Tyler "Sully" Sullivan, founder of BombTech Golf, shares his entrepreneurial journey and the leadership principles that have guided him to success. Sully emphasizes the importance of passion, innovation, and customer focus in building a thriving e-commerce business. He discusses how adopting a hands-on approach in the early stages was crucial for understanding the market and his customers.

As his business grew, Sully highlights the significance of delegation and empowering his team, enabling him to focus on strategic growth and innovation. His leadership style is marked by authenticity, transparency, and a commitment to building strong relationships with both customers and employees. Sully's story is a testament to how visionary leadership, combined with a customer-centric approach, can lead to exceptional business achievements.

Want to learn more about Sully's work? Check out their website at https://www.sullytyler.com.

Connect with Sully on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-sully-sullivan/.

Key Points

• 00:00:00 - 00:00:29: Introduction of Tyler "Sully" Sullivan, detailing his unexpected journey into entrepreneurship and the success of BombTech Golf and Ecom Growers.
• 00:03:10 - 00:03:26: Sully discusses the passion-driven approach that initially fueled his success but later became a challenge as it started to feel like work.
• 00:04:14 - 00:04:34: Sully shares his epiphany moment of selling a golf club online while being away from his computer, which sparked his obsession with e-commerce.
• 00:05:50 - 00:06:03: The conversation shifts to how Sully started selling custom golf drivers and eventually designed his own golf club with the help of engineering students.
• 00:09:52 - 00:10:16: The pivotal role of Facebook ads in scaling sales from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars is highlighted.
• 00:20:32 - 00:20:51: Sully shares insights on delegation and systematization within his business, emphasizing how stepping back can lead to improved business performance.
• 00:22:28 - 00:23:59: Introduction of Ecom Growers, Sully's agency that focuses on email marketing for e-commerce brands, and its organic growth from helping clients improve their email marketing strategies.

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:29:22
Craig Andrews
Today I went welcome, Tyler. Sully Sullivan. He goes by Sully. Sully never saw himself as an entrepreneur, but his passion for golf and unique business strategies turned his first e-commerce business. Bomb Tech Golf, into a seven plus figure business. Sal is also the CEO and founder of Ecom Growers, where he and his team have helped countless e-commerce businesses achieve amazing growth.

00:00:29:24 - 00:00:54:00
Craig Andrews
We're talking six seven figures in additional sales by just implementing his proven strategies that he used to grow his own business solely as a two time founder, and possesses an arsenal of proven strategies that have propelled not only his own business, but numerous others, leading to significant growth. So welcome.

00:00:54:02 - 00:00:55:12
Sully Sullivan
Thanks for having me.

00:00:55:14 - 00:01:19:24
Craig Andrews
So, Yeah. So essentially, we were talking about this. You're you're in Vermont and you're complaining. That's only 32. I'm in Texas and, I don't know what today's high is, but it's going to be in the 50s or the 60s. The, what is, you know, and we're recording this and, you know, in winter, what's, you know, what would be your ideal day?

00:01:20:01 - 00:01:21:18
Craig Andrews
in Vermont.

00:01:21:20 - 00:01:39:15
Sully Sullivan
So, why I came to UVM to be a ski bum. played played rugby. uvm, when I was there, it just fell in love with the state. And then now I'm. Now I'm here with two kids and my all this place hockey. So not only is it freezing all winter, but we're inside the rink five, six days a week traveling.

00:01:39:17 - 00:01:56:20
Sully Sullivan
Got four games this weekend. and we love it. It's a it's a long winter, but great families. And, you got to enjoy the outdoors if you're here, but I'm a little jealous of the 660 in Texas today. It's. I think it's 25 right now. So it's all good.

00:01:56:22 - 00:02:03:04
Craig Andrews
So. So your formula is you're a skier when there's snow on the ground, you're a golfer when there's not.

00:02:03:06 - 00:02:23:18
Sully Sullivan
Exactly. So that's the in-between season October November early December kills me. but now we with the hockey stuff do a lot more ice skating. I'm coaching, so I'm on the ice more than skiing. But that was my original formula for for living the dream. Golf and ski.

