Marketing Your Business w/CMO of Shyft, The Brand Behind Brands

welcome to the know your ship podcast presented by ehub I’m your
host Frank Dolce I have with me today the chief marketing officer at shift
the one the only Curtis Levi Lindsay dude that’s my why do why do people call
you Levi is that your middle that’s your middle name um I almost said
something dirty I can’t I can’t remember how edited this will be this this
will be highly edited you can say whatever you’d like my my mommy and daddy
just wanted to call me by my middle name I don’t know why that the Curtis is
silent who knows what just Ben it’s Ben a grammar thing just a benign name at
the beginning is silent yeah the Curtis in your name is silent yeah and it’s
just Levi mhm has that affected you mentally physically it’s it’s taken quite
a toll on my life for sure when people yell in a crowded subway station hey
Curtis oh look do you so you still identify with it I tell people Curtis is
like my like if I need to like get my accounting on and like do a spreadsheet
Curtis comes to play if it’s like if it’s like ooh fun time it’s like the
collar pops and and Levi out like my wife knows like if we’re talking
finances Here Comes Curtis it’s a night on the town yeah here comes Levi I
feel like I should adopt a similar strategy because my my real name is Francis
and maybe Francis really yeah Francis could maybe be the more formal and then
and then when I’m Frank then that’s when you want to be more serious yeah
yeah definitely little on the nose has your life been filled with those like
can I be frank jokes how often has that come up in your life regularly okay
regularly and and then the people who are you know saying the joke part of it
it’s always hilarious to that person it’s like they say it without thinking
that I’ve never with thinking I’ve never heard that like before like I got
him let me Frank and then you’re 78 and so like seven I’ll be 78 you’ll be 78
I’m just kidding you’re not a day over fabulous Francis thank you thank you
thank you Curtis here we go do we both have ADHD or just me I I do self-
diagnosed yeah well Frank has ADHD Francis he’s a much more solid kind of
character I could not be more excited to have you here today in all
seriousness because you are one of the most creative and thoughtful and
interesting people that I know you have a fascinating background I hope we
can talk about that a little bit that I think people would find extremely
helpful uh out outside of business and you have this great career uh that is
kind of aligned with the e-commerce space where we at e-hub operate so I’m
really excited to to dive into all of things yeah thanks for having me on
absolutely of course well let’s why don’t we just dive in let’s do it where
did you start where did you grow up from humble beginnings in Bountiful Utah
oh were you a brave or were you a I was a wild cat oh represent woodscross
wild cats Woods Cross yeah nice rough time we were good at theater and pot I
think at woodscross doing pot was that did was that an accredited course no
but that was like an elective it was an elective okay got you yep it was an
elective it was uh held in uh parking lot B Uh Wood Cross certain time up in
every day or was it just flexible flexible yeah okay of course yes okay so
humble beginnings at Woods Cross college or no College um I did so I went to
Salt Lake Community College for a year went on an LDS mission came back and
then did a little more slick and then I met my wife on Tinder shout out
Tinder where are my tiies at uh there’s no shame being 78 I’m not familiar
with that platform good I think that’s probably for the best uh being 78
where where was where were we oh oh yeah and then so then I went my I met my
wife on Tinder she was going to it was Dixie State then now it’s Utah Tech
right and she said you can either move to St George and marry me or wait till
I’m done which would have been like a year and a half later and so I married
her and then moved to St George and we both finished our uh I finished my
associate she finished her bachelor’s at Dixie State and then came back up
and then I finished uh my bachelor’s at Weber and I did a bachelor
professional sales at Weber really yeah it had yeah I was like okay I want to
go into marketing but I looked at the math required to do the marketing
degree and I didn’t want to do it so I chose the S professional sales degree
because it was I was done at math 1090 or whatever uhhuh so I was like I’ll
just do the professional sales degree cuz my dad I just want to check off the
box that I have a bachelor’s well remind me to ask you about that math and
marketing we’ll get into your marketing experience at some point and I want
to know if math has come into play math is so uh the devil created math uh at
the beginning of time uh I heard that yeah to just torture it’s part of our
experience on this Earth to just be tortured is math so what I I like math
because you can get to the you get to there’s an answer yeah that’s great I I
do love math I don’t love doing it but I love that it exists there are other
people I was think the same thing okay so in your in your childhood what was
was there something that you said like I I really like this I don’t know what
exactly what it’s called but kind of LED you down this marketing path where
there childhood experiences something growing up that demonstrated that she
would have some Acumen in this profession I I think I was always kind of a
