Podcast

Break Through $10M: Consistency, Discipline & Meta Ads With Anthony Ciavirella

Anthony Ciavirella is the Co-founder of Manmade, a boxer briefs brand. He manages the brand’s online community and works with content creators to deliver exceptional customer experiences. Before co-founding Manmade, Anthony worked in the finance industry as the Co-founder and Director of Business Development at RIISK, the Senior Relationship Manager at B2Billing Payments Inc., and a Financial Advisor at TD.

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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • [1:25] Manmade’s skydiving stunt and Anthony Ciavirella’s mission to challenge big-market brands
  • [5:17] Anthony walks through Manmade’s first year in business
  • [9:43] How Manmade acquired its first 1,000 customers
  • [15:26] The manufacturing and inventory challenges Anthony navigated during his early years
  • [18:44] Leveraging Meta Ads for explosive growth — and how to measure performance
  • [26:31] Strategies for content production
  • [31:50] Anthony’s personal philosophy for growth: consistency and discipline
  • [47:08] Notable DTC groups
  • [49:18] Advice for scaling past $10 million
  • [57:26] How a supportive family shaped Anthony’s entrepreneurial spirit
  • [1:03:14] Working with James Murray and incorporating healthy habits

In this episode…

If you’ve plateaued at the $10 million mark, you may have become complacent in your growth. Yet you’re limiting yourself by not striving for that next level. You must identify and align your “why” to achieve results for your business. What growth strategies can you harness to elevate your brand?

Having built a brand by identifying a market need, two-time entrepreneur Anthony Ciavirella emphasizes remaining dedicated to your mission and consistent in your efforts to reach your goals. This requires aligning your team with your “why” and disciplining yourself to reach your maximum potential. Anthony also notes the role of Meta Ads in his growth, explaining that creating consistent content in-house allows you to communicate your brand’s story and generate value for the customer. You must also measure campaign performance by identifying key costs and metrics like AOV, LTV, CPA, and COGS.

In this week’s episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris chats with Anthony Ciavirella, the Co-founder of Manmade, about building and scaling a purpose-driven brand. Anthony shares his company’s early days and how he acquired his first customers, how to produce content in-house, and the innovative stunt that kick-started his brand’s awareness.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

  • "You can't just be giving uppercuts; you want to give those jabs — the value for the customers."
  • "When your back's against the wall, you wake up every day with a sense of purpose and a bit of fear; it drives you to succeed."
  • "If you have something burning inside you that's bigger than you, that's the path you've chosen."
  • "Life throws you lemons; make lemonade."
  • "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

Action Steps

  1. Prioritize understanding your customers' needs to tailor your products and services effectively: By focusing on the customer first, entrepreneurs can create offerings that resonate deeply and improve satisfaction.
  2. Optimize your brand's digital presence with strategic content creation: Consistently providing high-quality and authentic content helps cultivate a community around the brand, leading to increased engagement and customer loyalty.
  3. Invest time in market research and aligning your brand with cultural trends: Anthony Ciavirella’s adoption of cultural icons as ambassadors exemplifies how connecting with relevant trends can elevate a brand’s appeal.
  4. Integrate humor and real-life experiences into your brand narrative: Manmade’s marketing stands out because they are relatable and fun, proving that a genuine connection with the audience can enhance marketing efforts.
  5. Build resilience through personal development and professional diversification: Entrepreneurs should strive for self-improvement and learning from setbacks, which can lead to greater success and fulfillment in business ventures.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:00  

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show. Hey everyone.

William Harris  0:16  

I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million. 100 Million and beyond. As you up arrow your business and your personal life, I'm excited about the guests that I have today. Anthony Ciavirella. Anthony was previously a finance guy. Went from private banking to co founding the multimillion dollar men's underwear brand Manmade he's on a mission to take on the big corporations by building a brand men need and deserve. Anthony, excited to have you here.

Anthony Ciavirella  0:42  

Thank you for having me. Will I'm excited to be here. Yeah, before we dig

William Harris  0:47  

into the good stuff here, I do want to announce our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Element is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired, with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that I appealed recently. You can learn more on our website@Elumynt.com, which is spelled E, l, u, m, y, N, t.com, that's it onto the good stuff. So Anthony, men's underwear. And this is really, really good men's underwear. One of the things that I liked recently is you actually had one of your co founders, I think, jump out and skydive, to show how they hold up while skydiving, right? Like, what was going on with this stunt here? That

Anthony Ciavirella  1:25  

was Phil. That was Phil. I was actually, I was actually away with the family on a family trip, and I knew he was going to do it some couple of months back. He posted something saying, do we want to see Phil skydive if we do share this video? Was a real that we posted a couple of months ago. If we get over 100 or 120 shares, we're gonna do it. And he ended up getting way over that. So think we set that bar pretty low, either on purpose or by mistake. We don't know, but he ended up getting it. And he's a man of his word, and that's exactly what he did. So we had a nice day in the month of August where he booked it, had a hard time finding a place that would agree to do what we wanted to do, but the place that we ended up going to knew who Manmade was, and they're like, Yeah, for sure, we would love to we actually have two instructors here that would be willing to do it. And we sent the media team, and they got it done. So Phil went 13,000 feet in the sky in a propeller plane and jumped out in Manmade underwear, 200 kilometers an hour. And if you see the clip, you'll know that it went extremely well.

William Harris  2:36  

Yeah, we'll have to link to that clip in the show notes, because it's pretty funny and just good to see that, you know, having good natured fun, showing off the brand. But the the thing that you told me that your mission is to take on, you know, the bigger change, the bigger the bigger brands. Why? Why was it the mission? Why did you decide that this is what you needed to start

Anthony Ciavirella  2:56  

because there wasn't, because they've been doing it the same old way for years and generations, and whatever you know worked or didn't work, they didn't really care. It was just like, that's what's out there. How can we make it cheaper? How can we sell more? And we felt that. We felt that when we first went on our off site four years ago to decide that we wanted to start our own brand, and we went with a bunch of we went there, and we had a bunch of ideas we put on our white list, and we finally went for a little walk. And that was hot summer day, and we realized we all had crappy underwear. Was a funny conversation, how we got on the topic. But you know, given the two skill sets, or the two things we had most in common, being basically entrepreneurial spirited and having terrible underwear days, we just became extremely, extremely focused on what is out there. What are men buying? You know, are we the only guys going through this, surveying, ordering, trying on different products? And we realized there is not much of an option out there, and if there are, it's more on the fast fashion, probably gimmicky and not very, in our opinion, stand outish. It didn't really change the game in any safe way, shape, way or form. So what did, though, was the modal fabric. Once we tried on the modal fabric, we realized, wow, this is like, this is game changer. And we realized how expensive it was compared to, let's say, the generic, and we kind of understood why, but we said to ourselves, how can we get it sold to that? How can we get the underwear to a point where it's extremely functional has all that men want, and have it in modal and not be priced at 40, $50 a pair. So we ended up going to work, and we ended up getting to the point where we got to and we went to market. We had a close here to the ground. We made sure that it was a good market fit. It proved our our theory, and in the rest. This history.

William Harris  5:01  

What was the first year like I'd imagine? You know, when you first launched this, there's equal parts of excitement, nervousness. Is this going to work or not? You know, four months into it, six months into it, a year into it. Talk me through that journey.

