00:26 Hey, welcome back to the show. And today we are so excited to have Trevor here because he's gonna help us understand why we're all wasting a lot of money in places that we shouldn't be and make it better for us. So Trevor, tell us who you are and what problem are you solving with your business?

00:42  Hey Todd, thanks for having me. It's great to be here. So my name is Trevor Testweed. I am the CEO and co-founder of a company called Measured and where I have spent the bulk of my time, my professional time and where I spend most of my hours is I'm immersed in a category called marketing attribution. And I've been living here for the last kind of 12 plus years working with brands to help them inform the contribution of paid media to their business goals. So this company measure we founded in February of 2017. So we're about six and a half years in and we're on a mission to help brands unlock the power of incrementality measurement. And incrementality measurement applied to media optimization is all we do. It's all we've ever done. It's why we exist. And when brands are spending money into Facebook and Google and TikTok into a catalog, we want to help them understand what is the true incremental marginal contribution that media is driving in a causal way to business outcomes, right? Whether it's sales or subscriptions or whatever the goals are.

01:51 Right, right. And this is, truthfully, this is an awesome topic to cover today because most of our guests, most of our listeners of this should be spending money on paid ads. If you're not spending money on paid ads, you should be. Because it is the only directly relatable thing you can find in your marketing that directly ties to a sale. And a lot of people balk on this because they don't know how to measure exactly what you're talking about. And I think attribution and attribution reporting is one of those things that so many people get wrong, that they just get flustered with their ad spend and they don't know what to do with it. Why did you set out to start this company? I mean, is that it? I mean, are people just having a hard time measuring what exactly is attributing to their net sales on the internet?

02:42 So that's right. Media can absolutely drive a meaningful contribution to their business goals. But it's really important to understand how it is driving impact in an incremental way or a causal way. So when you're fighting media through the platforms and you're in Google and you're in Facebook and you're in other platforms, the platforms are reporting back their own performance based on a last touch or a last view or a last click metric, right? And they're all measuring themselves in their own isolated world. So Google will come back and they're going to take a hundred percent credit for every conversion they were in the path of. And Pinterest is going to come back. It's a, Hey, I'm going to take a hundred percent credit for that conversion. Cause I was in the path and snap and catalog and on down the line. So we help brands D duplicate that credit and assign credit where credit is due based on the true influence that media is driving. Because if you have a sequence of touch points that lead to a conversion, all of those touch points do not deserve 100% credit. There's some fractional contribution that they deserve. And the reality today, given the privacy era that we now live in and a lot of the sensitivity around user level data is that cohort-based experimentation, testing control experimentation is really the gold standard now in 2023 for understanding contribution. And what we're doing is we're measuring the media buy, the campaign buy against the brand's transaction file and no longer dependent on the platform's conversion tracking, which is where you get a lot of the breakage. So a lot of the brands will go in and they're incredibly frustrated with the platform reporting. Facebook and Google and on down the line. It's a real head scratcher and it's a very meaningful investment that they're making on a monthly basis.

04:46 Interesting. Yeah, I mean, the amount of money people are spending on ads is so significant that if you don't truly understand the attribution of where that lead came from, where that conversion came from, it's a real crappy situation. And my guess is that, I don't know, 90 plus percent of companies spending money on multiple platforms have no idea where the traffic originated from and what actually drove that lead to a conversion.

05:16 You are. You are, and it is shocking the percentage of brands with very meaningful spends. I'm talking five million a year, 10 million a year, 20 million a year that are still decisioning on these last touch metrics. It is reckless, you know? And you have a lot of finance folks out there, that are incredibly frustrated with it. And oftentimes our biggest fan is the finance team when we step in, because we speak the language of finance informing contribution. So yeah, it's a head scratcher. There's a lot of inertia around these platform reported last touch metrics. They've been out in the wild for, you know, since the first display ad in 96, 97 and they're very easy to consume and adopt organizationally and they've been institutionalized across all of these companies. So it's a pretty big departure to move from this legacy metric to now a much more intelligent metric but we've seen time and time again when brands do and they institutionalize for us as an incremental metric, you can see a pretty radical shift in performance for the business.

06:22  So who is your client? Are you looking for agencies? Are you looking for big spend brands? Are you looking for smallsmit? Like who should be looking for your product? Because in my mind I see a lot of potential avatars out there, but is there one specific that kind of drives the most value to you?

06:42 So we are a neutral independent partner, right? So we want to be untethered from anyone who has an incentive to increase the or decrease the media spend. And so most all of our contracts, I think all of our contracts today, we have 100 and roughly 35 clients today, and everyone is direct with the brand. We work with the agencies very closely in partnership because often the agency is the consumer and they're the hands on keyboards and they're consuming our insight

07:12 Sure, sure. 