00:02:23:20 - 00:02:46:01
Craig Andrews
You know, one of my, one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes is the, the one where, Jay Peterman was trying to get JFK's golf clubs, and they had fallen out of the, the truck and got burned all to crap. And they gave him the, pyramid. He was like, wow, that guy had quite the temper, apparently, you know, thinking, of course they abused clubs.

00:02:46:01 - 00:02:49:16
Craig Andrews
Have you ever had moments where you felt like that?

00:02:49:18 - 00:03:10:02
Sully Sullivan
golf is a constant battle of frustration. You know, honestly, when I started, I loved it. It was obsessed. And then it did it. And that was probably the reason it was successful, as I was so passionate. But at one point it felt like work for me. You know, because I was on the course to shoot videos, trying to make content.

00:03:10:04 - 00:03:26:16
Sully Sullivan
So now the last couple years after selling, I'm like, can I just golf and just enjoy it? And that's been actually a struggle because everyone knows me. They're all sorry for Bamtech. I'm like, no, that's my brother or whatever. So I don't have, so I can just enjoy the game again, you know, and just enjoy and relax.

00:03:26:16 - 00:03:28:18
Sully Sullivan
But that doesn't happen often.

00:03:28:20 - 00:03:33:19
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Well, have you ever have you broken in clubs?

00:03:33:21 - 00:03:54:12
Sully Sullivan
when I first started doing World Long Drive, I was attempting to compete in, World Long Drive, which is. I was like, the worst one there. But you hit the golf ball as far as you can. It's like commentary of golf. And I had a local club builder assembling me these super expensive custom drivers, and I broke like seven of them and one in particular.

00:03:54:12 - 00:04:14:13
Sully Sullivan
I'd made it. I qualified in locals to go to regionals, drove like ten hours with my fiance, like who's now my wife, and ended up breaking my favorite club two minutes before having to tee off and compete. And at that point I said, listen, I got just figure out how to sell clubs and just learn. It's a very simple process, but learn it myself to save some money.

00:04:14:15 - 00:04:34:08
Sully Sullivan
And then through that process made a really bad website, sold a club on it while I was on my boat and that was like my first epiphany. Like, wait a second. I was on my boat on Lake Champlain in Vermont, and I got an email saying I sold something. I was like, wait, not for my computer. We're working for my boss on a sales call.

00:04:34:10 - 00:04:40:10
Sully Sullivan
And that's where, like, the obsession really started. I just wanted to do more of that.

00:04:40:12 - 00:04:46:14
Craig Andrews
Yeah. Isn't that a magical moment when you make your first sale? You know, there's some,

00:04:46:16 - 00:05:08:18
Sully Sullivan
It was so cool. And I think I lost money on it cause I think it was shipped to, like, Ireland, and I think the customs and duties and I think so I lost money on the sale, but it was just such an epiphany. This is 2000, 12 or 11. So online selling was a, even a father or more difficult concept than it is today with Shopify and the ease of selling online.

00:05:08:18 - 00:05:13:20
Sully Sullivan
So it was even more mind blowing to me back then. You know.

00:05:13:22 - 00:05:29:04
Craig Andrews
You know, to I mean, for me, it still gets me excited. This, you know, to this day that there's a stranger out in the world that wants to buy something that I'm selling. It's just, I don't know, it feels magical.

00:05:29:06 - 00:05:49:24
Sully Sullivan
It is. It truly is. And it's Facebook ads and social media have made many millionaires like myself that would never have existed. And even small businesses like you can make from really nothing. So it's it's truly it truly is amazing and life changing if you take the time to figure it out, because it's definitely possible.

00:05:50:01 - 00:06:03:03
Craig Andrews
So so the so you're baking, you're breaking clubs, you started making your own clubs and then you start selling them. Is is that the is that what became Bamtech?

00:06:03:05 - 00:06:22:14
Sully Sullivan
Yeah. So I started selling you know, custom long drivers did not so many but different components from other companies. And then I was talking to a frat brother of mine on the phone. I was like, dude, you know, I want to just design my own golf club. He's like, well, you're not very smart. And I'm like, yeah, you're you're not wrong because I think it took me six years to graduate college.

00:06:22:14 - 00:06:43:19
Sully Sullivan
But he's like, why don't you call UVM where we both went to college, which is five minutes from my house. Let's see if to help you. I was like, that's not a bad idea. So I called him up. And to my surprise, every year they have a, engineering program called the capstone, and you can apply. So I applied to work with four engineers, and if you get picked, you get to work with them for a year.

