Today's guest is Michael Cronin, founder of Acquire Agency, a social media agency that's spent over One Hundred Million Dollars on Facebook Ads.
His company is one of the top 40 US spenders on Facebook ads and the experience he freely gives in this episode is something you'll come back to again and again.
Michael goes deep into what it takes to successfully launch or scale your business, a quick rundown of how to tell if an entrepreneur can be profitable in their advertising, and so much more.
Be sure to subscribe and leave us a review if you're enjoying the show!
Grab your drink and get ready. This is the caffeinated hustle. The best place to learn about entrepreneurs and FTS and life expert advice and guest interviews to launch your business and NFT journey further than you ever imagined. Now, here's your host, entrepreneur, coffee fanatic and founder of the NFT project, caffeinated creatures, Ben Carson. Hey, welcome back to the caffeinated hustle. I'm your host, Ben Carson. thanks for stopping by. All right team. Today, we're gonna drop some amazing value in your day. We have a phenomenal guests that I just can't wait to just introduce to you just get that information out there. You're just gonna listen this one over and over, I can tell. So I've got a very special guest, Michael Cronin. Michael has spent over $100 million on Facebook ads, and he sold a lot of pantyhose and some other stuff, his exact words, Michael, welcome to the show. Glad to be here. I love the intro. Because you know, for those that don't know, I always have the guests give their own version for an intro. And you know, just nonchalantly say yeah, I've spent $100 million. But just on pantyhose, no big deal. Like that just cracks me up. Yeah, it's funny how it played out. I'm sitting here, you know, there's a talking about, like, how did I get here? And like looking and yeah, one of my clients we started with, we started with their Kickstarter, and they were spending like $5,000. And they just raise $101 million and sell pantyhose. And I'm, like, proud as heck. So I'm super proud for all they achieved, and I'll be achieved with them. And so yeah, I've started to tell everyone, I'm the world's top pantyhose salesperson. That's great. All right. Well, I mean, for those that haven't heard you before, how about you give us a quick, you know, five minutes or less just a rundown of your history of how you got where you're at what you're doing now? Sure. So I'm Michael, founder of acquire agency now acquires a performance paid Facebook agency. So we're specialty and that everything we do is measured to a sale. And we only work on one vertical like Facebook and Instagram, what you can buy through the Facebook Ads Manager. I've been working on Facebook and Instagram ads for like the last 10 years, I dropped out of school and start a Grocery Coupon app with Michele Romanow. Actually, who's now the founder of clear co she's a dragon's on Dragon's Den, which is like Canadian Shark Tank, we grew that and sold it to Groupon. I was a Groupon for a couple years sort of did the corporate thing. So they were doing paid advertising at scale, I launched and started a soap left and started a soap company that did really well right when Facebook video came out. And I just became pretty, pretty obsessed with the intersection of video and data. So understanding, hey, if we made an edit one way, you know, how would it work, if we made an edit another drive on the sales that was back in the era, the standard for editors who were fancy advertising people to do was to put a three second bumper of a logo at the front of the video, which we now know is like, just insanely bad practice. So I sort of did some innovative stuff and edits there lots of stuff company launched three companies in a row that failed real fast and not great, and then ended up launching the agency. So that's grown to a team of 30. In the last four years, we're a great team. We're a premium Facebook partner, so one of the top 40 spenders in North America, we get a ton of attention from Facebook, we don't always listen to them. But yeah, that's a bit of background, we've spent over $100 million. We've talked a lot of brands grow that you might now especially if you're in a female fashion with Mejuri share tax, or some you know, so we've worked with a lot of great brands over time now. And we really got going helping brand new startups grow companies spending their first advertising dollars, when we started four years ago. And now we've grown to I think we're just we're really exceptional because we keep spending performance dollars at scale. And we can still get great results. So we can spend seven figures monthly on an account, which is something that a lot of agencies start switching to brand awareness or saying we can't track it anymore, because it's too much money. And like we'll keep tracking. That's amazing. There's so much to unpack there, we have to start with the obvious question and the obvious statement, you are like the entrepreneur of entrepreneurs, and I love that you had massive success, went to Groupon and then did your soap thing went on after that and failed. And it's not just like stairstep of success, like reality is like even if you have a win, you're still gonna have losses and you just kept on going like that was that's very inspirational, because most people just say screw it. I've already had one winner. I'll stop. Yeah, I was 20 when we sold the group on, which isn't necessarily the healthiest thing. You don't necessarily need like a limitless spending again, I got into a lot of trouble and thought I was hot and then had the second half in a row