The DTC Mistake That Doesn’t Hurt… Until 2 Years Later With Jess Chan and Rachyl Neidecker

Jess Chan is the Founder and Executive Chair of Longplay Brands, a full-service retention and lifecycle marketing agency for DTC e-commerce brands. She is also the Founder and CEO of Backbone, an email strategy automation tool. As a former CMO of a multimillion-dollar DTC e-commerce company, Jess bootstrapped Longplay to seven figures in revenue within the first 18 months. She is a sought-after speaker, podcast guest, product developer, and consultant on topics like retention, lifecycle marketing, and progressive agency business modeling.

Rachyl Neidecker is the CEO and Partner at Longplay Brands. She specializes in turning complex or broken business operations into scalable systems. Previously, Rachyl served as the COO and interim CEO of an eight-figure e-commerce brand, the Director of Operations at COO Alliance, and has consulted for companies with $10M–$100M+ in revenue.

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

[1:58] DTC brands’ most costly misdiagnoses
[4:05] Why e-commerce brands must return to business fundamentals
[7:08] The meaning behind “playing the long game” and how it influenced Longplay Brands
[13:01] What e-commerce founders got wrong during the growth-hack era
[17:55] Rachyl Neidecker shares the signs of hidden fragility in a business
[23:13] Why scaling too fast can quietly kill growth
[30:09] Identifying profit leaks inside operations, shipping, and staffing
[33:12] Rachyl walks through Longplay’s customer lifecycle diagnosis tool
[38:23] The root causes behind weak lifecycle metrics
[48:49] How small issues can become expensive at scale
[1:10:50] Jess Chan shares how joy and alignment improved her cognitive performance
[1:12:04] Rachyl’s health journey and the value of workplace support

In this episode…

E-commerce brands often chase stronger channels, faster tactics, or higher revenue goals without identifying whether the company’s foundation can support the growth. When trust, profitability, and operations are misaligned, even strong marketing can amplify the wrong problems. So how can founders diagnose what’s holding their business back?

With expertise in lifecycle marketing and operational leadership, Jess Chan and Rachyl Neidecker point to a more disciplined way to scale. They recommend looking beyond surface metrics to identify root causes, such as brand inconsistency, product-market fit issues, over-discounting, weak customer education, bloated org structures, and hidden logistics costs. Instead of moving fast on foundational decisions, brands should slow down, inspect the full customer journey, build trust at every touchpoint, and optimize for profit and enterprise value — not just revenue. Sustainable growth comes from diagnosing the system before prescribing the tactic.

In this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris sits down with Jess Chan and Rachyl Neidecker of Longplay Brands to discuss diagnosing e-commerce growth problems. They cover DTC brands’ costly misdiagnoses, lifecycle metrics that reveal root causes, and the difference between scaling revenue, profit, and enterprise value.

Resources mentioned in this episode

Quotable Moments

“Business has now become a very big finesse game.”
“You run a product brand, and that product is sold online to customers via e-commerce.”
“There’s only so much discounting you can do until you run to the end of that road.”
“The more complex something becomes, the more you need some sort of framework rather than just a playbook.”
“The team is going to consistently fail. And then it’s going to look like the team is failing.”

Action Steps

Diagnose the real business problem before optimizing tactics: Review the full customer journey to determine whether the issue is branding, product-market fit, retention, operations, or profitability. This prevents teams from spending time and money improving the wrong metric.
Build trust across every customer touchpoint: Keep messaging, visuals, product education, reviews, and checkout experiences consistent from social media to post-purchase. Trust gaps can quietly reduce conversions, repeat purchases, and long-term customer value.
Audit internal profit leaks regularly: Look for hidden costs in shipping, 3PL agreements, COGS, staffing, vendors, and underperforming products. Finding small operational leaks can free up cash to reinvest in growth.
Slow down foundational business decisions: Avoid rapidly changing pricing, logistics partners, positioning, or team structure without enough data and time to measure results. Moving too fast on core systems can create instability that compounds over months or years.
Align strategy with execution across the organization: Connect long-term goals to roadmaps, monthly plans, team responsibilities, and day-to-day output. This ensures the team is not just producing work, but executing the right strategy in the right order.

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.

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Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:03

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.

William Harris: 00:15

Hey everyone, 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 and beyond as you up arrow your business and your personal life. One of the most dangerous things in business is solving the wrong problem extremely efficiently. And I think that's where a lot of e-commerce brands are right now. They're optimizing channels without understanding systems. They're measuring tactics without understanding causation, and they're making decisions based on short term signals without seeing the long term consequences those decisions create across the business.

Today's guests, Jess Chan and Rachyl Neidecker from Longplay Brands, have developed a really interesting approach to diagnosing e-commerce businesses through the lens of the customer life cycle and what they call the hierarchy of strategy. Jess. Rachyl, welcome to the podcast.

Jess Chan: 01:04

Thanks for having us.

Rachyl Neidecker: 01:05

Yeah. Thank you.

William Harris: 01:07

I do have one interruption that we get right into the good stuff here. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt 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 ipoed. You can learn more on our website at Elumynt.com, which is spelled elumynt.com.

Okay, first question, I don't know who wants to take it. But I'm gonna just throw this out here. What's the most expensive misdiagnosis you see DTC brands make over and over again?

Jess Chan: 01:38

That's definitely a Rachyl question.

William Harris: 01:40

Okay.

Rachyl Neidecker: 01:41

Okay. So the most expensive mistake. So in regards to like a channel problem or a branding problem, or just across the business.

William Harris: 01:49

Across the business, when you, you walk into a business and you're like, man, I see brands making this, this misdiagnosis over and over again. And it just costs people a lot of money.

Rachyl Neidecker: 01:58

So usually they think it's one of their top of funnel channels or retention. So email, SMS, direct mail. It's actually typically their brand identity and how they're managing their brand and making sure it's cohesive across all the channels. It causes a lot of lack of trust in your customer base when they see those kind of like fissures in the brand or inconsistencies and they'll just bounce. Like if you don't have the same USPS across like your social all the way to your product page, people really have a hard time trusting.

The next thing I would say that is a like a second close runner up is their 3PL issues. So whether it's their fillers or it's their packaging people, the 3PL, any kind of logistics center is usually not being managed appropriately and they don't know what to look for. I'll give you a really quick example. I'm helping a client that's decently large, awesome, awesome brand. And they're in anthropology, Ulta and Walmart and as like wholesalers and they do well on Amazon and they do very well on their website.

However, they were signing a new three PL agreement and they didn't know to look for the forklift fees. So it'll always be in there, but they can put your product in the back of their massive warehouse at the top shelf because you're not, you know, like their top priority and they're going to charge you every time they for a special project to go get that, use the forklift, get it up, get it down just to pick and pack one small thing. And their product is like, maybe like, you know, a two by four inch small product. So I would say that's, that's another thing that usually goes really wrong. And we helped one of our other equity partners find $500,000 that they had lost from a three PL recently.

So it's those small things that you don't think to look for on those agreements that plus like, candidly, just branding inconsistencies that I think we see the most issues in. Would you agree? Jess, what are your thoughts?

Jess Chan: 04:05

Yeah, I fully agree. And I think this also goes back to this, like returning back to the basics that we're seeing. E-Com brands kind of have to be forced to do over the last few years, because there was that heyday of e-com where all you had to do was worry about marketing. And like, as long as you were selling a product on ecom, everyone was making money and all the basic foundations of what makes a business successful, which is do you have a product that you can distribute profitably and make profitably? Do you have a way of delivering value to customers?

Do you know those those values? And do you know why customers buy from you? And can you speak to them like those are the two foundations of a successful business. And oftentimes e-commerce brands have been able to mask not looking at those big pillar things because acquisitions working so well, because there's no competition, because, you know, shipping is so cheap. And I think there's a, there's a back to the foundations chapter that's happening in the ecom as an industry overall.

William Harris: 05:06

That's so good. I had no idea that there was a forklift fee. That's something that's new to me. And the fact that they are charging you more because you are just simply not a priority to them. It's like, hey, you're not a priority to me.

I'm going to charge you. That just feels, oh, that feels wrong.

Rachyl Neidecker: 05:23

Imagine that. So imagine that times like 20 is what's usually. So that's they're getting you in a bunch of small ways. And you might be like, oh, these rates are better than my current place, but you just don't. All those things you don't know to ask are really what compound.

And then you're losing an additional 20, 30, you know, for in this one partners of ours case, $500,000 that we found for them. So like it's significant. Yeah. And it can, it can tank a business. So it's really just not and just, and I always say this, it's about the one and 2% things that you don't think about, that you should be worried about, because that's business has now become a very big finesse game.

And that's why we have that flywheel that we showed you, because it's really about constantly reassessing where your bleed is, because you change one thing in one of those areas, and it can massively impact those other areas in that 2 to 3% and at scale, that's significant. And then or it can keep you from scaling, right? So that's, that's kind of why we are constantly in this mindset of how do we reassess, how do we're like relook at the same problem and think about what the causes are based on what we know and, you know, our experience.

William Harris: 06:35

And so we're going to dig into that today. There's I want to dig into your customer lifestyle diagnosis and your hierarchy of strategy, especially. I'm going to we'll share our screen so people can visually follow along. Before I get into that, though, I want to dig in a little bit into just your backgrounds and some of your thought processes, because I think it helps to frame who you are and how you're coming about some of these things. So this one is first for you, Jess.

You've talked a lot about playing the long game. I mean, that's literally the name of the brand. Was that naturally how you thought or is that something that you have learned over time?

Jess Chan: 07:08

Ooh, starting starting hot with the questions, I love it. I think it's something I'm naturally oriented to, but it's also something I'm learning about myself over time. And I think that's the funny thing about like visions in the beginning or like, or like core values is like, it's a core value. You build it off of that, but there's also continuous learning and growing. And I think that's also where I've learned a lot from Rachyl as well, is like, why it's important to bring in the right people who align on those values.