Anthony Ciavirella  5:17  

So they say being naive is bliss, right? It's like not knowing is the best sometimes, because when you know too much, that's when perhaps you'll get cold feet, or obviously, obviously, when you go you know four, 430, year olds quitting their finance jobs, telling their wives, some of us, at the time, had kids, which most of us have, all of us, one partner has one on the way, but we're all we all have families now, but at the time telling our significant others, girlfriends or fiances or wives, depending who you're talking about, that we're about to quit our jobs to start a men's essentials brand, And the staple product is going to be a boxer brief, only in black. It was, it was, it was a shocker. It was like, What are you talking about? You know, obviously they knew that we were going to go into this completely focused and and we're going to do our best. But it was definitely a shocker. It was definitely something where it's like, Are you sure? Like, are we going to be okay? We had the support, and we got to work, and the first year was completely bananas. So if you think we roll it back, we've been around for three years, live to the market. But there was a year where we were in the lab really, like, no one knew about it, and we were working hard. It was probably the harder, the harder year, the hardest year. You know, the I always say the zero to one is harder than the one to 100 and that was the year where nothing was materialized. Everything was up in here, and we hired four partners, and we have good ideas, and we had to get to a point where everyone was aligned, which we got to, but it was a year where it was during covid, and everyone was focused about what was going on in the world, and then we just took that energy and that focus and put as much as possible into building this brand. It was a time where supply chain was a disaster. It was a time where containers were expensive. It was a time where there was a lot of unknown, but we knew that eventually things were going to tend to take the turn for the best online sales. Yes, they were doing really, really, really well, but we knew that things would eventually open up, and it wouldn't always be the case, but given that you lock the population up for X amount of years, and now they're they're buying online more. That's a skill set and a convenience that you're probably not going to get rid of anytime soon. So we, we took, we got to work. We worked that year to very pretty much, build out the whole brand, from visible novis to website to product, to designing the product, to figuring out, because none of us have come from fashion or apparel design or anything to do with this, so we have to, we do a lot of our homework, and that was pretty difficult, but the passion that we had for it, in the vision, the excitement and the the ambition and and And the just pure waking up every day, like we do this, right? It's gonna happen. It's just a question of when. And I remember, we set a goal to launch May of 2021, and we were reached a point three months before, because it takes about six to eight months to actually release the product. Like, get a get a finish, get a finished good into your warehouse. We knew we were going to make it, and we had to extend that to August 2021, which we ended up actually receiving and launching at the end, 30th of August. But it was, it was difficult. It was difficult. It was it was a lot of discipline. It was a lot of making sure that everything that we set out to want to accomplish that year that we had a game plan and we were all on the same page and executing full force like all four of us. So that was tough. That was tight.

William Harris  9:16  

Well, I appreciate like you said, like the the naivety was almost what you needed. You have to have the plan. But the plan can only go so far. It can only account for so much. And there is a little bit of like you've got to go into this, almost not realizing the pain that you're gonna have to go through in order to do this. Otherwise, it's very hard to get started and motivated. What was your What was your go to market strategy, though? How did you get those first, you know, 1000 customers. What was your plan for that?

Anthony Ciavirella  9:43  

So at first, it's funny. So you think that at first, all of your family and friends, they're all going to support you, and they're going to buy and then you go from like, first layer, second layer, third degree, fourth degree, fifth degree. You're like, Okay, people, yeah, type of thing, right? But there were. Like, okay, hold on, maybe our closest friends and family, but what about that's not going to be able to sell our first our first batch of underwear received was 10,000 pairs, and we said, okay, that's not going to sell at all. So what are we going to do? So I remember at the time, we made a list of, well, who are going to provide one pair? A free a free a free taste, call it. And then that shifted into adding, adding a pair to these individuals that purchase, to realizing not many people that we thought were going to purchase, we're going to purchase, and people that are actually purchasing, where people we had no idea that we're going to so then we realized, okay, hold on. We gotta deviate from this plan. And what we did was a lot of guerla marketing. So we did a lot of like organic stuff for sure, like Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, you name it. We did it if you scroll all the way down to the original like posts, some who are very cringe worthy, but we didn't, we didn't. We took our egos and we put them aside, like you have to put in perspective, right? We're four finance guys, CPAs, private banking, Wealth Management, real estate like these are guys that you know suit and tie at the office. People know you, they think you're crazy for starting a brand that this part this. But we didn't care, because we knew that one way, shape or form, where we're going to figure it out. So at the beginning, it was a lot of organic it was a lot of Gorilla going out to the streets, activations, having people touch the material. What are a couple of words that come to mind when we touch them? What comes to look what's the first thing that comes to your mind when you touch this material and filming it and asking them if it's okay, if we could use it for advertising and really like hustling and trying our best to get the word out there organically, because we didn't have much capital to spend on ads, and in the interim, the capital that we did have, we were testing right? We were testing to see what angles work, what videos did best, what, what's our click through rate, what's our seat what's our what's our conversion rate, like, what's, what's our cost per impression, and we're trying to figure out the formula so we can put more money behind it without bleeding out. Yep, right. So once we realize that this is the formula, we're going to go go and we're going to go with, we start to scale that. But before that, I would say one of our breaks was we a local newspaper? Imagine like we're talking about real newspaper, like the ones wrote an article about us that we hit the front page December 8, 2021, three months after that's that gave us about a 800 to 1000 orders across Canada. Because what happened was digitally, it got picked up by the sun, like the Calgary sun, the Toronto Sun, all these different provinces in Canada picked it up, and it became like a little bit of a viral, free thing that we ended up actually getting a lot of feedback from then, from that. Call it 1000 orders. Those are 1000 people that we did not know, or they did not know us. And from those 1000 people I got on the phone, my partners got on the phone, yeah, that's good. Wow, you're getting, you're getting served a nice dish of plastic. Funny.

William Harris  13:17  

Thank you so much.

Anthony Ciavirella  13:22  

Interesting. No problem. Thank you so much. Wow, that is so Who's Who's that?

William Harris  13:37  

That's my buddy, Richard. I'll give him a shout out. Richard Arkel, this was obviously staged. But you know why? Because you and I talked about this before. I've done a bunch of random stunts on this show over the years, and my inspiration for it was impractical, jokers, and I happen to know that, right? James Murray, one of your investors there, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to have some kind of a prank. At least. I haven't done these in a little while, but I couldn't pass up. I have I have picked my nose with the VP of Eddie Bauer on I have wet my pants on an episode. I've had a lot of fun. I've tried to see how many Mean Girls quotes I could fit into a podcast without somebody noticing. And so there's a lot of fun clips that said yes, Richard, my buddy, just brought me some for those who are listening, brought me some soup and just continue to layer on the Parmesan cheese. That

Anthony Ciavirella  14:29  

was lousy or so. I'm like, okay, maybe this is

William Harris  14:34  

really funny. So back to the important stuff. Though I had, I had takeaway a little bit where I wanted to get with this was, I think you guys have scaled up to what, over 3000 orders a day now, right?

Anthony Ciavirella  14:45  

Yeah, we're so, yeah, so I would say about that, and yeah, and it's going to be more during the holidays, yeah,

William Harris  14:51  

yeah. And so, you know, along the road from zero to 3000 orders a day, there's inevitably going to be hiccups. And so. Once you get past those first 1000 customers, what were some of the things that crept up on you that you're like, this is, this is tough. I don't know how we're gonna solve this. I don't know if we can solve this. You know, it's like, maybe this is it. Maybe this is as far as we go. Were there these hurdles or anything that you ran into along the way

Anthony Ciavirella  15:19  

detrimental to that point. Knock on, maybe

William Harris  15:21  

not to that point, but, but no hurdles, at least. This sucks,

Anthony Ciavirella  15:26  

for sure, yeah, for sure. I would say we have to go through quite a bit of manufacturers before finding the right one. And that was that was hard, especially, you know, we couldn't do it in Canada because we had to charge three times the price we're charging now to actually make it work. So that was really hard. And then when we found it, we were really relieved. But throughout the point of finding that manufacturer, we had to go through a couple of bad batches, let's call it. There were bad batches in general that we received that we had to, like, get rid of because we're not going to do that, and it was hurtful. What else I mean? We, we, we've been through quite a bit of obstacles, any that come to mind, where I felt like I had to throw in the towel, no, because it wasn't an option. You see, sure when your backs, when your back's against the wall, in the sense where, like this is, it's either this or I got to put back the suit and tie and go back to work at the bank. Sure, yeah, you, you, you, you get up every single day with a sense of purpose, a sense of fear. Call it, you know, like you just, you just want to, you just want to succeed, so bad that you make sure to do whatever it takes to get there. And there's no plan, you know, no and I just want to clarify, you know, like some people say, I'll do whatever it takes. We've never steered in direction of doing anything that doing anything that compromised the customer. Because I know this is mostly entrepreneurs listening and or aspiring entrepreneurs, but if you remember to always make the customer come first, like that is the purpose of what you're doing as a brand. You you essentially cannot make a mistake. You see the customer needs to be priority in all decisions that you make, and the brand is catering to the customer at the end of the day. Yes, you don't have a boss. But my boss is my customer totally, no matter how big or how small, because if you don't think of it that way, then, then, then I believe you're probably doing it all wrong, because, like, you're just, you know, maybe it's not a business. It's gonna last very long. Maybe it's you're doing it for the wrong reasons, and essentially, we are building a brand for a reason to to to provide men right with quality, right quality basics, quality essentials, and removing that BS, removing that bullcrap. So, you know, don't know, Bull, just basics, you know, like, just, like, just, just, just give them what they want and and that's it. That's so we're building, we're building a brand for the people. That's that's how we see it.

