Podcast

Kevin Mooney (00:02.73)
But again, thanks so much for being here. I appreciate taking the time. And it was really awesome that José was like, Hey, you should you should talk with Jacob Cass and I was like, heck yeah let's do it. So

Jacob Cass (00:24.137)
Yeah. José was on our pod. I must be like five years ago now. We have a podcast called Just Branding I run it with a cohost and yeah, he was one of the first in the first season, I believe that we got on because I had come across him and through the future, which is another platform run by Chris Do and his program, the core. and that's how our world's kind of collided when I was just kind of getting more into strategy. And that was one of the big courses at the time or programs.

into in that world. think the positioning of that course has changed a little bit around brand strategy. There was kind of some confusion around that, that word, but yeah, that's the origin story of José.

Kevin Mooney (01:02.83)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's really cool. you have, well, you've been in this space for a long time, right? As I was doing my stocking, I'm like, this cat's been around since the early 2000s. You started in such a cool way where you had a blog about design while you were in design school.

That is, I mean, that's just cool old school classic stuff. And then that turned into a relationship with an agency. They headhunted you and sucked you in.

Jacob Cass (01:42.043)
Yes, that's correct. Yes, that's exactly the story. So we can just skip the whole origin story. You've done it.

Kevin Mooney (01:46.936)
Yeah. Well, I want to know like maybe even before that, how did you become interested in design? And then, you know, was agency life something that you saw in your future or did that just happen?

Jacob Cass (02:03.529)
It happened. The, how I got into design was kind of by chance also, I naturally was attracted to creative subjects at school and definitely repelled against math and science and so forth. So it was in my bones from the beginning that I was more of a creative soul, but it wasn't until I saw my careers advisor in high school and they told me about graphic design as a career.

that I, the light bulb kind of went off. And that's when I knew that's kind of the direction I was going to go. I didn't know about all the different types of design designer roles out there. Like I didn't know the industry at all. I just knew that I liked making stuff and I didn't even want to say drawing because I'm a terrible drawer, but I, I did a lot of tracing and coloring and that sort of stuff. And we did have a graphic design class at high school.

And I still have the book today that has all my artwork in it. My very first logo, not too bad. Actually I had a negative space in the logo back then. It was kind of cool. Um, and yeah, from there I went to university and studied visual communication for three years. And that's when I was running the blog called just creative design at the time is now called just creative. And yeah, I was sharing all about my design work through the university and my studies and.

That introduced me to the world of blogging, which was just starting up at that stage. It was very tight knit communities and you know, blogging was kind of like, a frowned upon, it was kind of like, you're a, Weeder. You'll have like an online diary and that's what it was all about. But I saw the other side of it and I learned about blogging and how you could attract people to your brand and your services. And it wasn't just about diaries. You can actually make money from it.

Kevin Mooney (03:44.812)
Yeah, uh-huh.

Jacob Cass (03:59.433)
So that led me into web design as well. And I had a bit of experience with web design, you know, through geocities and I made it school had some knowledge about web design. So he taught me about it as well. So I kind of had this like cross pollination of graphic design class, web design and blogging. And that got the attention of an agency in New York, I missed one thing, social media. So I was very active on social media. This was Twitter was starting up, um, Facebook.

And I was very active on there. And at this time agency life, um, you know, agencies were still stuck in the old ways. They didn't even have digital departments. So this was like 2005, 2007 kind of year. And yeah, that got the attention of the agency in New York city. So I was based in Sydney. They offered me a job through Twitter and I said, yes, but I still had six months to go to graduate. And they said, that's okay. That's okay. You can come over. Um,

when you're done. So I did that and I went from being a design student to working with brands like Nike, Disney, Red Bull, Jerry's sign photo. I was like, Holy shit. This is like a catapult of a career. I didn't know anything about New York. Anyone. found an apartment the day before my flight. It was quite the journey, man. was, um, yeah. So that's, that's how I got into New York and I'll cut the story off there and then we'll see where you want to go.

Kevin Mooney (05:16.227)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (05:22.328)
Sure. I mean, that's a wild story. It's vastly different from mine. But when you joined the agency, what was the workflow like? Was it, hey, we need this made for these people? Or was it more like what José kind of describes where he was learning core, essentially,

from these people that they were working with. It was like, oh, this is actually how design gets done is through this process. Did you?