And in that, I learned from Rach on what it means to play the long game and all the different skill sets that come with that. And also, it was always a core value of mine and how I orient towards life. So, so it's both and You know, I think over the last like now we're pushing on year seven with with Longplay. And so it's been, it's been really nice to see deeper into our core value. It's a funny thing to orient towards the long game on year one.

William Harris: 08:04

Sure.

Jess Chan: 08:05

You know it's a funky thing. It's a funky thing. No one talks about. So it's really nice to really have like the years to step into these values and be like, yeah, we, you know, we've always been, yeah, we've always been living this way. But like the years really show now with the business.

William Harris: 08:20

That's great. Speaking of bringing in people, then that can help perpetuate that. You've brought in Rachyl op CEOCOO background. Rachyl, you seem to naturally see the hidden operational layer underneath growth. When did you first realize most companies don't actually understand where their bottlenecks are?

Rachyl Neidecker: 08:41

So I actually was in operations at Make-A-Wish years ago. And my. One of my core roles was to help. My team's job was to make sure that the CEOs of other Make-A-Wish internationally, because I was on the international side, were starting their business correctly compliant and all the ways they need to be for their country, along with Make-A-Wish is compliance, and that we were really helping them get things off on the right foot. And I think that's really where I was like, oh, gosh, these these things that seem kind of obvious and integrated are maybe not as obvious and integrated.

Like if you don't have brand consistency, you're probably not going to raise as much money. Like if you don't have the infrastructure that of the certain people or roles or like core competencies you need, you're probably going to be missing like half of your candidly, half the money you could be raising and half the wishes you could be granting. A lot of them really were working to get up to speed with the wish portal too. So like it was all about project management and how did we and the wish West Portal managed every wish internationally and domestically, and coordinated so many celebrities and had lots of like high end contacts. And I just was like, this is such like a large operation and it's so integrated that this if you miss one of these things, you're going to miss a lot of things.

So I think that's kind of where that kind of clicked for me. And then from there, I went right into, into actually like truly being an ops manager at a tech company. And then like just kind of scaled from there. But I started consulting at that point too. So I was kind of like, okay, I actually kind of get this and I can do a little side hustle.

I did it for free. I was like, I will work for free. Oh yeah, I consulted, I mean, I was young, I was just out of college. I had like, I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew I knew what I wanted to get to. And I always had a dream of being in the C-suite by, by 30.

That was like my goal. So I was like, I got to start learning as much as I can. So I just started offering my services for free. And then eventually I got paid for it. And that's how I met Jess as I was brought in to correct a distressed asset and corrected it.

Hired Longplay and Jess and I, like work, fell in love with each other. And we're like, we need to work together.

William Harris: 11:00

So I love that.

Rachyl Neidecker: 11:02

And that was seven years ago almost now. So it was actually probably right when long started. Like right after we started that. I met you, Jess. So, so yeah, so left there came here.

William Harris: 11:14

I think the thing that I like about that is people undervalue giving away some of that work for free. There's so much out there about it's like, no, no, no, you gotta charge what you're worth. And it's like, there's like, I fully agree with charging what you're worth and everything, but there's something to be said for that. Learning that you are getting paid, you're getting paid in that knowledge that you're getting from that. And I think so many people are trying to skip over that piece in order to just get right to the financial piece.

And I think they're missing out. But as soon as you said, for free, I don't know if you guys remember this movie. This is where my ADHD brain goes. There's a movie called Bedtime Stories with Adam Sandler and he's like, for free. So every time I hear that, I can't help but think of that.

Rachyl Neidecker: 11:55

I agree with you. I think I think people I mean, even internships, when I was getting internships, they weren't paid. And you worked really hard. So like nowadays they're all paid and they usually have benefits. And it's just like, I, I'm very much so of if I was learning even today, I think Jess and I are of that mindset.

Like if we're learning, we're going to put in that extra time, even if it's like inconvenient, you know, like our job is to make sure we're pushing our business forward.

Jess Chan: 12:21

Yeah.

Rachyl Neidecker: 12:22

Staying in front of things. Like that's kind of the approach I've taken with AI. So it's, it's our, it's, it's our responsibility. It's not even like, oh, it's nice to learn. It's our responsibility to stay ahead of it for like our team and our company and ourselves.

And yeah, we're not getting paid, but it's our, it's our job. So I just don't understand. I have a hard time not understanding learning being like a privilege.

Jess Chan: 12:46

Sure.

William Harris: 12:47

Jess. Speaking of learning, you have watched e-commerce mature from the growth hacks days into actual business strategy. What did the industry get wrong in the early days that were starting to correct?

Jess Chan: 13:01

Oh, I think because I got into industry probably around like 2015, 2016 was when I got exposure to it. And then like, really? And then I was in C-suite at like around 2017, 2018. And I'm always thinking, I'm like, man, if we all knew how good we had it back then, like we were all, we were all thinking we were all smart and strategic. It's like, no, you just really couldn't screw it up at that time.

And so, and I think one of the things that I'm seeing is like at that time, it was almost like we'd hit the lottery, like brands who started at that time to hit the lottery and like wrote was riding a wave and there's nothing wrong with that. Like that's that's one form of entrepreneurship is like knowing how to find a wave, ride it and get off. And I think there was a lot of, for lack of a better word, ego at that time, thinking, hey, we're not riding away. We're just really great at building. And I think one of the mistakes was not knowing when like, as a, especially as founders specifically is like knowing when you've spotted a wave and you're capitalizing on it and also knowing when to get out.

And so a lot of the mistakes that are happening are like, there was a whole slew of e-com brands that went down at that in the last few years because they were making money for that period of time. Then revenue started dropping. And then rather than clocking where it's like, oh, we were actually riding a wave. The wave has ended. We should probably figure out how to rebuild or pull out and get and like, reorient.

It's like, no, we need to double down on what we were doing before because we know we were good and everything else is outside of us. It's just not working versus really taking a step back and being like, wait, can we take the ego hit of like, we were making money at that time? Not because we were great at business or great at e-commerce, but because we got really, really lucky. And that's actually wonderful. And that actually allows you to take a step back and say, we actually have a lot to learn now to continue being successful.

Now to Rachyl's point is like, who do we learn from? How can we learn? How can we ask for help? And I think the failure to ask for help from people outside of the industry and people with more experience in business is one of the biggest pitfalls consistently that we've seen with e-commerce founders, because it's a hard pill to swallow. But the truth is, I think it's a really beautiful thing.

Like we, you know, the industry has gone through a lot. And, and there's, you know, there's a lot of learning there. And I think secondarily to that, like that's the kind of the foundational, like. Miss, like the lens that's not looked at everything that all the other errors kind of start from. And I think that the secondary thing that we see from that is there's an attachment to the marketing and tactics and all the playbooks and the way of doing business that was shared from that period.

And it's what what tools work out there? What channels should we be optimizing? What agency is going to have the quick fix and knows what's on the cutting edge of fixing these channels. Like what other playbooks are out there? What did the doctor squatches and the hex clads and all, like all birds, what did they do?

And we just need to duplicate it. And how can we find another VP that did it for those three companies at that time? And if we just hire the right VP or hire the right exec, we'll bring them in. Or if we just we just need more capital. Like we're not scaling because we need more capital.

So let's go find an investor. And no one's actually taking a step back and saying, wait, what are the foundations of our business? Do we actually have a competitive product anymore now that everyone is producing what we're producing? Do we have a brand that actually resonates with customers, and do we have a way of profitably distributing that? And I think the big thing, the last thing on this is like, I think it's not what Rachyl and I are really seeing is like, there's no such thing as like, I run an ecom brand.

Like that's, that's not a type of business. You run a product brand and that product is sold online to customers via e-commerce, but you're competing with every other product out there. The ones from China, including the ones from Europe, all these different things. And you need to figure out your distribution channels. You need to figure out your branding, your value proposition, you need to figure out your profit margins.

It's not enough to just be a really good ecom brand anymore. And that used to work.

Jess Chan: 17:21

That's a great call out.

William Harris: 17:22

I like that you said that it's like you're not actually an ecom brand, you're product brand. You just happen.

Jess Chan: 17:25

To know an ecom brand. That's not that's not a thing, right? It's like being like, I'm a wholesale brand. Like what does, what does that mean? It's a distribution channel, but it's not, it's not what your business is built on.

William Harris: 17:38

Rachyl. One of the things that I like to look at is fragility within a business, especially when I start looking at a business. What are the signs that tell you that a business that you're looking at has some fragility that they're unaware of?

Rachyl Neidecker: 17:55

So we look at every, like all the back end data as far as like what's happening, where they're getting conversions, where they're not typically, if there is like just said, like a product problem, we'll see that like in the non repurchasing phase. And that could also mean that there's just no education. We'll see it in like how unpredictable the revenue is. So if it's like, if there's no regular cadence to it, if there's these massive spikes and they can't seem to repeat it, those are not good things either. We'll see it in if they're if they're not converting on their product page.

They just don't have a good brand identity that they've worked to really cultivate. And they don't have trust typically. And that's something I think that Jess and I really talk about quite a bit is like the trust quotient and humanization, and how do you make sure that like, not only is there a consistency in your brand to build trust because like Jess said, it's everything's e-commerce now. So every product is competing with every other product. And what really is getting people to convert is do they actually buy and trust your USP?

And is there scalability? Because a lot of brands have gone viral on TikTok or viral on Instagram have done really well, but then you get to their site and there's just no consistency with anything that they're showing, saying, doing the UI, UX isn't great. So that's like your brick and mortar these days, that's your home. And if that does not like seem to flow well, people are going to feel like they can't trust it and people are gonna look at reviews and that's a problem. People are going to look at, you know, what kind of content you have and if people like it or not, and they're looking at the social proof so often, and that always ends up in the numbers too.

You can look at someone's numbers and be like, okay, it looks like you had a problem this month. You can go go somewhere on a review or a social post, and it's pretty quick and easy to diagnose. So I think it's, there's a lot of ways to look and like, see the fragility. But I do think too, if I think the biggest thing we've seen is over discounting, I think people have, like Jess was saying, not focused on their product and not focused on their like actual brand integrity or what they're offering their customer. Or do I need to sunset a bunch of products?