weird kid I had hair down to my shoulders till I was like 16 uh and I would
like I was always wearing weird clothes and like I was I always demonstrated
creativity like if it if it came to math I sucked but then if it was like we
had to write a paper in English I would write like a five-page essay on like
why Michael Jackson was innocent uh of what of things some things we know
traffic violations yes I wrote a paper in fifth grade it was called um guilty
until proven innocent in fifth grade in fifth grade because I was like he is
innocent guys the irony of that as a young little boy writing this paper I I
now realize the irony as I’m saying it out loud but anyway I was always more
creatively inclined and I was always wearing like I wore Michael Jackson hats
and I would like do Michael Jackson videos my sister would record them on VHS
did you have zippers zippers on your and one rainbow suspenders I would have
killed for the red Thriller jacket or the jacket from beat it the red leather
yeah I would have killed which which is a better which is the best maybe
which is a better Michael Jackson video is it thriller or is it beat it
Thriller as far as video go beat it I could record beat it like the
production value on I have and I did and I will again I think I think like
Thriller was was was too like stage drama like what are you even saying right
now I thought be it was just more pure pure Michael Jackson it was raw uncut
that’s true there was less uh of a crutch for Michael yeah with all those
special effects yeah who needs those nobody Michael didn’t need those Michael
doesn’t need those Way Beyond his time anyway back to your childhood as
you’re writing papers to exonerate what a great segue Michael Jackson back to
your childhood so okay so you always creativ you demonstrated this yes you’ve
demonstrated this creativity in in your childhood and and was there did you
consider doing anything else professionally um I always wanted to be a
stand-up comedian growing up um and I did some standup in junior high and
Elementary and some in college um and I I remember going to the dentist once
and hearing that his schedule was like Tuesdays Thursdays and then like half
day Fridays and I was like maybe that’s what I want to do be a dentist be a
dentist uh so there was a brief moment where I was into Dentistry how long
did that last uh when I found out how much school is involved in D there’s
got to be math when I found out that it was math went beyond 1090 then that I
very quickly was not interested in that was it yeah yeah okay so uh you you
go through school you get into this sales kind of program you you come out
and you decide I’m going to go I’m going to go for it I’m going to become the
best marketing genius in the history of marketing well what’s funny is so I
feel like I don’t know if it was just being is olated in Bountiful but I felt
like uh you like marketing jobs I didn’t know anybody that had a marketing
job and so I didn’t have anybody to rely on I remember calling people and
asking them hey I’m going to do this professional sales degree do you think
that’s going to like hurt my ability to become a marketer down the road and
everyone I talked to was in sales and some people be like oh there’s a little
bit of marketing in my job and I like I remember thinking I’m just going to
be in sales like I I don’t think like I don’t I don’t think these marketing
jobs that you see on like Matthew mccon How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days how he’s
like pitching uh tell me you haven’t seen that movie you know it’s so funny
that you mention that because unfortunately I have seen that movie and I’ve
seen that movie within the last two weeks you can imagine that I I when I saw
that growing up I was like that’s what I want to do really yeah I was like I
want to be I want to just pitch ideas and be the idea man but then and I was
like trying to find someone who had that job in my life I could not find
anybody and so I was like I think I’m just going to end up in sales and then
I got so scared to death of ending up in sales I ended up starting a business
M and then realizing that was really really really really really really
really hard and running a business starting a business and running a business
I ended up where I am out of accident I think I don’t think I didn’t very
intentionally end up here well was the business that you started so I was
doing windshield repair for a guy um and i’ had been doing it since high
school and I when we went down to St George to school in St George I started
a branch for the company down there which I it it sounds fancier than it is I
just got a couple contracts with like Ken Garf and and a car wash to do
windshield repair at those places and then I hired a couple employees it was
like a really small outfit uh and then after a year I remember one the owner
of one of the car washes said hey why do you need this guy up north like why
don’t you just do this as your own business so I called up the guy who was my
boss at the time um and I said hey could I buy this from you and he said sure
and I gave him I think it was like $2,500 to buy the business which he could
have well one I couldn’t have paid for it so it’s not like he could have
negotiated more out of me but I it basically paid for the like the kit that I
had and then I had to learn how to like charge Insurance uh anyway uh for
rock chips and all that stuff yeah and then I owned that for about a year