Jacob Cass (05:59.529)
Unfortunately, no, was a junior. So I was working on digital projects. So was an interactive kind of junior designers and we were doing a lot of pitches at that time for big brands. So a lot of my role was to, help with those pitches and win work. So, um, because digital was so new back then, it was showing the value of digital, how things work and the potential of different things. So we were doing like Facebook apps and things like that at that time. And that was.

That was my role. did never, I never got to see the strategic side from that agency but I did transition. Uh, this was the next part of the story, which I can move into. Um, but I, that company had brought me over. worked with them for six months, then they let me go. And then I had, didn't have a visa for the U S. So I tapped into my network through my blog and social media.

Kevin Mooney (06:38.702)
Yeah, go ahead.

Kevin Mooney (06:47.854)
shit.

Jacob Cass (06:56.681)
and managed to find a job in those two weeks in New York. The problem was that the company submitted the form to the customs place wrong, not once, but twice. the time elapsed when I had to leave the States. So I had to go home. got a sort of lawyer. figured out, well, they told me about this little kind of loophole.

Kevin Mooney (07:07.146)
no.

Jacob Cass (07:23.625)
I'm not a loophole, but a different type of visa than what I was trying to go for that I qualified for. And it was called a J one. And basically it's for any recent graduate from within a year is able to get this sort of visa. can go travel for, you can go work for one year over in the States. And I was like, Holy shit. How lucky is this? So I applied for this visa. I ended up going back to the States and this visa allowed you kind of, kind of.

Not go between companies. You could work for whoever you wanted. You didn't have to stay with one kind of company and like the other type of visa. So it was kind of unique in that way. So I used that time to shop around with different agencies and find a place that I liked. I worked in house. found another place where I was at for a couple of months, like contracting. And then I found one I really liked and I stayed there for about four years. And that was where I was working with those other brands like Jerry Seinfeld and Nintendo was a big one. I did so many gaming websites.

And yeah, so that's, that's how I kind of grew as a creative. And at that last agency where I was at for four years, I got exposed to more strategic processes. I wasn't doing any of like the account planning or anything, but I was in the room with strategic brains brainstorming. was part of huge decks for like big brands, which we want a lot of. it was, I was working with really top tier people at a midsize agency. So, which was perfect for me. didn't want to be in like a huge.

huge conglomerate. So that's where I kind of, um, cut my teeth in the industry. And then I left and traveled the world for a couple of years and I ran my business on the road. And that was, went way more successful than I thought it would. And I went from one year of travel to three years of travel. And while running on, like we went to 88 countries, it was like a massive, massive trip. And then I came home and had a family and that's where I'm stuck.

Kevin Mooney (09:07.47)
Well...

Kevin Mooney (09:17.133)
That part of the story ends right there. So what were you looking for in an agency? You know, I asked because I kind of slipped and fell into the agency world. have no formal background. didn't study design marketing. I didn't study anything. So I would have known what to look for in an agency. So I'm curious, like a, what you kind of look for.

Jacob Cass (09:19.267)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (09:45.059)
And, then be, you know, when you left that time there, what did you take with you to your business and what did you want to kind of do differently?

Jacob Cass (09:55.613)
I have to be honest here and say, didn't know what I was looking for. I was looking for anything. when you have a two week time period, you're like, you, you hustle hard and you tap into all your resources you can. Cause you literally have it. You get kicked out of the country. So that, that was real. but I was applying to pretty much all the jobs I like startups and big agencies and small agencies, midsize agencies and.

Kevin Mooney (09:58.53)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (10:08.807)
Hahaha

Jacob Cass (10:22.867)
Whenever I could get an interview, went for the interview and this particular role seemed perfect for what they were looking for. And because of my interactive web kind of social background, that's what they're looking for. And they were growing that in their department. So I was fortunate enough to grow there. So I was in the interactive digital department within the agency, which got me exposure to like print and then strategy and then, and a few other areas as well. So yeah, that's not, I don't know if that's like.

the answer you're looking for, but I didn't know.

Kevin Mooney (10:54.508)
Yeah, no, that's great. And then so when you were exposed to strategy where you're kind of like, this is the thing. No.

Jacob Cass (11:03.209)
No, I didn't know it was strategy. They didn't call it strategy. called it like, um, accounts planning. And I'm like, that sounds boring as, as F. I was a naive little, uh, designer. was a, uh, I was a junior, like I was straight out of school. Um, so yeah, it was only, it was only exposure through that. I didn't really know about, I only became, uh, I don't want to my strategic side definitely came.