We need to add some products, like, do I need to look closer at other ways that I'm bleeding? Do what are the things I need to fix at home before going to find 20 things out there? Right. And they're, they're really missing. They're really missing the core essence of like, I have to fix Maybe something with that's wrong with me or my product or how things.

And I think that that's typically what we see as like a result that ends up being unpredictable. But I think a lot of people are looking for that overnight fix, or they're looking for a very transactional relationship, or they're over leveraging, discounting. And that always leads to a short relationship and a cheap relationship with your customer base. And there's only so much discounting you can do until you run to the end of that road. People don't trust you anyway.

They just wanted the discount they were going to because you were the cheapest, not because you were the best or you they like that you were made in America, or they liked that you were, you know, gluten free and dairy free, or they like that you were paraben, like whatever those values that you have are handmade, employed people like whatever those things might be. They didn't come to you for that. They came to you because you were cheap. And that has been the biggest pitfall. It's kind of like what Jess was saying, where we saw people really like looking for that two x and three X like overnight success story and bringing the next best person.

It was very quick transactional and that's like become discounting now it's like, what's the quick transaction I can do to get people to come to my site? But we have watched a lot of businesses kind of die by a thousand cuts that way, right? Just like, wouldn't you kind of agree? Yeah, I would say those are the things that we look at. We'll look at the money, we'll look at what's happening in life cycle.

And then we'll also look at like, what are the, the behaviors with your cash? And those are all things that are usually one of those things is usually not doing well. That's we would say that that's a at risk or fragile.

William Harris: 22:10

I love that you called out the over discounting. There used to be an option in meta ads back when it was still called Facebook ads, where you could target somebody based on like people who like coupons. That was an option. It was like your whole audience. You could talk like people who like coupons.

And I would always turn that off. I would see it in so many accounts, and I would always turn that off because it was like, I don't care if you're getting a better CPA with that. It is the wrong customer. We are not going to target to get people who like coupons. I don't want them as my customer.

Like, I don't care if you do like coupons. Like I'm not against you just saying I'm not going after you specifically. Because again, what I think a lot of people were missing then was the LTV and they're saying, hey, look at the CEC on this versus the CEC on this. It's like, yeah, but look at the LTV on this one. And they just weren't looking at it that way.

So I guess my question is, what's something else that you think a founder thinks is helping with their growth? And this could go to anybody. Now I'm done doing just one on ones. Now I want either one of you to jump in. What's something that a founder thinks is helping their growth but is quietly poisoning the business over?

Discounting was literally my number one on this list. But what are a couple of other things that you see that people are doing that you're like, this is poisoning your business, but you think you're doing a good job?

Jess Chan: 23:13

I got one that I think Rachyl also a nod to is, is moving, moving fast. Weirdly enough, I think there's a lot of quick decisions of like, this isn't work because like that was, that was the mindset that worked really well back in like 20, ten years ago, because you just need to like run a bunch of tests and like, that's still the great, that's still a great strategy when it comes to like acquisition, like you're just a B testing a bunch of creative, like you do need to a B test quickly and see what lands. And that is a great optimization for getting from 80% to 100%. You want to move fast and just test a bunch of things, whether it's CRO acquisition email, that's 100% important when it comes to the foundations of a business. That is not the place to test quick things quickly.

You do not want to be switching three peoples rapidly. You do not want to be retesting your value prop every month, or testing your different team members every month, or switching your pricing model every month. Like those are not the places to test rapidly. And so I think the one of the one of the mistakes is like founders. And specifically, I think it happens more with founders because the same energy that allows a founder to quick start from idea to like, let's launch something which is excellent and is so needed is the same thing that plateaus growth because it doesn't allow for the build.

And so I think that's probably one of the biggest things that we see is like, it is working, but it's going to take six months and we should plan for it to take six months, not bleed out for six months, but like plan for it to take six months and like, let it let like give the thing time to succeed.

Rachyl Neidecker: 24:53

Yeah, I would, I would agree with that. We do, we actually part of our, and you're going to see this in our hierarchy is that we look 18 months out with the business. So we start up a relationship talking about like, where are you going? What are your goals? So that everything is a strategy and that the testing and everything that follows suit, anything we're doing has a plan, a time and a decision to be made.

I think, and I agree with Jess, like that's that 2X3X mentality that I was talking about. Everyone was like, just. But the way that people got there was they poured more money top of funnel or they discounted massively. It was all they. No one ever talked about how much they were losing on the other end, or the fact that they weren't even profitable.

Jess and I are always like. Like talking about businesses about like, oh, it's a $50 million business, but do they have any cash in the bank? Like that's something that her and I, when I came on, really decided we were going to optimize for, we were going to own 100% of the business. We were going to optimize for cash and bank and cash flow. And we were super conservative.

Like we made some, we made a lot of very conservative decisions, and we chose to move very slowly and deliberately. And we've hit all of our milestones. We very proudly, like, you know, built up a six month runway. We were able to pay for our own app, build on our own, like out of our pockets. So like, we're very proud that we've been deliberate.

To back to your question about playing the long game. We have definitely done that together. And I, I think the other thing that I would tack on to what Jess was saying about moving too fast, as if you don't give something enough time to mature. If you've laid the right foundation, which a lot of times we find rocky foundations, there's just like that needs to be fixed first. And that's not fun.

Like we'll come in and there could be somebody that has, you know, just really burned through their email or their SMS list or has really just not done a good job cultivating their customers. And you have to rewarm them after that first purchase. Like there's so much time that that takes, there's so many tools that can be used for that too, right? Whether it's like subscription or loyalty or you have great ambassadors, but even then you have to put a good training program in place. So all those things take time to mature and to actually see good results from, especially if you're not just going to go out and spend a ton of money, like if you want to do it the right way, it's going to be slower and things have to happen very deliberately, and you have to wait for certain milestones to make those decisions.

And like, just was saying, a lot of people just want it now to like their own detriment, right? And I think we're in that society of like, you can get everything now, but we have to be deliberate as leaders to know that the only way we can make sure that we have jobs, not only for ourselves but our teams, is that we are so cautious with the choices that we're making, and we give things a chance to mature, and we give things a chance to actually show us if they're going to work or not. We have a three month rule. Well, as long as we know we've laid a good foundation, we give it three months. If it seems to be just like really just shitting the bed, we'll we'll turn it off.

But. Or we can be like, what have we done that didn't cultivate this wall? How do we keep pivoting? But we do think three months is what something deserves to deem it a failure or a success. And that's even still quick.

Sometimes we wait six months, you know? So yeah, I just wanted to tack on to that.

Jess Chan: 28:07

Just I think.

William Harris: 28:08

The thing that I like about what you guys called out, knowing that we're going to be talking about health a little bit later on as well, is that when something inside of your body grows too fast, it's a cancer usually. Well, I mean, it can be benign, right? But like often times like these things are cancer cells that are taking off. And I feel the same way in business. And I talk about this with my team as well, that it's like there is there is quick growth and all of these things are good things.

But if you're moving too fast, if you're growing too fast in the wrong ways, then it's usually something that is not beneficial and it's going to have to be excised at some point in time. The other thing that I like that you called out is optimizing around profit. And so like, one of the other things that I would call out that I see, and I think that you were hinting at here as well, is when people are optimizing for the wrong goal in general. And I see this most often when it gets to like the marketing team and then the agency that's involved because they're giving KPIs to hit, but they're maybe sometimes segmented away from the, the finance team. And where we see it on the ad side specifically is somebody says, great, we're optimizing for this goal of $50 Kak.

Okay, fine. Let's say you have a $200 product. And this is going to be simple math for you guys. I know that you would appreciate this, but for anybody else who's listening, I want to try and keep it simple here too. So $200 product, maybe you have a margin of $50 on your profit of $50 on that product, and you optimize for a $50 cash.

You know, once you subtract the $50 that you actually got from that, you have a 4 to 1 Roas, but you have no profit. Maybe you have another product, though, that's $100. You actually have $75 of profit on that one. You optimize for that $50 cash. It's only a 2 to 1 ratio as, but you actually have $25 of profit when you're done with that one.

And we see this a lot of times in businesses. And so we love large catalog businesses. It's one that I feel like we we gravitate towards, but we'll find a lot of times where it's like you are optimizing for this flat cash goal across the board. You're saying we're getting a 4 to 1 Roas versus a 2 to 1. The agency's patting themselves on the back.

Your marketing team is excited, but your CFO is still like, this sucks right now. Like we're not doing what we need to do for the business. And so that idea of like pulling back and saying, wait a minute, optimize for the right goal and the right goal is going to be profit. How do we make sure that what we're doing is tied to that?

Rachyl Neidecker: 30:09

And I think part of that to, to kind of tack on what you're saying is people never think, oh, maybe I need to look at how to lower my cost of goods sold. Or maybe it's my three people that's tanking me. Or maybe it's my shipping and I'm always overnight shipping stuff or having stuff flown rather than having it like put on a ship because I'm not planning well enough. They don't. Or maybe we have too many products that aren't moving quickly.

Or maybe the price point is wrong. Like there's so many things and different levers people can pull at home, and that you can then use that money to reallocate, to invest in your business like marketing, right? Which is absolutely necessary nowadays. And marketing is not just whatever you're paying to do. It is your social, it is your ambassadors, it is your influencers, it is your website.

It is how you engage your customer service team. So there's so many different ways that we are marketing ourselves now that I think people are kind of starting to see it work more in confluence and maybe acknowledge that it's all intertwined. But I, I do see often that everyone's like, oh, no, it's this, it's this vendor, it's this thing.

Jess Chan: 31:08

It's like.

Rachyl Neidecker: 31:09

What about, what about the fact that you could find this at home and then actually reinvest in your business? So that's what Jess and I really work hard alongside. I would like to also bring up Catherine. She's my VP of Marketing and strategy. I actually met her when I was brought in to consult for a company, and they were converting their very large white labeling business.