00:06:43:21 - 00:07:02:21
Sully Sullivan
And so I got chosen and worked with four students in the faculty. and we went all in and we designed a golf driver and that I was crazy enough to cash from my four. Okay, so I didn't have any kids at the time and make the driver, and it ended up being awesome. And it was there was a lot of risk.

00:07:02:21 - 00:07:17:13
Sully Sullivan
I took early days to make it happen, but it was a nontraditional process to design my own club. But man, it was fun and I was just doing it and following the traction as I went. And it was just it was a magical time.

00:07:17:15 - 00:07:44:16
Craig Andrews
And, and so for me, I look at that and I'm a horrible golfer, I haven't swung. It's been a while since I've swung a club. I actually, no, I was, I was actually right before Christmas. but even that, I mean, it was, it was, you know, it was horrible. But, I mean, I look at all these drivers and I've always wondered, you know, years ago, I know the Big Bertha was the driver, and you know, there's all these things.

00:07:44:18 - 00:07:53:20
Craig Andrews
What's the magic in those? What what makes one worth hundreds of dollars versus another? That's not.

00:07:53:22 - 00:08:18:14
Sully Sullivan
Yeah. I mean, for for us, I just wanted to make a driver kind of for myself. And because I was the customer, I kind of just made it for myself and for, you know, the guys we were selling to. And I think that was the beauty and the simplicity is that we sold 100% direct. So if you were a customer, I would read every review, every feedback we got and we micro improve the product over time.

00:08:18:16 - 00:08:46:06
Sully Sullivan
So like we had a great version one. Right. And then we get like a thousand reviews and I would read every review, look for trends and ask for feedback. And then we'd make another version based on my actual direct golfers that were buying our product and make it a little bit better, a little bit better. And that was the beauty of like, I didn't mean to do that when I first launched, but the beauty of selling direct was that we we had the luxury of getting pure feedback and making just for them.

00:08:46:08 - 00:09:07:10
Sully Sullivan
And then our advantage too was we had a really premium product. We did no retail, didn't sponsor anyone. So our prices were like 67% less than some other brands. and that's kind of like the DTC way for most things. But again, I just did that because I thought, let's just be fair, I don't need to kill in here.

00:09:07:10 - 00:09:31:10
Sully Sullivan
Let's just it was like, what's a fair price? And I thought it was a good price. And we do like a three wedge deal. And now I sold that company. But like three wedges for 117 bucks, whereas sometimes you get one wedge for less than that or more than that just for one. So that was kind of our advantage was timing too, because 2012, you know, there was no one else really doing Facebook ads for, for golf.

00:09:31:10 - 00:09:52:17
Sully Sullivan
So it was it was like my passion combined with really good luck and timing. And I honestly didn't give up and was doing stuff that was hard to scale, like I was in golf forums, you know, I was like going to demo days. I was doing all these things, free Facebook ads that helped get us some, like word of mouth and, you know, some clubs sold.

00:09:52:17 - 00:10:16:21
Sully Sullivan
But then when Facebook ads actually were a thing and we could use them, we went from selling, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars a year to millions and millions. so but that organic base would have never happened unless I was a super passionate golfer, was out there golfing, doing demo days, doing kind of grunt work that a lot of people I don't think are willing to do now.

00:10:16:23 - 00:10:24:07
Craig Andrews
Now, you made a statement there, he said. Back when Facebook ads were working. Do you feel like they're not working now for folks.

00:10:24:09 - 00:10:49:05
Sully Sullivan
start, I should say started? No, I mean, I still actually have another ecom brand I'm messing with. Facebook ads are still super effective. I mean, it's always back then they were just so cheap. I wish I had more inventory to fund, especially during Covid for golf. I mean, it was it was like Black Friday every day stimulus checks would hit that it would they they weren't buying food and stuff like that.

00:10:49:05 - 00:11:06:22
Sully Sullivan
They're buy golf clubs. so that was just an insane time. But no Facebook ads for that brand have always been effective. I think if your offer isn't great, your creative isn't good. It doesn't matter. You know, I know some people. I've had issues since I was 14, but I haven't really seen that. If you got a good offer.