nice and what what was the most valuable thing you learned well running
running that business well one one thing that’s cool is I learned a lot of
the lessons the hard way which was like one I learned about working capital
because I hired a guy and I remember uh I thought it was so cool cuz I went
to my little apartment my little College department and watched Law and Order
and I would just get these dings of sales and I was like this is what they
talk about like I am an Entre freaking preneur like I am getting paid to sit
here and I was like this is freaking sweet and then uh he was a rough dude I
hired him like he was literally out of prison uh but he’s a he was a good guy
and he was a hustler but it came time to pay him his paycheck and I the cash
hadn’t come in from insurance yet so I didn’t have the working capital to pay
him like I was like hey man you’re going to have to wait another like two
weeks when I get paid by the insurance to be able to like actually start
paying you lucky luckily he was really patient about it but uh yeah I was
like oh working capital that’s like I didn’t even know the phrases for this
stuff but you just like you learn them by just diving in and getting to know
it yeah well sometimes you know that’s the best way rather than thinking
about it and thinking about it and thinking about it sometimes you do just
have to jump in and hopefully make meaningful mistakes but mistakes that you
can just learn from yeah and and it doesn’t collapse your business have you
ever been in that experience uh where it collapsed my business yeah vid army
yes vid Army collapsed that now was that your second operating operating
agreements yeah so I I got out of the windshield so I ended up actually
becoming business partners with the guy I bought the business from and I did
that for like another year while I finished at Weber and then um I left that
to start vid army with a buddy um and uh my wife was pregnant with our first
and I just graduated uh Weber when we started vid Army and that was spoiler
alert that was a great learning experience of everything not to do a lot of
those working cap hey I didn’t know working capital by then but there was
there you go but I didn’t know that oh hey you should probably have an
operating agreement with your business partner uh just basic stuff like that
it’s just just a handshake and trust and that didn’t turn out so well no and
how long was how long was that business in up and operational so three years
until I left um and we had built it up to about 17 employees who was doing
six figures a month in in Revenue um and it’s Heyday so this is also your
experience on a more personal level where you learned some valuable lessons
yeah would that be accurate yeah for sure do you do you want to talk about
that at all yeah my first panic attack was was operating the business that
third year when things started getting really hard when we started butting
heads uh as the cap table of the business um and I started getting frustrated
and stretched beyond my capabilities I mean I was like trying to wrap my head
around finances and employees and HR and clients and account management and
creative work and a and a partner you had a partner at this point we had so
two partners at that point um one partner was deployed to California so 33%
is deployed in California and can’t work on the business uh 33% is uh wanting
to go be with their family at home but wanting to keep the equity and wanting
to um get paid a salary with not really a guarantee of like I can have a job
in the business um and that’s really where things kind of came to odds and
then lawyers got involved and it was crazy yeah and could any of that could
that have been avoided in some way as you look back on this experience um
yeah I think biggest big biggest learning experience out of that I mean
agreements aren’t like fail safe like there’s ways to get around them and and
reinterpret them but one thing I did learn is that like you get into business
with people so quick like when you date somebody you date them for a year
sometimes when you get into business with somebody it’s like I’ve known this
person for two weeks and so I think if the biggest thing I learned is have an
agreement in place and then you can trust don’t just trust and then not have
an agreement any other issues that came out of that experience I mean you’ve
talked about having agreements in place and uh maybe other ways to avoid the
circumstances that you found yourself in three years into the business what
about you personally how did you come out of that uh it was rough rough rough
rough I so one big one big learning was tying my identity to outcomes and
tying my identity to the business itself because we we built in public and
that was with limited marketing budgets and a and a bootstrap business we
were really just building in public on LinkedIn as as a way to get leads and
it was working that’s how we got all of our business we closed Amazon because
I got I got known as someone who had a video production company and I got
tagged in um one of the VP of advertising VPS of advertising at Amazon I got
tagged in one of the comments when they were looking for video so it was
really beneficial to build in public but because of that my identity was very
much also tied to the business it was that’s Levi founded vid Army um like
you know you talked to Johnny Hannah and it was like oh that’s Johnny Hannah