with the soap company. Yeah, I thought it was untouchable. And then I got properly humbled with like few projects in a row. That was probably the best thing that could have happened to me. Yeah, for sure. That's still Wow, what a journey though man that's a that's you should be very proud of yourself because that is a something that anyone along the way would probably just be happy and you're like No, let's just move on to the next thing. So video advertising through Facebook totally understand that people's attention spans are so short, you're doing it differently. Did you teach yourself all this? Did you partner with the right people? What What were you doing exactly in this role to help grow the company? So I Learn from my mentors who learn from their mentors who learn from a tradition of direct response advertising. And what that is, is measured ads per dollar. And I need to see results out. And so I learned from them, I got in on the ground floor in the app game. On Facebook, if you look at the evolution of Facebook ads like app, were the first thing that I think, started to really understand how powerful this advertising platform was, because direct response was back and it was back off. And then had been off since like the 70s. Because radio and TV came in, in the 70s, right, and these were untried platforms that were met, like mega successful, got the entire audience on them. And all the mail to home was the only thing left. And that was direct response. If you previously people were ordering out of catalogs, mainly. And so direct response advertising was the main way that people advertised, I think some got left behind. I had a lineage of that through several mentors, several mentors through a guy who was at HP a long time ago, to like down and my mentors, Anatolian Michelle really sat with me and I learned a lot. I started as an intern at their company, and I just would work the full day and then say, what else can I help with. And I was working like, I did a year straight with no days off in the office 12 plus hours a day, and I just started taking on everything. And it turned out, I really had a knack with Facebook ads thing. There wasn't a rule book at that time. There wasn't a pixel at that time. We were really like inventing stuff as we went. And a lot of what we invented, then I still use in terms of the theory behind my strategy. And so yeah, develop that carried that through saw the way Groupon was doing things and then really interacted with the soap company, what was working, those other three companies tested a bunch of different stuff. And so I think the long winded answer comes to say, I don't think of myself entirely self taught, I had a lot of help along the way. I did a lot of original thinking along the way as well, which I think really helped me in the industry. And I think the only reason I think about this all the time, why am I successful, like I shouldn't be in this industry. Like I dip into the advertising industry. I never worked at an agency, I had no respect for the industry. And all of a sudden, like, I've got a successful agency that grew quite quickly. And I think it's just that I entered an industry at the right time, which was that direct response is now performance advertising is now becoming the dominant form of advertising again. Right. And so I got in right at the tail end of brand advertising, I can't compete with them. And that world I don't want to I think it's nearly fraudulent. I think it's bad like the what happens in the TV radio side, but now it's performance wave is up, I sort of caught that wave in a really great way. So So yeah, that's a bit of background in terms of how I ended up where I did. So you said timing was everything for you a little bit. I mean, time is very important for you will say like that. So someone that wants to start an agency now that's worked for someone else for a bit, and they feel like, you know, third point in their journey, it's time for them. Do you feel like the markets a little more saturated now than it needs to be? And it's a tough time to start? Do you think this is a great time to start? Is there always room for the top? Where do your stances on competition entering the space at this point? I think the industry is in a little bit of a weird period right now, I think it's gonna be really hard for small startups for the next five years. I think that the fortune five, hundreds are doing a lot of performance advertising, but they're building up in house teams. So there's really all the agencies are going to get pushed to the middle size of clients, you know, I think there's room to be a specialty if you can really be great at your specialty. And that's another thing I've done right with acquire is really stuck into Facebook and Instagram ads and being really good at that. So I think if there's, you know, if you think you're really exceptional at email marketing, and you can set up drip campaigns better than anyone else, and you really can. There's always an opportunity for you out there. If you want to launch a digital advertising agency that supports whatever people ask for. And you think you're good at everything, like good luck. You know, I don't think there's room for that. That's really good advice, because I've used a couple agencies for my art business. And I definitely went the wrong direction and show some of those jack of all trades, and I did not return any sort of investment or what I spent it was just a learning experience. And I just chalked it up to that moved on. But that's a good point there. So $100 million. What's your average customer at this point? Are you still dealing with any sort