I'm Spending 90 Days Cracking Instagram For My Ecommerce Business (Here's The Plan)

[00:00:06] So for the next 90 days, I'm running a personal brand experiment, a kind of head-to-head competition, if you like, between organic Instagram and paid Meta ads. And I want to figure out which actually drives more business for an e-commerce founder like me. And the reason I want to do this is two of the smartest operators in the world just gave me completely opposite advice about how to spend the next 90 days. Don't you hate it when that happens? Because one of them has got to be wrong. So on one side, we have Davey Fogarty, who is the guy behind the Oodie, which is the $200 million a year e-commerce brand. He has come out and basically said, you know, founders shouldn't bother building a personal brand. Until they're doing $10 million a year. And his argument is solid and it's based on maths because he reckons

[00:01:05] every YouTube video costs a founder over $3,000 in opportunity cost to produce. And that money therefore would be better spent testing paid ad creatives. That's his hypothesis. And then on the other side, you've got Daniel Priestley. Who's saying if you don't start right now, basically AI is gonna eat your business because the window is closing. And his argument is also pretty compelling, as lived experience, which is what he talks about, is the one thing AI can't fake. And the founders who don't show up on camera are gonna get outmarketed By the ones who do. Conflicting advice from two giants. And if you want to see what's, you know, what this sort of going all in on Daniel Priestley's advice actually looks like, look no further than the infamous, if I can call him that, Alex Hormozi. He runs, if you don't know, acquisition.com, and he reckons

[00:02:11] he has posted 35 35,000 pieces of content this year alone. 35,000. That's insane. I've been trying to do a podcast every week, right? But he's done 35,000. Now he's got a proper content team. And I think he batches a couple of days a week to make that volume work for him. But I do think the point still stands, right? He treats content as the engine of the business, not as a sideshow. And it is literally transforming his company. So some big giants, conflicting advice, which is the way it usually works. So which one is right? Which one is the path to go down? Because if I'm honest, I've been a bit stop-start on Instagram. I think most of us have been there, to be honest with you. I've tried it probably, I don't know, 3 or 4 times, never really cracked it. We've done all right

[00:03:09] with it, um, with our e-com businesses, never really what I would say cracked it though. I'm all in at the start, but either it takes more effort than I thought it was going to take, or I'm not seeing the results as quickly as I'd like to see them. And so I drift. And of course, then I hire someone to do it for me. I don't give them the right kind of guidance, et cetera, et cetera. So to be fair, Though, to social media, LinkedIn did work for me for a season until it kind of didn't because life got busy. And then when life gets busy, social media gets kicked back, doesn't it? Maybe, I don't know. Can you relate to that? Maybe? Just putting that out there. Anyway, I am going to settle this the only way I know how, which is actually by having a

[00:03:58] go and seeing what happens. And sharing on the podcast what I find out. And the reason why this is of interest to me right now, well, there's 3 reasons, I guess, 3-fold reasons. The first one being it follows on from what we talked about last time about generating organic sales. In the previous episode, we talked about that quite a bit. If you haven't listened to it, check it out. It's a great episode, right? Uh, the second reason, my 22-year-old son Zach, who is an absolute legend, has gone from zero to over 100,000 followers in the last 7 months using his strategy, which has enabled him to build his online business. And third, we have just launched something called Slingshot, or SAM, our Slingshot AI Mentor. It's basically an AI for e-com membership, and this experiment then that I'm going to go through, I'm going to live

[00:04:57] test on whether a sort of a founder personal brand drives more signups, more sales, than the same time and money may be spent on paid ads. And I will, of course, publish the numbers either way. That's the experiment. So hello, by the way, and welcome to the Ecommerce Podcast. My name is Matt Edmondson, and it's great to be with you. If this is your first time with us, a very, very warm welcome to you, my friend. Make sure you like and subscribe. And of course, if you're a regular, welcome back. Now in this episode, as I said, we're going to be talking specifically about this 90-day Instagram experiment, not necessarily the ad side of it, just the, the organic social side of it, what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. So Fasten your seatbelts. It's, uh, there's a fair bit to get through. Okay. So

[00:05:53] it's going to be dense. You're going to want to make sure you get the notes for this one, which will be on the website ecommercepodcast.net. Links will be in the descriptions below. So let me lay this out properly because like I said, there are these two arguments here and both are genuinely strong. And I think we need to give them both a fair hearing really before we make any kind of decision about what to do with own businesses. Now, at least that's what I thought. And hence the reason we are where we are. So Davey Fogarty, who, as I said, built the Oodie.

[00:06:28] This is that sort of massive hoodie thing, isn't it? That's kind of really warm that I see a lot of people wearing. Anyway, he recently put out a video called something like, why founders shouldn't build a personal brand. That's a bit contrary, isn't it? And his argument goes a little bit like this. He sat down and worked out the actual cost for a YouTube video for a founder to make, not necessarily in dollars from the bank, but in the opportunity cost, which is something we learned in A-level economics. Now, by the time you have planned, scripted, filmed, edited, replied to comments, etc., etc., he reckons the average founder is going to be looking at about $3,200 of time. And he gets there actually by making some really interesting assumptions. He thinks your time is worth about $200 an hour. And he assumes you're therefore spending about

[00:07:28] 16 hours on it. I'm not sure if both of those are actually true, but I get the idea, right? And I get that it's not going to be the same for all of us, but the principle sticks. The principle is the same. There is an opportunity cost for time when we work on these things. So when I get busy, um, social media always gets pushed to the back because it's the first thing to go. It's the easy thing to go because of the opportunity cost, right? And it is what it is. And his point, okay, if you've got I guess the over $3,000 of founder time, if you've got that to spend and you're doing under $10 million a year, where's the highest leverage place to put that money? And he reckons it's almost always paid ads and testing the creative behind them, because that's where

[00:08:27] you can find a winning ad that scales a business at 10x in a quarter of the time. Whereas a YouTube video, however good it is, is probably going to take 6 months to a year to start meaningfully moving the needle, if it even ever does, because you don't know, do you? And he's pretty specific about where the threshold sits. He's— his thing is stay focused on paid ads until you're well past $10 million in turnover, maybe even up to $50 million in turnover. Okay, so the maths may be different for each of us. Um, some of the ideology on this might be different for each of us, but I still think it's a pretty strong argument when you think about it purely in times of opportunity cost, especially when you're an operator and every hour you spend on something is an hour you're not spending on