They were in. They were doing every stadium in the US. Sam Adams, Guinness, the Rocks Teremana brand, sure, white labeling for the big white labeler, but didn't have any brand identity. So, so, so just want to shout her out from a standpoint of she is very good at kind of always helping us bring back to the client, like, here's the, the money we can find to reinvest in your business. And that's part of going slow.

So and why I think we've helped kind of build that longer plan that we're going to talk about in a little bit here, because it really is about what can you cut that is maybe not necessary, even if it is maybe your org charts bloated. Like we see that a lot, like where there's a ton of bloat somewhere and they probably don't need that. And not from like an like a, we don't value people. We very much value people. And our team is people.

But there are a lot of times when those roles either aren't being leveraged appropriately or either too early or, you know, unnecessary or just things that make people feel good to have around them and they might not be fulfilling that role, right? To their fullest capacity to where that makes sense. So there's lots of areas that companies are typically bleeding, but they'll blame the things that are external, right? They'll be like, oh, this, these marketing things don't work. This top of funnel spend doesn't work.

It's our CRO. Like they'll blame a bunch of different things when you actually probably need those things. And there's things you can find to fix at home first.

William Harris: 32:57

I'm going to go ahead and share my screen because we've referenced it a few times. And I just want to get into your customer lifestyle diagnosis tool. This is an example, right? It's not for everything, but like, walk me through this spider chart. You know, what are we looking at?

How do we use this? How is this beneficial to people?

Rachyl Neidecker: 33:12

Jess, you want me to go? So the. And we actually now have. This is like a. This is one version of it.

We now have even pre website. So just to kind of give some context. So we look at everything that's happening pre website social what's going on there. Any kind of you know SEO what's driving what landing pages that you may have then what's happening on your website and this bar at the top is, is just common nomenclature. We use all the time to talk about anything that's happening with your customer in a more at a higher touch relationship, right?

So this is a little more of an intimate relationship with them. Once they come to your website, they're likely the most qualified and vetted people to kind of really start figuring out who is your demographic, who's converting, who's not. The goal of this is to help us to see. So there's, we use a color coding system. There's red for that.

Obviously there's yellow for on the cusp of being bad and there's green for. This is actually good for the industry standard. These colors are color coded for industry and for like the segment that they're in. Some people, you know, feel that they're, you know, more of a affiliate based model or feel that their direct response or they are coming from like a more, you know, B2B background. So we do assimilate this for the industry and look at this based on that.

And long story short on this is we, we really look at each touch point and each kind of interaction with the customer so that we can really carefully identify where do we lose people and why. So like for this, in looking at this customer, the website traffic, when it converts to view product, that's someone that is on your product page. So they went to the website, they looked at your product page. How did that convert? This one didn't convert very well, right?

So they feed the product. They didn't, they weren't that impressed with your homepage. Not that many people went to your product page. Then from the product page, not that many people added to cart either. So that probably means you have you have a branding problem, right?

Then you go to the add to cart to start a checkout. It's good, but it's not great. So usually what happens at this point is that people feel like there was something sketchy about the checkout process. Maybe your subscriptions was the thing you were pushing and they're just like, hey, I'm not ready to try a subscription. Maybe it just looks really different.

There was a version of Shopify for a while that the checkout page looked different, and everyone thought that it was a scam. So there was like a huge trust problem there. And then from starter checkout to purchase all the behaviors that happen after that. But if usually if we see people subscribing, they like the product. If we see people like re-engaging with the product, they like the product.

But if we see a lapsed in the people that like purchased, there's usually a product thing we need to look at, right? So then we start talking about is it your branding? Is it your packaging? Is, is it is the use, are the, is the way to use it? Not clear.

Right. Because that's usually a huge problem is education really lacks in a lot of brands. And for them, it's their product. They know everything about it. They can't even fathom that people would not understand how to use their product or how to engage.

Jess Chan: 36:13

With.

Rachyl Neidecker: 36:14

It. You know, like, like how often to take it and why that's so important and, and the different value proposition that comes with it or how long, like if it's a, if it's a consumable, like a, if it's consumable or something you put on yourself, it might take three months. And so people dropping off at one month makes sense because they didn't see results yet. But you didn't tell them that. So they didn't know, you know, so there's a lot there's a lot that can be happening there that we talk about.

And then maybe two, if you have a couple, this could also be that one skew is pulling that entire percentage down. So maybe you need to let that product go. And I think that's something a lot of founders or owners have a hard time with like that. A part of their baby needs to die, you know, so there's that whole process that we go through there.

Jess Chan: 36:59

You gotta.

William Harris: 37:00

Cut the gangrene off so the rest of the child can live kind.

Jess Chan: 37:02

Of thing. Yeah, yeah.

William Harris: 37:04

That's a very morbid way of putting it.

Rachyl Neidecker: 37:06

But it's, it's what it is. And, and I think so if we see. So that's kind of how we walk through it with all of our, you know, all of our clients and we reassess and leverage this over and over again every rolling three months to kind of look at how is the health of the business?

William Harris: 37:20

It's so visual, I love it. I mean, it makes this make so much more sense. You can say, okay, here's where we need to focus. And like you said, if you're doing this over time, then you can see where this is changing. So you're like, hey, we made changes here and this has gotten better.

We made changes here. It isn't getting better, right? And it's like, okay, well, how is this impacting the overall business? Let's just say, you know, you get into this, you know, somebody's doing this and you reassess this in, in three months, how do you how do you determine where to start here? Like I'm looking at this, I see a lot of red and you're like, okay, well, here's where we're going to start.

This is the this is the area that's the most important for us to dig into.

Rachyl Neidecker: 38:02

So usually we do a couple things at once. Just see, are you going in to talk? So go ahead.

Jess Chan: 38:07

Yeah, they were going to say the same thing. But really I think the.

Jess Chan: 38:10

Most you're going to say the same.

William Harris: 38:11

Thing that I want you to say at the same time.

Jess Chan: 38:13

Yeah, exactly. At the same time, like I was, I was like that, just that just flashed a whole like reality TV show scene in my head, but I'm not going to go into it.

Jess Chan: 38:22

Okay.

Jess Chan: 38:23

But the, the big thing is like, and this is like one of many frameworks and models that we use across the board. And I think the thing that Rachyl and I have always been aligned on is like the more complex something becomes, the more you need some sort of framework rather than just a playbook or a process. And there isn't. And, and the big thing is like, we need to pull these numbers because there's going to be these patterns that show through it where, for example, like Rachyl said, hey, right now on this one, you know, only this brand is only converting 24% of all their website traffic to viewing a product. And only 20% of those people end up adding a product to Cart.

And a CRO team would probably look at these metrics too. And they're probably just going to be saying, all right, we need to optimize our home page and we need to optimize our add to cart. And here are all the different tests that we want to run. Let's try moving buttons around. Let's try adding different pictures like all the CRO tests.

And those are still just as valid. And those are important. But when you actually take a step back and say, hey, wait, those numbers are true. And also, even when we get someone on an email list, we still we're only converting 63% of the people still don't convert, no matter how much we're telling them. And out of all our purchase purchasers, 7% of those people don't even come back for a second purchase.

We might have a product market fit problem, and your CRO team is not going to be the thing to find that. But meanwhile, your acquisition team is spending a bunch of ads and they're getting, you know, you're like, their Roas needs to be a lot higher. And it's like, well, your acquisition team can't fix the product market fit problem, no matter how much they find the right people, because your product doesn't fit the market that you're asking them to target. And that's a role that we play is like, let's look at all these numbers to figure out what the core root issues are. And so it isn't as linear as like, well, let's find the three worst numbers here and fix those three worst numbers, because those three worst numbers could actually come from one core place.

William Harris: 40:19

That's brilliant. I didn't even think about the product market fit when I immediately looked at this. Like you said, I'm looking at how do I fix one of these things at a time? But to your point, it's like, wait a minute. All of these are depending on maybe one other problem.

And that's the problem that actually needs to be addressed, not the landing page.

Jess Chan: 40:35

Yeah, exactly. And like, that's also why looking at the yellows and greens are also important. So for example, here we're seeing like 51% of people who make a second purchase end up making a third purchase. And actually a lot of people hit whatever $100 LTV. So we're like, wait, you're actually scaling acquisition so quickly because you're trying to two X the business that you're not hitting product market fit.

That's why all of these things are failing, but you actually have a core market that is a raving fan and buys from you no matter what. So can we take a step back from trying to double the business for a second? Look at who these customers are that continuously keep buying? And turns out you have 10% of your customers who have $1,000 LTV, and you're not targeting any of those people because your acquisition team is trying to go broad. And that's the that's what Rachyl is saying, where it's like, wait, we actually need to pull back for a second.

Find what works and scale that. And we and no one else is ever going to be like, your core team is not going to find that your finance team is not going to find that your marketing team is not going to find that. And typically, this is the founders role, right? This is the founder or the CEO's role. And that's why like over the last few years, Rich and I have really grown Longplay with our team to be like an embedded operating partner, because that's the best term to say what we this is, this is the level that we operate at to help founders and CEOs and teams look at their business holistically And then together we can say like, now that we know we have product market fit problem, or you actually have great product market fit, you're just not positioning it in a way that your customers who are a good fit know that you're speaking to them.

And that's when we talk about branding and then we can go into, okay, well, you need an email team, but you also need a brand guide. You also need X, Y, Z. And then we have, you know, the ways to execute on all of that for them. But I think these are the, these are the types of questions that a lot of brands aren't asking right now is like, do we have product market fit? Do we have a business model that's profitable even if we scale?

And do we have the right team to make that happen? And those are the three foundational questions that this diagnostics helps, helps at least start the conversation and answer.

William Harris: 42:44

I love that you call it a diagnosis because it reminds me of I have a background doing medical stuff as well. I was a nurse for a long time. And so when I, when I see this, I think about that, it's like, oh, you could actually have somebody's lab work and it comes back and they're like, oh, your sodium bicarb is low. You could just give them sodium bicarb and correct that. But it's like, but why is your sodium bicarb low in the first place?