of small startups like people, like you said, You are a little bit actually. So do you feel like you enjoy the small startups more? Or are these people more established clients with massive brands, massive expense accounts that can kind of go down this path? And where do you find the sweet spot for your customers these days? Even I mean, most almost all of our clients are like, less than 10 years old. So even if they're getting going to have it still, you know, like, there's there's folks out there spending seven figures a month that are that are less than 10 years old, right. And we still work with some new startups. I still talk to a lot of new startups, I sometimes refer them to other agencies, and try to help them find a happy home. I love helping startups I you know, we also have companies who have scaled up and so as we've sort of grown through that we've become more expensive. And sometimes we're not the best option for a new startup Occasionally, when I see someone really on to the right thing, and I think they're really good entrepreneur, I will work with them. And so but I have enough data to get exposure on what's happening across different markets, with active clients and with with accounts that I see. Yeah, and that's a good point. I mean, you have 30 people on your team, you have legitimate overhead, you're not trying to price gouge anyone, just because you're established you, you just have to handle all the expenses and do it accordingly. But let's say someone feels like they want to work with you. They feel like their business is at a good point, are there any sort of metrics where you really just want to meet the person just based off the founder themselves more than, you know, if they can afford three months at this, or six months of this, when you're bringing on new clients, I do a pretty simple cash flow model for all my clients. So the first check they have to make it through is like, do I think they're on point and it's crazy? How many startups aren't really even checking things like their average basket size, cost of goods sold? What an anticipated cost of sales, or like a CAC, or, or like cost per purchase from advertising would be? And then the cost of an agency's and tracking all those things and seeing are they in the red or the black. And I think I sometimes wake up call founders and be like, Hey, you're burning, and you're gonna keep burning, right. So that's the first sort of level to pass. Like, I need businesses that can be cashflow positive, because I don't spend budgets, I spent two ro ss, meaning that if I see there's a profitability threshold for my ads, meaning per dollar, and I get so many dollars out, I want the client who if I get, like $4 out per dollar, and I can just keep scaling. And it's even better if I have a client who I can get if I can get $2 out from $1. And their colleagues and their businesses efficient enough that we can really scale from $2 up for $1. And right. And so what that literally means is, if I spend $100 on an ad, I drive $200 In sales, right for that client, if they're cogs on those $200 of sales is $50. We basically made $50, on the you know, 100 250 on the cost of the product 50. Left, I can keep going all that. And that's how I've helped companies grow exponentially. So when I see a client with those factors really lined up well, with the founder, who I think can keep up with inventory scales, because it's a big issue I've had is like, oh, I can push the guest. And then, you know, especially like complicated smart devices was an area that I was helping grow and like all have their factories when not deliver the reissues. So I ended up way more in fashion because of it. So when those metrics sort of line up correctly, I think there's a right founder, and, you know, and I believe in the product, and there's a chance I might, I might work with that company. Yeah, otherwise, like, we're generally working with folks. And then 250 Plus, yeah, I kind of, I kind of equate this to like, almost like a poker dealer, because like, you know, all these econ players are just players at the table, but the dealer sees everyone play all the time, and you just really kind of understand, you probably understand ecommerce more more than most founders do. Because you've worked with so many types, and you've understood so many processes along the way. Like, I would hate to be in that conversation that you're basically telling the founder, hey, this isn't my company, but you're not going to make it like you're doing like that's just got to be a such a weird. As a founder, you're not expecting that from someone you're trying to hire on, you know, you're expecting them to say, Yeah, I'll spend your money I'll give you like, that's got to be such a, an eye opening experience. I think it's one of the things that people appreciate me the most for, I become a little known for it. But it's just that, like, I am so honest. And so over the top honest with people, and if I think that there's a chance that brands not gonna work out, and then they're losing their money, like, I'll tell them that. And it's actually one of the ways my business has grown, is I get referrals to the other clients who maybe are lined up correctly, from people who say, hey, this was a one guy I've ever talked to in my entire career who said, No, that you're not right for me. And I think people really appreciate it. And I think more vendors out there need to be taking a hard look at themselves and saying, Hey, am I taking on clients who I know aren't right for me? Do I know that this relationship is doomed? Am I doing this just for the three months that they'll stay for before