William Harris  18:26  

I love it. What are some of the tactics along the way that have proved to be the most effective for you in scaling? So, you know, you get through the guerrilla marketing and you say, Okay, this is a scalable tactic. Meta, yeah. Meta ads specifically, Meta,

Anthony Ciavirella  18:44  

yeah, Meta, Meta, Meta, Meta is, is the reason why we were able to grow so quickly and so efficiently 100% and I mean, now at this point, we become part of what's called the disruptors, member, top 1% of advertisers in Canada, and we're working very closely with our rep, and she's amazing. But before that, it was still Meta, like it's It's measurable. You're able to measure it to see if the formula works, and if it does well, you scale, and then if you have the right processes in place to scale correctly, right? You need to make sure you have your product. If you're have no product to sell, and you're scaling and you're bleeding, because now, yes, you're driving the traffic. There's intent, there's purchase, there's purchasers, but there's no product while you're throwing money in the garbage.

William Harris  19:36  

So I want to stop you here. You said it's measurable, and I think a lot of people would say that they feel like it's not now, I agree with you. There's a lot that you can measure there, but when you say it's measurable, how are you measuring the effectiveness of Meta campaigns, especially, you know, post iOS 14 like that was a tough thing for a lot of people. When you say it's measurable, what are using a third party tool, just within platform? What does that mean to you?

Anthony Ciavirella  20:01  

Yeah, we use a third party tool, for sure, but a lot of it is done manually. So my partner, Rob is the media buyer, and what we do is, on a daily basis, we measure, we measure our cost. So we met, so on a daily basis, we know, for example, what's our gross profit on new customers in Canada, new customers in the US, returning customers in Canada, returning customers in the US. And then we have our gross profits for the day, so we know globally how we did. Obviously, you need to know your aovs, your LTVs. You need to know your CPA right? So what is it costing you to get this customer? And then, if you see, okay, your three most variable costs are marketing cogs, your cost of good and your shipping, right? So if you have those three variables, and you know that you're selling for $1 it's costing you 40 cents to get the get the customer through the door, then it may be costing you 10 cents to ship it. It may be costing you 20 cents to get it out there. Well, 40, 1050, 6070, so you're left with 30 cents. Now, with that 30 cents, you have a customer, and you're able to call it make a little bit or break even, and then you better have a gosh darn good product and a good and a good product. Word of mouth, yeah? Some word of mouth, well, yeah, word of mouth. And then returning customers. And then they're returning customers. You've already paid for the marketing on that customer, so you remove that 40 cents, call it. And then at that point, you're much more profitable on the second order and the third and the fourth, and then you're building a brand. Right now, there are customers. There are people on this podcast that might want to sell a piece of furniture or like a game or something that you buy once while your average order value is not going to be $1 maybe $10 you know what I mean. So you got to make sure that. But your marketing might not cost you 40 cents. It might cost you five bucks, I don't know, right? So you have to, you have to know, you know, what does it cost to get that customer through the door? What's cost me to ship the customer's product? What does it cost for the product? What am I making? What are my fixed costs? What is my dividend like? Once you have those numbers pretty much clear, then you can measure on a day to day basis. Now is every day, every two days the same. No is every season the same. No is every quarter the same, no. But you need to make sure that you build a solid base of a solid of brand, that you have those returning customers, or you have those customers, that word of mouth is working, or organic, your organic needs to be on point, you know, like a lot of times people, they think the marketing that we do is only on our Facebook and Instagram pages. It's not that's organic, that has that is not those are not ads. Those are different to add. That's a different day of shooting, that's more effort, right? And we and sometimes they get 50 likes, and sometimes they get 1000 legs, right? You know? But they get the engagement, they get the views, they get the eyeballs. That's all free. And that's all stuff that people see personality, see cultures you value, you know, they see its value for them and not just for you. And before I finish, it's, um, there's the, there's the there's the jab, and then there's the uppercut. So that's what like GaryVee, somebody that says that a lot, you know? So you want to, you want to not just be giving uppercuts, because that's just you want to give those jabs, you know? You want to give those jabs, those jabs as value for the customer. Once a month, we do on YouTube and sent to all of our customers. It's a vlog. It's a vlog for them, keep them updated, what's going on in the life of Manmade and what we're doing to build it. And it's really entertaining for the people that are interested in it, people that follow us on Instagram or Facebook. It's entertaining for them. It's engaging, it's building community. And then you have the ads, and the ads are a hook, a problem, a resolution and a call to action, right? You need those four elements in every ad that you do and you you need to either be educational, entertaining, educational entertaining, and I'm missing one, but I know that those are the two pillars that we go after is basically to entertain and to educate, because people think that we're building a brand to go after or to compete against, brands similar to us, or call it brands that are not traditional. But that's not true. We're going after the traditional guys. We're going after the food of looms, the Hanes, the the Joe boxers, the CKS, like the guys that are, that are, that are eating the majority of the pie, right? Not the slivers the majority, because that's where people don't know any better, right? They just been buying the same boxers they've been buying since their granddad's day. You know, like, it's one of those. And then they try our boxer, or they try our T shirt, or they try our socks, or soon, our swim trunk and our pants and our crew, our crew sweater and all that. And they try it, and they're like, Wow, this is great, you know? And, yeah, they they realize the benefit and and how innovative it is, because we believe that we're innovating. We're not doing things the way they've always been done, you know? We push it. We push it to

William Harris  25:28  

level. You're even innovating on content. You kind of call that out that you're doing, like the web log, or whatever the video that you're doing, yeah, I like content that is made solely for the purpose of the customer versus for the purpose of making a sale. And all things lead towards that. But I talk a lot about Romancing the customer and how that's a, you know, somebody buys something and then, rather than sending them another ad immediately after they just bought something, to buy something else. It's like, are you romancing them at all? Are you telling them about, like, why the purchase they just made is amazing? Are you taking them through this idea? It sounds like you guys have thought through content a bit more Meta being a big part of what you're doing. How are you approaching, and you talked about your four different ways that you're the four different components of an ad. How are you guys approaching this? Is this a systematic thing that you're constantly coming out with. You know, 100 new creatives a week. Is this something that you're doing in house, or you're working with a team? Like, what is your content production look like? Yeah, 100%

Anthony Ciavirella  26:31  

we do everything in house. We believe that if you're going to do it, you have to do it yourself. You know your brand better than anybody else. I know it takes a lot of resources and a lot of work, but it's one of those things for us that we need to have control over, because that's the lifeline, that's the juice, that's the blood that goes through the veins of the brand, right? So what are we doing? I mean, on our team right now, when we first started, was an iPhone, the four of us quite frank, we used to try to edit it ourselves, really not good at it. Then we felt like a subcontractor. Wasn't that great either? We hired a first editor. He was okay, but then realized it wasn't for him. What we needed was more than what he can actually provide that he went to become a producer for movies. That was a great story, but we ended up getting a really talented editor. That was the first and then we got a videographer, and now we work with a creative director as well to bring more creative creativity, excuse me, to the good to the bunch, because he's really good at what he does. He's he's really creative. So it's systematic for sure, like we have Wednesdays is for ads. Fridays is for organic, right? So Wednesdays, we we film ads. Rob spearheads it for sure, like we had to, like, make pillars on who's taking care of what. Then Rob spearheads it, but he pulls in the partners whenever we're needed. And then on Fridays, all of us have pretty much the whole day block to film for organic either morning or afternoon, depending on who's in what, but, but, yeah, it's definitely a systematic we have, we have in our arsenal, like, months in advance content that we're going to be pulling out like it's not, it used to be. It used to be. Film it today. Post it today, sure, but now, but now, but now. It's not like next week. We're already filming and making content for Christmas, right? That's been posted around Christmas. So, like, you need to, you need to have that. You take that very seriously. Like, that's, that's how, that's how your customer is going to get to know you online. You have to have personality, and you have to be real, and if you're not a good actor, you don't have to act yourself, right? Then, if you're not comfortable in front of the camera, get comfortable, right? We had a lot of practice and getting comfortable in front of our camera, and, you know, making ourself vulnerable, and that's what really gets you comfortable. And then you realize that it's just another day at another day in the office. And then you just start building and realizing what's good, what's working, what's not. Because, you know, every Thursday at three o'clock, we sit in this conference room, the whole media team, the four founders, and we take a look at all our organic and all our ads, and how they're doing and what needs to be shut off and what's not and how should we do this different, and where are we going on this direction, what's it looking like next month, and when we planning this next thing? So there's a lot of planning, there's a lot of a lot of planning, and you need to be on top of it. You need to be on top of it. And you need to give the you need to give the jabs, and you need to give the uppercuts, because the jabs is the value for the customers, the romancing, as you put it, and then the uppercuts is really the what's going to sell the product on sponsored ads, right? And that's different. That's, that's a different game, that's, that's, that that's an art do. And that depending on what you're depending on what you're offering, your customer will vary. You know, a lot of other brands that that sell similar products to ours are selling a lifestyle, or selling a lifestyle. It's like, you know, look like this guy, or feel like this, or do this, or we're like, solving a problem, you know, so like men have problems, we make it relatable, we make it entertaining, but at the end of the day, we don't take ourselves very seriously, but we take our product and our brand very seriously. And I think that transcends pretty easily through the screen and and we want to continue doing that, and that's how we innovate on our marketing.