What are the other labs that are also out? And it's like, oh, you actually have this other thing. And if we treat that thing, your sodium bicarb is going to now be corrected. I don't need to give you sodium bicarb. And so it's the same concept that you're saying here.

One of the things that you've mentioned several times, I know, Rachyl, especially you've talked about it several times, was trust. And so my head, at least at the time that I was thinking about, I wanted to wait till we get to this is it's like, well, how do you see if somebody has a trust issue? And I'll give a quick example of one that I've seen before, but I want to know, like in here, if you're able to see it in your diagnosis. We had a customer come to us one time and this was a few years ago, and he said he had gone through like nine other agencies before coming to us, and nobody could fix his meta ads. And we're looking through this and I'm like, you don't have a problem with your meta ads.

I'm looking at everything that they have done. And that's not the issue. The issue is the time when your meta ads started to tank. As the same time that there were two really big videos that went live on YouTube negatively about your brand that have millions of views. The reality is this correlates so strongly.

You just have some bad PR. You have something right now that is unfortunately affecting your sales, that is outside of your website. It is outside of your ad account. It is not anything that you can do or fix necessarily in this other than can you reach back out to these people, see if you can give them your new product, get them to write a new review, and hopefully help to kind of fix that or something along those lines. But that's not going to immediately show up.

You're not going to see that in your ads account. You're not going to see that if you're so like in this diagnosis tool, how can I see if this customer has a trust issue? This one might not, but like somebody else is like, what are we going to see?

Rachyl Neidecker: 44:35

Yeah. So I think there's many different ways to kind of indicate that we look at every channel when we take on a client. So every, and we do a bit of history and digging and we try to understand what their reviews look like. I think that's one of the core indicators of trust. Talk to their customer service team as well, because that is one of the biggest indicators of trust.

What people are asking, are you in any way answering that on your website? But on here, typically it's why are people not viewing the product? If your website traffic is low and you're pouring a ton of money into it, what are you pouring your money into? So we'll like, we'll look at that. Well, there's usually an indicator that happened before and then that's when we find stuff in social, like you're saying, and then from or something that they did or something they, they sent out like, we'll look at email history when things happen, when revenue took a dip.

All those things are indicators on here. Specifically, if people are either not coming to the website when they should be or when they're on the website, but they're really not looking at the product because the homepage looks cheap or untrustworthy. That is a huge indicator. That's, I mean, that's a, that's a bad problem. And then they're not looking at the product because they're like, yeah, I feel icky.

If it's hard to navigate, people won't trust you. If they get to your product page, they're only converting 20% because they spent the time to get to your website, to get to the right product, to look at a product you did not cultivate trust quickly enough. And then if if people are not adding to cart, same thing. So I would say it's more on the website side. If you're not seeing people re-engage with the product, you also have like just saying a product market fit problem, a product problem, as I mentioned earlier, or it could be that they got your product and it was not what you promised.

So then that's when we would engage customer service feedback reviews and be looking at all those things. So our job is really like to find to inspect what we expect and to work to like this, this tool I just was saying we very much so believe if you can't say it simply, you simply don't understand it. So this is very much so to say like, here's what we're saying. Let's have a conversation. And that's what all of our diagnostic tools kind of lend to is making sure that we're able to inform our, our, our client and give them the option to and point out what we think is wrong.

And then we've inspected a little bit, but can we dig deeper and then fix these issues? So I think trust problems usually take a while to remedy. It could be products. It could be like based on this, the fact that only 7% of people purchased it probably just was an education problem. But you would see like second time purchases being a problem, like if they didn't like the product.

So we would say, okay, the trust problem happened at the product phase, and we're probably not educating appropriately. And we probably need to add, you know, let's inspect that. Maybe we interview a few like people that left maybe we like, but usually start with the customer service team, the reviews, what happened on social and just. So yeah, I hope that helped answer your question. There's a lot of different ways and there's a lot of areas that you can lose trust.

So that's why it's such a big thing because you can lose trust just like in a relationship at any point. And then it's so much harder to rebuild it rather than not pouring money on the fire, like going, oh, we need to make more money. So I'm going to pour money into the marketing. When you have a brand or product problems like we had been referencing. So the or you're just not managing your money really well and you're going to keep losing small fractions of it, and then you're going to blame other people and not understand why it's happening.

And then you won't have money to invest or fix the problem. So I would say here, this on this exact chart, it's probably a trust issue on the website. And yeah, it's a website problem. But in general, there's many different ways that trust can be lost throughout the process.

William Harris: 48:24

So true. I'm going to skip over to the other slide that I wanted to go over, which the hierarchy of strategy. I really liked this one. You had a lot of good slides, but I can only cover so many. Right?

You told me before that a mistake today can create a problem two years later. Explain that. Like how can a problem today create this problem that you almost don't see for two years?

Rachyl Neidecker: 48:44

Yeah. Do you want me to take that, Jess, or.

Jess Chan: 48:46

Yeah, that's definitely a you thing.

Rachyl Neidecker: 48:49

So I would say this is something that Jess and I probably do uniquely, uniquely, well, really multifaceted. And it's really about making sure that you're that that 1 to 2% problem is going to be a problem at scale. So that's how we kind of identify it. It's like, okay, oh, good. It went away.

Whatever that was. So that 1 to 2% is what we look at. Because when you scale two years down the road, that could be a 10% problem or that could be a 30,000 problem. And then it's almost like, oh, we have to spend so much time correcting this. So it's very important to kind of look at your business with those like three, six, nine, 12 month goals and even 5 to 10 year goals and figure out like, okay, what are we, where are we bleeding a little bit right now?

Let's look at our money. Let's look at all these areas of the business. Let's look from the top to the bottom and everything happening in the company, and try to find 1 to 2% problems because at scale or larger, that will be our bleed. So that's and you could be losing a lot of money. A lot of people, as an example, don't care for their flows.

Your flows can make up by just a regular reoccurring 10% of your revenue if done right. Not just fill it out. Not just like I paid someone to do it. You need a test. Roll them out and make sure they're working.

But that can make up your cash and then you can reinvest that money. And then that's predictable income each month. And how did you maybe and I think a lot of people are like, I don't need that yet. I don't have enough customers. It's, it's always the water.

It's usually what people are making excuses about what they think they don't need. Like we've had a lot of brands do really well on either Amazon, TikTok or Instagram in the last couple of years. But then all that traffic is going to Amazon, and Amazon's getting the main stake of their business and how they're, you know, really how their business is being articulated to people and other people are pilfering that, like other people are either wholesaling their brand. Other like we see other people getting beat out. Like a lot of our clients have wholesalers or other people selling their product quicker or a little bit cheaper than what they're selling it for or duping it on Amazon.

And then they can't own their brand identity and they're losing customers constantly. So. Sure. So the, the goal really is like, how do I make sure that I kind of control that narrative? I'm not overly indexing on other tools outside things to drive my business, but I'm leveraging it appropriately.

And I think those are the things that people kind of like get out of hand because they're chasing cash. Like we were talking about earlier, it's like, I'm chasing the dollar. Oh, I made 2 million. That's great. And I maybe lost money, but who cares?

This will be good in five years if I. But they're not thinking about the ramifications of not owning your identity, not making sure that you are the one. You're the arbiter, essentially, of everything that's happening and that you're looking internally at what those problems are. I also think a lot of people don't plan their people process really well and how that looks to scale. So they don't really know when to bring on a vendor, and they're just kind of patching up the ship rather than strategically making choices.

And that is where we see a lot of money going out the door too. So the goal really is to make sure you know your goals and to make sure you're looking for those 1 to 2 percents to kind of mitigate that, to keep it from being a very expensive problem. And if you don't know, hire somebody or find a vendor that you like, because I think a lot of people don't do that soon enough either. They're just like, oh, it's not important. Or I, you know, I know it's not going to be a big deal, but there's usually an outside perspective that could lend to a lot more experience for you.

So not knowing. Good.

William Harris: 52:17

I love that you called out though. The idea of the thing that you're usually making excuses about is probably the thing that you need to deal with. That was probably the thing that I took away the most from that. I feel like that's true in every area of life, not just in business, but it's like the thing that you're the most afraid of is probably the thing you need to do the most. So that's a good call.

What are the most common slow death decisions that brands make?

Rachyl Neidecker: 52:48

Do you want me, coach?

Jess Chan: 52:50

Yeah, I can, I have a few examples and then I'm sure you have a bunch as well. Is the one we've seen is the hey, we just need to do this thing to hit the next goal. Like goal setting is a big one because goal setting is top down and it becomes a culture issue. And we've seen this across the board with so many brands that we've worked with where CEO, founder, investors, whatever come in with like, these are our quarterly goals because there was a business book that was like, this is how you motivate the team. And I've done this too.

So like I'm speaking from like, I think, and I also will say a lot of the things that Rachyl have has spoken about, I can empathize with as a founder because I'm like, I've actually experienced the pain on the other side of doing it that way. And then learning from Rach and building this together. And so a lot of it was like goal setting where we've seen a lot of teams essentially say like, well, I was given these goals to hit. And no matter what, I need to hit those goals because I need to keep my job and to think that your team, no matter how great they are, like that's the lens that they're looking at things from. Like, you gave me a goal, I'm going to hit that goal.

And a very classic scenario is, you know, we have these revenue goals. This is the maximum you're allowed to discount. And so run with it. And it's your job to optimize the channel. It's your job to hit these revenue goals.

The team is going to kill it at that. And you know what? They're doing their job like they're actually excellent. But those goals are set incorrectly. And so two years down the line, every discount lever has been maxed out.

Every channel has been maxed out. You have nowhere to run anymore. And no matter how much you set more aggressive goals, the team is going to consistently fail. And then it's going to look like the team is failing when in reality, they were operating under a failing system to begin with. And that's like, I think one extremely like probably one of the most common examples we have seen.