from homie um like it’s very common to tie entrepreneurs to the business that
they found especially ones where they’re very loud about it and very uh they’re
good at self-promotion of being the owner of that business and so uh when you
when that gets yanked away it’s like well wait crap I’m a failure like the
business failed and so I’m a failure um and I kept telling myself I’ll be
happy when vid Army succeeds I’ll be happy when vid Army has has this much
revenue and so when vid Army fails it’s like well crap that was what I was
holding out on to be happy so I’m not happy now so H how do you approach
things differently now I mean that’s an unbelievable learning experience and
how do you approach life differently um well I now realize that you can
always start another business you can always get another client um but you
only have one family you only only have one life um and a lot of our time is
spent worrying about things that actually are fixable and don’t matter you
talked in the past about taking some time off is that as a result of this
experience as well the just stepping away for some period of time getting
whatever recharge you need and then stepping back in yeah I one of the
biggest people would tell me when I was in the thick of it and I think it was
something I had to experience to really learn but I would think if I go on a
vacation and put my phone away and don’t answer I’m going to lose the entire
business is going to crumble in all reality maybe you lose a client and I
would think I can’t lose a client I can’t go out of town and lose a client
but it’s such a catch22 because the truth is is you need to go out of town so
that you can gain three more clients and maybe you lose one but and and
frankly going outside of business it’s better that you lose a client than
Lose Yourself uh and I would go on vacation and my wife it sucked because I’d
be angry and honry because I remember being on the beach in Hawaii and one of
our videographers deleted uh we had an aam and bcam always on set and our
videographer deleted the entire bcam so we only only had the aam and it was
really important because we edited in such a way that we had to have an aam
bcam or else it’d be all choppy um anyway so I’m on the beach in Hawaii and
my wife is trying to enjoy herself and I’m sitting here calling and seeing
what we can do and talking to the employee and tell walking them through it
it’s like I I wish that I would have just been like oh whatever like we’ll
lose the client or hey just deal with it whatever like I think it takes more
experience I think it takes losing a lot of clients and bouncing around to
different things and even losing a business to realize like there is life
after a losing client there is life after losing a business and that allows
you to enjoy life in the present is to realize that there’s just an abundance
of that stuff but there’s just one moment yeah well I thought that was super
interesting in listening to some of the stuff that you’ve done in the past
because it’s it’s hard to you get so ingrained in the success of your
business and what you’re trying to do and that you forget about all of the
other stuff and it’s it’s really difficult to step away it can be really
difficult to step away and uh and once you realize that that time away is
almost as valuable as being in the business every day then I mean it’s just
it’s something that every business owner everyone who’s working in a business
needs to learn yeah so you you’ve had this really interesting career to the
point where you are now I it seems like you’ve landed in a really really good
spot with shift for sure that was a question I couldn’t I was like wait uh to
my CEO that wasn’t a bad pause we could probably edit this out should we
start over edit it to where I answered right away yes excitedly so so uh and
and do you find yourself like based on where you are currently where you were
when you started like how would you judge yourself where would you put
yourself on the scale of a of a you know a professional in the is in the
business every single day oh man that’s a good question I I still think I
have a lot of experience that I need to have um I there’s a lot of cool
things I’d still like to do um I don’t know I one of my favorite phrases is
is be easily pleased but never satisfied um it’s it’s it’s being grateful for
where you are and what you have but not being satisfied and and getting
complacent sure I have a hard time with the opposite of uh always wanting to
be better that I forget to have gratitude of where I’m at and um so I don’t
know I I’d like to be in a place place where I’m more easily pleased and and
never satisfied but I’m more just never satisfied got well let me let me ask
you about what you’re doing currently so obviously e-hub we work in the
eCommerce world and in the shipping and Logistics technology and we have a
several clients who are Our Brands and and and those clients might find what you
do particularly interesting so maybe you could take a few minutes and just
educate The Listener about shift yeah you know it’s funny we in the last year
we’ve really figured out we had to kind of take a look at ourselves and ask
us ask ourselves what do we do that nobody else does better than us and we do
a lot so it kind of had to we had to take a look okay we do product
development and supply chain and and uh we make Tech packs and blah blah blah
