Creative volume isn’t the unlock. Better messaging is.

In this episode of eCommerce Evolution, Brett sits down with Nate Lagos (CMO of Adapt Naturals, former Head of Growth at Original Grain) to break down how great storytelling drives real performance.

From selling wooden watches through emotional positioning… to increasing AOV by reframing gift messaging… to building ads that scale without “fatigue” — this episode is a masterclass in understanding why customers actually buy.

If you’re a DTC founder, CMO, or operator tired of launching more ads without improving results, this conversation will recalibrate how you think about copy, positioning, and brand personality.

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Sponsored by OMG Commerce - go to (https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact) and request your FREE strategy session today!

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Chapters:

(00:00) Intro

(05:05) Nate’s origin story, and why storytelling became a “performance lever”

(07:40) Selling the story behind the materials

(10:30) Customer motivation deep dive: status, identity, and gift-giving

(15:05) Creative quantity vs quality

(19:05) Finding the real “why”: research methods

(23:10) Brand as “personality”

(30:10) Testing surprises + valence/intensity framework

(37:15) Practical frameworks: adjective formula

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Connect With Brett:

1. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/
2. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce
3. Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/
4. Request a Free Strategy Session: https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact

Relevant Links:

1. Nate’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natelagos
2. Adapt Naturals: https://adaptnaturals.com
3. Original Grain: https://www.originalgrain.com/

Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, JC Hite, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Stephane Colleu, Jeff Oxford, Bryan Porter and more

The reason I stress so hard

that personality and brand

personalities need to be

flexible is because we don't have one why.

There's not one reason

why people are buying.

Well, hello and welcome to another edition

of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast.

I'm your host, Brett

Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce.

And today I am absolutely thrilled

to welcome to the show Nate

Lagos. We are talking all

things better creative,

better storytelling, better copywriting,

knowing your customers better,

better branding and positioning. How

does that fit into performance marketing?

This guy is an absolute legend.

We met when he was serving his

head of growth at Original Grain,

saw them through tremendous amounts of

growth. Now he's a CMO of Adapt Naturals.

We're working together and loving it.

And so he's also the host of the

Tactical and Practical Marketing Podcast.

Check it out, one of my favorite

follows on X. So with that,

Nate Lagos, what's up, Nate? Welcome

to the show. And how's it going, man?

Brett, thanks so much for

having me. Man, it's going good.

The year's off to a busy but hot start.

I'm excited to get into

what we've been working on.

Totally. And this is for the

supplement and health space.

This is go time for you.

And I know you guys,

you really hit the ground

running when you joined Adapt,

and so excited to see

how that's progressing.

Yeah.

Definitely. So yeah, man,

want to get practical here,

just like your podcast. But before we do,

I think it'd be really

interesting to one set the stage.

So we met when you had a

growth at Original Grain.

Feel free to talk about any of the

experiences there because that was just

tremendous growth. But then we

really got to know each other.

We both spoke at the same event

in New York City, Digital Growth,

not Digital Growth, D2C Growth Summit.

Shout out to our buddy, Johnny Hickey,

what's up? And we both spoke there,

got to know each other a little bit.

You walked on stage before me and

you were wearing a cowboy hat,

great look and aviators. This is a choice.

And you're like, "Hey guys,

I'm using notes here and wearing aviators

because I got bucked off a bull and

I have a concussion." We're

like, "What?" First of all,

that's the coolest intro ever.

I've thought about just doing that

even though it wouldn't be true,

just to see what kind of reactions

I would get. But tell us about that.

So you write bulls in your spare time

and how did you perform such a good talk

while concussed? Yeah.

And do.

You have a concussion right now?

No, I'm not concussed now. I can tell you,

these ribs still hurt from that

injury, but the brain has bounced back.

We're good there. No,

but the reason that all came together

was because I wrote the presentation

before I went bull riding.

So the notes were good,

the deck was good. Everything was

locked in. Sunday, I was like,

let me buck some bulls. First

one bucked me off, stepped on me,

broke three ribs, but I

was like, "I can do better.

Let me get one more in quick."

Landed directly on my head,

concussed pretty bad.

So that was Sunday and then hopped on

a plane Tuesday for that conference.

That's crazy, man.

That's crazy. Yeah. Kudos to you, you

really couldn't tell. It was great.

And you broke down storytelling

and what you did at

Original Grain, which

we got to observe that.

I know the founders love that

brand. Just tremendous growth there.

But let's dive into that a little bit.

Let's talk about copy and storytelling.

I want to talk brand.

I want to talk knowing your

customers and a few other things. But

how do you approach storytelling

and copywriting in general?

Because you're more

gifted than most at that.

So I'd love to just know,

what is your approach?

Yeah. Copy was something I

slept on early in my career.

I became a CMO at 24 of a

company called Dugout Mugs,

made baseball themed barware. I didn't

do any copywriting there. I mean,

sorry, I was writing copy. It was

not thoughtful. None of it was good.