[00:09:23] something else, right? And I appreciate that because most of us listening to this aren't sitting around with a whole lot of spare time wondering what to do with said spare time. We've got teams to run, products to ship, customers to look after, suppliers to chase. So David's point, I think at least here, makes a lot of sense. And of course, on the flip side, like I said, you've got Dan Priestley, and he's coming in with what I think is probably an equally strong counterargument. but one that is slightly more longer term in its thinking. Okay. So Daniel's saying, look, AI is changing the rules. Uh, it's changing the rules of the game and it's doing that right now. And the window is closing because AI can now do most of what you do as a business. It can write your copy, it can design your ads,

[00:10:17] it can generate the images, it can even handle your customer support to a fair degree. The one thing AI can't do though is be you. It can't have lived your story. It can't have made your mistakes. It can't have grown your business through that really one painful time and thing that you went through. And so lived experience has become the most interesting idea in all of this. In fact, it's become the moat. I would say that AI can't replicate. And honestly, this is, if you're familiar with the show, uh, and what we do here, this is where the Digital David thesis that we've been banging on about this podcast over the years fits in just in maybe a slightly different language. The whole idea, of course, is that we as small e-commerce businesses can run at the Goliaths we face, the giants, you know, with their

[00:11:20] their unlimited budgets and their race to the bottom pricing, uh, and their space rockets. You know what I mean. Uh, and we can still win because the one thing they can never replicate is us, the true authentic storytelling selves that we are. The founder, the actual you as a real person. Amazon, Jeff, he can't be you. The big D2Z Brands buying customers at scale can't be us. And now

[00:11:51] AI can't be us either, which I think makes the founder, the human, the operator, the one who's been in it from day one, the single most defensible asset a Digital David has got.

[00:12:06] And founders who don't build then a personal brand are essentially hiding that asset. They're hiding the one thing that the Goliaths can't really take and compete with. And so then Dan Priestley stacks on top of that a Steve Bartlett observation, which I think is brilliant actually. And, and, you know,

[00:12:34] this is not a big loving for Steve Bartlett, I'm not necessarily a big fan, but Dan went on to his podcast and had what can only be described quite a lot of success with the views, had a lot of views on his video. And so Daniel wrote to Stephen, said, why do you think that is? Because there are more famous, better well-known people that have come on who did not get the views, um, that he got. And so the answer that Stephen gave, which I thought was really fascinating, it's a really interesting phrase. Relatable beats impressive, right? So relatable beats impressive. And Daniel goes on to say that if you're waiting to land on the moon, you know, or do something else equally impressive, don't, because we don't follow people because they're amazing. We follow people because we see ourselves in them. And founders. When we're

[00:13:34] honest, have a real edge here, don't they? We— because we've been through the mess, we can be relatable in a way that polished corporate accounts simply can't really. And so what Dan Priestley is saying is start now while you've still got the AI moat advantage and before anyone else sort of figures this out.

[00:13:56] And if you want to see this in practice, like I say, look at Alex Hormozi. And what those guys are doing. I think he's running about 10 e-com companies and software companies. They're doing a combined turnover of well over $200 million a year. And he reckons, like I said, he's posted 35,000 bits of content. I mean, that's just insane, right? Granted, he's got his content team to make that volume work for him. Most of us don't have that. But like I said, the principle holds. And he treats content as the engine of his business and not a sideshow. And it's— the result is he is selling more books, more software, more services than most of his competitors combined. So who's right? Right? Because they're both compelling, they're both successful, they're both speaking from experience. And the honest answer is, I don't know yet. And that's a

[00:14:55] question I'm going to try and answer over the next 90 days. Now, truth be told, I have been here before, sort of, years ago when I first set up my Twitter account, which I appreciate does date me. I think I, I had and probably still do about 40,000 people follow me. 40,000, you know, which at the time felt like a really big deal when all your mates have got 100. And I'd open the app and I'd see that number was going up and I'd feel like I was winning. But here's the thing, I didn't really do anything. Well, let me rephrase that. It really didn't do anything for the business. Maybe that was me using it wrong. Um, but I can tell you it did feel good having that many people follow you that quickly. And I think this is something that we need to talk

[00:15:47] about, um, especially as founders, right? Honestly. Because I think this is a common thing in e-commerce. The number on the profile is a vanity metric. I'm firmly convinced of this. It feels like a scoreboard, but I believe it's measuring the wrong game. It's just a small part of a bigger picture. And I've seen so many brands, and I've done it myself, by the way, so I'm not throwing stones from a glass house. I've seen so many brands throw a truckload of money at building the follower count, and you know what? The engagement is just not there despite having the followers. There's no comments, there's no DMs, there's no purchases coming off the back of it. Just a big number at the top of a profile that makes everyone feel good when they looked at it. I've watched my competitors do it, I've seen clients do it.

[00:16:43] We've boosted follower counts and the engagement hasn't really changed. You know the old saying, it's better to have 1,000 followers that are really, really good and buy a lot from you than 1 million followers that don't really engage with what you're doing. Okay.

[00:16:58] So the question isn't, should we get followers? The question is, should we as e-com founders specifically spend our limited time are limited hours building a personal brand, which is a particular kind of follower base, isn't it? It's the kind where people actually care that it's you versus spending those hours on paid ads, creative, or product development, or hiring, or any one of the 15 other things currently on the top of your to-do list. And the reason this matters now for me personally, like I said, is because of SAM. We've just launched SAM. Slingshot AI Mentor. If you've not heard me talk about it yet, SAM Quickly is our brand new AI for e-com membership platform that joins the power of Claude with all our e-commerce frameworks and insights and knowledge and adds in business context, which in effect is a huge winning formula. We've added recently

[00:18:04] a huge research engine called Magpie, um, a video structure called Prism, Prism, not prison. Sounds very similar, doesn't it? And we've even released Scout, the sort of organic search discovery skill that I talked about in the last episode. And this whole stack of AI tools is specifically for e-com founders running businesses in our sort of size range, right? So anything under, I guess, $5 million a year on their business. And it's what we have developed and used. And now we've packaged up the whole thing as a membership because so many people were interested in what we do. It's brand new, it's live, it's open for signups right now, today. Um, and of course, if you want to know more, go to ecommercepodcast.net, uh, sales pitch over. But what this does, right, is it puts me in a really specific position as a founder because I want

[00:19:02] to sell that membership, right? It's one of the things that we want to do. Now, I appreciate it's not especially cheap, right? It costs $2,000 to join, but the value you get is insane. Now, I've got 2 to 3 hours a week of founder time that I can spend on this growth experiment rather than just farm it out to the team. And I want to see if I can do it. And I guess I have this sort of clear choice in front of me. Do I pour these hours into Meta ads creative testing for Slingshot, which is what Davey would tell me to do, and I am going to do more about that in the next episode anyway. Or can I pour them into a personal brand on Instagram, which is what Priestley or Hormozy might tell me to do?