William Harris  30:39  

I love it in the dedication that you are putting into reviewing the creative I think is a key part of why the creative is successful. I do see there are sometimes brands that are too hands off with that, where they say, Hey, you know, you guys, just go ahead and do it. They'll tell them, maybe the advertising creative team is like, go ahead and just make it. And they're not thinking through what is working. How do you plan this in advance? And I think that those things are important to do so good job for you on that. I want to talk about your your philosophy to growth, because there are a couple of things that you brought up when we were chatting before that. I really appreciated. One of those that you said is, you know, the things that are blocking people from growing. So if I think about this, people are trying to get from 10 million to 100,000,002 10 million to 100 million, and they reach these different roadblocks. And a lot of times it's not even so much a a product problem or a people problem or process problem, as much as it is maybe like a mentality problem. There's something that they have to unlock within their brain in a way, different way that they're thinking, like a philosophy thing. One of the things you told me is it's consistency and discipline every single day. Show up at the office, take me through like your philosophy of growth and why consistency and discipline is so important. So

Anthony Ciavirella  31:50  

we started off the four of us. Now we're closer to 30, and by the end of the year 35 and then we end the next year will be 50. You're not building this alone, right? So you're not building this alone, and everyone has to be on the same page. So we have a rule. It's basically like no hybrid, no more remote work. It's like everyone at the office. It's a startup. Yes, we're out of the startup phase, but we still consider ourselves, and we'll always consider ourselves a startup, because you have to be you have to think that way. It's like, in any given day, could be Armageddon. In any given day, this can be taken stripping away from us. So that's a little bit of a mentality and the discipline and the consistency. So like, for example, we'll be doing a town hall next Monday. Not this one coming the next one, with the whole team aligning them. What's going on with the holiday season? What's the plan for 2025 where we're going? So everyone feels like or knows not feels but knows where we're headed. You know, we're a team like from customer service to fulfillment, from pick and packer, we have like we we explain it all, because everyone's a piece of that, of that vision of that brand, of that culture. So that's the first thing. And then, like, we do a lot of like off sites as the co founders, which now we have, like a director of finance over Director of Human Resources. You have director in in the creative space, and we're going to be building on that, and they're going to be pulled into those but for example, right now, I read December, so after the holiday season, end of December, and every January, sorry, June, but twice a year, we used to go up north. We still do. And there are large trends. We spend three days, we plan out the year in advance, in December, for the next year, and then in June, we revisit what we've done in the last six months to make sure we're on the right track. We have to add to that now, which every quarter we need to do a one day off site, just the four of us to make sure that we're not deviating. Or, you know, is it going direction we said that was going three months ago or two months ago or a month ago? Because picture this. You can either be driving 50 kilometers an hour on the service road or on a road. And if you go like this with your steering wheel, it'll take some time before you go like like, before you go off road. You know, you have time to bring the steering wheel back into the middle and continue going along your Jolly way. But when you're going 200 kilometers an hour and you and you keep your steering wheel like this for just a little bit, you're going off road like this, like in a flash. So when you're going quickly and you want to grow fast, you need to make sure that you're you're continuously revisiting and aligning the team, the founders, the executive team, like everyone's beating at the same beat of the drum, like you cannot deviate from the mission. And then, you know, you go up no like we go to the up north thing. We plan the year in advance. We have the targets, you know, sales, product and operations, social media, culture and staffing, tech and finance, yada yada. And then you have those. The tactics. This is the goals, high level. And then at the bottom, how are we going to get to these goals? How we're going to do this? And then we those are all the tasks. And then we divide those tasks among the four of us, and then amongst the four of us, you know, our teams, what are they going to be doing? How are they going to get things done? And so on and so forth. So that's one thing, and then the discipline, sorry, the consistency, uh, showing up every day, having a morning call the whole team, everybody, everybody has one minute of air time. What are you doing today? What do they look like? Do you need help, or anything? Okay, you know, I have a 15 minutes here. Let's meet in the conference room. So that's like the huddle, where everyone aligns themselves every single day in order to make sure that we're going in the right direction together, we would not be able to be where we are today if it wasn't for the four of us and our teams. We always say not one of us could have done this alone, and we also cannot have got to this point without our team. Everybody here wants to be here, like, it's, it's a nice environment, and we want to, we just hire the Director of Human Resources. She's starting on the 16th. I

William Harris  36:11  

saw that post on LinkedIn when you're looking for it.

Anthony Ciavirella  36:13  

Yeah, it was, it was a, see, that's another thing I'm going to tell you something. Okay, so, like, every time we hire for these roles, we don't hire straight out of the gate director. We used to be like, we need some help in HR. It's getting to a point a little crazy, you know, like we're, we're trying to run this, this company, and, like, vacations and this and that, and they are, they all these things. And we're like, okay, we need help. Maybe we need a HR coordinator. Go on to some going to get it. Get some candidates in the door. Meet with them. We find some pretty good candidates, but we're like, is that really what we need? Okay, we don't need HR coordinator. Let's get a what are they called? Yeah, HR manager. Meet a couple of them, you know. Okay, you have some experience, maybe two, three years, four years. And we look at each other, we're like, okay, but like, if we were to close our eyes next year, where are we going to be? And we know that answer, and we're like, okay, but this person is a is this person going to be that same person we're going to need next year? No, okay, you know, I need to hire five key roles right now. Five really, really key roles. Are they the people? Are this the person that's going to be able to do this? Plus? Plus, Plus. No. Okay, so get a HR director. Yeah, it's expensive, more than the HR coordinator, but you got to invest in the people. And we're at that point where we can, right at the early days, which not too long ago, we wouldn't be thinking like that. We try to really, like run it till we can't take it anymore, till, like this blood in the fingernails. But now, at this point, at this point, after a few quarters of like, doing well and months and month over month, doing well and going to the right direction, it's time to invest in the next, you know, three, 510, years. And every time we hire, we don't take it lightly. We take it very seriously. The last thing we want to do is layoffs. So, like, we make sure financially we're very stable, before offering someone a type of role where they have to leave a major corporation they have families. It's like, it's pretty serious, right? So we make sure of that, but we're at that point, and we're really proud of that, and we want to be able to hire the right people to get us to get us to that next level. So that consistency and that discipline stays the focus. And yeah, man, it's, it's, it's, it's really that. It's like writing it down, revisiting it, making sure you're on the right path and and staying and staying the course, not getting complacent, not getting comfortable, not getting lazy, because it's easy, right? Like you want to get a six pack and you want to be jacked and you want to be super healthy, you get there now, what now? What do you do? You stay there, or do go back to your Bender ways and and, you know what I mean, and you gotta start the cycle all over again once you hit what you thought was hard to hit three years ago. You just want to get bigger and better and faster and sharper and and now you're competing in the league, right? So we see it like that. You know, you get to the show, which we call the show the NHL, call it, or whatever, like any professional athlete, once you're there, you need to prove yourself. You need to stay there and get better. And if you want to be the goat, well, there's not many that get there, but there are, and there's some key elements that those guys all have that is, is human like but it's, it's a life changing if you have to choose, it's a path in life you have to take. You know what I mean? It doesn't come, it doesn't come without a cost, right? So, hours,

William Harris  39:43  

hours, hours upon hours upon hours, right? It's like, you know, I've read the stories about Kobe being in the gym, you know, before a game kind of thing. It's like, he'll be in there for eight hours before the game starts, or something ridiculous. It's like, yeah, he's in there to win it.