But we had a super unique

product. We tested offers a bunch,

saw good growth there.

But it wasn't really until

I got to Original Grain

that I felt the need and got

into storytelling as a performance lever.

When you look at a watch made out of wood,

there's a bunch of different

ways you can sell it.

When I tried selling it as

a watch made out of wood,

didn't go over that well. I can't- Would.

You like a watch made out of wood?

Yeah. I can't tell someone

like, "Hey, do you know wood?

Do you know the thing that's the most

renewable and cheapest resource on earth?"

Yeah, we put it in a watch and we're

going to sell it to you for $300.

Everyone's like, "Eh, no.".

No, thanks.

But when we start to get into the stories

behind the materials our watches were

made from, and I started to tell

you that this isn't just wood.

This was a tree that was planted

grew for 70 years. And then it

was chopped down, harvested.

It was turned into a whiskey barrel

where a master distiller filled it and it

aged the whiskey for another decade.

And then we got it and cut it and plained

it and sanded it and inlaid it into

your watch.

So now you can carry a piece of

American and whiskey history on your

wrist, then you're going

to buy that for 300.

And made me feel like

you're getting a steal.

At that 100%. Yeah.

And that really kind of opened

my eyes to the power of words and

I have not slowed down on it.

Copy and message testing was like

the first thing I did at Adapt.

I still joke with the team internally

that CMO stands for chief messaging

officer because that's what I

try to spend the most time on,

but it's been crazy powerful.

The performance gains we've had

from it haven't stopped yet.

Yeah. I love it, man.

And I like studying some of the

classics and some of the greats in

marketing. I just reread

Ogleview & Advertising,

which is a classic kind

of skimmed through again,

My Life in Advertising and Scientific

Advertising by Cables, I believe it was.

And then one of those guys,

I can't remember which one,

but talked about advertising for

Schlitz Beer and how they really

grew market share for that beer company

by talking about the Artisan Wells and

the way they treated the bottles and

the way they went through the brewing

process. And turns out it was actually

the way that everybody did it,

but they just told the story better

for that time. It fit that time.

I know it might not fit now.

Now we just need to show sports

or girls or whatever to sell beer.

But it worked at that time. It

was a brilliantly told story,

even though anybody could have

told it and it sold a lot of beer.

And so it's like taking some of

those classic timeless things.

Humans have been telling stories forever,

but channeling that for good marketing. So

yeah, walk through some of the ways

you approached it from Original Grain.

Was it just understanding the story?

Was it understanding the customer first?

Was it a lot of trial and error to see,

okay, this angle works,

that angle falls flat?

Probably a little bit of all of that.

Yeah. It started early on

there. I was not a watch guy.

I walked into that brand,

never having owned a watch,

never wanting to get into that world.

But.

It sucked me in and it's

grabbed me now. But early on,

I was asking simple questions about the

industry like, why do watches exist?

Why does someone buy a watch today?

And I quickly found out the answer was

not so they know what time it is. Right.

Got a phone.

For that.

That is reason 99 out of a hundred

why someone could buy a watch.

But I started to learn

from industry research,

from some customer surveys that the

men who are buying the watches for

themselves are buying

it as a status symbol.

They want to be respected by their tribe.

And if you're in a conference like we are,

status in that room is a Rolex.

But if you're a blue collar guy who's

known as the whiskey guy in his group's

status in that group is not a Rolex,

it's an original grain watch in

laid with whiskey barrel wood.

So that was really eye-opening.

When I buy this product,

what does it say about me and what does

it say about me to the people I want to

impress? 100%. With the people

I'm around. Yeah. 100% super.

Interesting. Yeah.

And then I quickly found out that over

half our customers were women and we only

sold men's watches. And I

was like, "What is going on?

" And the reason that they were

buying for the men in their lives

was most commonly it was the wife of

that blue collar hardworking guy.

And she very visibly sees all he

does to sacrifice for the family.

She knows he gets up early,

works late, works hard,

and has sacrificed a lot

to provide for his family.

And these women we found didn't

have a way to reciprocate

that.

They didn't have a way to show

him that they appreciate and value

and are so grateful for

everything he does for them.

So our messaging changed

drastically around gift giving

times where we didn't

start saying like, "Hey,

if your husband likes whiskey,

get him this watch." These wives don't

like how much their husband drinks

already. They're not trying

to reinforce that behavior.

But when we changed the

message to say, "Show your.

Man-" Which does feel like that would be

an angle you should test, right? 100%.

These are men that love Whiskey

and are your whiskey fan.

I love it too, although it doesn't agree

with me, so I almost never drink it,

but it's great. So you think, "Oh,

that's a good angle." But actually it

turns out that's not the reason they buy.

And so you got to dig deeper,

which is what you found out. Yeah.