And typically we were brought in of like, hey, we got to fix this thing. And the uncomfortable truth that people need to witness is like, all right, they need to dial back your goals for a little bit. Because you're now backed into a corner where there's no way to continue growing at the pace you're growing and increase profit and change nothing. That was maybe possible six months ago, a year ago, because there could be some finesse, but eventually you kind of hit like the end of the line.

William Harris: 55:08

It's like the human body, again, going back to this. It's like, hey, I have this goal on my bench, but I've got this rotator cuff issue and it's like, well, we're gonna fix this issue, but you got to dial back your goals on the bench for a little bit. You'll be able to hit that, but not if you don't address this.

Jess Chan: 55:21

Yep. Exactly.

Rachyl Neidecker: 55:23

I think to tack on what Josh was saying, I think it's change, agility and awareness of I, I can see that there's a problem coming that I don't know how to fix it. And it's it's very much so like, am I the best person to fix it? Is there someone I need to hire to fix it? Do I need to get a consultant to help me figure out how to fix this? Do I trying to read a book like, I don't care what you do, but how can you?

How can you know your blind spot as quickly as possible? Like with the evolution of our business, I just and I planned for AI problems. And this was starting two years ago, just I didn't say, Catherine. I planned for AI to be, you know, replacing people, replacing certain areas of our work. How do we make sure that we are staying ahead of it?

And Jess and I really like structured the company so that she could spend a lot of her time focused on helping to fix our AI stuff. So it's very much so. Like, do you have a resource in-house or do you need to go find that? And then how do you, how do you, how do you look at yourself and say, okay, like Jess was saying, what I've done, rinsing and repeating does not scale with the evolving world. And I think that's the hardest thing that we run into is people are like, why did this?

And it worked. And it's like, or I did this and it didn't work. We hear that all the time too. Or I tried to do flows. They don't work.

I tried to use a loyalty app. It didn't work. I tried to rebrand. It didn't didn't do anything, or I, I tried to fix our marketing. It didn't help.

And it's like, yes, but it might be a. Using a. The right person at the right time can be such a big impact. And, and trusting that maybe testing and trial and error can be necessary. I think a lot of people get scared, like Jess is saying when they see profit taking a dip.

But it's like, if you've not been agile enough to predict that as a problem, you have to expect that you don't need to put some money into it, and that you're going to need to give it some time to mature or to fix. And it can't be an overnight thing, and it can't be having everything all at once. It's just that's not it's not the real world. And there's, there's times to take steps forward. There's times to take steps backward and knowing, having the wisdom to know when you need to do that, I think, is something that we constantly see that is kind of a like the death of a lot of companies.

They just, they think that they can keep doing what they've done with the same mentality. They've done it and keep succeeding rather than maybe we need to rethink everything. And that's something I really admire about Jess is she's always the first one to be like, maybe we should just burn it all to the ground and rethink everything. And I'm.

Rachyl Neidecker: 57:53

Like, all right.

Rachyl Neidecker: 57:54

Let's, let's go down that road. Let's talk through that. So but I think that is a, I think that's the reason that we're still here candidly, is.

Rachyl Neidecker: 58:03

Yeah.

Rachyl Neidecker: 58:03

You know, she, she trusted me in my opinion on the things that we needed to change. I came in and did a lot of change that she probably wouldn't have. She didn't. I think there was times she probably didn't like the changes I was making, but like they they did help. They were uncomfortable, but they helped.

And we're here. And but yeah, she was I think that there's a lot of wisdom in those decisions.

William Harris: 58:25

I want to talk about the hierarchy of strategy. I'd flip to that slide before I actually got to the questions on it, just because like, I'm not going to turn off the screen sharing, but take me through, you know, in brief idea, like what the hierarchy of strategy is and what it's solving here.

Rachyl Neidecker: 58:41

So the, the reason that Jess and I created this, this has been an evolution to of over many years, actually, I would say just the reason that we kind of have this here is because we usually just see like agencies functioning at like step five and six. We usually see like executive teams or consulting companies functioning sort of at step one and step two. But what we, we do is we do all the stuff in between as well as the top and the bottom. So that's why we kind of created this is and even internally for anyone that's seeing this and has like an internal team and you're like, how do I make sure that we're like, it just feels like we're missing something. I feel like we're just doing output.

We're maybe not thinking through everything. This is how we manage the business, our business, and then by extension, our clients businesses is it's like, how do you look to the future in step one? Maybe look at everything, look at all your channels, look at your industry like product market fit, like we were talking about competitor analysis, what your retail presence is everywhere, whether that's brick and mortar or that's online, all the places that you are, how your website is doing, how your social media is like supporting that or not supporting that. And then like the second look needs to be like, okay, now we need to make sure that we're, we have a roadmap to actually fix the problems we've identified in the first step, right? So what are the issues we're having in step one?

How do we fix that? Or how do we hypothesize we're going to fix it in step two, make a plan and really stick to it. And that's when the testing comes in. So your monthly planning is really about building out the structures from your long term goal setting. And then it's about making sure that everything that you planned out to do, you're doing, and that there's a very clear strategy for your team to do it and to be executed.

And then from there, then it's like, okay, is the content look good? Does everything in line with what we need to do? Are we being consistent? Right? And so it's very much so.

Like, how do you distill it down to like a, a A process. This is kind of what we came up with and just I would love for you to talk about it, but that's, that's kind of like the origin of the hierarchy of strategy, how we leverage it. And if anyone is watching that, they're wanting to use this for their team, it really does help to kind of do like a reset every like couple months to make sure and reconcile with your initial plan.

Jess Chan: 1:00:53

Sure.

Jess Chan: 1:00:54

Yeah. And I think to add to that is like, just like the previous diagnostics tool helps kind of find like overall, the structure of the business is like, is this model meant to convert? The hierarchy of strategy is a really good way of mapping it onto your team and like responsibilities and org chart like ratios background is actually in org psych. And so like, we've spent a lot of time really thinking through what makes a healthy organization and an org structure for our team and how does it continue? Like it's not static.

And I think that's one of the biggest things I learned from rage. I'm like, look at this beautiful mural board of an org chart I built out and it's like, done. Let's just hire the people and like, fill the role and everything. And it turns out humans. Humans are not that easy.

You can't build them like Lego blocks. It's constantly dynamic as. And also the business is evolving. And so if you actually take a step back looking at this hierarchy of strategy, it actually maps very well to like a founder executive role, kind of at the top, a VP role in levels two and three, a marketing or a manager role in level four. And then kind of like an execution role, production role in five and six.

And we found that a lot of the times, we'll also use this with teams that we started working with where we can see like, you know, founders or executives like strategies, like everything's not working. And it's like, well, it's probably because you, you are way too stretched across all these different areas. You are trying to carry levels one, two, three, and four, but you're probably doing level one really well. And just as a single human, you can't do levels three and four really well. So you're actually the execution team is not executing on remotely on the strategy.

So your strategy is actually has nothing wrong with it. Team's just not executing on the strategy even though you've articulated it. So you actually have an org chart level problem. And let us come in and help plug in those holes, or who can you move there? And so it's actually a really great framework that kind of really applies like reaches organizational psych to help quickly diagnose like gaps in the life in your, in your org chart and why an idea or a vision or a strategy or a plan doesn't follow through to execution.

William Harris: 1:02:50

That's brilliant.

William Harris: 1:02:52

What's the difference from an e-commerce perspective? What is the difference between scaling revenue, scaling profit, and scaling enterprise value?

Jess Chan: 1:03:01

Oh, I'll take this. One has the expertise, but I have the struggle busing that I've gone through and the founder role on this. I think revenue is super easy. And I think that's why not that it's super easy in this. It's the easiest out of all three.

And it's also the easiest to conceptualize. Like it's truly just a single metric at the end of the day. Like you can, you can, I can, I can build a $100 million business overnight. I just, I'm just going to need $1 billion. But I can build one overnight.

William Harris: 1:03:33

Yeah.

Jess Chan: 1:03:35

And it's just a single metric, and there's not much to look at. And then and then profit becomes way more complex. And that's everything that Rachyl has touched on, which is when you when you start to optimize for profit or you start to optimize for cash and bank, which is something that Rach brought in to like our awareness and like, like when she says, like, hey, we focus on that for a Longplay. Like that was really something that she brought into the organization. And I really appreciated it because I felt as a founder, the burnout of I scaled for revenue.

I did what every founder, what all those Twitter chats were doing and all those entrepreneur groups is like, what, how, how big is my business? How big is my team and how fast am I growing? Like that's all I optimized for for the first year and a half, two years. And it sucked. Like I hit those goals, but like everything was on fire on the inside because I wasn't looking at profit.

I wasn't looking at cash and bank and no one talked about it. And so when you look at profit, suddenly business becomes extremely more complicated and extremely more overwhelming. And I think that's actually like speaking from an emotional standpoint. I think that's where a lot of people retract, where they're like, oh, like you're overcomplicating it. We don't need to talk about all those things.

Let's just grow revenue and everything's going to sort itself out. And having lived that experience, it does not sort itself out. The problems just compound. So like profit is way more complicated. But in that complexity also way more levers to pull.

You can pull on team, you can pull on cashflow, you can pull on cash planning, you can pull on cogs, you can pull on number of SKUs. Like there's so many things, so many levers you can pull on revenue. You really only have a handful of levers, which is primarily marketing and, and the enterprise value. Now you really need to think over time, like now you need to think about stability and foundations, and now you need to think about values and the structure of what you're building. And you need to think about all the things that are very unsexy, which means sometimes you need to have flat revenue growth for a few years to go back to your foundations.

And I think that's where like now the patience and diligence and wisdom really comes in. And it's also probably why, like in entrepreneur culture, like exits are so valued because it's a representation of like that type of wisdom in building haven't been done. And so I think there's actually three. I think it's a fantastic question because they're very, very different hats that you have to wear to optimize for each one.

William Harris: 1:05:52

Rachyl, you sounded like you wanted to jump in on that.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:05:54

Yeah, I do. I think that that's where we go back to, to like the, the sexy versus non sexy thing and that those 1 to 2% things are now probably massive bleeds in your company at the enterprise level. And that is when you have to make hard decisions like, okay, our executive team is bloated. We actually maybe don't know these few things. We need to, we need to actually attack the problem internally and have a flat year.