Kevin Mooney (11:19.971)
Yeah.

Jacob Cass (11:32.899)
After my travels, like I traveled for three years without taking a phone call. I did everything through email and it was like, was sold out. I was fully booked. had systems in place. I had really great SEO. I was only working four hours a day, not, the full eight hours. So when I say fully booked, that's what I mean. And like life was great because we got to travel, we got to work on the road and it was, it was crazy. We didn't have overheads. were young, free.

It was a good time. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (12:03.256)
That's cool, man. And then so, so as you start to kind of lean into the strategy part, that's when you're learning about José and core and then eventually the future, things like that.

Jacob Cass (12:13.203)
Exactly.

Yeah, that must've been that six, yeah, six, seven years ago, I think now. And yeah, that's kind the word brand strategy. was new at that time. And when I learned about that, I was like, holy shit, what the hell have I been doing for the past like decade? Like I thought I was just, I thought I was doing branding, but it was very surface level. It was very focused much on visual identity versus the strategic side. And it worked really well. And I just know that,

Kevin Mooney (12:30.786)
Yeah, yeah.

Jacob Cass (12:44.603)
It could have been much better and I could have helped my clients so much more and become more of a partner with them and not just like a hired gun that was doing like one-off projects. So that's easily said in hindsight, but once you learn that and you understand the strategic side and how you can help a business grow and not just be the creative executioner, then things can really change. And once I learned about that, that's when my business really took off. And I also.

Kevin Mooney (12:55.0)
Yeah.

Jacob Cass (13:12.147)
kind of got into coaching and I was helping other creatives because there's such a gap with that. Not just, you know, just in the market, in education in general, I believe it's pretty broken with that side of things. So.

Kevin Mooney (13:23.32)
Yeah, I wish I had, cause you kind of caught those waves that happened not only in culture, like technology, right? Blogging, sure, was kind of, you know, blogging, sure, like you said, it was kind of this weird online diary thing, but you realized that, this is a way that I can make money. And then Facebook comes around, well,

Jacob Cass (13:38.385)
I am an early adopter.

Kevin Mooney (13:51.81)
first it was MySpace, but Facebook comes around and you're like, hey, I think I can apply some techniques to this and make some money. I did not think about any of that stuff. to be fair, I didn't know what I was going to do in my life. of, I didn't do super well in high school. I couldn't focus. I didn't know what I wanted to be. I didn't really come from a family that was like, think outside of the box and maybe you can go do this. Maybe you can do that.

You know, I had a guidance counselor in high school tell me that I should be a septic pumper when I grow up. So there was, there wasn't a lot, there wasn't a lot of people behind me saying like, you can do it, Kev, go for it. at one point in high school, I wanted to be a graphic designer, but I didn't know what that was. And for the first

Jacob Cass (14:28.217)
Alright. That is rough.

Kevin Mooney (14:49.998)
Uh, four years out of high school, I didn't do, I didn't do college. didn't jump into anything. I just kind of existed and lived my life and I just thought, Oh, I'm just going to be a nobody. And then I went to college, studied abroad, came back, got a job. That job was terrible. I ended up getting fired from that job. Um, but along the way,

this thing inside me kind of grew, which was this drive to figure things out and this drive to do it for myself because I don't work well as an employee. So when I worked at that job, I was just kind of observing what this company was doing and it was very simple. They would source products from out of the country. They would bring them in, they'd slap a...

label on it, call it their brand, sold some shit through their website. And I remember when I got fired, I was like, I could do that. It's not that hard. You don't have to do anything.

Very quickly I realized it's a lot more challenging than you think, but that was sort of the first introduction into brand for me. Fast forward a couple of years, I started this kid scooter company. It's big in Australia too, the Pro Scooters. yeah, yeah. so basically what I did was I flew over to China and I found a manufacturer.

Jacob Cass (16:22.033)
Alright, three zero, like the right, yeah, yeah.

Kevin Mooney (16:32.142)
And I worked with them to make a product that looked similar to something in the market. And then I did the website. did the branding, figured out the logistics where I have to store everything. How do I ship them out? What an order comes in. And I did everything that Daniel Priestley now says is, the wrong way of doing it. You build, you're supposed to build demand before you build the supply. built the whole supply system. Didn't.

focus on anything on the demand side of things. Ultimately that thing kind of shit the bed. But that was a really fun time and really interesting to me. And the things that I realized that failed, the demand side of things was, well, A was missing. So I was like, this is, that's the fun part. Like I was waiting to get to that part. I never had the opportunity to get to that part.