So when we changed the messaging from

like, "Hey, with you guys, love this.

It's a great gift for them." We changed

it to show your man he's worth every

second with a gift as rugged

and dependable as he is.

Conversion rate went crazy, AOV went up.

And then we were actually able to raise

our prices without seeing a decrease in

conversion rate because we weren't

just selling a watch anymore.

We were selling a token,

a physical expression of

love and appreciation,

which people are willing to spend more

money on than a piece of metal in wood.

Yeah. It's so good, man.

And now you've flipped it where

it's not what is this watch

worth,

it's what is my man worth to me and

how much am I willing to show him?

I remember my dad, I got a

motorcycle when I was in high school.

He'd ridden when he was younger,

but got a new motorcycle.

And I happened to be

with him and my stepmom.

They were buying a helmet and

the salesman was so brilliant.

The salesman was like,

"We got these helmets and these helmets."

And so you look at it and you're like,

"Well, I'm comparing plastic, right?

Is this plastic better than that

plastic?" And so he started showing like,

"Well, this is like the $700 helmet,

this is the $200 helmet."

And my stepmom was like,

"What's the difference?" And

so he told us and he's like,

"I guess it just depends on what

you think your head is worth."

And then he stopped.

And what's hilarious because

money really wasn't like an issue,

but it is until you know. So then they

bought the expensive one. So I was like,

"Yeah, that's a good point. My head's

probably pretty valuable." So yeah.

100%.

What are you putting the value on and

what is someone really buying because that

can shift the whole game.

For sure. Yeah.

And I've seen very little evidence

that customers are price sensitive.

I think they're value sensitive.

Everyone gets that wrong.

That's why everyone just

results into discounting a ton,

but we've found such big gains that just

being better at communicating the value

of the product with

written and visual content.

Yeah. Yeah. What is your take?

Because what's interesting,

the reason I wanted to do this

episode, well, a few reasons. One,

you're fascinating to get to talk

to, so I was interested in that.

But I listened to a ton

of podcasts in our space,

listened to all the big ones for D2C.

Almost everybody's talking about

creative volume and creative velocity and

creative diversity, all of

which I believe are important.

Those function differently for Meta

versus YouTube versus other channels.

But what I hear less people talking

about is just understanding what are we

saying and how are we

approaching storytelling and

how are we positioning this

product?

And so how do you think looking at just

good copy and your approach to good

copy, how does that impact or how does

that translate into diversity, volume,

velocity?

Yeah.

I'm not a believer in creative

volume to unlock scale on Meta.

We actually just ran a

test the last few weeks.

We cut the amount of creative

we launched on Meta in half.

In that time we were able to increase

spend by 25% while improving our aimer.

So I find more success being

more accurate and aiming for

quality over everything.

I don't really believe in

the concept of ad fatigue.

Coke has been running the

polar bears for 40 years.

Kit Kat has that song stuck

in my head since I was eight.

I think great ads resonate with people.

Geico's always been saving us 15%

or more on car insurance. Always.

When you have messages and

symbols and content that work,

I think the way to build a

profitable advertising program and a

brand that people like and remember

and gravitate towards takes

repetition.

So I like to hone in on

messages that can do both,

that can increase sales today,

but also start to build positive

affinity between how people see you

and the experience they have

once they get your products.

So with that said, I don't want

to launch a hundred ads this week.

I want to launch seven that do a really

good job at communicating our value,

that do a really good job of hitting the

right customers when they are ready to

buy and running different versions of

that over and over and over throughout

the year. And in doing that,

I've seen multiple individual ads that

can spend seven figures a year without

ever fatiguing.

And I've seen us be able to build

efficient in- house creative

teams where the goal is

not a hundred ads a week.

The goal is how many great ads can we

make? If we can make 12 great ones,

awesome. If we can make 30, cool.

But if we can only make four,

I'd rather four excellent ads that speak

to the right people at the right moment

in their lives in order

to get them to buy.

Yeah.

And I think creative

velocity and diversity means

different things to different

brands at different

levels of scale, right?

But I think there's also

some element of ... I love

the Oracle of Omaha,

his quote that diversity is only important

if you don't know what you're doing,

right? Which it doesn't fully

translate here, but it sort of does.

Maybe the reason you need

so much philosophy or so

much volume is because a lot

of what you're putting out there sucks.

Get better and then you can probably

cut that volume down and find

some real wins. And I think that

begins with good storytelling. And so

that's phenomenal.

So can you talk a little bit about how

do you understand what a customer is

actually buying or what they want and

would love to hear how you're maybe doing

that at Adapt Naturals.

Is that survey based?

Is that just we're testing ads and

angles and seeing what the results are?

How are you honing in on this is

what someone is actually buying?

Little bit of everything, little

bit of surveys and research,

little bit of testing new messages

and seeing how they respond.