00:11:06:22 - 00:11:11:05
Sully Sullivan
Good creative. they still really. They work great.

00:11:11:07 - 00:11:29:19
Craig Andrews
You know, I think it's just said something really key there. Now I build offers so that they always gets me excited when I hear somebody talking about the offer, you know? But I mean, one of my sayings and this is more for higher ticket stuff, is there is no sales pitch that can ever come a bad offer, but an amazing offer can never come.

00:11:29:19 - 00:11:31:24
Craig Andrews
Even the worst sales pitch.

00:11:32:01 - 00:11:52:18
Sully Sullivan
Totally. You could, you could have like for the golf clubs. We had really bad early creative with the video or image, but the offer was so good it did well, you know, so it's like I hear you and I think a lot of people have poor offers, whether it's low tech and high tech or like, I'm messing around and launching a, fishing apparel brand.

00:11:52:18 - 00:12:11:11
Sully Sullivan
And it's funny fishing hoodies with sayings and stuff on it. And I was just messing around and tested and I'm like, you know what? But better price sensitive. I better have to do a certain, you know, certain things to make this offer an offer. And I really want to sell at a certain luxury price point. But that it's not all discounted.

00:12:11:11 - 00:12:31:17
Sully Sullivan
But it was just you have to have an offer that's enticing. So I'm going to hit that right offer level right image the right copy. Guess what? I was running three zero as on Facebook ads for services is impossible on cold traffic on a new pixel. So it's it's the offer is good. You can make a lot of mistakes on other things.

00:12:31:19 - 00:12:33:00
Sully Sullivan
if the offer is good.

00:12:33:02 - 00:12:41:16
Craig Andrews
All right, so you just throw a whole bunch of jargon. Let's break that down. So you said three times Roas. What's what's that mean?

00:12:41:18 - 00:12:43:24
Sully Sullivan
Yeah. You spend a dollar, get three back.

00:12:44:01 - 00:12:48:04
Craig Andrews
Okay. And then you said on a new pixel. What's that mean.

00:12:48:06 - 00:13:09:16
Sully Sullivan
So just for, you know, direct consumer, if you're on Shopify, you know, you install the Facebook pixel. So this is a new ad account, but just an idea I had like two months ago. So I launched the store install the Facebook pixel or Meadow Pixel, onto the Shopify store. It's that collects data from anyone that goes to the site and helps optimize your ads to be better.

00:13:09:18 - 00:13:31:17
Sully Sullivan
And I'm not very good at running Facebook or meta ads myself. I know enough to hire and fire people, but you know, a newer ad account typically takes longer to figure out what's the right audience, what's the right offer, what's the right creatives? Whereas if my like, my other ad account was like eight, ten years old, there's so much data and so much learnings of what what works and what doesn't.

00:13:31:19 - 00:13:48:04
Sully Sullivan
And the pixels like just has more info on it so it can find better, potential customers. So a newer account, usually it's harder to do do that quickly. But I didn't spend a lot of money but was able to get some quick winners because the offer was good.

00:13:48:06 - 00:14:11:03
Craig Andrews
So. So those that are not savvy in the ways of pixels, you know, one way of thinking about as a pixel, sort of like a cookie and what you're saying, what you're saying is over time, the more data Facebook collects, when that sort of cookie or they call it a pixel is is on your website, the more they learn about your ideal customer, the better they can drive the ideal customer to you.

00:14:11:05 - 00:14:24:13
Craig Andrews
And so what? The power. What you're saying is you dropped a new pixel on there. So Facebook didn't have any historical data in like straight out of the shoot. You're getting three times you spend a dollar, you get three back.

00:14:24:19 - 00:14:45:22
Sully Sullivan
Yeah. It's great. So I'm launching we're doing a production run right now to go for it. But yeah, so that's like Facebook. When people say Facebook doesn't work I usually cringe. And there's usually a different problem. It's either your website's got a conversion issue, which is rarely the case, like a lot of people mess around with color button colors and, you know, design and they overly design the site.

00:14:45:22 - 00:15:13:14
Sully Sullivan
It's like, listen, it's the offer offer. Number one, you know, copywriting is a big part of that, too. It's like the design is usually never the case. I don't think we've ever done a button test that actually has a meaningful improvement. We usually do messaging test based on who we think our customer is, and those are far bigger levers than colors, design, look and feel, which most founders, myself included.

