made companies more comfortable renting their audiences from meta, Google and Amazon and other platforms?

Jim Huffman: 22:05

Yeah. I don’t know if they made it more comfortable, but it’s definitely made it the norm because, I mean, how many companies have we seen where they just blow up in scale in a in an impressive way, but because they were too dependent on the like Google algorithm for search, that changes, they get wiped out or they’re too dependent on the Facebook algorithm. There’s an iOS update, they get wiped out. So you can absolutely scale on paid. But I love the concept of rent to own in the sense that get in front of them with paid, it’s the fastest, but then you make them owned by capturing their email, getting their address, whatever it takes.

So you can then own the 1 to 1 communication, whether that’s email, SMS, or direct mail. So paid ads work if you can also factor in this has to be rent to owned. So for example, with our customer acquisition with Neat, absolutely. We run ads to a product page to buy a shirt to buy a bundle. But our email sign up rate was super low when we took it over, it was like 1 to 3%. 

We’re now doing some pretty aggressive tactics to get that email sign up rate over 1,015% to get their SMS, their text message number, and to also get their address. So we can do direct mail because we need to own that relationship that we work so hard and paid a lot of money to, to get in front of. And I think the companies that don’t truly understand that, oh man, there’s a price. You will pay a price down the road if you don’t pull that off.

Rick Rappe: 23:39

Yeah. Well, you know, I’m an old school, direct response, direct mail guy. So when I looked at your seven laws, I see a lot of principles direct marketers have been using for a long time. List offer economics, positioning, media conversion, and lifetime value. Is is growth marketing partly a new vocabulary for some very old direct response marketing principles?

Jim Huffman: 24:03

Yeah, I think we’re all slapping new fancy words and phrases on top of things. The the, the only thing I would say with growth marketing is that now with more digital tools and AI tools, it does allow marketing to have a little bit more data and attribution from top to bottom of the funnel. And we have more touchpoints where a marketer isn’t traditional sense of just top to funnel, just doing the ad, they can really touch customers from top to bottom of the funnel. And ideally, growth marketers aren’t just looking at marketing metrics. They’re driving revenue, they’re driving profit.

And that’s part of the KPIs.

Rick Rappe: 24:41

Yeah, right. Well, it’s so important to talk to to study the response metrics, response and conversion. But you’re also thinking beyond that in terms of what people are buying and, you know, lifetime value the things that drive lifetime value. So you spent years in advertising helping clients drive growth and then you bought your own company. Neat.

What changed? What changed when it was your own money that was on the line?

Jim Huffman: 25:12

Yeah, I do think it gave me much more empathy for founders and really looking at the business, not just as like another client. And I mean, we always cared, but to like really understand the woes that come with being a business owner in the sense that like, we took it over, right? As tariffs, what we’re going on. So really being able to speak to people where it’s like, yes, we need to grow. Yes, we need to have a good ROAS and a good cost per acquisition.

But hey, what are we doing with this price change? Are we eating some of it or are we raising prices? Hey, how much inventory are you about to buy? How much inventory is sitting there we need to sell through. So whenever we’re merchandising the website, whenever we’re making ads, are we pushing stuff that is new or you’re trying to get off the plate and how that can drive the strategy? 

So it just gave me a little bit more of an in-depth view and like a 360 degree view on wow as an owner, there’s all these other things going on that marketing can help or at least be a part of that. I was kind of blind to. You know what I mean? And so that perspective has just been helpful to help with strategy. But also sometimes it’s therapy, right? 

Just to be able to speak the language and meet people where they’re at with, with what they’re going through.

Rick Rappe: 26:31

Did it, did you find that being the owner and, and having to invest your own money in marketing made you more cautious in wanting to spend money on experimentation.

Jim Huffman: 26:42

Yeah. You know what I like. I know the truth of what it takes to, like, stand up a channel and how you need to invest in assets, how you need to give it time to learn. So that part I was like already sold on. And that’s something that can be really hard with people that are just getting started because I think we have a big green button we hit and all your growth dreams come true, but it’s really this kind of iterative approach and process.