Anthony Ciavirella  39:57  

It's the same in business, bro, like. So William, like, you have to, you have to be in it to win it. Like, it depends, you know, there's some people listening to this that, like, you know what, I reached 10 million, 2 million, I'm good, you know, maybe even a 10 1 million I'm good. Like, I have a little business. I'm okay. Like, I don't need and there's some people that want to build, like generational like businesses where it's like, you want to build something to compete, because not just for the money, the money will come it's because you have something in you that is burning so strongly that it's bigger than you, it's better than you, right? It's stronger than you so. So either or of the spectrum is fine, but if you are going to go to the other side of the spectrum, you need to prepare to sacrifice, and unfortunately, sometimes those sacrifices come with a bigger cost, or like relationships, time with family, even though we have a healthy balance, I have to say we're four. We all have families like you know, when we're not in the big seasons, we weekends are dedicated to our families. We try to get home before supper, and we put our kids to bed or whatever. We try to do all that. But when it comes to Father's Day and the holidays, and if crap, if the fan, our families know, you know, this has to this. This cannot happen. So we, we get pulled into drafting, we get drafted to war, and we do what we got to do.

William Harris  41:33  

Yeah, it's a, it's a fair way of looking at it. Uh, entrepreneur to entrepreneur, I can say that I've, I've definitely felt that myself. I wrote an article on Fast Company years ago about how to work 100 hours a week and not die. And it wasn't hyperbole. You know, I was actually working 100 hours a week and documenting my process of what time I start coffee, what time I'm doing creative tasks versus what time I'm doing logic tasks based around, you know, circadian rhythms, and it was just how I could actually function for a sustained amount of time working 100 hours a week. There's sacrifices that had to be made. You'll never be able to say whether those are worth it or not, other than simply that, you have to do it. You put in the time. If this is a path that you've chosen, and it's not easy, and like you said, it's not for everybody, and that's okay. It's okay to admit if it's not for you, but if it is dig in there and grind and when you can hire those people that could take things off your plate, I like that you called out that you were hiring directors. Some of the best advice I got early on was from, oh boy, I'm drawing a blank on his name right now, it'll come to me later, but that's what he said. Justin koffenberg, that's what he told me too, was he was like, You need to hire somebody that can take it off your plate, not just somebody that is going to manage it, you're going to manage them, but somebody that you say, this is yours. You own this. Let me know if there's anything you need from me. Otherwise you've got it. And I really like trying to hire from that mentality.

Anthony Ciavirella  43:06  

Yeah, it's very rare that sometimes you'll find someone that you can mold into someone taking it off your plate completely. It's happened to me in the customer service side. I've hired someone off of Tiktok, believe it or not, but she was persistent to get that job, and she was my first customer service while I was answering all the emails and the DMS and everything that's do a customer experience off my kitchen table or at work, 2345, hours a day. And I trained her. She was like shoulder to shoulder to me, and she learned the philosophy and how we respond to things, why the why we, why we, why we create maybe some friction, but not too much. And you know, why, why we always have to do best for the customer, and how to call a fraudster versus like someone who genuinely has an issue, how to talk to customers, all of it. And now she's spearheading that, that division, which is rare, but yeah, going forward, like, it's hard, it's long. It was long process. It was like a six, one year process. I can't you can be doing that in a in an environment where you're growing so fast, where you you at the beginning, we had no choice. Remember when I said you had to, like, make sure your fingernails were bleeding before you can invest in another person. Well, that was that era. Now we're hiring for someone who could take it off our plate and do better, better than us. That's how we're able to work now, 40, 5060, hours a week instead of 100 hours a week, right? Because, right? I don't want to be, I don't want to be working 100 hours a week forever. I don't, I don't, right? We don't. We all don't we spoke, right? These are the four No, like, I got, I was in a near death experience of how it should happen in my life, where it's like, geez, you know, like, that's, that's not, that's, that's not how I want to go if I had to go, you know, like, it's, I have. I want to balance life, even though I. Chose the entrepreneurial thing. But if you're building a business, how you know you're building a good business? I feel too, is that, is that the business will still run even if you're not in it. In this stage the game, it needs it. It needs us. Because we're not we're nowhere near done, like we have so many things you have to do, but we always have it in mind that we're building a business that it needs to have its own pulse like it's capable of. This was the first year where I went away for longer than a couple of days, and I checked my stuff the first week, and the second week, I only took an hour a day to review everything that I missed. Yeah, it was the first time, partially because I have partners, but partially because we have a set of a very good team and very good team, right? And there's clear expectations from everyone and and that's important, that's important, they need to know. You can expect people who are employed for you to know exactly what's in your brain. No, it's impossible, but you could, you could educate on what is needed to do in terms of their day to day task and how to go above and beyond and what's expected in the next month, 23456, a year, in order for them to know if they're doing the right if they're working in the right way, if they're doing the right things in their in their job. So

William Harris  46:30  

and you can set the vision, and you can set the values, and with the vision and the values mapped out, they have the ability to make some choices. Say, does this align with the vision? Does this align with the values, okay, then I could probably make this decision to move in this direction.

Anthony Ciavirella  46:44  

That's exactly it. That's exactly it.

William Harris  46:49  

So you, you also told me, because you have a lot of wise advice here, and I appreciate this, that you are involved. You, Ian, the founders, are involved in a lot of DTC groups. Yeah, I imagine you

Anthony Ciavirella  47:01  

we, I want to correct that so we're involved in a sense, where we read the content on it and we follow but to contribute and to post about it. We feel like a lot of people that do that, perhaps had exits, have become VCs angel investors, and they're looking for other like opportunities who are not in that realm. So we read, we inform ourselves, especially in the earlier days. But yeah, I just wanted to correct that statement, and

William Harris  47:31  

that's fair. Are there certain DTC groups that you would want to give a shout out to you, like, Hey, if you're in a DC space and you're trying to grow a business, this one or two are ones that I would say, you definitely want to be a part of.

Anthony Ciavirella  47:46  

The one that comes to mind that I can tell you that my partner, Ron, who's the media buyer of the team, Charlie the disruptor, he's, he's, he's top. And then I would say, I would just, you know, he's a lot of people know him, but I would say, I would say, Gary V. Gary V is someone in on, on them, on on, on the content side of things, where I would say, he says a lot of wise things, which is true. We've tested the theories, and they work. Moise Ali on. Moise Ali is another forget his podcast, limited supply, very good podcast. And, of course, yourself, William,

William Harris  48:34  

I appreciate that. That's uh, your checks in the mail. No, I'm just kidding, yeah, but no, I appreciate that.

Anthony Ciavirella  48:41  

Yeah. Um, those are, those are a couple, yeah, yeah.

William Harris  48:45  

When you're when you're looking at building and growing this business, aside from the things we've talked about, what else do you think is important for let's say a business that is at the mark that you're at, let's say that they're they're doing 10 million, and they're trying to breakthrough there, or they're stuck. They can't break that plateau of 10 million to get on their way towards 100 million. What? What other advice would you give them? What other pieces do you think that they might be missing that are that are stalling their growth?

Anthony Ciavirella  49:18  

They're getting comfortable. They're getting comfortable. They're paying themselves good salaries. They're making good money. They're slowing down. They're like, this is good. What I got to do more. Their Why is not aligned?

William Harris  49:34  

You know? Why? Why

Anthony Ciavirella  49:35  

did you start this business? Why is it for the money? Well, why is good? Yeah, but you can make money becoming an insurance broker. Like, why did you, why did you buy this as a business? You know, what's your goal? Did you want to do? Did you want to attain something outside of just, you know, sales, because the sales is great, but you know, you have to check into your why? And I would say, like taking profits, reinvesting into your business, scary, scary to take now you're now you're doing ibida, where you're making 2345, $600,000, a month, or $100,000 a month. And you have to take it and reinjected into the business where there was a once upon a time you were like, geez, I can't wait to make that yeah, you know so your your why. Because once you know your why, you're not scared anymore. You know you got your momentum. You know your formulas. You know what you have to do. You know you need to reinvest in your team, in efficiencies. You need to invest in more product. You need to invest in talent. You need to invest in in software. You need to invest in whatever it is. Do it. Do it. You have resources now. You have resources now, right? And and go to the bank. Now, go to the bank now say, Hey, I did this. I did that. I need this. I need that. Even if you don't need it, you always go to the bank when you don't need money. When you need it's too late. They're not going to lend it to you. So when you don't need it, you go to the bank. You show them your financials. You show them you're on the right track. You show them you have a good track record. You show them all that you get what you need to scale, because it could come to a point where you're scared that if you scale now, bigger the stakes, bigger than mistakes. Bigger the stakes bigger than mistakes. You are scaling and you're spending more and you're pushing harder. One tiny mistake can cost you. Instead of making 600,000 a month EBITDA, you might be losing 200 how many two hundreds can you lose before you're bankrupt?