Jacob Cass (17:07.134)
Hmm.

Jacob Cass (17:26.739)
Thank

Kevin Mooney (17:30.146)
just so happened that Nextdoor to me was a creative agency. And they always liked the things that I was doing. Cause I was just having fun dicking around, making stupid videos and putting on events and people coming by, things like that. Well, the owner of that quickly became a friend of mine and basically invited me into the agency and was like, Hey, do you want to try to do this? And he was very keen on

José and Chris and basically everything that they were talking about in preaching, but core wasn't something that we had adopted yet. So we made really cool things, really pretty things. I think it was very strategic, it wasn't strategic from like a process. And, know, we'd made something that was

for their customers and for their brand and kind of define some of those things, but it wasn't necessarily, well, you told us that this is your core values. that's what we couldn't tie it together. So I admitted this in a show recently when I finally learned about core and what is brand strategy now. I essentially use that against my clients. It was a way for me

Jacob Cass (18:36.496)
no.

Kevin Mooney (18:56.6)
to say, told me this, therefore I made this over here. You can't tell me that this doesn't match that, because that's exactly what you said, right? And so I think the intention was just off a little bit, but quickly thereafter I realized, no, this is actually a way that I can produce something for somebody that has outcomes in their business.

And then sure, I can always lean back on this other thing where I say, well, you told me X, Y, and Z. I need you to tell me not that you don't like that shade of blue, but how that doesn't connect with these people or your values or so on and so forth. So that's kind of my long story of how I got into some of the things that I'm doing right now. Yeah.

Jacob Cass (19:48.233)
I have a question. Did you end up selling those scooters? Did you use the frameworks or anything you learned or what happened to them?

Kevin Mooney (19:57.622)
I had a bad partnership in that. So if I were to back up a little bit, the

prior to the scooters, I took this same philosophy that I learned at the company that I was fired, meaning source products from somewhere else. So I would go on Alibaba and I would find random products that I thought, well, it's cheap, it's a cheap entry point and I can brand it, right? So I did everything from dildos,

to silicone wedding rings, to water bottle infusers, to stand up paddle boards. So I was already developing those skills of bringing things over here, trying to put a brand on them, and then I was selling them through Amazon.

As I was phasing out that part of my life because it wasn't really working, I didn't sell a lot of dildos to be honest, I just didn't. So we had boxes of dildos in our garage.

Jacob Cass (21:04.413)
You just have a warehouse of dildos and scooters and someone's having a great time in there.

Kevin Mooney (21:08.078)
They're having the best time. So I started to dabble in the scooters by retailing ones that already existed and I had built up some cash flow and then I took that cash and rolled it into well now I'm going to go do this for myself. I'm going to cut out that middle person. I'm going to go go manufacture my own. So.

Kevin Mooney (21:36.602)
I had success in the retail end of things. When we started Delta, that was the name of the scooter company. I had this big ambition driving the company and I brought in a partner, an investor in that. And that person was a friend from college and he had put a lot of money into it.

and we both didn't really know what were doing. We didn't allocate any budget to marketing, which was the stupidest thing that we could have ever done. But the, the, the point that I'm getting to is that the partnership itself was bad. So the company is what suffered from that. at the end of it, when we called it quits, he liquidated all of that and basically sold.

all the units to somebody here in town. And I think it was like a local nonprofit. So they took it, they could sell it. And you still see the scooters around town. Like I'll be driving down the road and I'm like, there's another one of my scooters that is out there that nobody knew it was me or that it existed.

Jacob Cass (22:53.929)
Is that a good memory or a bad memory? See you next time, bye.

Kevin Mooney (23:00.174)
think it's really good because it reminds me of what this thing could have been. And it reminds me of what I did wrong. And it reminds me of

power of organizational health and then brand and then actually executing on that brand. Because let's just say I had all of the things in the brand department buttoned up and written on paper. I still didn't put them out there in the world, so nobody would have ever known. But I had a great story behind the name. I had great marketing material and taglines and values in my head, but I didn't realize that

That is something that you should share with the world. And so yeah, I would say it's this good and bad memories. Of course I look at it and go, my first shot at a real business could have been a legit business and in like the seven figures, had like all the companies were doing seven figures at that time. It's like, damn it. I could have really had a good fucking business.