And that might keep you from selling, that might keep you from being able to get out, that might keep you from that, that having that feather in your cap of everyone that says they've sold, but so many people sell when they're in distress. And I think that that's really I think selling is the sexy thing a lot of times, but it's definitely not usually a good sign when, when from an operating perspective, usually we all like we all know what happens, right? They needed to get out and they were just doing what they could to optimize to get out. And that that can uproot everybody that's in the company. If, if they didn't like, take the people with them, if it can cause so many big issues isn't as I think the thing is, is people think that selling is sexy.

And usually there's a lot of underlying problems that that tells most people that have sold a business or know what is actually going on, that there was a distress and they didn't know how to manage it or they couldn't get out of it. Right. Very rarely are people like I scaled and it was so great and everything went really well, and now I sold and now I have all this money, like a lot of people are selling at a loss, you know? And I think that there's that's just something that we're all trying not to have happen by being more strategic. And I think at that enterprise level, your small culture problems, your small people problems, your small infrastructure problems and your inability, because it's so much harder to be agile at that level too, like your inability to be agile at that level can really be the biggest problem.

So you're fixing your problem is probably going to take twice as long as a smaller company. So I think that going back to agility and not being like a big deficit in, in leadership, if you can't do that and you're leading a large company, you really won't be able to fix your problem. So it's smarter to try to get away from that problem or just remove yourself before you're the one going down with the ship, you know? So those are just things I would point out.

Jess Chan: 1:08:15

I also want to quickly add to this because I think you're bringing up something really important, William. And I feel like I've now been in like the entrepreneur like industry for like over ten years. And I've like been part of so many entrepreneur groups, plus being part of like an agency where I feel like I do have a unique view on just a number of businesses over time and entrepreneurs over time. And we talk a lot about the exits, but we don't talk a lot about all the companies that couldn't exit because no one hears about that. But I've seen a lot of like, there's so many stories I've seen over the years of someone has built a $100 million business that may have 20% year over year growth, but couldn't exit because it wasn't profitable on the back end or they missed the boat.

Or, you know, someone who was very profitable and might have had slower revenue growth, but they still couldn't exit because there was no value outside of them and they hadn't actually built an asset. And so I think those are the those are the conversations that aren't really having, aren't really like talked about in entrepreneur circles. Because who wants to share that? I tried to sell my business and it failed and all the five reasons it wasn't sellable. And we only care about the success stories.

But yeah, usually, usually revenue, if we found revenue, profit, enterprise value also sometimes quite disconnected. You can have great revenue, terrible, terrible profit, enterprise value. And I think there was a period in e-commerce, especially where those were all tied together, like the Casper Allbirds exit era, like the OA era, it was all revenue growth, there was no profit, and there was no particular enterprise value. But and that reprogramming, I think is happening in e-commerce right now.

William Harris: 1:09:53

And that was corrected in the market, unfortunately. So, okay, you both think deeply about systems in business, but also systems in the body. We've talked a little bit about that. I don't think it's a coincidence I want to transition. This would normally be the who is Jess and Rachyl, but like we condense it to just one topic, which is just health, because I think we all three share a lot of passion there.

I don't care who answers this one, but what's what health changes gave you the biggest improvement in cognitive performance?

Jess Chan: 1:10:27

I'll go.

William Harris: 1:10:28

First. You're on mute.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:10:31

My computer was trying to force. Quit this so you can hear me, though, right? Yep. Okay. Okay.

So I think that's a that's a big question for me. Like for me specifically. So actually you go first, then I'll go because yeah, you go first because mine's long.

Jess Chan: 1:10:50

I think mine's probably like a slightly unconventional answer, but I think the big health changes were actually a lot around dropping into like, what feels good and working from a place of joy and doing what I love. I think I got caught up in a lot of the pressure of like the founder or like leader or any title where I'm like, I'm supposed to be good at everything. I'm supposed to be doing everything and like whatever everyone else hates I should be doing. And like, it's like asking a frog to, like, climb a tree. It's like, I could do it maybe like with a lot of struggle, but not great at it.

It doesn't look great. And so I found, and this is something that Rachyl has been so supportive of, which I'm really lucky to have, is like, I can actually focus more on the things that bring me joy, like really feeling to my body. And like, this is what brings me joy and this is what brings me excitement. This is what I'm called to. And in that, I found so much more creativity and like momentum doing work that way, rather than trying to continuously force myself to do the things that I'm not great at, somebody else is great at and loves.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:12:04

So yeah, and I would say I'm similar. I actually had a, I have had a long health journey that just has genuinely been amazing for me. Like, I don't want to cry, but she. I came to Jess and I was like, look like I will work so hard for you. I will get these things done.

I was like, but I've got some health problems. Like I was really honest. I, I was immobile more than once in my six years here. I like truly immobile. I was having like home health care teams because I was not gonna live in the hospital.

I have a couple really rare issues. And I also have, which a lot of women can relate to endometriosis and mast cell activation syndrome. And a couple things that I would like to not share, but I had to have my uterus and like cervix and other things removed last year. And Jess still was like, I know I was still working from bed, I was determined to work, but I was immobile prior to that and up to that, I was having some water on my spinal cord from all the swelling, from everything. And I couldn't I couldn't walk and I would say the reason I'm still like here.

Like I would say mentally and emotionally and just at Longplay and like really actually alive still is because just really understood and gave me the space to, to be okay, not being okay and still show up for work, you know, like I was just off camera and I was able to work like I, it was good for my soul. And I think she really understood that and saw me. And I really did need somebody that was going to understand like, hey, like I have these issues, but I will, I will do right by you, I will, I will work hard, I will show up. If I really can't, I'll let you know. But no, I, this has gotten me through this job.

And Jess and Katherine, who I've talked about several times, have really the support at work for me has been life changing. I've never had that. I've had people like say they they care and they understand. And I think if I didn't deliver like excellence or make sure that there was like, you know, a fair exchange or heads up for what was going on. I think it would have been different, but we've all really worked to give each other what we need at work.

And I think that has been invaluable for all of our mental health candidly, like we like, whether it's Jess wants to take a trip or Catherine needs help with X, Y, and Z or I, you know, I have a surgery, but here's my plan. Like, this is what we're doing. We're going to optimize for stuff before that. And then I had also like gone through IVF recently just so I could try to have kids some way. So that was, it's just, it really is just the space to figure out how we can all work together and honor what the person needs.

And it's different for each person, I think is my biggest thing that I've learned is like, I don't need a long vacation, but like, I have to get a biologic every month. I just need that day off because I can get really, really sick. And it's when I say really sick, like I'll be on calls and maybe try off my camera to throw up like that doesn't bother me. But like, if I'm really sick and I she unequivocally was like, yep, you have that space. So it was just so great to feel like what I was getting, what I needed and how I needed it.

And what did that look like? And we brought Catherine in to like, because she really is become like a right hand for me to kind of cover for those client calls. So our clients are still getting excellent care. Our team was still being excellently cared for. Jess would step in on those times, like to, to support with different things that we needed.

So I really just think that that, that mentality of what does support look like for each person, because maybe it's not that I need a mental health day because I'm like, I'm pretty good. I'm good that way. Like I don't need that. But maybe that's something Jess or Catherine need, like, but I need the day from my biologic, you know? So what does each person need?

And are you actually answering that? I think that's something that is really missed in a lot of organizations. And because we're a smaller like we can do that. But I do think that this scale is for us to its scale with us as we've grown. So I just want to say those things and say that there's overlap.

William Harris: 1:16:24

It's incredible. I mean, you guys have such good strategy, but the fact that you have such a good partnership is like, that's not common. This is it's a rare thing.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:16:38

We work at it. I want to be very clear. We we work at it like we're very comfortable in disagreement and like healthy conflict. And that is something that we have spent over six years, hours, like hours and hours working on.

Jess Chan: 1:16:54

Yeah.

Jess Chan: 1:16:55

So I think it's.

Jess Chan: 1:16:55

It's something to work on just as much as the strategy. And I think that's also something I learned, like in the beginning where like, you know, when you're trying to, when you're trying to do big things over a long period of time through uncertainty, which is basically what business is like, you're trying to steer a giant ship with a lot of people to an unknown land. And you're like, I think I have the map. But like, we're not quite sure. Turns out there's like rocks here.

Like you're navigating through a lot of uncertainty. Like what's actually most important is relationships and community and the trust of like, hey, we're going to figure this out together. Not the person who comes in is like, oh, like I have the exact plan. As long as we follow this exact path, we're going to hit gold. Like, I think that is what used to be expected in business.

I think that's probably the biggest learning curve I've had over the last like seven years. Building this business together over this, this long period of time is like the most your most important assets are, you know, a general approach to a strategy that is extremely malleable because who knows what you're going to come up against and the right people by your side who share the same values and can, and you can like genuinely trust to go like all the way through with and you can have healthy relationships with, and you can actually enjoy life in this process because like, who knows if the business is ever going to exit, who knows if we'll ever reach the like. Can we enjoy the journey together?

William Harris: 1:18:19

That's the key. You have to enjoy the journey. You're 100% right. I have a couple more questions that I'm going. We're technically at time.

Do you guys have a couple more minutes to keep going?

Jess Chan: 1:18:28

I'm good.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:18:29

Okay. Yes.

William Harris: 1:18:30

If we were in a cage fight, what is the supplement that you would fight me on? You're like, this is the supplement.

Jess Chan: 1:18:37

I have my ginseng pills that I discovered. So I used to be extremely mediocre up until grade eight. And my parents were like, if she could just, you know, get a job and like, generally succeed in life, we're pretty confident. We're pretty happy. I was not athletic, I was not, I was very got like C's in class.

Then we went to like Hong Kong and Korea, got these ginseng pills and I started taking them. And then grade nine, I started like getting 90s and I was on like every sports team. I still take them. I called them my smart pills. And I don't know what the actual dosage is supposed to be or the health benefits of ginseng or like what it's supposed to be.