William Harris  51:47  

Right? So many, usually, right? So, so,

Anthony Ciavirella  51:50  

so, so that's why. And it's like they're scared of that. They're like, geez, wow. They're thinking that they're at the casino. I'm being greedy. It's not greedy. You have to know your why. Why did you start this? Where do you want to go? What's your goal? That's the difference between the guy who's earlier, I said, an entrepreneur that wants to reach, let's say, this level, and then the guy who wants to become, wants to go for it all, that wants to wants a cup, that wants to be the goal that's that's the difference. And then, and then, when you, when you come to terms with that, and you realize, okay, that's what I want to do, then go for you know a lot of guys, they're like, Oh, I'm gonna build a business to sell it. We're not building a business to sell crap. Sure. Like, why? Just three star all over again. I know a lot of guys that sold their businesses for 20, 3040, 5060, lot. I got a couple of guys million and they're 3540 years old, and then they're like, depressed. It's a rush to run a to run a company like this, and say it's yours, and every day is another is not the same, and and you're making decisions really quickly. You're using your brain a lot. You're engaged. You're meeting people. It's fun, it's fun, and you can't lose sight of the fun once it's only about the money. It sucks.

William Harris  53:13  

You reminded me so a lot of the poem that says something along the lines of, you know, working out is hard. Being out of shape is hard. Choose your hard. And it goes through a series of these different things. And people have that on T shirts and whatever now, but it's a poem, and I don't remember who wrote it. I should know, but it's the idea of people getting comfortable. I think the point is you have to get comfortable with the uncomfortable, right? So you have to be comfortable with working out. You have to be comfortable with choosing hard things each day, and if that's what you're comfortable in, then it works out. But if you're just getting comfortable, and, like you said, getting lazy with the approach to growth, it you are limiting yourself, because you're limiting your your why you're limiting where you're going with that

Anthony Ciavirella  53:57  

look, if you're profitable and you're at 10 million, and you're profitable, and you're doing well and like, it's going well, good for you, like, you're part of that small percentage of companies that are able to do it. But if you're able to get that point, what's stopping you to get to the other point? Like, stop putting limited like, stop limiting your belief. Stop, stop putting limits to your growth, just just male cross your t's, measure eyes. Have a plan, stick to it. The same formulas that worked for you in the past will work for you fundamentally for the future. It's it's the values of how you do things that get it done. It's not anything specific. You asked me before you know, what did you do that was there's not one thing that we did that, Oh, my God, it changed things for us. It's a, it's a, it's an accumulation of many little things that became this big thing. We're four guys from a small town, well, small town, and from the city, but from a small. Section in East side of Montreal who went to public schools. I never finished university. I have five classes left, right? I never finished because I started my business, right? I was doing it part time. Why I was doing a part? I had all these certificates and licenses to to work in the finance world, and I was getting my university degree part time while being at the bank that I met. When I left the bank, I put everything on pause, and I learned more in business than I would have ever learned in school, where now the universities are calling us to go present on our business, sure. So like at the end of the day, I am not the smartest guy. Rob is not the smartest. Phil is not the smart there is not nobody's the smartest guy. But when you have a plan and you're consistent and you're disciplined, then you build it properly, it will come anybody. Anybody can do it. Literally, anybody can do it. It just how badly do you want it? So that's where, that why comes into factor. That's where, and even us, every couple of months, we have to revisit that and and, and make sure we're on the same trajectory, and make sure that we're all we're all aligned, because we're human beings at the end of the day, you know, I can, I can, I can, you know, some crap can drop on your lap tomorrow that will geez you up, that will geez you up mentally. And it takes, takes courage and discipline and a lot out of you to stay focused, right? But you do it, and then once you get through it, to build you right? So, so, so that's it, that's, that's, that's a there's no secret

William Harris  56:49  

sauce. Well, I mean, you're right, there isn't, but there is, that is the secret sauce. And if people get that, then they can, you know, hustle and work and grind and stay disciplined and consistent. And I think that's a good transition into who is Anthony Ciavirella, because you're kind of getting to this one of the things that you told me about is growing up. You, oldest of three, kind of had this gift from God to be able to read people. Obviously, you have something in you that makes you disciplined and consistent. Tell me a little bit about your childhood and how you think that has helped shape you to be who you are.

Anthony Ciavirella  57:24  

Yeah, I'm the I'm the oldest of three. I come from a My mom was a homemaker. My dad worked in construction. Of a brother of three years and a half younger than me, and a sister that's six years younger than me. I always got like support from my parents. I always got support from my parents, but when I started working at the bank at such a young age, I started working at the bank, I was actually 17 when they hired me. I was turning 18 a couple of months, two months, and they made a mistake. They didn't realize I wasn't 18 yet. So I started working, and when they had to give me my first pay, like, hold on, you're still not 18 yet. And I'm like, No, I'm like, okay, whatever. We'll pretend that we didn't see this Sure. And two months passed, that was pretty crazy, but I learned a lot. So I learned a lot with customers working as a teller and in the office as a financial advisor, and I worked my way up. And what was the best part was sitting down with a customer who was broke, a customer who had money, a customer who did well, who didn't do well. And I wouldn't focus on what they do for a living, because there was different people in different strokes of life that did well, that you were like, Oh my God, how did you do this, being this, and then there was people that are, like, doctors and lawyers that were broke, right? So just to give you a perspective, and I would always ask and go under the layer, like, what did you do? Like walking through your life, like I would sometimes during these meetings block, like an hour and a half an hour 45 minutes, was talking about them and asking them questions of who they are. And I was always fascinated about learning about people and how they what made them tick, and what were the little differentiators that made them successful. A little bit about, like this podcast, you know, like you're asking me all these questions full circle. And I learned a lot about myself through these people. Because a lot of the people that were saying things like, well, you know, I have to do this, and I had to do that, and I came from this, and I came from that, and I'm like, oh, did you have backing capital? No, this is how I did it, or this is what I did. I realized that it took just to want it bad enough, and I did, and I always wanted something more. I always had this voice inside of me saying, like, is this? Was this? It? Get up every morning, go to work. Play the game come back home like is this? Is this it? You know, this is what I'm going to be doing. That's why it took me a song to finish university. I never knew what I wanted to do. I knew I liked business. I knew I liked finance, but to say that I wanted to become a CPA or a banker for life, I wasn't convinced. So I met a customer, and this customer enlightened me, because he too had very similar in private banking, had similar traits than I did, and he was jolly and he was he was well to do, and he kind of told me, like, you don't have to follow the lay of the land. You don't have to follow what society paints you for. Because I never had like my mom being a homemaker, my daddy in conjunction, someone saying to do your homework, which made sure of this. I never had that handheld, that hand holding. They made sure to have a roof over my head and food on my belly and love in my heart, but never to the point where they were able to say, this is the path you need to go into. We're going to put you the best schools. All that stuff never happened. I had to do it myself. So I think that's what that's what maybe got me to learn a lot more about myself. And having to go and strive for things myself never made me take things for granted. And when I met this customer, he he really pushed me to leave the bank, to be honest. He's like, What are you scared of? That bank job is going to be there if you have 10 years, 20 like you're a smart guy, like you're gonna, you're gonna get another other banks, there's, they'll hire you back. These guys paid you for 12 years. They've trained you. You know the culture. You know every if you ever want to come back, door is always open. This bank is not going anywhere. So he enlightened me, and my parents pushed me. My dad is like, yeah, he's like, those time, like, like, this is your chance. Like, if you're going to take a risk, do it now. So, so, yeah, so, I'm a guy who didn't know what the heck he wanted to do in life, but, but knew he liked, knew he liked people service. I was an extrovert. I still am. I like, I like, I like, I like working hard and working with good teams. I like striving for better. I like sports. I love my family. I love my kids. These are my team. Yeah, these are things that there's a little

William Harris  1:02:40  

bit about me. Yeah, it's helped shape you. I know James Murray is one of your investors. Is it all of the investor? Not an investor? Oh, he's just, he's just, like an advertiser or influencer, an ambassador. There you go. That's what I look for. Okay, so, so he's, he's one of the ambassadors. Do you work with all of them? Or just him, just James Ray, just

Anthony Ciavirella  1:03:03  

him, just him.