they fire me miserably? Which like, there's so much turnover in the industry right now? Like, there's actually positive benefit to speaking, honestly speaking your mind and saying what's going to work and not and people will appreciate you for it. So, yeah, I mean, I would challenge other service providers to hone in on where they're really helping people where their ideal client profile is, and like, say no to people and explain why and don't be, you know, a jerk about it. But people will really appreciate it from you. And they'll have more respect for our side of the industry if we start to do that more. And if you're getting referrals down the way, I mean, they're gonna remember that conversation. I mean, you're going to interview a lot of people when you're trying to hire someone on but if someone tells you no, because you're not good enough yet. I mean, that's gonna make it very different from that's just, I love your story. Because from all the way back you basically said you were doing what everyone else is doing just doing a little differently and now you're, you're still doing things differently. Nik, I think that's just should be a testament to everybody in this space for the entrepreneur journey. If you're going to do what everyone else is doing, why are they gonna go with you, you got to do it better, you got to do it differently, you got to make yourself stand out in a in a positive way, and you're not cheating anyone along the path. And that's how you succeed here, you got to do it differently, but better and be honest, the whole time. Practically, I think the the way to do that it's do less better, do less better expand on that a little bit, because people want to do more better, I want to be better because I have more features, I have more buttons on the gadget, have more, you know, I, this, you know, the first thing people jump to is just kind of Christ. The second thing people jump to is, like, I'm going to distinguish three things, I'm going to do five things, and people are gonna want me because I do five, it's like no, people buy the thing that does three things, because they want the one thing that it does quite well. Right. And if you just do that one thing quite veteran dropped the other two, you can do quite well. And so I mean, I think about that in ecommerce companies who launched with stores with 50 products in them. And only two of those products sell. And then they focus on building the collection of the other 48 products. And it's like, you've got the two that sell well, why don't you try to improve that? Like, how will you have 10 products, you know, I don't think you should have one product, but how many have 10. And you really hone in on what your winners are. And so I think as an entrepreneur, if there's something that you're good at get better at that thing, that's how you can become exceptional, right? You don't become exceptional by, you're not that smart. And you don't have that much time. And you're not that good, you're not going to be the best at 10 different things. If someone specializes in any one of those 10 different things, they're going to end up better than you. And the folks are good at 10 Different there's not zero folks out there who are we're good at 10 different things. But they're really exceptional. They've been doing it for a really long time. You know, and and you don't understand the history behind that. Right. And so if you've looked at some of the mature growing digital advertising companies, you know, they've been in the game for like 10 years. And so New entrants want to start and replicate something that's been around for 10 years, that didn't that happens across entrepreneurship all the time. That's often not how they started. They started with one thing really well, they went eight years doing one thing really well. And then their ninth year, they had enough resourcing team to expand into nine other things. And you look at that company and go, Oh, they do 10 things. I'm gonna watch doing 10 things. Well, that's not how they made it there. No, that's I love that answer. Love that. All right, let's try and talk to some of the listeners that are trying to do ads for themselves. They're not making enough money that they can go out for an agency, what's some information, some tips, just help out the people that want to get better, but they're not ready for outside marketers take care of them. So if they're doing themselves, what would you recommend? Give them some information, some advice here, it's really easy to hold someone else's futures and encourage accountability from them. And it's really easy to let your own feet off the fire. Right? So first off, make yourself as accountable to yourself as if you were an external person, haven't make yourself have to have a report that you present yourself, saying, here's why this week was right, you know, I think I think it's really easy to have an external partner and grow frequently. And then I think when you're in house, it's very easy to let things slide. So that's the thing. I think, also, if you don't know what you're doing, recognize it, it's costing you more money than working with an external partner. Right, especially if your spins are getting higher, but like, then the things I see in accounts are alike, and the dollar figures behind them. mind boggling, like, Oh, here's $20,000, I spent entirely the wrong way, I had zero chance of driving a sale, it was brand awareness the whole way. And I thought that, you know, things would generally end up doing like the platform's aren't your friends, that's the other biggest piece of advice I would have for you Facebook once your