[00:19:50] So both are real options. Both cost, I guess, the same if you think of time as money. And in 90 days, I think we'll know an awful lot more. We're going to know which one drove Sam signups, definitely. And yeah, I'll tell you the numbers. Keep listening to the show. If you're not subscribed, make sure you are. If you want to find out how this experiment goes, we're going to track Instagram attributed signups versus the paid ads signups. Not, not vibes, not a feeling, but we'll definitely give you the actual numbers. And so I guess for me, that's the real bet, right? David says no, run the ads. Daniel and Hormozy say yes, build the personal brand. I think Alex Hormozy will probably tell me to do everything at the same time anyway. But before we get into that, and before I tell you actually what

[00:20:39] I'm going to do, let me tell you who I'm stealing the playbook from.

[00:20:49] Yes, because this is the bit I think that tipped me over the edge into actually committing to this experiment rather than just thinking about it for another 6 months. You know, this is what kind of led me to do it. And it is my son, right? Zak. So Zak has an Instagram channel called Zak the Nutritionist. Zak is spelled Z-A-K or Z-A-K for our international cousins. So Zak the Nutritionist. All one word if you want to go follow him. Again, I'll put the link into the description.

[00:21:25] And he's grown from zero followers when he launched in, I think it was September, October last year, 2025.

[00:21:34] And he's currently over 70,000 followers on Instagram as of today. He's put content out every day. He's focused specifically on generating Instagram Reels and hasn't really cross-posted them much to YouTube or TikTok. Although he does use the auto-posting tools to push out to Facebook as part of his workflow. And the other day, he accidentally discovered that he's got another 30,000, 40,000 followers on Facebook that he never really knew about because he never goes on Facebook. Anyway, that's brilliant. So in the last 7 or 8 months, he's built up a following of around 100,000 people across those 2 channels. And what's more, he's created a business off the back of it.

[00:22:20] So what he does is he has written a recipe book, um, and he sells that on his site. And he's just about to release his first mobile app, which he's going to put on Apple Store and Google Play right now. The thing with what Zach does is it focuses specifically on IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, which I, I appreciate is quite an interesting niece— uh, niece— niche. Yeah, IBS is not my niece, just want to clarify. Uh, but it is an interesting niche, and the reason it's interesting is because it's mainly his story, right? The founder's story. He has suffered with IBS for years and everything that's gone along with it since he was a young kid, and he really wanted to help people in that area. He went to uni, he did nutrition, he really has dug into it, he's got his head around it, and

[00:23:08] he's, he's improved his life no end. And all the stuff the doctors probably should have told him but didn't he's put into his business. And guess what? He is just about to go and travel the world as a digital nomad off the back of all of this. Now, I'm telling you this, uh, not just because I'm a proud dad, although obviously I am very proud of him. I think the guy's an absolute legend, I really do. And it's been great sitting down with him and talking to him about all of this stuff. Um, but there is a methodology in there which I think is transferable. Honestly, Watching Zak crack this in, what, 7 months while I've been faffing around with Instagram on and off for years. Well, slightly humbling, if I'm honest with you. But the methodology that he uses is actually really simple. As with

[00:24:01] all of these things, it's just that most of us don't do it. So what does he do? Well, he finds the videos that are working well. Especially in his niche. Okay, he understands the format and the breakdown of that video. Like, you know, he asked, why is this video working? What's the hook doing? What's the structure? What are the sort of little micro cues that I can take from the video? And then he replicates them with his own point of view and his own little twist onto it. He'll publish that and he'll experiment, and he figures out what creates engagement and what doesn't. Okay, so if you break that down, there's 4 steps, right? He finds, he decodes, he replicates, and then he iterates. And that's it. There's nothing magical in there. There's no sort of secret sauce. Uh, there's no, um, algorithm hack. It's just

[00:24:59] discipline, systematic copying of what already works, applied to his own niche and his own story. With his own little experiment.

[00:25:11] And it's that experiment which I find fascinating, right? Zak figured out, for example, that if he puts a tea towel on his shoulder versus not having a tea towel on his shoulder when talking about nutrition, the same script, the same person, obviously same camera, the engagement was higher with the tea towel. Why? Because it made him look a bit more homely, I'm guessing, a bit more like he'd just stepped out of a kitchen.

[00:25:39] I guess visually it breaks the viewer's sort of standard pattern. There's not just a guy standing in front, there's a guy with a tea towel on his shoulder. And that subtle shift, I think, made his content feel more curious or more relatable. But it's the same script, just simple experiments. And then he figured out something else, which is the same video, same script, same person, same setup, but with a slightly different camera angle, also had more engagement. He figured out the exact position he needed to put his camera on. Why? Now we're talking a few degrees of difference, not a different shot, not a different setup, just a slight tilt or a slightly different framing, and the engagement moved. Now if you'd have asked me

[00:26:27] before Zach figured this out what moves engagement on a reel, I I would have probably said something quite sensible, you know, like the hook, the topic, the script, the value add, all of which matter, obviously. But a tea towel on your shoulder and the camera angle slightly tilted an inch closer. Don't know if I'd have guessed that. Not in a million years. But the only reason Zak finds this stuff out is because he was testing it, right? He was experimenting and he was monitoring the results. He wasn't just sort of sitting in a room going, What do I think is going to work? He was posting variants and watching the audience actually respond. And the audience told him things that he never would have guessed on his own. And I think that is the crux of this whole thing. Most of us, when we make content,

[00:27:18] we're guessing. At least I am. We're making it based on what we think looks good and what we think sounds right. And I guess what we would watch.

[00:27:30] And so we trust our own taste, which is fine, except our taste is almost always wrong

[00:27:40] because we're not the audience. The audience has a different brain, thank the Lord, right? Different scrolling habits, uh, different reasons for stopping or not stopping. And so the only way to find out what they respond to is to systematically test it exactly like Zak did with the tea towel. And this connects into something really important. So, um, again, a few episodes ago we talked about, um, story and about brand and about something called the story overlap, where the customer story and our story interact. And this, if you're a regular to the show, fits exactly that, isn't it? And so that's the methodology that I'm stealing from Zach. We're going to find, we're going to decode, we're going to replicate, and we're going to iterate. Uh, and we're gonna commit, I guess, to running the variables and trusting the data and not my taste, as good as

[00:28:37] my taste is. And I suppose for me, the good news is I don't have to be Zach, as much as I think the guy's cool, and I'm trying to live my life through him because he's going to go travel the world. But anyway, that's another story. Um, but I don't have to do what he does, like post every day, do the constant grind. I don't have to be 22. I just have to apply the same discipline methodology, don't I? Um, and I'm going to actually do that.