William Harris  1:03:04  

Is he as silly, like, have you met with him? Is he as silly in real life as he is in the show?

Anthony Ciavirella  1:03:10  

He's the same?

William Harris  1:03:13  

That's pretty good. They

Anthony Ciavirella  1:03:14  

there's no there's no show. It's not a character real life. No, it's him, and that's really cool about those guys. They they're four best friends as well, yeah, and that's just really cool about them. And what resonated with us is we see that we're kind of cut from the same cloth, you know, yeah? So that that really attracted us to them, and vice versa. And we're working closer with James. He really loves our brand, loves our products, love what we stand for, and you'll be seeing a lot more content from teams in the upcoming months. Yeah, it's him, Howie. And we have some really cool people right now the future. Yeah, Howie, man, that was really nice, by the way. Just shout out to Howie. That guy is heart of gold. He reached out to us. I reached out to him, but his people never got my email. And then, randomly, on a Saturday, I see a comment on one of our ads saying, thanks to the guys up north for taking care of my boys down south. And then we got on a call. I DM them. He DM me back. I got on a call. I said, Yeah, I reached out to you guys, like, I never saw your email. I gotta talk to my team, whatever, whatever. And he's like, look, I really like that. You guys are from Canada. He's like, I like you. I like you guys. Like your products. He's like, anything I can do to help. So for a couple of weeks, months, everything was done organically from him. And now we have something where we're a little bit more on on a structure more long term. But the deal with him is, I don't give them what everybody all of our no scripts. I don't tell you what to say. I don't want to it's, it's, it's, it's, speaks only

William Harris  1:04:53  

it can be done. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because that's the only time when you come up with really good lines, like, thanks to the boys up north. Taking care of the boys down south, right? That's because it's him

Anthony Ciavirella  1:05:03  

unscripted. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So that's it. Man,

William Harris  1:05:08  

what a what are some quotes that you live by? I know we've talked about a couple of quotes. There's a mug that you had. What's a quote that you live by?

Anthony Ciavirella  1:05:18  

So, yeah, that mug was, nobody cares. Work harder, yeah, and who said that? The mug, the actual person who said it? I don't, I can't quote him. I don't know. I'm sorry about that.

William Harris  1:05:31  

I thought it was you. I thought that was your quote,

Anthony Ciavirella  1:05:34  

perhaps, but I received I so it may be, but I'm pretty sure if you Google it, somebody said it. The point is, is I had a mug back back at the bank. I remember there was some sort of altercation. I was working really hard. I was making sales. I was doing everything well, and I wanted something, and I didn't get it. And kind of said, like, I'm like, number one performer in this department. Like, I don't get why I can't get this little like, shouldn't I have a bit of, bit of preferential treatment? Like, I'm not even asking for anything crazy I don't get well, as you know, if I do for you, anything I do for everybody else. So I realized that in there I'm like, Hey, nobody cares. Just work harder and then don't do it for them. Do it for you. And that's when a bit of that toxic corporate thing got into me. And I, I think that was the start of, like, why I wanted to start my own thing. And when I did, I wanted to make sure that the culture of whatever where we start isn't that, yeah, it's work hard. Everybody cares, you know, like, that's a thing. So, so, so that was a bit of a full circle. But another one that I live by is that you miss 100% of shots. You don't take that from Wayne Gretzky, and I love that quote, because, going back to what you were saying before, you know, how do you get people from moving 10 to 100 or one to zero or whatever, you have to take the shots. You have one life, bro, William, you have one life, you know. And when you're old, 90, 100 and hopefully, we lift 120 130 and you're talking to your grandkids, great grandkids. And you know, you have wisdom. And you're sometimes maybe too old at that point to start something, or have the energy to do something, or the health to do something at that point. So the last thing you want to do is regret. Feel regret saying, geez, I should have done it like this, and I didn't. Why? Why did I, you know, why did I not do it, you know, and feel that that's, for me, is is worse than trying and failing, totally, right? That's from so if that's the case for anybody listening, if feeling regret is a crappier feeling than trying and failing, at least you tried. And if somebody says, bro, remember that time you said that business and you failed? Yeah? Failed? Yeah, at least I tried. Yeah. You know people that are telling you that they're just jealous people totally

William Harris  1:08:08  

when my daughter was younger, I don't remember my it was my oldest daughter, maybe she was in second grade or something. I remember her being afraid to try something, and I don't remember what it was. She was afraid to try, but she was afraid of failing. It so not afraid of trying and afraid of failing, right? And I remember crinkling up some balls of paper, and I set up like a little bucket or a bowl or something over there. I said, Okay, you go ahead and shoot and see if you make it. And you know, she shot, and maybe she made that one, and it's like, and I was like, I don't know. I'm not gonna shoot it. I don't want to miss it, so I'm not gonna shoot mine. You go ahead and shoot again, right? So she shoots and misses it. And, like, we go through this several times. I'm like, Wow. You know, you made yours. I don't want to miss after you made it. Why don't you just go and shoot again? So we keep going through this, and, you know, at the end of, like, 1010, shots or something, it's like, Okay, let's see who won. And say, how many? How many do you score? She's like, I got three, right, three out of 10 or something, like, how many I get? She's like, Well, you never shot. And I was like, oh, yeah, you're right. So I don't have any points, like, I didn't get anything because I didn't even try. I didn't even play. Yeah, you missed seven, but you made three, and so three is still more than zero, right? She's like, Yeah, okay, I got it. And it was, like, a really good, practical way of showing that, that it's a great quote by Wayne Gretzky,

Anthony Ciavirella  1:09:15  

I love it. I can't wait till my boys are twin boys. They're 10 months old, and I can't wait till they get old enough to to to experience those things with them. And one thing that I've always said I would love to do is like, you know, come to any job I want to do lemonade stand, or maybe I can go cut some grass, or whatever the case is, and just like, and just, and just seeing them do it, and and, and helping them like helping them where, helping them where they may be a little bit confused, and maybe, you know, making them make the decisions and realizing on their own, where maybe it would have been a bit different, and teaching them less about how to do it right, but the perseverance and the discipline and the consistency. Would need in order for you to succeed. Then, once you do, how much sweeter it tastes, rather than being given given the sauce. You know, well

William Harris  1:10:07  

now you have a podcast to show them when they're older, all about discipline consistency, speaking of discipline and consistency, or, let's just say, taking shots. Are there things in your personal life, that you're also trying to up arrow, that you're consciously trying to improve that's not business related, maybe it's health, sleep, relationships, whatever, are there certain areas that you're trying to improve on personally?

Anthony Ciavirella  1:10:31  

So I was 270, pounds once upon my life. I was always very athletic. I was always extremely into sports, soccer, per se, training, three, four days a week. At one point in my life, I was 270 and then I became 180 I had a full 360 I dropped the weight. I got really ripped. I was really healthy. And now I would say I'm hovering between 210 to 20, but I am consistent, like every day, like I used to before the kids. I used to train at a gym locally, here, privately with the trainer, and I would like go hard, like some people wouldn't be able to last the 45 hours of training, but I consistently stayed on the train, even when I was sleeping two hours a night. Like it was pretty, pretty crazy, but I didn't. I never wanted to get I never wanted to go more than a couple of days without getting on a bike or running or anything for 3045, minutes, because then what happens is, you create the habit of not doing it, and then it's harder to get back onto the train. So, so I have that down pact. But when it comes to nutrition, I eat, well in the sense where I don't eat McDonald's and all that stuff, but I eat maybe sometimes too much, you know, like,

William Harris  1:11:45  

man, yeah, you know what

Anthony Ciavirella  1:11:51  

I'm saying. Piece of bread I'll have. I'll have this or that and all that stuff. Also nicotine. I don't smoke cigarettes, but I'm on the nicotine replacements. I've been on it since I quit. And I've quit smoking grass five years ago, like four years ago. I don't remember how long it's been, yeah, the smoking part, but the nicotine part, that's a difference. There's that's a different thing. And I kind of convinced myself at some point that nicotine is also good for your brain health and this and that and small doses, but it does. It does do something. I know it does but, but definitely being dependent on something like nicotine sucks. So that's something I want to I want to correct and biting my nails. I bite my nails a lot. That's another thing that I want to, want to correct. I've gotten better with it. But being like emotionally, call it intelligent, or having an emotionally intelligent IQ, it also causes the reverse effect, sometimes, of maybe showing too much emotion about in certain settings where I've gotten much better with time, but obviously there's always a better. You could always get even better, you know. So that's something that that I want to, I want to correct. I would say I'm very empathetic in terms of any scenario that's put in front of me. Hence why I'm in the leader of the customer experience side of things, and I've always done really good with that, but, but, yeah, like, what else? There's a lot. Those are things that's,