money. Google wants your money. I've seen you know the YouTube program at Google talk people into spending $200,000 on a campaign without driving a sale, they finance it for the founder so they could pay it back over two years. They didn't drive a single sale, they hunted that founder down with collections agencies for two years, and almost one minute personal bankruptcy, right? Wow, spending brand awareness, money. And so like, I think brand awareness is so wrong. And it's so like, it doesn't work. And they know it doesn't work, if what you're doing is worth it to drive sales that you can track, right? And so if anyone's telling you any story, Besides, you're gonna see sales from this, in the near term. They're generally lying to you about what kind of traffic you're driving to. Right, including Facebook, including Google, like brand awareness on Facebook doesn't drive any incremental improvement, that means it's doing nothing, because Facebook knows who are the people who we show ads to. Right? And they don't purchase. And then who are the people who we show ads to and they click but they don't purchase and who are the people who show us when they purchase. So it's your brand awareness Website Traffic Conversion audiences, the different types of campaigns that you can run on Facebook. And so I would be very cautious if if you don't know what you're doing and you're spending brand awareness website traffic, you should like call an expert and at least most experts will do an audit, listen to their audit and do what they tell you what they said in the audit like beat their system, but it You know, I think that, that if you're doing brand awareness, website traffic, it's time to call someone else. If you're in conversion ads, and you're saying what he's saying is super redundant things you can do to improve is like, generally people don't work enough on their creative before they get to an agency. So work hard on your creative and spending more money on your creative. How many creatives Do you think you should have before even considering on an agency? Because I've know, you have one good creative and you're like, I'm set that's not even close to accurate. When we work on some of our accounts at scale. We put out like 1000 creatives a month. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Obviously, before you get to an agency, you don't have to do that. It's a good question. I mean, if you if you had one creative and admitted it, and you got a really high robust and rescale, like, I'd be like licking my chops looking at your account going, Oh, I can, like do so well with that. Right? I think that like I would think about it in a flowchart. But I think that flowchart has has top sections like we we do this system internally is called variation, iteration optimization that we call the VO, at the top variation, big changes super distinct from each other, you would probably want three to four things that are very distinct from each other, that you've found success in, I care less about iteration and the optimizations, which is usually what people care about. Usually, people make one distinct thing, it works, and then make tons of tiny tweaks to it. Right, your agency, whoever can make tons of tiny tweaks, I'd rather see two to three things that are different, that work. So for example, if you're selling swimwear, I want to see two distinct demographics, Representative ads, and they're both making sales. So maybe a young audience at the beach and an older audience with the pool. And if you have both those things, that's an indicator for the agency, that this is a brand that can expand outside of that small niche. And it's an indicator yourself that it should be able to do that as well. So that when you go to the agency, you can say, hey, I opened the door in both these areas you should be able to walk through, you should be able to really push us to the next level, I think that what you just said was was gold. So I'm just gonna say real fast for the listeners just take this. If you're thinking about working with an agency, what Michael just said was phenomenal. If you can open the door Gogan agency to push you through it. But if you came in open your own door, don't go find an agency, because they're not going to do what you expect them to do. And you're going to burn through money. So that was that was a massive golden nuggets, I just want to make sure the listeners heard that. I can also talk a little bit about like, what the red flags are, when you're looking for agencies, 100%, let's do that. When you go and find an agency, they should be talking to you about finances, they should be laying out a list of what they think they can achieve in terms of sales. And if they can't achieve it, you should fire them. Right? That's what I do. People have replicated the other folks, we're kind of doing it. But it's pretty standard in the industry. Now, here's what my sales numbers should be after month, one month, two month, three months, four months, five, iOS 14 Things happen in the industry prices go up. There's reasons why you fall off that report card sometimes. But generally, you should have the report card. The second thing is that every report they send you should have sales on the top if you're in the E commerce world, right. And if it doesn't have if it has impressions, or traffic or reflects on the top, you're generally probably with someone who isn't being helpful, and then you're laughing, but it's more than half the industry is doing it that way. Oh, I felt that pain. That's why I'm just laughing that you're bringing up some PTSD here. You know, it's not, no one has 100% success rate in