[00:29:02] I can cheat a little bit here, uh, because I have a lot of AI tools which we've built, which Zach didn't have access to, especially in the early days. And so I'm hoping I can do all of this in a fraction of the hours Zack had to put in at the start and still get meaningful results. At least that's the theory that we're going to test. We're going to find out.

[00:29:32] So before I committed to a single thing about this experiment, let me explain what I did. I went away and I used our Magpie which I mentioned earlier, our sort of internal, although it is available on some sort of internal Instagram research engine. It's such a great explanation, is it? Instagram research engine inside SAM. So basically, we went to YouTube, and we pulled all of the top videos that have done well in the audience growth and personal brand space recently. Okay, we went, did some searching, we pulled up the videos. And then using Magpie, we analyzed those videos. Um, and we asked one question over and over. Does this transfer what they're talking about in this YouTube video to an e-com founder like me, or is this sort of creator economy noise that I should sideline? And what I found was fascinating, as it always is,

[00:30:38] because it broke down really cleanly actually into this is gold, or yes, this is creator economy fluff.

[00:30:47] So we can ignore it, right? I do like that word fluff. Anyway, so let me walk you through what I found because it will save you watching countless hours of YouTube videos. Yes, you're welcome. So what is gold? What is the gold, Matt? What did we find out? So a couple of things. Number one, Callaway's sort of pick one platform for 6 months rule. We call it. This, I think, was hands down the strongest single argument in the sample that we looked at. The idea is that you pick one hero platform and you commit to it for a minimum of 6 months. Now, I've broken that already because we're starting with 90 days, but I figured a 90-day challenge would be better for the podcast. Not gonna lie, uh, we may well carry this on beyond the 90 days, uh, but the soundbites are just better

[00:31:38] on the You guys will have forgotten about this in 6 weeks. Um, anyway, you go for a minimum of 6 months and you ignore everything else. No cross-posting strategy, like Zach turned out to be right, right? Like no be everywhere nonsense, just one platform, 6 months, full commitment before you even think about expanding to another platform. And the reason is So important, because if you're like me, you want to do it all now, right? But every platform has its own algorithmic logic, and therefore it's got its own audience behavior, and it's therefore got its own formats and language. You know, the men are from Mars, women are from Venus. So trying to do them all at once means you do none of them well, unless you put every single waking hour into it, I guess. And so for me, the platform we're going to try is

[00:32:34] Instagram. Specifically, we are going to be doing reels and carousels, which ironically I think makes this experiment, in theory at least, easier and not harder because it removes a load of decisions that I don't have to make, which is a beautiful thing. And I want to flag this for us as e-commerce founders as well, because I think a lot of us, like I said, myself included, historically fall into the trap of we should be on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, X, Threads, Bluesky,

[00:33:14] MySpace if it's still around. I don't know all of them. Right. And so what happens is we, we spread ourselves very thin, don't we? And let's face it, we're already limited to only having a marginal amount of time anyway. And we're splitting that across 5 platforms and none of them really get the investment they need to break out. So

[00:33:37] Callaway's rule is pick one, just one, 6 months, then assess. That's exactly what Zach did. And that's what I'm gonna do. So I'm gonna pick Instagram for the next 90 days and we'll see where we are at day 90 before I even think about anything else. Number 2, number 2 piece of gold. Chantal Leonharts' Name the Audience in the Title trick. I thought this was brilliant. This is something I'd not thought about before, but basically Chantal's, uh, interesting with this because she had a video go, I think it was 15 times over her normal performance, about 700,000 views. From a sort of 40-something thousand subscriber base. And the only thing different about it was that she'd named her audience explicitly in the title.

[00:34:37] So the phrase 'for your small business,' for example, so the title 'Duh duh duh duh duh for your small business,' and what that does actually is it prequalifies the click. Um, so anyone who's a small business owner sees the title and goes, oh, that's me. And they therefore click through and then the rate goes through the roof. Whereas anyone who isn't in a, uh, who isn't a small business owner scrolls past, which is fine because they're not your audience anyway, are they? Um, and so for e-com founders, I think this genuinely is gold because it means we don't need to chase generic audience hooks. We can and probably should name the audience directly. So, you know, for me, founders doing up to 5 million, or for e-commerce operators running small teams, or if you're an e-com founder and you've ever wondered, dot, dot, dot, you know,

[00:35:28] it's going to be that kind of framing where I name the audience in the title. And I think that's a direct transfer to us, really costs nothing, just requires me to be willing to say no to the broader audience and yes to the specific one. Which is actually harder than it sounds, right? So I've got to bear that in mind. Okay, so two things of gold. There's more, by the way. We're going to get into that in a little minute. But let's look at, uh, what the creator fluff was and what, what should we ignore.

[00:36:04] Number one, we've mentioned this already, Vanity Metric opens,

[00:36:11] right? So a bunch of the videos I watch opened with something like This month my content did 32.7 million views, man, or I made $80,000 in 30 days. I don't know why I did both those with an American accent. I'm genuinely sorry, but they were all American. And, you know, look, I get why creators do this because for their audience, that's social proof, right? That's the credibility hook. But for founders like us,

[00:36:43] And I'd love to know if you think this is actually true, by the way. Write it in the comments if you're on YouTube, uh, or let me know on Instagram. Those kind of things kind of repel me. Now I'm breaking my own rule, aren't I, in sort of my own personal taste, but I think— I don't think it's a fit for the audience that I'm going for. Um, and I, you know, it's not true to our sort of, uh, our brand, I suppose, but

[00:37:11] You know, as, as a founder, when I hear someone open with, I made $80K in 30 days, man, I immediately think this person is going to be selling me a course. It's going to be a thinly sort of veiled pitch for their thing, and therefore I'm out, right? And I think most e-com founders will feel the same way. Just a bit of a guess. We've all been around the block. We can all smell that opening from a mile away. And so for our content, I'm going to avoid the vanity metric opens. They're going to be out like, do this and you'll generate 100 grand in sales in 30 seconds, man. I'm going to stop doing that accent now, uh, now because I don't think they're going to work, uh, but I especially don't think they will work for our or my audience. And that's the thing