So yeah, so that part I was game for the harder part for me is patience because I’m like, I want to grow and sell. But guess what? You can only grow based on how much inventory you have. And I can’t buy inventory today and get it tomorrow. We have to place an order today that we get in 120 days. 

And that level of planning I just hadn’t had to do. And so that’s been a little tricky to see that slow part of the business.

Rick Rappe: 27:35

Yeah, Yeah, I find it as a in the direct mail world, that’s definitely one of the things that’s hard to sometimes teach, teach our clients, especially new clients that, hey, we know how to get to a winning direct mail program and turn it into a scalable channel. But there’s an R&D phase that we have to go through first.

Jim Huffman: 27:54

Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 27:55

And, and it’s like, you know, some people just want the answer right now. And it’s like, well, it’s not about there’s no way to get there without going through the right process first. So that’s, that’s the hard, how long.

Jim Huffman: 28:08

Does your process take? Because that your feedback loop obviously takes longer than we’re doing an ad today where we can get feedback instantly.

Rick Rappe: 28:16

Yeah. Well, we have a particular methodology that we call the rapid performance method when we’re doing campaigns. And so it’s if you think about a B testing, we structure a matrix with A, B, C, D, E, F, g testing. So we can test lots of things all at the same time with small test cells. And then, you know, we’re looking at audience segmentation and list sources and targeting ideas along one side of the matrix, and then offers creative formats, different creative ideas along the top.

And, and so we’re finding the intersection of where everything kind of comes together and really gives people the best results. And the. And so by doing a lot of testing all at once. It, it answers the question. It helps you find the needle in a haystack. 

But we, we can’t do it iteratively, iteratively in direct mail, because a direct mail campaign can take such a long period of time. So it’s too slow.

Jim Huffman: 29:19

Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 29:22

Was there an experiment at night that you were convinced would work? But that completely failed?

Jim Huffman: 29:27

Yeah. I didn’t even want to talk about it. So painful. So basically we’re launching and it’s going well. We’re doing user generated content ads with influencers and creators.

We have static that’s working. But I was like this brand. There’s humor with it. We were popping water balloons in shirts. Those ads are working. 

Let’s go big. Let’s do like a funny ad similar to what True classic has done, similar to Dollar Shave Club. So we get a really impressive agency. We spend $30,000 on the video, we get a location, we get actors, we get models, there’s like CGI involved, blah, blah, blah. You get you see where this is going. 

They make the video, they make all the clips with different hooks. We take it live and it just flops. Completely flops. We then run an ad next to it that just had the offers of static that we made that day. And that ad crushed this $30,000 video campaign we did in scaled, and it was just like such a spicy meatball to have to swallow. 

It was so painful. I mean, I’m proud of us for taking a swing and taking a bet. I wish I had that $30,000 back. But but yeah, humor is hard. And so I actually wish I would have done it with more of a long term testing approach to it, rather than just doing the spray and pray, going for the home run. 

And so we’re going to do humor again, but we’re going to approach it a little bit differently.

Rick Rappe: 30:55

Yeah, yeah. Some of the really creative ideas, the the really creative ideas in direct mail are awesome for your portfolio and for your clients. Get really excited about the cool, creative, but then they, they let you down on the results side.

Jim Huffman: 31:12

So it’s very true. Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 31:15

And humor, humor and direct mail. I’ve tested it a few times and it does not work very well. Yeah, yeah. It doesn’t work very well.

Jim Huffman: 31:23

Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 31:24

Hard to translate. Is there anything that you can think of that clients regularly, regularly resist doing that’s become something that you understand more deeply now that you’re the owner for.

Jim Huffman: 31:40

For us, it’s something where when we’re experimenting on an ad platform, we have to let the brand go a little bit. We still want to be on brand, but we’re always pushing clients like we do. We have to be so precious, like we’re trying to learn. So we want a wider spectrum of different types of creative and things we’re putting out there. And then when they come to the website, we can make sure it’s on brand.