this agency world. You know, some brands work and you know, it didn't work with that particular agency. But you can at least be honest in terms of how how you're reporting, and how you're laying out what success looks like. It's so interesting, because there's so many numbers you can throw out. And especially if you're a newer entrepreneur, and you're just trying to get your name out there fast by spending the money, as long as you're seeing some sort of large numbers, you're thinking it's working. So we're just going to keep going. So how long do you give, if you're an entrepreneur, you're going to bring someone on? I mean, most agency owners are going to try and get you on for three months, six months, you know, like they want a steady income, they want to make sure they have time. From an entrepreneurial perspective. How long do you give someone taking over your accounts? Do the marketing before they work? Do you give them one month? Should you try and give them three? Like what's a realistic timeline that makes sense for both sides instead of just so like on my contract, you can leave anytime I don't have any locking period. Wow, it's harder for me. But like I have to earn, earn it. And I've had people panic in the first two weeks. And like that's the cost of having the agency that I would want as an entrepreneur. But I would say that it's not binary, right. And I think people want it to be too like, here's the point, one month, you haven't hit goal Exactly. It's time to fire the agency. It's like, well, if they have a clear goal path, right? And at one month, then they've hit 80% of goal. Like they're probably on the way there. Now if after six months or so only hitting 80% of goal, it's time to fire them. I think most people say they're either like over this number or under this number. In this time period. That's the answer I want. And it's like no, you kind of have to look at what's the variance given the timeline. So one month in at 70% of goal, you probably don't fire the agency, three, you know, five months and at 70% it's probably time to fire right so that's more of the way of looking at Now if you're at the end of month one, and you're at 10%, of goal, like people will still look at that and go, Oh, it's ended month one, it's 10%. Of goal. Well, I said I even three months, it's like now they're 10%. It's kind of there, right? You're like, leaving, it's time to go. It's time to go. So so it does matter how far off the goal they are over what timeline. And when you start to think about it that way, what those ratios look like, are become more clear. So let's, let's flip the book here now and talk about existing customers, you've got the you've had for a while, because you're you're just crushing it for them. So let's say someone's been with an agency's six months, at least, or longer, and they're having success. How often do you check in? Basically, what are your your guidelines, your exact kind of goals change once you're hitting your targets, and you're just trying to maintain or you're always trying to improve? And if you stop improving, it's still red flag that something's going on? Yeah, that's, that's what I get paid for. If we stop improving, there's a red flag, you gotta answer for it. So I think we, you know, we've had clients with us for coming up on on for years. So like, like, I've had clients with me since two weeks after I started. And so for for those guys, yeah, it's a path of constant improvement. I think that, you know, it's been a volatile couple years here. So it's interesting as businesses go up during the pandemic, and down, and it's created a lot of that variance off the sort of main line of performance. And, and it's been a funky time for the industry to try to account for that. And and for clients. You know, there's something happening in our world right now, where it's like, there's an increasing costs, and there's lower attribution. And it can lead to like, lower performance or lower growth rates, at least for clients, and there's been in the past. And so they're trying to solve that by firing their agency. And they're just going agency, the agency and there's a lot of folks can on and off the carousel before it makes it full rotation doesn't necessarily solve the problems when those are underlying, but besides that, yeah, that shark needs to look up into the right for us. And it's worth striving for with our clients as well. For sure. Can you hop on someone's account and kind of see who their last agency was? Is that kind of is that a filter you make sure of with a new customer before you take them on to see how often they're bouncing or that doesn't really bother you. They just haven't found the right fit yet. No, bothers me. If I hear like someone is switching agencies every two months, which those people are out there, I'm just like, cool. Here's like nine people you should reach out. Six months later, like this guy said, No, I'm coming back. So I mean, but there that's, that's about double switching, I can also look at the accountancy to the previous agency, do a good job or a bad job, and I can get what the goals were right. And so if I hear someone say, Oh, I, you know, I moved my my agency, right as I was 14 hit. And, you know, they went from doing 100% of goal that 85% of goal. And so I fired them. Two weeks later, I'm like, probably, you're probably a problem person to work with. Right? So it's yeah, that's, that's sort of I can tell I mean, that's the other thing in this industry, though, like there's no secrets, all of our ads are public. So anytime we come up with a new ad style, which I think there's probably like 10, or 10, to 20 Different