and we had to take a look it came down to we find money in people’s Supply
chains so we take a look at your supply chain and we figure out where there’s
either cost savings or opportunities for you to have more working capital
through a line of credit or or whatever it may be or or faster lead times so
we have offices in Mexico China and Vietnam maybe you could be in Mexico so
you have faster lead times coming into the us or or maybe you need to be in
Vietnam so you can avoid tariffs in China or uh we just a lot of people tend
to pick a supply chain and kind of just grow with it and we come in and
analyze it and say are you in your best most optimal supply chain because for
a lot of companies doing over 2 million a year it can mean hundreds of
thousands of dollars if your package is a little too big like we’ve we’ve
found hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings for companies and saying
your packaging could be shrunk by an inch um so there’s just a lot of things
that uh a lot of levers to pull and we go in and we analyze it all and and
we’re your supply chain expert it’s it’s so funny that you mentioned that we
we deal with that all the time and in fact I just received uh a package from
no it wasn’t Amazon I’m going to throw Amazon right under the bus it was from
another company like a Marketplace and it was let call it it rhymes with
schaman it was a license plate frame in a box almost the size of your chair
like so so much waste in in that and that’s something that you guys would go
in and figure out now you’ll you’ll you’ll do everything from the start to
the Finish is that correct I mean you’ll take a product design or even help
build manufacture it build the packaging for it help with the whole process
yeah so we have a a design team and a uh an operations team team in the here
in the US in orm and uh we’ll take it from concept or we’ll take an existing
product and find improvements while we’re finding the cost savings a lot of
time we even find we can save you sometimes like hey we saved you a dollar on
your cost of goods and we improved the quality because um we made you a tech
pack for standardized manufacturing and and then we have quality on that are
boots on the ground in your country that can go visit your factory on a
weekly basis monthly basis whatever it is um so it’s just everything to do
with the product until it gets to the 3pl once it’s to the 3pl that’s where
our expertise really stops and that’s where your guys’s begins absolutely
nice very nice plug can is there a is there a brand or is there a customer
that you can tell us about that that people might know about and even take us
through how you’ve worked with that particular client um yeah I think thread
wallets is a good one um it’s it’s kind of cool to see shift and thread kind
of grew up together uh and we’re we’re really blessed to be tied to customer
growth it’s very much in our interest to make sure they grow um that and that
we can be a good partner and I think thread is a really cool example of us um
working very early on from early stage prototypes from Kobe Bower and and uh
seeing taking their designs and then making it come to life at a sustainable
margin and um changing companies and factories as they’ve grown and uh it
it’s been cool to to be a part of the story we’re we’re kind of the brand
behind Brands you know that there’s some that I can’t mention that you would
definitely know but um and that’s we don’t mind being that because we we’re
we’re the we’re we do the unsexy stuff for them so that they can go and sell
product so H how far along was thread in the design or manufacturing process
when they came to you and said hey we have this thing man it was re from what
I understand it was really early on I’ve only been in shift like a little
over a year but um shift is seven years old and thread is what I think it’s
five or six years old and so I think thread might have been you know like a
year or so man don’t quote me on any of this but uh it’s well I don’t have to
because it’s being recorded so it’s recorded but you don’t say anything about
it later I so it was very early on from what I understand uh and and when you
say when you talk about um if you’re not familiar with thread by the way like
they have all of these cool products in fact I purchased one I I did a I did
a bike race a long bike race and I like to carry my credit card and ID with
me but my my wallet is also this thick yeah so that are you the George
castanza wallet guy is difficult in the back of your kit on a bike and so I
just got one of the little thread wallets that you know the pocket you just
slide your stuff in there it’s super convenient super nice yeah and and uh
when when you jumped into that or when you got involved with that um and they
said we want to produce these particular wallets at that point do you take
over is it collaborative how does that work with the client it’s very
collaborative um I mean thread will talk directly to the factories but then
we’re there helping with purchase orders um making sure that their design
teams uh because there’s really design and development in making a physical
product um and design can often be a little more aspirational um but then
coming in and and developing it so it’s like hey we need this quality
standard making a tech pack which I didn’t know what any of the stuff was till
I started shift but a tech pack is like that blueprint like if it was if