And so it’s a constant fight of is this on brand? Off brand. And we’re trying to push the edges of it as a brand owner now. I totally understand it. I understand the influx of customer reviews and how precious those customers are and always wanting to be true to them. 

So it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a necessary point of friction that I still understand that I have a new appreciation for, but I’m always kind of leaning towards, let’s push the edges. Because I’ve seen too many companies just default to like, oh, that’s not on brand. We don’t do that. And it’s like, that gets you out of that growth mindset. And then it’s a fine line of when it’s on brand and off brand.

Rick Rappe: 32:48

Well, in, in my world, there’s often 1 or 2 people whose jobs their it is to sort of establish the brand and then make sure everyone stays within their definition of it. And it’s sort of lives in, in brand guideline documents. But I’ve, I’ve always thought that the real brand is, is in the consumer’s mind.

Jim Huffman: 33:10

That’s totally agree.

Rick Rappe: 33:11

That’s what we’re trying to own.

Jim Huffman: 33:14

And I think it’s with the product, it’s like, as long as our product and customer service and our promise is delivering. That’s what I care about the most.

Rick Rappe: 33:21

Right, right. Well, I think need is interesting because it’s definitely the brand is the technology in the shirt and it works. So the brand comes through when you’re wearing it, you’re like, wow, this thing is amazing.

Jim Huffman: 33:36

Yeah, that’s the feeling. Yeah. And what’s so fun is we get these reviews from people that are like, so honest. They’re like, all I wear is black shirts and like, I can finally wear colors. One guy was like, I wouldn’t go on date night with my wife because I hated her favorite patio spot.

I was always dripping in sweat. I felt like a sweaty beast. It created an issue. He’s like, Now I’m going on dates with my wife. And they write these like honest testimonials and you’re just like, oh my goodness. 

Like, this is so cool to be a part of this. Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 34:07

Yeah. I’ll tell you one quick story about my Neat shirts. On vacation in Italy. It was super hot. And, you know, I was sweating through my shirts, like, you know, halfway.

Yeah. Hiking all over these beautiful.

Jim Huffman: 34:22

It’s so hot.

Rick Rappe: 34:23

They’re places. And then I. And then I had my Neat shirts and it was like, oh, this is so much better. I could, I could sweat a little bit, but it didn’t show. And it was.

Jim Huffman: 34:33

All.

Rick Rappe: 34:33

Yeah, it was all good. Let’s see what’s what’s a key metric that an owner cares about that marketers don’t talk about enough.

Jim Huffman: 34:44

I think return rate is one. And that could be return. That could be churn. But it’s like the follow through of marketing and acquisition and following through of the promise is one big one that that we look at. And then I think one thing, this is kind of simple, but like marketers, the worst meetings are when a marketer is like, things are going so well, look at this test.

Look at this campaign in a silo, in a vacuum. We’re sure the numbers look good, but the, the founder, the entrepreneur is stressed. They’re like, no, things are not all right. Like my, the business from a holistic perspective is off. And so I think just not looking at the core marketing metrics relative to the, the business P and L for the quarter is is one thing that can be tricky. 

Like at our team, we call it a think like a founder. And it’s like, what’s the messaging that resonates with the founder? What’s the tone that resonates with the founder right now?

Rick Rappe: 35:43

You’ve run thousands of experiments over your career. Is what have you learned about human behavior that doesn’t seem to change no matter how much marketing technology changes?

Jim Huffman: 35:55

Oh, yeah. They know that everybody lies. They’re always skeptical. And at the end of the day, everything’s an emotional decision, regardless of how you try and rationalize it. So speaking to that side of it, rather than trying to argue them into why it’s definitively better that that wins the most.

And I’m constantly, I guess, not even surprised, but I’m just constantly impressed where we can take the most raw emotional feedback from customers. Why a different product didn’t work, and then why this one finally did. Or the thing they overcame, and how we then repurpose that to marketing messaging. How that like almost always works. Like some of our best hacks are using AI to crawl Reddit to find really upset, disgruntled customers of competitors. 