tastemakers, and then the paid North American performance, sort of agency who come out with ads, and then everyone else is sort of replicating what they're doing. And everything we come out with is copied. And like, it's, it's like days, it's like three, right? And then in terms of ad structures, and everything else, like the level to which all the agencies can read each other's Ad Account structures, naming conventions, and everything else is quite high as well. So you say that, but But it's, it's just interesting, because you're, you're the one of the top 40 agencies, you said in the country, top spenders, you have long term customers are extremely happy. If it's that easy to copy, or, I mean, it's if that much competition, replication is occurring, what do you think is making yourself stand out? So Well, I think that copying has a cost. And you're not sticking to your guns on things at all. And so I think copiers get really lost when things start to go poorly, or when things start to be countered thesis, right. So an explanation. I've been on Facebook for a long time now. And the Facebook Ads Manager, Facebook gives preferential cost to things when they're trying to promote something. So campaign budget optimization, and account consolidation was the thing they were really pushing two years ago, they had a simplified account structure, it was basically Trust, the algorithm turnover, all your keys and the money algorithm that's gonna carry your account through. And I've been through one of those before with look alike audiences and seen it collapse. So I didn't go for it. And I kept running the same strategy I was running. And like, frankly, I might have missed out on a month of better performance because I didn't go with that. But I said, this is inflated performance. It's not real. The algorithm doesn't actually know what it's doing. And Facebook will never get do away with brand awareness and traffic. So they're trying to write the algorithm that's for all three. And because of that, they're watering down the performance that you can actually get from it. And as soon as I was 14 hit, like everyone on simplified account structure got totally screwed. They were totally upside down. Right? So if you're someone copying what's the best his performance of the week of the month of the day, right? And you don't have a thesis behind what you're doing, when the big changes come, which they frequently do in our world, you're going to end up upside down and not know why. So I think one of the reasons that, that I've maintained these, these relationships and maintain this position is because I have a lot of the ad theory behind it. And, and what I'm trying to achieve, and I'll stick to my guns, even as things change, even if even if there's a smaller short term hedge performance. Yeah, I love that Michael, I love I'm loving everything I'm hearing about you. I mean, you're gonna do things a little differently. You're gonna tell people No, and other people will tell them yes. And you're gonna stand by your, your confidence level, you're gonna stand by the fact of what you're saying, and you're gonna live or die by it. And it's clearly the right path forward. So I really appreciate this on the creative side, video verse, just static image, how often do you do you only do video? Do you still try and throw some static images in there? I know you said you're primarily video. Yeah, we used to be 100% video, we've moved back to 6040. So images are working a lot better than they used to? Is it just testing and just seen? No, Facebook was boosting video performance. It was one of those inflated performance things because they wanted more video on the platform. And then two years ago, they stopped caring. And so like video and images, sort of even that, and again, and yeah, that was a hard one for me to walk back. But the data was showing it. So I ended there. You know, so So yeah, the images are performing a lot better. Yeah. And there again, another nugget, because you know, you're willing to stand by what you're saying you're willing to live or die by when the data tells you you're wrong. You're not going to just be stubborn, either. You're willing to be flexible when it counts, but not just because it's the flavor of the month. So it's setting up the right hypothesis, the right bounds, which at what point will I change my mind? Right? It's not a one on if there's enough data that's backed up by well, 100%. That's, that's really well said. So I think when you wrap this up here, I know you're busy. You got a lot more going on your day. So where can listeners come find some more information about you? Sure. You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm Michael Cronin on LinkedIn. Otherwise acquire agency.com is our website and we've got all the links to our socials and everything from there. Awesome. Last question we're gonna ask every guest is Michael, what's your favorite caffeinated beverage? I'm drinking coffee right now. I mean, it's an all day drink, right? How do you trust an entrepreneur? Stop drink coffee at 10am I just can't do it. No, it keeps it rolling. Oh, man, I really appreciate your time here. Really appreciate all the value drop in the listeners and we'll talk again soon. Hey, thanks, man. Have a good one. Thanks for listening to the caffeinated hustle. Sponsored by caffeinated labs LLC. For more information or to connect with Ben, check us out online at caffeinated labs.io. Or email us at support at caffeinated labs.io. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Or give us a follow on social media by checking the links in the description. We'll see you next time.