The most impactful thing I've

done is hire Sarah Levener,

who's a customer research, I

don't know, researcher, analyst,

but she's awesome. And she really

opened my eyes a couple years ago

to understand the real reasons why

people were buying. And to be honest,

it made me uncomfortable

because it exposed some stuff

in my purchasing behavior

that I didn't really want to know.

I got Chick-fil-A delivered to the house

today because I'm stressed and needed a

little quick, convenient comfort.

It's comfort food, dude.

Chick-fil-A, it's comfort food,

but you can still function afterwards.

I eat a Chick-fil-A sandwich.

It's not health food, but

I still feel okay enough.

Yeah. It's better than Taco

Bell, which is what I really.

Want. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

My last cowboy hat I bought because I was

insecure and felt like I deserved

something that I hadn't gotten.

You.

And that sucks when you look

at that for yourself and

you can stop yourself from

making some bad purchases.

You want to be like, "No,

that's why other people buy.

I buy just.

Value.".

Yeah.

I bought a new watch as soon as I left

OG because I'm insecure and wanted to

feel better.

But uncovering the real reasons

why people were purchasing allow us

to create ads that speak

to what they really feel,

not just what they say they want.

Because.

When we ask customers directly,

they will tell you the reason they

bought after they've justified it and

rationalized it to themselves.

No one walks into the

Rolex store and says, "Hey,

I'm deeply insecure.

I would like the people in my circle to

know that I am financially successful.

Do you have anything for me?

" Yeah, I've got a significance issue.

I want other people to respect me.

That's why I'm buying this. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's why you have

to do a mix of surveying.

We scrape Reddit for insights.

We run all of our customer reviews

through a series of prompts to figure out

what they're actually feeling,

not just what they're saying.

And then the last part of it that I think

everyone misses is when you're testing

copy and messaging, that's

a two-way conversation.

The customers just don't talk back.

They either buy things or they

don't. And one of the big

examples for this is at

Original Grain, we started to talk about

guys who were building their legacy,

guys who were carving their own path.

No one in their right mind would

open up a conversation with, "Hey,

I'm Nate and I really

care about my legacy." Or,

"I bought this wash because I care about

my legacy." No one's talking like that.

But when we put out messaging that spoke

to that and we saw conversion rate of

our mail buyers go crazy, we

thought, oh, they care about that.

They might not know it,

they might not admit it,

but talking about that is going

to make them purchase more.

Yeah. Yeah. It's so good, man.

I worked with a pretty large jewelry

store for a long time early on in my

career, did all their marketing for

over a decade. And when I first started,

I wasn't a fan of jewelry.

I just thought it was a waste

of money and kind of silly.

So I'm surprised I got

the gig. But as I got in,

I started understanding one,

when people wear jewelry,

they feel better about themselves. And

so my wife, when she wears jewelry,

I'm sure she feels better

about herself. Also,

I started to understand

that for me as a guy,

I feel better about myself when

I buy my wife nice jewelry. 100%.

I want people to not only

see how beautiful she is,

but maybe to know that I'm successful. I

started to understand, maybe that's why

I'm motivated to buy this

is super interesting.

But then also you start to

look at some of the reasons,

and I heard some of these

people talk about it like, "Hey,

I'm buying this for my daughter

because she'll get to keep it and

pass it down to future generations."

So I think that's true,

that's the logical piece, but then

it's also probably that, yeah,

but I want to look successful too in

the process. So really interesting.

And then I like you, really

the why I became a jewelry fan,

so I buy jewelry pretty frequently buy

for my daughters and stuff like that too.

As well.

I bought a nice car

when I was 26 and I told

myself beforehand, I was like, "Hey,

I'm not going to post this on Instagram.

I'm not going to put it on

Twitter.This is not a flex.

I'm buying it because I want it.

" But that doesn't stop me from feeling

good about myself when I go meet people

in town and I step out of.

That. Totally. And it's.

Like, all right, it's

still kind of a flex.

I was trying not to be a huge D-bag

about it, but a little bit still.

And.

Then I brought it up on a podcast, so I.

Just ... So funny. But yeah,

then you start to understand,

okay, so this is maybe

what's at the root of it.

This is maybe the reason that people

are willing to talk about why they buy.

So let me appeal to both.

Let me appeal to all of that and then

my ads and from different angles and

things like that. And so awesome.

Let's talk a little bit about

brand. And I'm a huge believer.

You said this earlier where you

like to run ads that get results

now, but they also build someone's brand.

I've always been a huge fan of that.

Some people call it brand formants

where it's like I'm telling stories,

I'm moving people to take action.

I'm getting a direct response.

I'm likely a decent ROI now,

but I'm also building a brand into

the future. How do you view brand?

Because I heard one of your podcasts

recently where you talk about, "Hey,

this is maybe a way to think

about brand." So talk about that.

Talk about that maybe

from a performance lens,

but what's your reframe of branding? Hey,

thanks again for tuning in to

the eCommerce Evolution Podcast.