Jacob Cass (24:00.037)
Yeah.

Jacob Cass (24:06.674)
you

That's the thing with branding and it's like, you're actually growing a brand. It takes time. And it's no wonder that, you know, the drop ship drop shipping you, you shared earlier, like you had so many different topics, but you're just slapping a logo on them. It sounds like versus built in an actual brand. So that's the difference. Like how does your product stand out and what makes it unique and relevant and differentiated to from the others? Like how is it distinctive versus just like, you know, something that's

has more substance, more soul, as you mentioned.

Kevin Mooney (24:40.514)
Well, and then the next part of that, and people get this mixed up a lot in the brand zone is you share a lot of things about the product because we did make the product different. I used a different aluminum that was stronger and a little bit lighter. And, you know, I had different color ways. So I would put that information out there, but it's like, I'm selling these scooters to 13 year old kids.

They kind of don't give a shit about that. And I think I could have connected with them on a different level simply by saying this scooter will make you look cool. That probably would have sold better than this is lighter and stronger. Like they just didn't care.

Jacob Cass (25:24.679)
Yeah, it's like the product, product fit, right? You're solving the problem of, want something that's functional, but it also makes me look cool. And you know, it's, it's, it's more of the emotional drive, combined with the functional aspect.

Kevin Mooney (25:37.262)
Yeah. So that's, I look back on that and go, I learned so much. just sucks that we had to lose a bunch of money and, and three years, right. Um, you know, my, my partner was funding the entire thing and I was working in that the entire time. And I'm not saying it's all my partner's fault. It was certainly mine because I didn't know what I didn't know. And, and he did know what he didn't know. And

There was bad communication. And so I look back at it and go, it was the health of our relationship that really didn't allow that thing to succeed. And then of course I made some fatal mistakes out in my zone too.

Jacob Cass (26:20.841)
All, all experienced, hey, we use that for the next project. And, I think as part of our journey, our story is that we're learning from each of the things that didn't work as much as what did.

Kevin Mooney (26:33.292)
Yeah, a hundred percent. So yeah, I would say that my path into this space is way different than yours. I would say you were ahead of the curve and you were riding those waves and thinking proactively and ahead of things. I was not, I was trying to mimic what was out there and figure it out.

Jacob Cass (26:42.374)
Yeah.

Jacob Cass (26:54.249)
Well, it's funny you say that about like drop shipping. Um, I always had that in the background. I'm like, yeah, that's, could buy this and then, you know, put a logo on a build a brand. And I just never created my own product, like physical product. I, for some reason, for whatever reason, I was also always drawn to digital products and digital things. And I really released anything physical. So, um,

Yeah, it's cool. Cool. Just hear your story and how you did it. And like, I got targeted so often for like drop shipping companies and how to start this. I think I bought like a mini course at one point. I just never took it. So it could have been one of my parts.

Kevin Mooney (27:27.31)
Yeah. I mean, it was a thing. And I think if you got into that thing, you could make some money for, I don't know, five or 10 years, right? But inevitably it's a race to the bottom because especially if you use Amazon as your selling platform, which is really enticing because you can make money pretty quick. You have a huge audience.

couple little SEO tricks, get right up to the top and you're selling. But the problem is somebody else can buy that exact same product and your manufacturer will actually put their logo or your logo. They don't even give a shit, right? Cause there's no loyalty in that, that world. And then all they, all they have to do is drop it a dollar and they'll sell more than you. And then you drop it a dollar and then they drop. And then all of sudden you're selling this thing for

Jacob Cass (28:10.791)
One and a half.

Jacob Cass (28:18.398)
Yep.

Kevin Mooney (28:25.25)
you know, 99 cents and it just doesn't work anymore. And you're like, I'm out.

Jacob Cass (28:27.113)
Yeah, I see that on, I see that on, on Timo. Like if I'm shopping for something there, can like, if you scroll further down, there's not always someone else that has like a dollar cheaper or like some combo that looks cheaper, but that postage it costs like $1 higher or whatever. that there's all these like tricks and there's just so many vendors selling the same thing as such a race. that like Timo Timo, for example, is like exactly

what not to do in terms of like racing to the bottom and being the cheapest. You don't want to be in that spot. There's only one winner there and that's the lowest.