William Harris  1:13:29  

yeah, that's a lot of stuff. You've got a list of things and a list of goals that you're trying to be conscious about improving. I love that. I think that that's, that's just the mind of somebody who is an entrepreneur as well, because you're constantly seeing things that have the opportunity to be improved. I have to ask you mentioned a near death experience, is that what caused the shift from 270 to 180 or

Anthony Ciavirella  1:13:54  

no, the near death experience was on my honeymoon. We're supposed to go to Bali, and we stopped in Qatar, and in Qatar, we're at a hotel, and we had one day that we had to sleep there, and the next morning, our flight was only at 4pm so we had some time to do a bit of late school, explore a little bit of Qatar. And I did an excursion in the sand dunes, and we had a really bad accident where the car ended up flipping over 12 times and being stuck in the middle of the desert for three hours with my new my my wife that we just got married like two days ago, the two days Before the accident happened, helicopter to the to the hospital. I had bruises and stuff, but nothing broke, nothing severe. My wife, on the other hand, she had a hip surgery, two fracture, three fractures on her back. After five years, it's gonna be our five year anniversary this 26th of October. I. Five years of osteo and the operation and treatment and so on so forth. She's doing well, obviously, there's always going to be, you know, Bones once they break. It's never the same, but, but, but we have kids, you know, like she, she's a tough, tough cookie, right? So, tough cookie. And how does that change there,

William Harris  1:15:25  

right? Like, how does it what goes on now?

Anthony Ciavirella  1:15:29  

Yeah, you, you, you, you appreciate every day that passes. Every single day I started to pray so every morning, every night, little prayer. Call it spirituality. Call it whatever you want to call it, but prayer to say that I'm the most religious. Before that I wasn't to say that I thank God I do to say that I realized that life today, you're on today, you're doing well today. Everything is going well. And in a in a blink of an eye, you could things can happen, but I remember that once that did happen, and I survived it, and we persevered through it, it was one of the, one of the hard work things that I've been through, and I would say, I realized, like, life throws you lemons make lemonade, you know, like there's, there's no other ways of putting it, like, if something happens in your life, and at the time we were building the business, like at the time, we were, we were, I was, I was, I was, I was in the entrepreneurial world, you know? So it was tough. It was tough. It was really tough. And you have to, you have to, you have to, get to pull through. Another thing that happened before I had my twins at eight months, my wife was pregnant with her first son, and he was a stillbirth. So we lost our first boy, yeah, Luciano. We named Giordano's middle name is Luciano and Leo's middle name. Those are my twins. We gave them both the middle name of Luciano, but that was another one. That was another very, very, very spoiled, hard part of life that could have easily steered my direction, but, but it didn't, not because I didn't put focus on processing what happened, but more because I understood the why of my company and and, and Once you go through things like that, it changes you, but it could change you for the better, or it could change you for the worse. And yeah, and you realize how precious life is, and you realize how lucky you are, and you realize to not think, to not take anything for granted, right? So these are things that these are things that I've learned throughout the last couple of years, and I still have a lot more learning to do that for sure,

William Harris  1:18:14  

that's a good thing, right? We want things to learn. Um, man, I can really sympathize with you on the miscarriage, though, too. I'm sorry to hear that my wife and I bid two miscarriages in between our first and our second. And there was a time where we weren't sure we were going to be able to have another child there after the second one. And it was, you know, it was a really bad one. And you know, you know, I think it was about three months without going to too much details, I mean, her, her hemoglobin was under six. I mean, she had bled out so much that it was dangerous for her, and so it was the big deal where we're just like, this isn't for us. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah. Aside from the emotional side of it, there's just, there's a lot there. But so, you know, it's one of those things where I think, to your point, you're grateful for every blessing that comes as a result that you see all the things that are in your current life, that are blessings that you maybe took for granted. And I think that's important 100%

Anthony Ciavirella  1:19:11  

I feel like once, like when I went through the stillbirth scenario with my son, a situation, excuse me, with my son, and you talk about it, you get the courage to eventually talk about it. More and more people talk about their journey and their stories, back to full circle from the beginning of our conversation, where, when you're naive, it's it's sometimes better. So many people are pregnant, and things go well, and I that's all you will. That's all you want right healthy babies and good pregnancies, and that goes really well. And that's their experience, and that's great. But more and more and more you hear about these miscarriages, stillbirths, you know, all kinds of stories and and that's hard. Yeah. It's probably the hardest thing. That's the hardest thing I went through in my life. So, so, but so when you said before any obstacles, there wasn't like a production run or a marketing campaign or anything particularly in the business, that almost made me throw in the towel. No, and not, not all of us. Well, when that happened. I was like, out of it for maybe, you know, couple of weeks, and my wife months or a year, almost so So, so having good partners, and I remember like getting my mind to help me, to help me when my wife would be resting, or whatever, my computer was open, you know, staying in, feeding off the energy of the brand that you've built sometimes helps. And also so that was that was super therapeutic for me. And yeah, that's a little bit about who Anthony is and what he's been through.

William Harris  1:20:58  

I love that there's so much that you shared that I really appreciate how raw and real that was. It's good to get to know you. You've shared a lot of really good wisdom and advice for people that are building their business as well, and I appreciate that. I'm just thankful for your time coming on here and talking to us and sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us. Man, thank

Anthony Ciavirella  1:21:19  

you, William. And I just want to point out, I don't, I saw those things that I shared, you asked me for sure, but I share them. I share them to whoever asks for sure, and I don't share them for like, obviously it's, it's sad and soft for pity, or it's like, oh my god, it's more for anybody listening. I know that there's, there's people that go through crazy rough stuff in their life. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's not pretty and it's not fun and it's not uncalled for. It uncontrollable. It's out of your control. That's what I want to say. It's out of your control. You can get Robert De Niro said this one. So here's another quote that I like before I let you go, is you can get to you can get too happy, not happy, not the right word, I forget the quote, but you can get too high when times are good, and you can get too low when times are bad. You just have to try to find that, that that medium, you know, that that point where you you remain calm. You're allowed to celebrate, and you're allowed to, you know, enjoy the milestones that you hit and things that go through in your life, but, but then back to business or then back to the focus of what, what your why is, right. And same thing for the lows, you know, you processes like the worst thing to do is to throw anything you go through in life under the rug. Okay, because it's gonna haunt you, and it's gonna haunt you and keep haunting you. Process it, talk about it with the right people. Get help, take the time you need in order for you to get better. Sometimes, working on yourself, doing things that make you happy, make you feel accomplished, make you feel worthy, whatever. Those help but, but, yeah, don't get too low when those times happen, because it can really, you know, it can really affect someone's life. And having a good support system, like a very good support system, maybe a friend, maybe a neighbor, a partner, a wife or girlfriend, whatever, just having someone there that you trust, that you can you can lean on when times are bad, and be there for people that are going through things like that when times are bad for them, is important, and you can't lose sight of that in life. I think that's important even for entrepreneurs, right? We want to be these tough guys that were Teflon and big bad this and that you're a human being, bro, there's always something that can get to you that creeps up so bad that you don't even know what hit you. But you're also human. And you know, pain will diminish through time. No matter how hard the pain is, it'll never go away completely. It'll go, it'll be, it'll be, the light will dimmer, and as long as when that light is dim, you you are at peace with with that pain, you will go. You will get through anything that comes your way. So I think, I think that's a good piece that I wanted to leave you with, because anybody listening that's going through something, and it brings Any, any, any, any value to that, and it helps anybody is is worth more than this whole podcast that we've done the last hour and a half for me, you know, like that's something that's, that's, I hope someone takes, takes with them if they need it.

William Harris  1:24:48  

Beautiful advice to end on, Anthony, thank you so much for joining us and everyone. Thank you for listening. I hope you all have a great rest. Thank you. Thank

Anthony Ciavirella  1:24:56  

you, William. It was a pleasure.

Outro  1:24:59  

Thanks for listening. To the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.

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