making clothing was architecture like you need a blueprint like you need a
tech pack that says uh for the factory this is what I want a lot of the times
factories will kind of just wing it or make a tech pack of their own uh and
then they’ll own and keep the tech pack like it it’s just uh it’s a it’s a
partner that can come in and um help liaison with the factories help you find
the right Factories do audits negotiate with the factories the rates um
someone right there speaking the language and then speaking English for us
here in the us if we don’t speak that language and then on the ground there
speaking the language um to get stuff and uh faster all that I this is where
I need to do better as CMO at like I honestly they should throw me in the
deep end on a client because there’s so much to supply chain that I’m missing
out on and that people don’t give credit to people that do Supply chains or
do operations for Ecom companies because there’s a lot and we tend to
oversimplify it sure well let let’s talk about that your role with with shift
as Chief marketing officer so uh like what I I think people get kind of a
misconception when they say Chief mark officer like you’re the guy that makes
TV commercials or in this particular scenario how do you work with shift to
help spread their message um so a Content like this um has been awesome uh
but it’s been B2B is just so much more partnership based which I actually
really enjoy it’s getting to know people and um providing value for other
people and not asking for anything in return and then one day they’ll hit you
up back up and say hey I finally found like a referral for you and it’s the
perfect person so like I I I like it because you just get to care about
people very unconditionally and then sales comes as a byproduct or the leads
come as a byproduct thankfully I don’t have to close them I just pass them
off to sales so I just get to be the good guy the relationship Builder but I
actually really really love that um in my other roles as creative director or
at kisik um VP of content um it it was much more like put out good pieces of
content and then people will resonate with it and move down the funnel or
convert based on the content but B2B marketing at shift has been very just
who helping be a part of the community of of e-commerce service providers um
and just being being friends building relationships gotcha okay I’m going to
ask you two questions in one you can answer it any way that you’d like yeah I
want to know either about the greatest success that you’ve had at shift or
the biggest failure that you’ve had and if you’ve learned anything from
either of those experiences I think um a big failure the that I can say is
that we we wasted a lot of time in the beginning because shift actually grew
to when I joined they were at like 21 million last year we did 37 million um
in annual revenue uh and I was the first marketing person and then I also
joined with a salesperson and so that was uh or someone to come on and Lead
sales and so that was the first time doing it it really just kind of grown
through client growth and through referrals um which is really impressive and
it’s fully bootstrapped um and so this was really our first attempt at
marketing shift itself and so there’s been a lot of learning in hindsight’s
2020 obviously but I can look back and say the biggest mistake has been
marketing to people that we that aren’t the right fit and marketing um shift
in the wrong way with the wrong value proposition so just either it’s the
right person but right wrong value proposition or wrong person and wrong
value proposition or any combination of those so are you getting are you
getting better at that yeah and I’m a yes guy uh I’m like come one come all
and I get revenue fomo and I want every like everyone’s my ICP and if they
aren’t we’ll make it work I have a hard time uh I have a hard time saying no
especially when that person’s a friend and they’re like hey can you help out
with this project project even if it’s not a fit I just have a hard time
being like no we’re just really not the right person for that and so I hate I
love but hate that there is an ICP and there’s a lane that you stick in
because I I just like selling to everyone all the time everything but have
you had that experience of trying to force force fit and it just doesn’t turn
out that well it ends up being a bad experience because either we take it on
and it wasn’t within our wheelhouse and we poop the bed or uh we don’t we we
say you shipped the bed we shipped the bed yeah exactly or uh we don’t take
it on and I am like why are we taking this on and there’s a little
frustration on my part so which that’s the better one I’d rather be
frustrated than us uh take something on that we shouldn’t gotcha interesting
well I I think we’re going to move on to my favorite part of the podcast
that’s okay with you did you have any anything else you wanted to say about
shift no that’s it or any of the people that you were working with about that
one guy you work with that you were telling me about before yeah you want to
talk about that wait which one that you know that guy which what are you
talking about the big guy I think you refer to him as the big guy no maybe
we’ll just leave that the big guy yeah for another time I am I am I putting
you on the spot no I don’t know who you’re talking about oh you’re better at
this than I am what do you mean you’re better at this game that than I am
what lying yeah t