00:15:13:16 - 00:15:33:05
Sully Sullivan
I want it to look a certain way and feel a certain way and make it sexy and whatever, but that usually doesn't have any impact. You know, it's like so for like email, you know, we do a lot of email marketing and a lot of our plain text emails that have no design. That's like, if I were to send an email to you and I like natively, like text would, hey, what's up?

00:15:33:05 - 00:15:52:01
Sully Sullivan
What times interview? Thanks. Sally. That email actually will do better than an overly designed newsletter that looks like a brochure, but it feels good to spend all this time designing something, so I don't. I don't even know what the question was, but it's like, try to be native to the platform and it's really the offer and the copy.

00:15:52:01 - 00:16:03:05
Sully Sullivan
And then the day that I found, no matter what you're selling, whether it's services, physical products, it's like copies of Big Lover, you don't have any real, authentic conversations.

00:16:03:07 - 00:16:26:03
Craig Andrews
Yeah. And and authentic. I think that's you know, that's really the key is, and I think a lot of companies actually, I was I think I made a comment on LinkedIn this morning about how so many companies are afraid to be authentic. They feel like they have to be perfect. And when they strive to be perfect, they fail to be human.

00:16:26:03 - 00:16:29:22
Craig Andrews
When they fail to be human, they fail to be trustworthy.

00:16:29:24 - 00:16:57:08
Sully Sullivan
Yeah, I like early days with a golf company. I didn't have a budget to make great videos and do so. I put myself on camera and I cringe at the videos. They were so awful. But guess what? People felt like they could relate to me as a regular guy in those videos that were also in my backyard. They may not have felt on brand or looked a certain way, but man, they killed it when it came to Facebook ads and return ad spend.

00:16:57:08 - 00:17:18:13
Sully Sullivan
So it was. I think that's also a different conversation to have with certain founders. It's like, well, they want it's a certain way. But sometimes the raw, authentic, exposed and vulnerable feel just like real videos or ads do the best. And for me, it was like I was almost the brand, you know, the face of the brand because I needed to be.

00:17:18:13 - 00:17:33:14
Sully Sullivan
And I ended up being one of the reasons we were so successful. Yeah, but I didn't mean to do it that way. I just was like, we need your video. I can't pay someone to do video. I'm going to shoot this on my whatever cheap thing I had. And it did great.

00:17:33:16 - 00:17:58:00
Craig Andrews
You know, it was probably was it ten years ago somewhere around that is a number of years ago there was, this Canadian band that was on tour and they, their guitar got, you know, the guys sitting on the airplane, and he looks out the window and they see this guitar case is flying through the air, and and they they made a song on a budget.

00:17:58:00 - 00:18:24:12
Craig Andrews
They made a music video and a budgie wrote a song about this whole experience in songs called United Breaks Guitars. And, it's great video. You should check it out on YouTube. Yeah, okay. But the first video he made on a budget of $100 and it was like a huge hit. I mean, it just went super viral. He's like, well, hey, if I spare 100 and got that response, what will happen if I spend 10,000?

00:18:24:14 - 00:18:37:20
Craig Andrews
And so he went off. I don't know what he spent on the next video, but definitely 100. It was, you know, somewhere between 8000 and 10,000. It was thousands of dollars to do that next video and it flopped.

00:18:37:22 - 00:18:59:01
Sully Sullivan
Yeah. Well it's funny, I was just listening because we're starting to get into YouTube a little bit, and it's like the YouTuber Casey Neistat, who makes these amazing videos, and he said his best video ever was one. He shot his iPhone. And it's grainy and it's awful. The audio is bad. So it's it's I don't know. There is a perfection.

00:18:59:03 - 00:19:19:10
Sully Sullivan
You want to be perfect as a founder. It's your brand, it's your baby. And that's fine. But I think if you're on social media and that's a big lever for you, which is for most brands, it's like be native to have a platform. People are posting produce videos on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. They're producing from their phones. So do the same thing as what they're doing.

00:19:19:10 - 00:19:41:05
Sully Sullivan
All right. So it's like if you insert a commercial into a socially native iPhone environment, it's going to look weird. And I think, I don't know, I don't know why to do that. Oh, I do know why. But it's it's a common misconception to be too perfect. And I think that goes along with also delegating because like, what are my superpowers, I guess.