07:13 activating on the optimization. So we work very closely in partnership. 

07:14 They're making the decisions. Yeah.

07:15 You got it. That's right. But I think, you know, by and large, our contracts are direct with the brands and then we work in partnership with platforms and agencies. Yeah.

07:29 Interesting. Interesting. So as you hit that avatar, do you feel like, and this is maybe unnecessary, but I'm kind of curious, how, as you work with agencies, they've got to love your product because you're helping them drive more spend towards whatever vendors actually attributing the sale to the lead flow. So how are you not kind of bundling that in more of a direct to building agency plans versus going direct to these consumers because of the size of the ideal and primarily enterprise level clients.

08:03  Yeah, good question. So we work mid-market and enterprise. So kind of an entry point for us today. And at some point we will probably push further down market. But today the smallest clients that we're taking on are spending north of $5 million in total media spent for the year. And we have a lot of brands that are spending 50 million, you know, five, 10, 50, even 100 million. We're not working today with like the Verizon's and the GM's. We're kind of one level below them. But more often than not, the agency is a very grateful partner that we engage with and it's a very positive relationship. But listen, we are neutral and our entire goal here is to inform optimal spend. And media isn't always winning, right? There are certainly cases where we want to turn down a media channel, a campaign or a tactic and dial up another media channel or tactic.There's winners and losers. And if there's an agency that is concentrated on that loser campaign, for example, maybe it's a direct mail or a catalog campaign, which is a very expensive execution. We often find the catalog works well, but in some cases, maybe it doesn't at the level of spend a client is. We want to dial that down. So, you know, more often than not, they appreciate us every once in a while if their specific channel is dialing down a spend as a result of our measurement and reporting. Maybe they're not our biggest trend at that point. Yeah. 

09:33 captainscouncil.com

10:58 That's cool. No, it's very cool. And obviously, you know, it's, listen, I applaud people that go straight for enterprise and that mid-level to enterprise marketplace because they are the companies with the most spend and they're gonna give you the most profitability, obviously. But is there, are there solutions for the smaller companies? Because a lot of people we're talking to today are in that, you know, five to 50 million in revenue, not five to 50 million in ad spend. What kind of solutions or what kind of things should they be thinking about as they're getting confused in their ad spend right now, trying to grow and build.

11:38 Sure. So at the smaller stage, and we have worked with brands further down market. So an example there would be like Farity brand. We started working with Farity, I think six years ago, and they were not hitting that $5 million annual mark and quite a bit smaller than that. And a lot of times early on, a brand will get really good at one channel or maybe two channels, and they will ride Facebook, or they will ride non-branded search, right? Or they ride catalog, and you're really good at activating that channel to help drive the business. So you know you want to push that one channel to a point of diminishing returns, understand where that is and then start to diversify into the second channel. But you don't want to get too diversified too early. Find the channel or two or maybe three that work best for you and really get good at making those those. Yes.

12:27 That's great advice. That really is great advice because as much as we all wanna have multiple touch points in every platform, it really is kind of stupid. I mean, listen, our brands, generally, when you're below those revenue numbers, it can be hard to really nail down the messaging, to nail down what's gonna drive a click through. There's so much to think about, and you really are dealing with sophisticated ad buyers who know what's gonna drive traffic and what's gonna that lead to a conversion. So very interesting model, very cool company, man. I love it.

13:00 Thank you, yeah, they don't always show up that way. I will tell you, you can't correlate spend with sophistication. Sometimes you see the smaller scrappy, very sophisticated, and sometimes you've got really big kind of cruise ship bloated spenders and aren't as sophisticated. Yes, that's right, that's right, yes, yeah.

13:20 Okay, I get it, I get it. Now this is a really, really cool product. I love the solution you're solving. And listen, now that we know about what your company does and who you serve, talk to us about your journey. Because, you know, did it start with enterprise? I mean, did you take off from an agency where you were doing this kind of work for people? I mean, how did the origination kind of happen into this and what are some significant things you've done along the way to kind of isolate your avatar and know who you want to serve?

13:49 Yeah, I think here it Measured, the journey started in February 2017 and we started really in co-development with a couple clients that we were keen to understanding the pain that they were experiencing and how incrementality could line up to solve for that pain in a significant way. We, you can, on a scale basis, you can move the needle you know, a lot more on a $10 million spend than you can say, let's say $100,000 spend, right? And so when we show up and on average, we like to set a minimum of a 20 to 25% efficiency gain and on $10 million, it's a lot more meaningful to a CFO or, you know, a company than 100 grand. So we, you know, in my career, I've spent a lot of time with the enterprise or mid market. And so it's more of a place of comfort. So, we started building out with that segment and having a lot of success and seeing the wins and then got socialized into kind of that peer group. And largely started with the fashion segment. I mentioned Faraday, there's a brand called Johnny was an early client. Brand like Viori, one of my favorite brands is a great client, had a lot of success with them, but kind of that cohort, yeah.