But for me, they are my smart.

William Harris: 1:19:22

I need to do some research. That sounds very interesting.

Jess Chan: 1:19:25

I have no science behind this, but.

William Harris: 1:19:26

I love it.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:19:28

So I, I actually think my thing is kind of funny because just literally was like, have you ever tried creatine? So I've been taking creatine, like, because now it's cool. Again, I was using it when it was like, not cool, like a long time ago. I was a gymnast. And so like making sure that I was in good shape and was like able to keep going the next day and my refractory period, my muscles was good.

So I love creatine and I now it's cool again, everyone uses it. So I would say like creatine is the thing that I would probably use the longest if we were in a cage fight over. Like, what have I stood behind for the longest time? I like this brand personally. It is.

It's nice because it's the labeling is clear. There's trust because it's super transparent as far as what is in there and what's not and how clean it is. And it is clean of like the things that I would mostly worry about. And it's the monohydrate. So that's what you should be looking for.

So I love creatine, but I also take a lot of supplements that I have here. My second favorite one would be Wolverine. I actually think it really helps with I don't, I'm nearly never as sore. I feel like I wake up feeling a lot fresher when I take it. So I would say if I were in a cage fight, it would probably be those two.

But it's pretty well tied with like, I think the value that they both give, but those are just my favorite things. Okay. My husband actually doesn't he? He takes both two and he's like a hard he like doesn't believe in taking things. He's like, no, I don't need anything.

But he's gonna hate that. I made that choice too, by the way. That's my mocking invoice?

William Harris: 1:21:05

Yeah. That's good. That's part of your job. So, okay.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:21:10

He does take both of those things and he thinks that he sees the results. And he's he's about he's six two and he's like, you know, 215 and he's very he has no fat. So he's very muscular. He likes these two products.

William Harris: 1:21:23

Nice. I would say, I can't say that I have no fat, but I'm making a significant trend in that direction. In the last maybe six months or so, I've gone from 30% body fat to 19% body fat. So I'm I'm making my progress. Okay.

On the creatine, I also love creatine. It's one of the ones that I'm on. I saw that it was liposomal. I haven't done liposomal creatine. I do just take regular ones.

But I am a fan of liposomal delivery for other things. And the ones that I'm taking for that would be the ro RHO nutrition. And so I've got their Nad+, the glutathione in the curcumin, resveratrol, which are all through liposomal, which I really appreciate.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:22:00

Yeah. So the, I just actually, it's funny you say that I I just last night bought from aro. I bought their not their creatine I bought it wasn't the the nad they have nad yep. They're a lot of their products have berries in them and I'm anaphylactic allergic to berries. So it's like an FYI to anybody.

Look at the fine print. It's in their ingredients, but they are their NAD is like clean of that. It just has lemon in it and it is gluten and dairy free, which I'm also allergic to those things. So I actually just bought that last night.

William Harris: 1:22:35

Very cool. And then the other one, the Wolverine, I actually like what all is that I don't even know what that one is.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:22:41

So the biggest thing that's in there is this like BPC 157, which everybody is all about and level up in general has been sold out of Wolverine like over the last year, several times they started selling specifically in a lot of doctor's offices, whether it's like a derm's office or like a plastic surgeon, you know, they were selling in those locations first. So I'm usually an early adopter because I have friends in those industries. So they'll be like, they'll tell me what's trending. And I'm. Yeah, I like to give things a try.

And I actually feel like this really worked. And I feel like it actually helped me to lose weight, which I know sounds weird, but I really like even my husband was like, I do feel like I've not had like as much of a craving for food. And I feel like I lost a little weight, like taking it. I noticed more muscle and like, less like chub, for lack of a better word.

William Harris: 1:23:34

Okay. That's good. Which I want to quick disclaimer we are not doctors. We are a couple of friends discussing our own health routines, right? Like just to make sure that that's out there.

If there was one other thing that you were going to say, you know, hey, consider this founder, consider this, you know, executive, whether it's a supplement or a lifestyle habit or something else that you're like, hey, I, this is a good thing, you know? Maybe besides lifting, like obviously it's like, yeah, go for walks and lift. But it's like, aside from that, you're like, this is a thing that I really stand behind that you should be thinking about meditation.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:24:10

That's something we all do. We all meditate all our entire. So Catherine, Jess, and I, our executive team, we all meditate.

William Harris: 1:24:17

Together or individually.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:24:19

I mean, we have meditated together. I've taken just to like we. My favorite moment trying to meditate was our sound bath, where that like dog was like wandering. And that was so weird. Jess and that girl can't play the sound bath.

But no, we've actually hosted events with our team where we've done like group meditations. Catherine was there. That was when she first started with us. So but no, we've done. And that was in person.

We did like in-person retreat. But yeah, we've meditated together, but we do meditate independently. I would say almost every I meditate every start every morning with meditation. I know Catherine does it usually after her workouts, just you meditate pretty regularly too, I would say every, every day.

Jess Chan: 1:24:55

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely a big fan of meditation. And then I think tied to that is specifically, I would say with founders is the self-awareness. I think a lot of founders outsource the healing through the business.

And I've done that too. It's like, I will finally feel X when the business hits these goals, or the team is finally at a certain place or da da da da. But in my experience, over the last seven years, having done this dance is like whenever I drop into a deeper part of myself and I'm self-aware, the business tends to grow in that direction. And I think that's true for anyone in any sort of leadership role. And usually we are the biggest blocker of whoever's leading the helm of the business is the biggest blocker, and it has nothing to do with strategy.

It has nothing to do with marketing tactics. It has everything to do with what are you most scared of? What do you need help with? What are you trying to avoid? And also why?

Why did you want to build this business? Like what are you in this for? And asking those uncomfortable questions.

William Harris: 1:25:55

I love that you said that. Sorry. Go ahead.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:25:59

Can I add to that? But please go.

William Harris: 1:26:01

Well, I love that you said that because I felt that in my own life. And it's oftentimes the moments where, like you said, it wasn't a strategy thing or whatever. Maybe I'm like, I'm actually just going to go to bed on time. I'm going to go to bed by 10:00. I'm not going to answer that email that, you know, 3 a.m. and what seems like you should like, well, but then you're less productive, you're less.

It's like, and like, I can't even necessarily that it's like, I can't say that it's because I went to bed that I was more productive or more effective. There's just almost something that just resonates better. And just everything you do seems to work better. Kind of to your point of almost the meditation. It's just like, I don't know, things seem to just work out better when you're not so stressed about doing this, this, this, and this, whatever it is that's blocking you.

It seemed like there was like this founder level thing that was blocking the business.

Jess Chan: 1:26:46

Yeah. And I think to go back full circle, William, to what you said earlier, which is we started with, which is like the worst disease is solving the wrong problem very efficiently and even go beyond the business. I think I'm speaking for myself. I'm like, I've tried to solve a lot of problems that were personal things by growing a business. And sometimes if you just look inwards, the business stuff kind of actually sorts itself out over the long term.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:27:13

And I would say two things to add to that from like a how to apply that, like what Jess is talking about is we have this saying internally where we're not happy when we're happy now, because it's always like, like what you were saying is people are like, I'll be happy when we do this or I'll fix this problem, then I'll be happy. And it's like, you're always chasing something that is intangible and you will always fail. And there is no success in that. And we're all about how, how do we make sure each of us is honored and happy now? And a lot of that self work.

And then I think the other part of that too, is like, we learn so much when we're not like when we're not around. So each of us takes in like important time off. And that always reveals something in the business and one of us is gone. So that like we're not having they call it like critical person syndrome. We're not having that we're having.

How do we learn how to plug that gap? What are we doing to either enable or cause problems or what does that look like? And we all reflect on it like, we just had a meeting yesterday about reflecting on upon Catherine being out. And what did that look like for us, and how do we plan better for each of us to leave and come back in a way that is more fluid, but also like, why did these problems happen when we were gone? Right?

So it's, it's very healthy to take time away from your business because then you learn what you're causing, what you're doing to cause problems or a ruckus or, or, or not doing that you should be doing, you know.

William Harris: 1:28:37

I love the concept of now, I'm sure you guys have both heard this, but you know, that's the idea. That's like, if you're depressed, you're usually spending too much time in the past. If you're anxious, you're spending too much time in the future, right? Like the most peaceful is now. And it just reminds me of a Bible verse that I keep in my heart that I try to remind myself is.

Which is be still and know that he is God. And it's like for me, when I get like too far in one direction or the other, it's like, no, no, no, it wasn't be busy. It wasn't be productive. It was just be still right here in this moment. And I feel like when I do, it seems like to your point, things just work out better.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:29:14

We do take community breaths. So like that's something we do. We'll all be like, okay, this is a big thing. Let's all take a breath together. Take a second.

Like recenter, be in the now and then discuss some things. So like when we have big discussions, that's something we do too. So I think all those things can really help. But sometimes spending time away from your business is the best thing for you and your business. And you can come back with more wisdom and your team can see what needs to be filled in and what the gaps are.

William Harris: 1:29:42

It's been so fun learning from you girls today. I feel like the things that you've talked about, the strategies, the ideas, the partnerships, if people wanted to work with you. If they want to follow you, what is the best way for them to do that?

Jess Chan: 1:29:57

Just Longplay brands.com. Best place to find us. We're also on LinkedIn under Longplay as well, and also myself. So Jess Chan and Rachyl and Rachyl on LinkedIn. Those are the best places.

Awesome. Reach out to these days.

William Harris: 1:30:15

Well, again, I can't thank you enough for taking the time today to chat through all of this with me. I feel like I've learned a lot and grown just talking to you both today.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:30:24

Oh. Thank you. It was great. Thank you for having us.

Jess Chan: 1:30:26

So much fun. Thanks for having us. And as usual, love the way that you host.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:30:31

Great questions.

William Harris: 1:30:32

Yeah. Thanks. Well, thank you everyone for listening. I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Rachyl Neidecker: 1:30:36

Thank you.

Outro: 1:30:38

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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