And then if those weaknesses are benefits, turn that into an ad with an emotional hook, because then they see it and they’re like, oh, finally it exists. Because if you win the emotion, the rational brain will then help justify that emotional decision.

Rick Rappe: 37:08

Yeah, yeah. Well, with Neat, it’s interesting because I’m thinking through in you’re selling a shirt, but what you’re really selling is you’re selling me on the opportunity to not, you know, to, to look dry and look, look, put together and all these things. And a shirt is just the vehicle that allows me to get what I That end result that I’m looking for.

Jim Huffman: 37:32

Yeah. Confidence. We see confidence written a lot. So we’re kind of like, oh, we’re selling confidence is is what this is. Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 37:41

Interesting. We do a lot of experimentation with emotional hooks in direct mail marketing as well. Yeah. You know, we can do fear based copy versus greed based copy versus salvation, you know, like lots of different, lots of different ideas. And, and you, you weave them into the copy platform and use that to build a concept around.

But yeah. Interesting. What’s one piece of advice that you find yourself repeating over and over? Because founders or marketers just don’t want to believe it.

Jim Huffman: 38:13

Yeah. Stop going after shiny objects and tactics and focus on the fundamentals and the basics of like, do you truly understand your positioning in the customer’s eyes. And how can you be not necessarily better, but different from competitors. So you stand out, then do all your tactics, your channels, whatever. But just honestly, it’s coming back to the basics.

That’s like, because with this book, The 7 Laws of Scaling, the thing I like about it, like it has nothing to do with AI. AI is what’s going to change. And that’s super exciting. And we have to be on top of that. These are like the things that won’t change. 

It’s like getting these principles in place. So it’s literally just like, did you choose the right market? Have you do you have the right product within it, the right money model? And then did you die? Did you nail your positioning? 

If you do those four things, you will look like a genius with whatever marketing you do. If you don’t do those things, you will be on hard mode with marketing.

Rick Rappe: 39:12

Yeah. Well, you’re you’re seven laws are real similar to some, something that I created the framework for direct marketing success. And we use that as a checklist to just basically go through and make sure that we’re getting each one of the things right? And where when you get all of the things coming together, like you said, it’s compounding and that’s when things really take off. So yeah.

Jim Huffman: 39:36

Absolutely.

Rick Rappe: 39:37

You’re constantly meeting founders and marketers. So is there anybody that you’ve encountered recently that you think I should invite on to Response Drivers?

Jim Huffman: 39:46

Yeah. I mean, I think Craig Swanson is such an original thinker and has such a unique approach to growing and scaling and really thinks in the terms of leverage and compounding. That’s someone that I always love hearing his take on things. And then obviously a fellow Seattleite marketer, Adam Weiler, is a breath of fresh air in his own unique way.

Rick Rappe: 40:13

Awesome. Thank you so much. If people are interested in getting their hands on your book, how would they go about doing that?

Jim Huffman: 40:22

Yeah, they can go to Amazon. The 7 Laws of Scaling. They can go to the growth website. There’s actually a free copy if people want that. So yeah, however they want to get it.

Rick Rappe: 40:33

Awesome. And if people want to get Ahold of you, what’s the best way for them to reach out and get Ahold of you?

Jim Huffman: 40:39

Yeah. Go to jim@growthhit.com or go to the website. We have pop ups and type forms that will gladly take your information. Perfect.

Rick Rappe: 40:49

Perfect. Well, this has been a fantastic conversation, Jim, and I really appreciate you being a guest with me today.

Jim Huffman: 40:56

Yeah. Thanks, Rick. Good to see you, man, and appreciate you wearing Neat. Very cool.

Outro: 41:00

That’s a wrap for this episode of Response Drivers. Thanks for tuning in. If you found today’s insights valuable, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left a review. Got a question or a topic you’d like us to cover?

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