I want to take just a minute and

talk about my agency, OMG commerce.

We've been helping e-commerce

brands for 15 years,

and that's like a

hundred e-commerce years.

And our specialty is finding opportunities

for growth that other people miss and

unliking channels that you're not

currently maximizing. For example,

YouTube, most brands

are sleeping on YouTube,

and my belief is it's the biggest

untapped opportunity for your brand.

We're also good at adding up to eight

figures in growth for Amazon brands.

And so if you're looking for

scale and growth profitably,

that's what we do. We'd

love to chat with you.

We'd love to review your

current marketing efforts,

show you where there's missed

opportunities and craft a specific plan

for you. So visit us at omgcommerce.com,

click the Let's Talk button,

and we'd love to schedule a complimentary

strategic review with you. With that,

back to the show.

Yeah. I think the word brand throws

our performance marketer brains into a

tizzy that we cannot escape from.

You want me to waste money? Why.

Do you want me to everything?

One jumps like, "Okay,

so I should just go blow some

money?" And it's like, no.

No. I got Coca-Cola.

Yeah.

I try to reframe it to everyone on my

team that we are not building a brand,

we're like showing our personality.

And once you make it your personality,

I think it's a lot easier

to draw connections between

who our customers are and

who we should be. Yeah.

I also like the word personality

because we all know our

personalities can be flexible.

This is how I show up to an

e-commerce marketing podcast,

but on Friday night when I

have some guys over for a fire,

I'm going to talk much

differently than I'm talking now.

I'm not going to talk about

what copy tests I ran that.

And the next day when I'm at lunch

with my in- laws, who I am there,

it's just a little bit different

version of me than who I am at work.

I'm not being fake, I'm

not being artificial,

but personality allows you to show up

in the right context in the right way.

And that's what I think brands need to

up in a way that our customers

care about and respect and like

in the right context,

because the way that you behave on TikTok

and on YouTube and on Instagram should

be different than the way your products

arrive and should be different than how

your customer service team operates.

So I like personality because

you can start to ask yourself

questions like, "Hey, if our brand had

Friday night plans, what would they be?

" Would it be out drinking,

dancing, partying?

Would it be at home with the family?

Is it getting a headstart

on chores for the weekend?

And then how different is Friday from

Saturday and how do they feel on Monday

mornings?

That's what I think you need to do

to build a fully flushed out brand

playbook is understand how your brand

is going to show up in different ways to

different people, but at the right time.

Dude, it's so good.

And I think the other thing we think

about when we think about branding is

colors and fonts and logos.

And certainly those are important and

there's all kinds of psychological stuff

that goes into that, but I love

the personality angle. Yeah,

what does my brand do on

a Friday night for fun?

What about on a Saturday

morning or Monday?

And then so I like that reframe for sure.

How then have you seen ...

So when you view it that way,

how does that shift the

way you approach copy?

How have you seen that shift

the way your team writes copy?

What's the practical impact of that?

First, we find out all those answers

from our customers. We ask them,

"What are you doing on a Friday? What

kind of music are you listening to?

What kind of sports are you watching?"

Once we start to get those answers,

we start to see and it becomes clear

where we need to show up. At OG,

all of our fans were NFL and country

music fans. So we were like, immediately,

let's go get some country

artists to partner with us.

We worked with some NFL

teams, but that was hard.

But we immediately knew like, okay,

those are the places we need to show up.

Then once you know what the places are,

you start to understand how you need

to appear, how you need to talk, dress,

act.

So that's what starts

our copy and messaging,

kind of brainstorming from

there. It's like, all right,

if our brand is going to

show up to a country concert,

are we going to be the

guy front row screaming?

Are we going to be at the back at

the bar buying our friends shots?

Who are we there? Who do our

customers want us to be there?

How can we show up as our customers

essentially like best wing man at the

events that they want to be at?

So that's where it all starts and we

try to view everything from that lens.

Would our customers invite us as one

of their best friends out to enjoy

their favorite activities with them?

Yeah. Yeah. It's so good. And then

over time you're going to see, okay,

how does that flavor or

shift our copy and our emails

from our automated flows to our monthly

promotions or weekly promotions?

How does that impact the Meta

ads or the YouTube scripts?

It can start to influence all

of those and you're 100% right.

There's a different way to

approach each of those channels,

but that personality can be the anchor

or the core of what you're doing and then

you're just applying it in the different

space there, which I think is awesome.

One example I want to pull up that I

hope will bring this into kind of like

concrete terms for everyone.

We did an event with OG

where we gave away a bunch of

guitars to veterans and we put them

through a music therapy program

to cope with PTSD and everything. Yeah,

the guys at OG do awesome charitable work.

But we threw this event just

outside of Nashville and it was fun.

It was a party, it was happy, it got

emotional for a minute, but overall fun,

happy event.