00:19:41:05 - 00:20:05:04
Sully Sullivan
Are you calling that, in the business, I was able to delegate and work for hours a month. but it took me two kids to figure that out, and I because I wanted to control every aspect of the business because I was the founder, I could do it the best. And when I had my second kid, I finally, because I was working every minute of every day, I used to even assemble the clothes myself because I was so obsessed with making it perfect.

00:20:05:06 - 00:20:32:00
Sully Sullivan
But it took me my second child's birth and taking six weeks off to realize because sales went up when I was off, I go out, I'm useless. I'm useless now. And and once I saw that, it was like the epiphany of the sale of a boat, I was like, oh my God, I can take this next level. And that was one of the reasons why I was able to sell it so quickly, was that I had everything delegated and systematized and very transferable.

00:20:32:06 - 00:20:51:09
Sully Sullivan
So you could ask me for anything, for any document of how to do anything from any department. And I was not the bottleneck. I could I could be off, I could be skiing or golfing and and the business would continue. So it's like it's hard to get there that it take took you know, it took took me life events to figure out stuff in business.

00:20:51:09 - 00:20:59:16
Sully Sullivan
You know. So it was like just one of those things where you could told me 5000 times to delegate, but it took me two kids to delegate. Well.

00:20:59:18 - 00:21:05:18
Craig Andrews
That had to hurt at some level to realize that the more you're away from the office, the better.

00:21:05:18 - 00:21:24:05
Sully Sullivan
Sales did you know, I, I first I was like, what am I going to do? Like and I kept trying to do more and I kept messing stuff up. And one of the worst years we ever had was when I was at the office just just moving stuff around on the website, just doing stuff that had no impact.

00:21:24:05 - 00:21:48:01
Sully Sullivan
And, and I was like, you know what? I need to figure out something else to do. So I started golfing a lot. but yeah, no, it is it's a good thing to be at that point where you can hire people and get out of your own way, but it does. And it's like when I sold the business, you know, I there's definitely and they say this there is loss of purpose because I was so tied to that company and everyone knows me from that still knows me.

00:21:48:01 - 00:22:10:00
Sully Sullivan
So this transition, this last year and a half has been interesting, you know, because now I'm like, I didn't have that much to do before, but selling it gave me a lot of things to do during the sale, you know, the transaction and then the post transaction. And now I'm like, I don't really have to work a ton, but I you go crazy if you just golf and ski every day.

00:22:10:00 - 00:22:25:01
Sully Sullivan
I know it sounds insane, but. So I've been spending time on the agency, making content, doing podcast interviews because you gotta have purpose and feel like you're having some impact on in on the world or I don't know this, I do, you know.

00:22:25:03 - 00:22:28:00
Craig Andrews
And what's your agency do.

00:22:28:02 - 00:22:52:04
Sully Sullivan
Yeah. So it's it's that was another natural evolution, but it's called Ecom Growers. And I started it with my first employee, Chris from Bamtech. It was very organic how it happened. Kind of like everything in my life and business. But. So we had, he was doing all my email on Klaviyo for bomb tech, and they did a case study on us, like way back 2016 or 15.

00:22:52:06 - 00:23:17:01
Sully Sullivan
And they're like bomb techs, percentage of revenue from emails like 50% or 45, really high open rates, all these stats. So people started messaging me like, hey, can you help me? And I go, no, I don't want to. I don't have the time. I'm all set. And then my first employee, Chris, was actually one of the engineers, the engineer, one of our golf pros, my best employee, would do anything for me.

00:23:17:01 - 00:23:36:00
Sully Sullivan
He said, hey, can I work with them on the side and, see what happens? I said, dude, I want nothing more to support you. It's awesome. Impact our work here. Go ahead. So we got three clients from just inbound leads to me. I say, hey, here's my here's Chris who does all my email, talk to him.

00:23:36:02 - 00:23:59:01
Sully Sullivan
And then it started taking off. And he had six and he had nine clients and goes, dude, I'm getting busy. I said, well, let's write a business plan for you to exit your job here and where you want this to be. And we ended up becoming partners in that in 2016. And he really runs that company. And, you know, now we usually have like 35 or 40 Ecom brands who work with only two other email.