[00:37:58] I need to keep coming back to, isn't it? What works for our people? Where is that customer story? Where is that brand overlap that I need to think about. So I'm going to avoid those. Number 2, the Daily Reels grind cadence advice is one thing that I'm blanket ignoring, right? Almost every video said post once a day minimum or post 9 times a week to grow. 9 times a week, are you mad? Now that might be possible if you are a full-time creator. Fine, I'll give you that. But I am an e-commerce founder with a maximum of a few hours a week. Uh, and so you've given me a recipe for burnout or

[00:38:48] short-term posting that's no chance of being good, or even worse, I turn it over to AI and get AI to do it all for me. Um, and so the advice I think we actually need is the opposite. I think cadence reduction with structural improvement is more the methodology, i.e., very Jerry Maguire, isn't it? Uh, some of you will be like, you are, uh, fewer posts. Um, but each post, I think, deeply systematically built using the sort of find, decode, replicate, iterate loop. And that is very Jerry Maguire. We should call it the Jerry Maguire rule. Less but deeper and more value. I

[00:39:34] think that could work. I'm going to keep that name, the Jerry Maguire rule.

[00:39:39] Anyway, if you've not seen Jerry Maguire, go watch it. The human head weighs 8 pounds. The—

[00:39:46] so I think the other thing that I noticed, right, in all of the YouTube content and part of me was the reason why I keep referencing YouTube. In doing this experiment, part of me was toying around with the idea of, can I learn everything I need to know about Instagram from YouTube? Yes or no? And so I'm like, let's go and get all our research from YouTube just to see what happens. Okay, I thought that'd be quite fun. Um, and so when we did, we, we kind of looked and there were 3 gaps all of the YouTube videos collectively left open and they all matter for us, I think, as founders. Okay, 3 gaps. Gap number 1:

[00:40:27] no one properly addressed email or owned audiences. Now, the reality of it is, unless you are literally starting from zero, you are going to have an audience and you can have an email list. How do we deal with that? It's a good question. The second gap that almost no one talked about was working with a small team where social media is in effect probably the 189th priority on the list that day, not the first, um, because it's a small team. And then gap 3, every single video assumed you were starting at zero, which I think is rarely true, especially if you are an established founder. I mean, if you are starting literally today, God bless you, The finance, starting from zero, I mean, follow along, same rules in some respects apply. But I think most of us have cameras, a sort of a following, a content

[00:41:24] runway, and probably some real operator credibility. So that's not zero, it is a foundation that we currently have. And so building a playbook, I think, that ignores it leaves some leverage on the table.

[00:41:42] So they were the three gaps. So let me try, uh, and pull this together in something resembling a playbook, because I think the worst thing I could do here is hand you a load of analysis with no actual plan. So here's what I'm gonna do and why. Okay, so the first thing, and honestly the bit I've wrestled with the most is the niche.

[00:42:09] Do I do one of our e-com brands? Do I do the e-commerce podcast, podcast channel? What do I do? What's the niche? Now, most of us, I think, when we start posting default to a, I'll post about my business in general, which is what I could have done. I've got all of these e-com businesses. Let me tell you about them all, which sounds sensible, right? But then I'm taking on people like Alex Hormozi, aren't I? A long way to go. So, uh, posting about my area of expertise is the obvious move in many ways. But I think this is where the research really shifted my thinking, um, especially Calloway, who makes this point, and Meta's actually own algorithm article, which was quoted by Modern Millie, which I think is a great YouTube name, Modern Millie. Um, and that essentially confirms it, that Instagram's algorithm builds an

[00:43:04] embedding of your account based on the topic consistency of what you post. Okay, so the more disciplined you are about staying on a single topic, the stronger the signal you give the algorithm. The more sprawl, the weaker that signal, and the harder it is to get distribution. Callaway calls it hitting the bullseye over and over. So same topic, same audience, same problem, and you do that repeatedly. And what that means is that if I post about e-commerce and leadership and AI and the books that I'm reading and the books maybe I'm trying to write, even though all of those things are genuinely part of who I am, the algorithm doesn't really know me or doesn't really know what to do with me. And so it doesn't really give me the audience that I need, whereas Zach picked one thing: IBS nutrition. Not nutrition, not health, but

[00:44:01] nutrition specifically for people who suffer with IBS. And the algorithm has grown to understand him, the audience has grown to understand him, and then the growth followed. So for me, the niche I'm picking, I needed to deliberately tighten it. And surprisingly the niche is not e-commerce per se. I think that's a bit too broad. It's not even e-commerce plus leadership or founder lessons. Um, no, specifically what we're going to be doing is something like

[00:44:38] AI for e-commerce or AI workflows, uh, for e-commerce operators with a turnover under $5 million. That's it. I mean, that's pretty niche, isn't it? There may be 4 people out there that are interested in that. Um, I don't know, we're gonna find out. But anyone running an e-commerce business of that size, under 5 million, that's who I'm talking to.

[00:45:01] Anyone interested in how AI actually changes how you run that style of business day to day, well, that's the topic. And everything else, even the stuff I genuinely care about, should get put on a different channel or saved for another day. And I appreciate it sounds a bit narrow, but I think that's the point. The narrower we go, the stronger the signal and the more the algorithm and the audience can both lock on.

[00:45:30] Which actually doesn't do me any favors because if I keep my Instagram account, it's already got history there, which I need to overcome somehow. The second, uh, piece of the playbook is the methodology we've already walked through with Zach. The Find, Decode, Replicate, Iterate methodology. That's the operating system under what we're going to do, so I don't need to re-explain that. If I do, just rewind. Um, uh, the third piece, and this is where the AI tool stack I think genuinely matters, is the time budget. I've given myself sort of a maximum of 2 to 3 hours a week that's it. I mean, that's going to be a stretch to find, but 2 to 3 hours a week, right? Because if this thing requires more time than that, then it's already failed against David's argument. You know, the opportunity cost, I think for me would be

[00:46:27] way too high right now. And I should be spending the time on paid ads creative or shipping product or doing a million other things. So 2 to 3 hours a week is the ceiling. Uh, and the AI tooling, I think, is what actually makes that ceiling, uh, viable. So specifically,

[00:46:49] a few things that we have developed. Okay, so like I said, Prism, not prison, uh, is a video analysis system. So, um, using Claude Code, we can take a video and we can analyze that video to quite good depth. No other tools other than just some stuff we've written with Claude Code. Um, so it's great because it just uses our Claude Code subscription. Love that. Um, we're going to use Magpie, uh, for research and trend spotting. And so this is a something that we've developed that analyzes Instagram channels, and so, or Instagram search terms or hashtags, and it understands what reels are doing well. Um, it understands, um, you know, the sort of the virality of them. And so it grabs certain reels and it's like, let's look at these ones, let's not look at those ones, along with some other interesting tidbits about channels and

[00:47:45] what's working well. And it puts that back into Prism, and that then analyzes that video, which gives us that analysis through Claw Code. So we get a really detailed breakdown of videos, which is brilliant. So that's sort of the find that's, you know, the, they have a good old look and decode. Uh, we've got, so the, so we've got Prism, we've got Magpie. The third thing I've got is Sam, um, the AI mentor, uh, that helps with all things e-commerce. And that's going to help me with content development plus a few other bits and bobs.