We invited our Tennessee customers

to come out and we had a hundred

or so of them show up and having a night

where I could just kind of talk and

hang with customers was so eye-opening.

And the example that really stands out

to me is there's a customer of ours

who showed up to this event on a Friday

night in ripped jeans and dusty boots.

And I was like, "Man, that says

way more about who our customer is.

" And it would never show up

on a post-purchase survey.

It would never show up in a review,

but just understanding that it's

going to change our tone a little bit.

We're going to say y'all when we talk

instead of saying you all or you guys.

It can change subtle things,

but those subtle things I think are

what makes the difference between a

corporate boring brand and a brand

that resonates with the people they're

trying to hit.

Yeah, it's so good,

man. I love this quote.

I think this was founder of

Airbnb talked about to scale,

sometimes you have to do things

that don't, right? Which getting in

Front of your customers, you can't

necessarily do that at scale Hell,

you certainly can't see all of

your customers face to face,

but I do however think you could

duplicate those events and you could do

multiple of those events per year.

I think it'd be extremely valuable.

I'm sure if you were to go back and

look at those people that attended,

they've probably purchased

more than your average cohort.

They probably referred more

than your average cohort.

That was probably a time well spent.

But then on top of that, yeah,

there's something about seeing a

room of your customers that will

completely change your perspective.

And it's way easier to think about,

I'm writing this ad for dude in the

dusty boots versus I'm writing this ad

for a male who's 25 to 54 and lives

in the South.That's not even all that

helpful. I want to write for a person

and now I've got this person in my head.

Yeah. And I think this little

extra thing here for you,

I think in real life events

are necessary to build great

brands from now on. I

think in the age of AI,

people are going to be craving

connection and authenticity and something

tangible and real more than anything.

I think events are such a great

way to do that. And you're right.

I think those events are going to increase

the LTV of any customer that shows

up. So we'll probably at

least break even on it.

Yes.

But at the very least, you'll get to know

your customers on such a deeper level.

So I'm really excited for that.

We've got some stuff planned at Adapt

that I think is going to be great.

But I think when in doubt, if

you're ever having writer's block,

creators block for what

to say to your customers,

try to get in a room with them. And I

promise the ideas will start flowing.

That's awesome, man. And then I

think then you leverage the event,

and I think that's what

you guys are doing as well,

where you invite out some VIPs,

you could shoot some interviews,

you could get some content footage and

pictures of this and leverage that.

But that's one of the things I used to

do actually formerly when I was doing

some TV stuff,

this was like early days of OMG and before

we would do customer interviews and I

got to where I was like a

pro at interviewing people.

And there's something magical

that happens when you're asking a

customer the right questions

and they're on camera,

but you get them to not think about

the fact they're on camera for a little

while. They'll say some amazing things.

And then you chop those

clips up and now you've got

pieces of marketing gold that you can

use in your Meta and YouTube and TikTok

and Instagram ads for a long time.

100%. Yeah. Do in- person events.

If you take nothing else away

from this podcast, do it.

I think it'll pay off in spades. Awesome.

What are some of the, because

I know you do a lot of testing,

a lot of this angle versus that angle.

Can you think of some

tests that surprise you?

So this one, and I did not see it coming,

or this was a surprise outlier of an ad.

And any examples come to mind?

Yeah, dozens. I'm right

more often than I'm wrong,

but it's not as often as I'd like.

I think the biggest examples that

I'm ready to share, at least,

are sometimes just flipping the

perspective of a headline from

positive to negative or negative

to positive can be such a huge

difference. If you're not familiar

with valence and intensity zones,

ask ChatGPT what they are. It'll give

you a good little summary of them,

but it's essentially a way

to assign a description

to a piece of content that's either

going to be like positive and low energy,

positive and high energy,

negative and low energy,

or negative and high energy.

What I have found is there's not a

copywriter in the world that's good at

writing in all four of those tones.

I am largely positive and hover

between low and high energy, but if you

ask me to write something negatively,

it gets way too depressing

way too quickly.

I don't know what that says

about me, but it gets dark.

Quick. It's dark fast.

So I've always just kind of

stuck to positive writing,

but it's helped a ton to feed some of

our best winning headlines into ...

I'm using Claude for

everything now. And say, "Hey,

figure out what valence and

intensity zone this copy

falls into,

then rewrite options in every other

zone." And it spit out some stuff that

I-.

What a great approach.

... that I would never

have thought to write.

And so that's been really

eye-opening to see how powerful that

can be because I've been wrong about if

something should be phrased positively

or negatively.

So that's been one that has surprised

me time and time again where I'll take a

winning headline that I tried to

beat on my own three times and failed

and I put it through

that series of prompts.

It comes out with something new that

crushes it. That has surprised me a bunch.

So just something I'll riff

on that really quickly.

I think it's so important because

I definitely lean positive as well.