15:10 Cool. No, it's very cool. And I like how you referenced the socialization amongst the brands that you're working with. It is nice to have a brand, by the way, I love the branding that you've done with your company, measured is such a valuable term. I got to think that's a high ticket keyword to spend on, but I mean, it's a great word to represent your entire what you do for companies. And so I love your whole thing all the way through. Your website's fantastic. For those of you that aren't really in the range of working with measured, you do have some valuable resources on there. Like you've done a good job of trying to educate people on why this is so important, what measured means when it comes to ad buying. Tell us, what did you learn these lessons of, it sounds like you worked with someone before working in enterprise level markets, and that's how you jumped in. A lot of people are pretty nervous about jumping in enterprise, servicing that market as a startup. How do you advise people? What kind of recommendations to give people to make that leap, stop working with these tiny, tiny revenue numbers, and start jumping into some bigger fields of play?

16:28 I think it's just being very kind of self-aware and clear on where you can drive the most value. For me, it all comes back to value creation with our clients. And the conversations that get me most juiced up is when clients come to me with customer success stories and tell me about how they've really moved the needle with their business or got their marketing practice on track. I had a client tell me a few months ago that anchored on Measured's platform. They were able to course correct their marketing practice and eventually got public as a result of that. And, you know, it's those kind of endorsements and accolades that are most meaningful to me. So I think it's just a place of where we were, you know, most comfortable and felt like we could drive the most value.

17:16 I love it, love it, I love it. And for those of you listening, you don't have to be 10 years in your company to go after an enterprise client. Like you can literally jump in from the start. If you, to the point here, when you know your value and the value that you bring to people, you can go for big clients. You can ask those big numbers because if it makes sense, it makes sense. I mean, if you're saving the company money or helping them redirect wasted resources to someplace is gonna add more value to their business They're gonna praise you up and down for that. So Trevor, I think it's awesome what you've done. What are some surprises? I mean no business grows without some surprise headaches and some things that really drove them crazy. What are some of those things talk to us about some challenges?

18:04 Oh, man. Well, you know, building a company is a journey, right, as everyone here knows. And then you're often, as I say, living on kind of this razor's edge of kind of excitement and tear, right, at times. And, you know, I think that, you know, over I think, you know, over the last, how long have I been doing this, maybe 12 years of being an entrepreneur, I've learned to appreciate and enjoy the journey and you know, bring kind of the highs down and the lows up. But it's, you know, sometimes you feel like you're at a really difficult low and you can't see kind of through it. And it really, it's only a matter of time and perseverance and, you know, working hard and keeping focus in the right areas. And you pop through and you look back and you're like, I don't know how I got through that, but boy, am I glad I persevered, right? So it's.

18:59 Seriously, right?

19:00 Yeah, the journey, the entrepreneurial path is a game of perseverance. I think that is probably the number one attribute a lot of entrepreneurs talk about when they're successful and I certainly experienced that, right? So it's, yeah.

19:12 Did you, do you have people to lean on? I mean, you know, honestly, like I feel like I don't, I don't know a single founder or even, even a CEO that takes over business, you get in those ruts where you're just like, what the crap is going on? Like this just isn't making sense. This wasn't on my whiteboard a few months ago. 

19:29 Yeah, yes, no, absolutely. 

19:30 Do you lean on somebody or a group or a person or what, what's kind of your exit? Is it just perseverance?19:36 I know I absolutely do. And it's really, it's a collection of people. And, you know, on my team, I've got a couple of lieutenants who have been really terrific partners to me that I've leaned on and gone to war with and, you know, people that I've locked arms with and there's no way I'd be able to get through it kind of without when I look back, I wouldn't be able to do this without them. So I think that the partnership internally is incredibly important. And then I have a collection of advisors, right? From different aspects that I look for counsel. I have a coach and I've learned to appreciate the coaching practice who holds me accountable and challenges me and is a really, really great thought partner and I found that to be worth the valuable time that I spend on it. I'm also very fortunate, I've found a terrific investor partner and I remember a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with landing the right investor. I've been extremely fortunate and I brought an investor by the name of Telescope and board member named Mickey and he has earned my trust and he has been terrific counsel and a really fantastic partner to me since I've worked with him over the last year and a half. Yeah.

20:51 Talk about that for a second because you know, I find that a lot of people get really nervous about raising money to the point to where they just don't. And myself being one of those guys, every time I raise money a few times and been burned so bad

21:06 Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

21:07 I get nervous just thinking about raising money. Tell us about that experience. 

21:09  I've had some big challenges, yeah.

21:10 It's a huge deal to get it right.