[00:48:19] Because I reckon without those tools, I'd probably need 10 to 15 hours a week to do this, probably properly, maybe more actually. And I just don't actually have that time. Zach was spending 34 hours, 30 to 40, maybe 50 hours a week in the early days trying to figure all this out. And so it was watching him that we could understand that system and start to get AI to help us because I just didn't want to go and subscribe to a whole bunch of other stuff, if I'm honest with you. Anyway, that's the honest disclosure. Sam, our Slingshot AI mentorship and the membership we've just launched. That's what we're going to be trying to promote. And so this is the experiment. It's a live test case for the product, and the product we've built. And hopefully, maybe one day, if it fits, go check it out,

[00:49:07] right? I'm not here to sell this product to you. But I, I do think it's pretty awesome. Now, coming back to that third gap I flagged earlier, you know, the the what you actually start with. So let me be honest about my own starting position, because if I pretend I was at zero, then the experiment would be, I guess, dishonest from minute one. And so I'm not starting at zero. I've got an Instagram account, um, @mattedmondson if you want to follow along. Um, again, I'll put a link in the description. I've got 489 followers, uh, 489, mostly friends, family, and various sort of people from business that I've met around the world. If I'm honest with you,

[00:49:54] I— very few are what we would, what we would class as my ICP, my ideal client profile. Um,

[00:50:03] and in fact, one of the first decisions in week 1 is whether I keep that account or rebrand or start fresh with a clean sort of algorithmic embedding from day 1. I think if I'm honest with you um, I'm gonna stick with that account because— and the reason why I think I'm gonna— I think it would probably be better to start fresh based on what we've talked about already, but I appreciate, uh, we can't always start fresh.

[00:50:34] It's not always possible, is it? So how do I take something like that and turn it around? It's going to be an interesting experiment. I've also got a camera, as you can tell if you're watching this on YouTube. I've got my home studio, which is where I'm recording this from. We've got a new studio coming at the warehouse, which is a bit more state-of-the-art. We've invested quite a bit into that. That's going to probably— will that be ready before the 90 days are over is a very good question. I sure hope so. And obviously, I've got years of podcasting behind me. So the on-camera bit, I don't think is going to be the bottleneck. Maybe it is, I don't know. Um, so, and I've also got, as a result, what you would call a content runway sitting in plain sight. So I've got hundreds, if not

[00:51:25] thousands, of hours of me talking to a camera about various things, which I could, I could use that. Um, like, is, is there a sensible strategy in this for me? To have, uh, Sam go through my entire back catalog and cut loads of clips out from different podcasts that would make sense. And because then I could probably post, I don't know, 5, 10 a day because there's so much back catalog content we could put out there. Um, I don't think that's what I want to do. Um, I could do using what I have, but I don't, I I don't, I don't know, maybe that will be done. Who knows? It just doesn't feel right to me right now for a number of reasons, but I could be persuaded, uh, otherwise. Okay. Um,

[00:52:15] so that's the niche we're focusing on. They're the sort of things we've got. What else have we got? Uh, I've got the AI tooling. Like I said, I've got Sam, Magpie, Prism, Scout. They're all built and shipped. Um, we are just updating the system at the moment to help me write scripts for videos. Um, and so I've got a lot of AI leverage, like I said, and I've also got the patterns, the research that we've talked through. I mean, all of that research we did for this episode, um, and to sort of start this whole process is now in Sam. Uh, and so Sam is like now the world's leading expert on how to build an Instagram channel. At least I think it is. We're going to find out. Um, and I've also got the methodology which I've robbed from Zach. So none of that is

[00:53:04] blank. Okay. But there is a line that I am drawing. I've mentioned AI a lot. It is gonna be one of the main themes of the channel. Um, but I, I think some, to be clear, and this matters more to me, I think, than, than maybe I'm letting on.

[00:53:20] Um, every video, every single reel will be me. It's gonna be me on camera. It's gonna be me talking, me telling the story. Um,

[00:53:34] I will have AI do the operational work, the analysis, the scheduling, the first draft scripts, the captions, the graphics, the research, the decoding, um, monitoring competitor content and all of that sort of good stuff. Um, I suppose all of the bits where you don't need a soul. But the face, the voice, the actual story, well, that's gonna be me. Because like that, again, coming back, that's the whole point of the Digital David Manifesto, that AI cannot be you. And if I start to outsource that bit to AI, even though it can't do it, I think I've already lost the bet before I've even started. So that's my guardrail. Okay.

[00:54:21] And of course, there's an honest trade-off to flag here as well. The Instagram purists will tell you to post natively from the app for maximum reach, um, and they're not wrong actually. There is genuinely, it seems, a small algorithmic tax, uh, for scheduling via tools. But I've got 2 to 3 hours a week, and so that's a tax I'm going to have to pay because I'd rather spend my time on something other than sitting there on my phone scheduling all of this stuff. Of course, if the experiment shows that the text is killing results, I am going to have to adjust somehow. But for now, leverage over purity is important. And so we will use scheduling tools. And one quick connection to last week's podcast, because it's the real strategic reason behind all of this. Last week I talked about Scout, our sort of AI discoverability

[00:55:16] work. And one of the findings I found genuinely a bit nuts at the time— brand search volume,

[00:55:26] which is the number of people typing your brand name into a search engine, is the single strongest predictor of whether AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are going to recommend you to their audiences. Uh, they're 3 times more predictive than backlinks, which means this whole 90-day experiment isn't just a sort of an organic versus ads bet. I'm hoping it's the actual manufacturing of some brand search volume around what we're doing, you know, because it is building a personal brand and the Instagram audience builds that moat. Um, And let's see, shall we? I mean, last week's episode and this week's, I think, are two sides of the same coin. And if you haven't listened to that episode, do go check it out. Right. Thank you for bearing with me so far. We are almost there. Okay. Few other things just to say. Uh, I'm gonna put some

[00:56:23] cards out on the table, the specifics, the actual bit, I suppose, because I think if I don't define what success and failure are upfront, Will I be tempted at day 90 to retrofit a narrative around whatever happened? Hmm. I don't know. I don't know if I would or if I wouldn't, but let's not give myself that temptation. Okay. So the niche, AI workflows for e-commerce operators under 5 million, tight and deliberately so. And not e-commerce in general, not AI in general. There's a lot of people doing that, but the intersection bound by an audience revenue stage I think is important. The platform, Instagram, uh, focused on Reels. We will do carousels as well. Don't know if I'll get a chance to do stories, but we'll possibly look at this idea of just reposting to TikTok and YouTube. I'm aware of Callaway's suggestion not to do that.