I'm an optimist to a fault

sometimes, very optimistic.

I also am a morning person. I can

do well late at night as well,

but I've just got a lot of energy,

but I'll wake up just ready to go and

my wife does not and my kids mostly do

not. And so it's like if I wake

up and I'm charged up and I'm

overly optimistic and

positive, my kids hate that.

I got to meet them on

their level, so to speak.

I think the same is true for copy.

Some people want a different energy

level, they want a different angle.

They're going to connect with you

if you're a little less optimistic.

And so that's where you got to look at it.

And just a reminder that not everyone

is the same as you, right? 100%.

So what a brilliant way

to use Claw. Love that.

Yeah. And then

that has become how we build funnels too

because each of those zones are

going to hit different people

the best. So the first time we test

that, we test it to everyone on our

website and we determine like, hey,

the majority of people respond

well to a positive, low energy

Piece of copy. And it's like,

great, we can set that live for now.

But there's still groups of other people

that are not going to resonate with

that at all. So once we find a

couple different ones that work,

then we start to create

ads in that same tone and

voice and send them to their own landing

page that speaks the way they want to

be spoken to.

The morning person energy is

probably the better example of it.

The example that I have given to

my team is that when you're drunk,

a sober person is so annoying.

And when you're sober,

a drunk person is so annoying.

Dude, what a great example.

They should not mix at all, but

I want to sell to all of them.

I want to sell to drunk and

sober people. Absolutely.

So it's created more work because

we got to make more funnels and ads

and LPs,

but it's been worth it because we are

talking to people the way they want to be

spoken to.

Yeah. It's so important, man. And you

start to connect all of those things.

This is the reason why someone buys.

Maybe this is the reason they're

willing to admit that they buy.

This is the deeper reason why they

buy. Now we can speak to both of those.

This is our brand personality, right?

This is how we show up on a

Friday night and a Monday morning.

This is who our customer wants to be.

This is who we're writing to or writing

to the guy in the ripped jeans and the

dusty boots. And then it's like,

okay, then how are we approaching it?

Is it high energy positive,

optimistic? Is it low energy positive?

Looking at all of those things, man,

you really start to create some unlocks,

which is just phenomenal. And

what about any creative

formulas that you use?

So I think what we just talked

about, man, if people embrace that,

going to create some serious unlocks.

Let me add one more thing to that.

Yeah, please, please. Before we move on.

The reason I stress so hard

that personality and brand

personalities need to be

flexible is because we don't have one why.

There's not one reason why

people are buying from us.

And the example that I've

used is sometimes I buy

whiskey to celebrate because

I'm happy. Sometimes

I buy because I'm sad.

Same product, same guy, but

depending on how I'm feeling,

my motivation for it is different.

So that's why I think we need to be

able to communicate in different voices

and tones because it's going to hit

different people in different ways at

different times. So don't be so focused

on like, "Oh, what's our one why?

What's the thing?" There's a hundred of

them and you need to learn eventually

how to speak to all of them really well.

So good. So good.

Last couple things here as we

kind of wind our time down. First,

do you have any kind of

creative formulas you use or any

rubrics or like, "Hey, as I'm creating

ads, all the things we just talked about,

but then it needs to kind of have these

elements." Anything like that that would

be helpful for marketers and brand owners?

One of my favorite quick hacks that

anyone can do that I have yet to seen lose

at a brand I've tested

this on is ask Claude,

ask your favorite AI tool. "Hey,

list all of the positive adjectives

that someone might use to describe our

products.

They're.

Going to list rugged and dependable or

maybe it's luxurious and high end and

exclusive.

Then you're going to ask it after

you upload all your customer reviews,

you're going to ask it,

which of these adjectives do our customers

most want to describe themselves?

"And it might say," Hey,

your customers really want to

be known as something luxurious

and high end and premium

and like a top shelf guy.

"Then you're going to use the formula

that I've used for I think 11 brands

now from OG to Adapt to Jack

Daniels,

Hexclad and Ridge have run similar

ones where you say positive

adjective plus positive adjective

just like the customers who use it.

So at OG,

we said our watches were rugged and

dependable just like the men who wear it.

Hexclad said our knives are sharp

into the point just like the chefs who

trust it.

Jack Daniels said their whiskey is bold

and complex like the guys who drink it.

That formula has just crushed

over and over and over

again. So that's the one

like if you are new to copy,

I'd go run through that series of prompts,

mess with different

versions of adjectives,

but that one's been huge for

us and it's super simple to do.

Love that. And also,

I just so appreciate that you talked

about we don't maybe need to have this

maniacal volume focus and obsession of,

I must launch a hundred ads this week

Let's see how many great

ads can we produce.

And one of the things

I'll kind of emphasize,

because we see this on the

YouTube side a lot as well,

there've been a number of brands we've

taken from zero to a million a month in

spend on YouTube and most of them,

it's with a couple of good creatives.