21:12 Oh yeah, no, it's very difficult. And I've had other experiences that were more similar to yours. And as a result, we bootstrapped this business for the first five years. I did not raise any money until five years into the business. And eventually, what happened is I got to the point of, I was in December, 2021. I had over a hundred employees, I had 90 clients and the weight of responsibility that I felt was daunting. I held all the risk, right? And so the response, 

21:43 Yes. Yeah, you're feeding all those families.

21:44 That's right, all the families I was responsible for. And so the responsible thing for me to do was to go and de-risk, de-risk the business and pour concrete into the foundation of my company. And so I went out skeptical and had a lot of conversations and was just very honest about some of the challenging experiences I had in the past and eventually got to a point where I made a bet, right, as a leap of faith. You get as close as you can to having all the information that you really don't know until you get on the field. 

22:19 No you don't.

22:20 But what you can do is you can talk to all the other CEOs in the portcodes that they work with and you can collect a bunch of triangulation and reference checks and then you and I got as much information as I could. I took the leap and I got lucky. But yeah, many of us have had very difficult experiences. And I will tell you that you can have a terrific experience as well. And that's how I've improved.

22:43 So happy to hear that, so happy to hear that. And for those of you listening, you really gotta, it's a risk to start a business, it's a risk to raise money, but I love the fact, Trevor, that you took this thing five years bootstrapped, 100 employees, lots of revenue, lots of great clients before you even did that move. I think that's so important. And talking with a lot of people that do invest in businesses like yours, you know, it says so much to them when they know that you're a capable leader and that your product has fit. You know, it's just, it's a huge difference to come five years in than it is to come free revenue, looking for, you know, tons of money with, with as little equity as you can give away. And you got nothing there. You know, it's a totally different, totally different journey that you've just taken us down. Thanks for sharing that.

23:36 It's a very different conversation for the entrepreneur when you check all the boxes and now you have all the leverage as opposed to when you're early on you don't have product market fit and you really haven't proven the business. You don't have any leverage. So for me, I've done it both ways and I would bootstrap it as long as you can until you've really got the formula and you proved it and then raise institutional money when you've got all the boxes checked.

24:02 You know, and thanks for sharing that burden because a lot of people go without saying it out loud that holy crap, it just, it weighs on you. I can remember having 350 employees in multiple countries, in different islands, different cities in the US and thinking, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, I've got all these eggs in like three clients buckets right now and if any one of them fail, I gotta send families home with that money. And that burden is hard to describe to people. And, uh, but it's shared whether you got five employees or 300 or a thousand, that burden is definitely there all the time. So, so you raise some money. Well, what other tips and advice have you got for people that are kind of, you know, just in closing, but what do you have to help people who are in the stage you're in where you're, you're obviously having some success. How do you find that next stage? Where do you get into that?

25:03  Yeah, so stage is interesting, right? Because there's different stages, there's an evolution as you're kind of maturing through your life cycle, the business. One of the challenges that I have faced as we've grown this from a very scrappy young company to now really kind of professionalizing our execution is there are dimensions of the business that I really enjoy working kind of in an IC role, right? And so the challenge that I've worked with my coach on is elevating from someone who's working in the business, in the trenches, doing kind of IC work, to elevating up and working on the business and working closely with my team at skip levels, right? To execute on the plan. And where I've arrived on that is that it's really important for me to carve out some percentage of my week and be clear with my team on the areas of the business that I'm gonna continue to work in. And for me, that's having the client conversations, it's speaking to prospects, it's being out on the front lines. And, you know, I carve out a meaningful portion of my time to do that, because it's what fills my tank and it juices me up to come back and work across the rest of the business. So I guess one piece of advice is don't apologize for that. There's nothing wrong with continuing to you know, work, you know, in the business in some dimension, no matter how big your company gets, right, because as you professionalize, I want you to kind of elevate up out and I don't think you have to do that, yeah, in total.

26:42 I love it, love it. Trevor, that's awesome advice. I love that. This has been a great interview. And for those of you listening, pay attention to Trevor. If you fit in the range where he's looking at in terms of client avatar, definitely go take a look. Whether you are or not, go take a look at his site. Such great information, great calls to action. I'm sure that you're driving good ad revenue to your site because that is what you do. But like truthfully, go there to learn, because I think Trevor's full of information that he's being very humble about in trying to help you know that there's good money to spend and there's bad money to spend. And no matter what size your business is in, be thinking about your strategy. I love your advice of honing in on one core platform, make that one work until you get to a certain revenue number then talk about diversifying into multiple platforms. I think that's great advice. And when you are ready to diversify, get into bigger plays. Trevor's your man. Trevor, thanks so much for being here, buddy.

27:50 Thanks so much for having me, Todd. It's great to be here. Appreciate your time.

27:52 All right, we'll see the rest of you on the next episode.