[00:57:20] Um, whether we do or don't, I don't know, but Instagram, we're going to experiment with it. Instagram is going to be the hero. This is where we will probably use things like the auto direct message features that you get with things like ManyChat, which I'm not going to use. We're going to start off using UploadPost. Um,

[00:57:41] so yeah, we'll see how that goes, right? Cadence. Like I said, we're going to be— I'm going to build up gradually. Um, weeks— for the first few weeks, I'll probably do 1 or 2 reels a week.

[00:57:53] Weeks 3 to 5, maybe 2 to 3 reels a week, and then week 6 onwards, um, I think probably 3 or more reels a week. Um, and so my target by 90 days is that we'll actually be posting reels daily. I may get there sooner, I don't know, but I'm, I'm aware in myself that I need to build up rather than start at daily from day 1, uh, because I know me, if I can, if I commit to doing daily from day 1, I'll probably burn out by week 3 and hate everybody by week 4. Um, and then I'm gonna go back to the start-stop thing. Uh, and so don't want to do that really. Uh, like I said, hours, there's going to be 2 to 3 hours a week, very AI-assisted, full stop, uh, not AI done. If it's taking more than that, something's broken

[00:58:46] in the system and I'm going to need to fix the system, not just push through. Uh, for content, I'm going to use the 70/30 rule. Now, this is where 70% of the content is on the topic, basically AI workflows for e-commerce operators, and 30% will be on me as founder context, like what we're running, what we're building, what's working, what's failing, and avoiding the kind of sprawl that kills this algorithmic signal. That I mentioned.

[00:59:20] Phasing. Let's talk about phasing. Month 1 is organic Instagram only. From month 2, if all goes according to plan, I will add paid Meta ads alongside, um, using a framework which I've not decided on yet. We're going to figure out the methodology. Uh, and in the next episode, I'm hoping I'll be able to introduce to you not only the sort of day 30 Instagram report, but also what we're going to be doing in the ads. So at 90 days, we'll have 30 days, um,

[00:59:59] at 90 days, we'll have 90 days of pure Instagram data plus 60 days of the ads data. It's not a perfect parallel A/B split. I appreciate that. Um, but I have got constraints on time. Hopefully it's going to give me at least some data to make some kind of call on it, whether that's go one way or the other or extend the experiment. I don't know, but I do want to test both alongside each other and see what the outcome is. So that's the input side. What about the output side? What does success actually look like? Well, success— obviously Davey was wrong. This actually was worth my time. So number 1, the headline metric is going to be Slingshot signups attributable to Instagram. So realistically, I think there'll probably be 20+ maybe paying signups in 90 days at a stretch. If there's 50+ signups, great. Um,

[01:01:06] and they have to be what the same hours plus budget on paid Meta ads would have produced. That's the track. That's the the, not the track, the experiment. Um, and I will track both. Let's get my words mixed up. And obviously, I'll give you the data. Uh, it's not a problem. So number 2, uh, quality of audience signal. So Slingshot specifically, this is important. Again, it matters in e-commerce, doesn't it? Because Slingshot specifically is for e-commerce operators under $5 million. So success is the right signup, people who fit the ICP engage with the content, stick past month 1. Vanity signups that churn in 30 days don't count. Not that I've had anyone churn on Slingshot within 30 days, and I definitely don't want to do that. And if we start getting a lot of churn, then I know I've missed it. I've not attracted the right

[01:01:57] audience. And then number 3, secondary outcomes from the right audience will be something I'm also keen to track, right? For example, how many e-commerce podcast guest bookings do we get from AI curious ecommerce founders that have connected to us via Instagram. Um, we also obviously are looking for founder partnership deals and acquisitions and equity, uh, deals and so on and so forth in ecommerce. That's one of the things that we do. So how many of those leads, uh, are coming in? Measurable— what I would call Orion leads. Orion's the name of our main company, in case you don't know. So measurable Orion leads in the sort of our inbound that makes Instagram make sense as a source would be interesting. Okay. So number 4, by day 90, we come out with a working AI for e-com on Instagram playbook. Now we have started with a very

[01:02:54] detailed playbook. I'm going to be refining that, if I'm honest with you, over the next 90 days. Uh, and I can take that then into phase 2, which is our e-commerce brand channels. So what we learn over these 90 days, we can extend out into the brand channels of our e-commerce businesses and we can roll out the AI we've developed and so on and so forth. Even in— I think we'll do that even if direct signups are modest, because I think a proven playbook will compound across

[01:03:24] all of our brands for years to come. So let me get— there's a lot of learning, a lot of value in me doing this, and I appreciate that. Number 5, obviously, let's talk about follower targets because Why not? I think maybe gaining 2,000 to 3,000 followers is realistic. 7,000 to 10,000 would be a stretch. But as I have said, this is the least important metric, as the 40,000 Twitter followers reminds me. Follower count isn't the bet. It'll just be one of those numbers that we measure. The 6th thing, um, and then how do I measure this? There's going to be an interesting question, but I need to have enjoyed the whole thing. And I want to have learned something really valuable and something which is teachable and something which helps our team. Okay, because if I burned out on it, if I hated it, then I—

[01:04:18] and the playbook isn't repeatable, then I'm not really that— I've just not been that good, really. So that's what success looks like for me. Failure: Davey was right. And this was in fact a waste of time. So slingshot signups from Instagram are non-existent, the same hours on paid meta ads would have pronounced— pronounced— would have produced— pronounced— what did I— don't know— would have produced significantly more for the same cost. I didn't enjoy it. I didn't learn anything. I didn't learn anything I couldn't have learned cheaper elsewhere. Maybe, maybe the team needs me and I was sat there editing reels, or if that's where we land, David was writing. So I won't be— I won't— what, will I be happy? I don't know. At least we figured it out, right? Uh, I'll tell you on day 90. Um, and one more honest thing, um, I've watched