We're obviously testing

quite a few things,

but I can think of a few examples

where it was like two ads,

two smashing ads that unlock scale for

six to 18 months.

And so I think that should

maybe motivate to spend the

time, spend the time to do the

things you're talking about here.

And then over time you can lean more into

volume to whatever extent makes sense

for your brand,

but good creative

matters and you've got to

invest in it.

So to me, it's the

sharpening the ax analogy.

If we both had an hour to cut down a

tree and you start hacking at the tree

immediately, and I spend the first

45 minutes sharpening the ax,

I think I'm going to beat

you. And in marketing,

that ax sharpening is research

and talking to customers and

surveying them and understanding why

they're actually trying to buy before you

go to make the ad.

Well said. Well said, man. Where do you

go for inspiration? Who do you look at?

Are you just looking at other great

brands? Are you reading books?

You listening to podcasts? Where

do you go for creative inspiration?

Songwriters.

No way. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah.

I consume shockingly

little marketing content.

I probably should consume

some more. But for me,

the people that know how to connect words

to people the best are writing music.

Morgan Wallen put out a song last year

where he talks about if you're going

to be a friend, be a friend like Skull,

that's always there in a pinch. If

you're going to love your woman,

love her like a Chevy, nice and steady.

And if you have something to say,

treat them like your browning

rifle and shoot it straight.

And like one, those companies should all

be using that in their ads constantly.

100%. Lean into that. Yeah. Yeah.

But I think people that can write number

one hitted songs are understanding how

to connect words to people's feelings

better than anyone in marketing.

So that's really where I

try to get inspiration from.

I find when I try to get too much

inspiration from competitors or from the

industry, our ads start to sound and

feel like everyone else is, which.

Is- It becomes derivative right

now. It's like that thing,

but maybe just slightly different.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's great.

I've also heard,

and I've always had a fascination

for copying and good marketing,

but I've also heard, and this rings true

for me, paying attention to comedians,

like listening to how do comedians

frame things and say things?

Because generally what's really funny

and what works is like I'm looking at an

everyday thing, like Jerry

Seinfeld waiting for a table

in a Chinese restaurant,

but I'm flipping that into something

hilarious and something that we can relate

to. But I love the music thing. I

hadn't thought a ton about that.

My wife is helping me like country music.

I didn't grow up liking country music.

Nice. But I'm appreciating

it. I'm appreciating it more.

My daughters all like it, so I'm like,

all right, all right, I got to get there.

But I've also loved even

hip hop artists and stuff,

like what they do with language, very

clever and very interesting. And so yeah,

I hadn't thought about that.

I'm a marketing podcast junkie,

so I consume this stuff like I'm

running out of time, but I like that.

I like that, listening to music.

For inspiration. Yeah, I like

comedians too. I'm a big standup fan,

but I haven't treated it

like that. But I mean, yeah,

comedians and artists,

they make people feel more

passionately with their words than any

marketer does.

No one is reading your ad on Meta and

laughing out loud to themselves or nodding

their head to it.

Yeah. And really that's just,

I understand how to use language

and how to shift emotions.

And I understand comedic

timing and things like that.

So all of that does actually play

into good copy. It just does.

And so that is awesome, man. Dude,

this has been absolute gold. Love it.

I could talk to you for

another couple of hours.

I've got like media questions and

other things that I need to dive into,

but we'll kind wrap up it. We'll run

it back. Next thing, we'll wrap up,

make this all creative

focus. But yeah, dude,

for those that want to

find out more about you,

tell me about the podcast, tell

me about what you post on X.

And then also huge fan of

what you're doing at Adapt.

So we all need to get healthier and

probably buy some stuff from Adapt.

Yeah, get healthier. That's like

half the reason I took the job.

It's like just wanted to

reprioritize health and quality of

life. But yeah, you can follow

me on Twitter @natelegos.

The Tactical Impractical Podcast is

available anywhere you listen to podcasts.

And yeah, other than that, would love

to just connect with everyone, Twitter,

LinkedIn, and hopefully we all keep

growing brands and making money.

Let's do it. Nate, thanks so

much, man. It's been awesome.

Looking forward to round two.

Sweet. Thanks for having

me, Brett. Appreciate.

It. Absolutely. And as always,

thank you for tuning in.

Would love to hear from you.

If this podcast was helpful

and I know that it was,

share it with somebody that you think

could benefit from it. And with that,

until next time, thank you for listening.

That'll do it for this week's episode.

One final mention. If you feel like

you've stalled out with your growth,

if you feel like you've

missed opportunities and if

you feel like your current

team or agency, they just

don't have that buyer anymore,

or maybe you feel like you've

outgrown them, we would love to chat.

You may be missing opportunities and

we don't want to miss an opportunity to

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So if you'd love to scale on YouTube or

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or just like a second set of eyes to

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