00:23:59:03 - 00:24:19:07
Sully Sullivan
And now he's making, you know, 810 x whatever I could ever pay him and my company and it's I couldn't be happier for him. It was and it was all from you know, people want me to help and just this natural transition. He's a better founder than I am. So it was I didn't plan it that way.

00:24:19:07 - 00:24:21:09
Sully Sullivan
But it's been a beautiful thing.

00:24:21:11 - 00:24:29:00
Craig Andrews
Well, that's that's incredible. You know, one thing, before we wrap up the. You were talking earlier about Facebook.

00:24:29:02 - 00:24:29:08
Sully Sullivan
Yeah.

00:24:29:13 - 00:24:46:10
Craig Andrews
And I, you know, I, I just had this conversation like, two weeks ago, and the person was like, oh, Facebook's are dying platform. Why would you waste any time there? So what would be your response to such a person?

00:24:46:12 - 00:25:12:15
Sully Sullivan
I don't know if I would respond. yeah. I mean, I mean, really it's, it's if you're selling if you're selling really anything, you know, social media is still the most powerful tool I've yet to see in 11 years, at least for e-commerce, a better advertising platform than meta or whatever Facebook, Instagram that exists. It's like those two Facebook and Google.

00:25:12:17 - 00:25:36:03
Sully Sullivan
You could still build a massive company, and there's been many new brands that have started within two years that have done six, seven, eight, nine figures out of nowhere. So if it's if it's not working or if you think it's a dying platform, I think that's eliminate belief and you need to be willing to try it. And you need a better offer because it's I just started a company two months ago and we're we're running profitable ads.

00:25:36:06 - 00:25:48:19
Sully Sullivan
I don't know where. So it's I anything that there when there's anything that works well you know there's always people that say it doesn't work well, but that's because you have a different problem.

00:25:48:21 - 00:26:02:14
Craig Andrews
Well, let's say Facebook is dying. I don't know of any other single channel I can go to and reach one third of the world's population.

00:26:02:16 - 00:26:23:23
Sully Sullivan
From an ad standpoint, it it absolutely crushes from an organic standpoint. Yeah. Maybe your your reach is not what it used to be, but that was never the goal with Facebook. Like reach is cool, but the ad platform is just so powerful. If you can't do that, I would do what I do, which is I vent different experts for an hour.

00:26:23:23 - 00:26:46:01
Sully Sullivan
Like I say, okay, challenge ten people to help run my Facebook ads for an hour and I'll pay them an hourly console fee. And you know, through that process, hopefully you learn something of like, oh, well, the five of them are decent. You'll probably learn something of how to run it. Better ads or better copy. and you may actually figure out a way to make it work.

00:26:46:03 - 00:27:08:18
Sully Sullivan
And then by number, it took me 12 people to do this in my own age or my own ecom brand. by the 12 person, I found some that beat my ad performance and I was able to hire them. But I think that's the problem too, is there's so many bad agencies out there that don't perform. So there's also like people that don't know what they need and then agencies that are good at what they do.

00:27:08:21 - 00:27:25:11
Sully Sullivan
So that little filtering thing I do where I just invite people for one hour screen share to vet them, we'll give you a better chance to see if Facebook ads will work, or selling on that platform will work, and hopefully teach you enough to hire or fire someone that can help your company.

00:27:25:13 - 00:27:47:16
Craig Andrews
Yeah, well, I wish we could talk longer because this the things I like about your story is it's very you know, you're stressing authenticity, going out and and trying some things and very importantly delegation. I wish we had more time, but we don't. How can people reach you?

00:27:47:18 - 00:28:08:06
Sully Sullivan
Yeah. So I'm on, LinkedIn. Pretty active there. I think it's Tyler Sully Sullivan. And then we're putting, push on YouTube at Ecom Growers and also ecom growers.com. Check us out there. they can email me direct if they want. I'm pretty bad at replying email, but I should be better. I'm usually ski and a golfer now.

00:28:08:08 - 00:28:13:14
Sully Sullivan
but it's solely, ecom growers.com and love it. Talk to people.

00:28:13:16 - 00:28:16:22
Craig Andrews
All right. Well thank you for being on leaders and legacies.

00:28:16:24 - 00:28:20:20
Sully Sullivan
Proud to be here. Thank you.