[01:05:15] how creators can get obsessed with metrics. If you are doing this, if you're following on and doing this on yourself, view counts up, you feel good. If it's down, you feel terrible. Your whole life becomes about stats. And it's interesting to me how many full-time creators end up living with quite

[01:05:35] significant levels of depression because of it. The benefit for me is I'm not chasing a full-time creator income. I'm not relying on this. Um, I can take what works from the methodology and leave behind, hopefully, the obsessive-compulsive disorder where numbers are concerned. If you see me doing that, just tap me on the shoulder and go, Matt, put the numbers down, dude. Your health, your mental health is more important. So I'd love to know where you are on this whole thing, by the way. Um, are you convinced a personal brand, uh, is worth it for founders like us? Are you fully on board with this idea? Are you going to commit to this yourself? Or you're skeptical, which is also fine. Um, maybe you're even just skeptical it's going to work for our kind of businesses, sitting more in the Davey Fogarty camp? Um, maybe you've tried

[01:06:25] it before, I don't know. Or maybe you're somewhere in the messy middle, um, a bit like me really, kind of half curious, half suspicious. Um, this is my general pose in life, uh, but I am willing to be persuaded by evidence. So again, tell me in the comments, reach out to me on social media, let me know. Um, because that's helpful, that's hopefully, hopefully, but not just hopefully, it will actually

[01:06:51] dictate the kind of content we put in the next episode.

[01:06:55] Thank you for bearing with me. I hope this sparks some ideas for those of you who are wrestling with this question, because I know it's not just me. And to help, we of course have a freebie. We've put something together called the Founders 90-Day Instagram Lab Kit because we needed a really complicated name for it. And I really need to think about names for these things. I did not until I say it out loud on this show that I realized how crazy some of these things are. Anyway, it's everything that I've just talked about packaged up in a way you can actually use this week. Full disclosure, I've not tested it yet. I know from our frameworks and what we've done with clients what works. Does it work for me? I don't know. This is a bit we're going to find out, right? It's got 3

[01:07:39] bits in it. It's got the 5 Million Decisions Sheet. Again, that's not easy to say, which walks you through whether you should specifically build a personal brand right now, given your revenue stage, your hours, your paid ads maturity, and your founder-as-talent fit. So that's hopefully going to help you make the right decision rather than just guess. Okay, it's got the T-Towel test worksheet. The T-Towel Test, the 3 Ts, um, which is the variable testing framework. So what to test, how to log it, how to read the engagement signals without becoming obsessed by them. And of course, it's also got what I call the Founder Content Scorecard. So 10 yes or no questions you can run any social media advice video through to figure out before whether you implement it or whether the advice actually does apply to e-commerce founders like us, or whether it is this

[01:08:42] sort of creator economy noise that you should sideline. Um, I do this a lot actually. I, um, Magpie is great. We've, we've got Magpie really dialed in. I can put in there a link to a specific video that has come up, you know, like how to do this on social media. I put it into Magpie, Magpie goes away, analyzes the video, understands it, researches it, figures out if it's true or not, understands because it's got my business context whether it's going to work for me. If it is, how I could apply it. I love that. Now you will find the link in the show notes or the description if you're on YouTube, or just head over to the website ecommercepodcast.net and click the resources link if you want to get a hold of that freebie. Um, as I said, we will be updating the playbook and

[01:09:33] stuff, uh, as we go through. Um, and so that workbook may well get updated as we go through. Um, but it's a pretty good solid workplace, uh, start place. If you want to take the challenge up yourself and follow along with me, um, and you know, just give yourself a bit of a social media challenge for the next 90 days, why not join in, right? Now for those who want to go deeper, Um, the Lab Kit is the sort of the 80/20, the public version. The comprehensive playbook, um, that I've mentioned that I will be updating, uh, and that I'm actually running this whole experiment from, sits inside our Slingshot membership alongside the AI tooling that really makes 2 to 3 hours a week, uh, actually possible. So like I say, SAM, Magpie, Prism, Scout. Um, if you want to know more, head to ecommercepodcast.net and

[01:10:29] click the Slingshot link. Um, if you want to find out more about that, I'm not here to pitch you on it any harder than that, but I did want you to know that exists and that all will exist inside SAM. So if you're already a member, you can go and check that out. And while we're talking about community, check out Cohort if you'd like to come and join us. It's a free community to join. There's definitely no strings attached, uh, and we all just help each other grow, uh, in e-commerce. And it's great. Honestly, it's one of the most useful, uh, little corners of the internet. Um, I really enjoy it. Uh, and it's great for people running businesses like ours. We'd love genuinely to have you in it. Uh, no strings attached. And of course, love to know your thoughts on this and whether you

[01:11:17] think Davey or Daniel was right. It's interesting they both start with D. Anyway, and whether you're up for your own 90-day challenge and experiment with me. So do reach out to me on social media. If you've got this far, please come follow me on Instagram @MattEdmondson, because that's the channel I'm trying to build. Uh, come give me some love, uh, some Instagram love. Uh, you'll definitely get bonus points if you do it on Instagram because that's part of the experiment. In fact, probably what I could do I don't know if I should do this, but if you've made it this far, not only are you a legend, um, I think last week we did this thing where if you joined the waitlist for Slingshot, you got 25% off. Um, that expires this Thursday. Um, so if you message me, direct message me on Instagram as a

[01:12:08] result of getting this far and listening to the podcast, I'll send you the 25% even though it's expired. Don't tell everyone, uh, but just message me and I'll send you a special code. Um, yes, I will, absolutely. Uh, I'm doing whatever I can to grow my Instagram channel, boys and girls. Anyway, thank you so much for sticking with me. I appreciate these last two episodes have been a bit meaty, um, and a bit, a bit longer than usual, but I really want to deep dive on this because I know it's a problem that quite so many— actually, quite a few people reached out to me like the day or the first 2 days the last episode came out, because I'm recording this one— what day is it today? It's Monday, it comes out on Thursday. Um, and so in the last 3 days, the amount of

[01:12:53] people that reached out to me, um, saying they got some real value out of the last one was great actually. So thank you for those comments. Um, I think these are some things that we're going to have to start doing and start doing— be better at. So I hope you've enjoyed these sort of slightly deeper dives into some of these things. I appreciate they're a bit meaty. Um, but I do thank you for sticking with me, and hopefully they're helpful. So that's it from me. Have a wonderful week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you in the next one.

[01:13:28] Bye for now.