Kevin Mooney (29:02.978)
Yeah, it is. Yeah. That's, you know, if I think about it, that's actually the first time that I also tried a digital product. What I would do on my Amazon listings at the time, let's say I was selling a scooter, I would attach a free scooter guide to it and it would come as a digital download.

And so I would kind of recycle material that I had used internally or maybe on social media, something that pointed out all of the different parts on a scooter and how to replace a broken part or, you know, maybe tag on to the end of that, how to do a couple of tricks or something like that. So I was attaching a digital product to the physical one in hopes that they would buy mine over the person who was lower than me.

Jacob Cass (29:59.535)
Yeah, okay. All right.

Kevin Mooney (30:00.558)
So, so I don't think I, at the time I didn't quite focus on like, I could just sell this digital product. Like this could just be something I sell and I don't have to spend $200,000 bringing a product over here on a boat and putting it in a warehouse. Like, duh, Kev, I should have just thought about that back then.

Jacob Cass (30:23.289)
okay. Where to from here, pev? Pev, kev?

Kevin Mooney (30:32.577)
I don't know, man. Since we're on digital products, I'd kind of like to know what you're going on.

Jacob Cass (30:38.921)
Yeah, I did have this kind of thought when you're talking. So digital products, recently created a workshop around this because people have been asking about digital products. How do you do this? How do you do that? So I tried to put together a system of how I created and marketed and sold digital products. So I ran this workshop a couple of months ago and it was like a four step process that I went through to that. I kind of backtracked on how I did, did things. whether it be a font or.

you know, a summit or a course or whatever it is, there was some steps I just always went through and I wanted to teach this to other people because, you know, so they didn't just have to rely on like that feast and famine cycle of working with clients all the time. How can they have a product that works while they sleep? Like it's sold while they sleep and you know, everyone wants that passive income. So I tried to systemize that. I'm going to try to remember a little bit of that. But first it was like ideation.

How do you take what you know, like the value you have and your expertise, everyone has that. it's, it's really identifying what value you have. And then also some of the problems in the market and also looking at competitors. So it's kind of like the branding process, but in digital product context, context, then we actually in the workshop. So we came with ideas and we had five minutes and then you'd go into the next stage. The next stage was about,

creating the product. So how do we create it? What product, what do we need to create the product? What software, what tools is it a PDF? Is it a download? Is it a physical, no, not a physical thing. Is it, you know, where is it hosted? All those sorts of questions. So you go from ideation to creation. And we, in that five minutes after like explaining the whole process, they go and work on it for five minutes. And it's all about momentum, trying to get things out of your head onto paper. How do, how do you actually make it?

So you have a plan forward. What do you need? What's it look like and so forth and what problems does it solve? And then we moved into kind of the, the marketing and growth phase, which is kind of like bridging that gap. So here's the value. Here's the product. This is what it exists. how are we going to sell it? What's the, what's the potential title? What are the key points and pretty much how are we going to market it? So then we go spend time on that. And the last stage is in the growth scale.

Jacob Cass (33:08.105)
growth and scale phase where you capitalize on the success you've had, but then you start thinking about how you actually integrate that further into your brand and system, which we kind of do in the first one or two stages as well. But here's where I actually implemented, implemented. So was like, how do we actually scale this? How do we make it? How do get more visibility on our products? So it works while we sleep. So those sorts of things. And throughout this process, I'm teaching them with a case study of my own. So I go through.

how I built a font or designed a font with, I collaborated with someone else and how I went through that, that process, those four steps and shared exactly how, how to do it to give them inspiration for their product as well. So yeah, it was really successful. And I've had people tag me with like, I launched this product and you know, they're getting traction. So it's, cool to see the impact on that side of things. And it works.

Kevin Mooney (34:02.4)
Yeah, I'm super interested because it's a space that I've never even played in. I think for me, it's probably, I know it's like a blockage in my brain because it's such a vastly different space for me that I've just never played in that I can't wrap my head around it.

I think the other part of it is that I struggle.

And I promise I'm not trying to make this about me, but I struggle. I struggle seeing the value that I can actually provide to somebody in a digital product because well, first of all, the tools are already out there. Core is already there. Brand strategy is already there. All these things. And I'm speaking just in my little industry bubble.

The only, how do I say this?

Kevin Mooney (35:12.507)
I see a tool and then I see myself using that tool and making connections.

Kevin Mooney (35:24.354)
I'm doing a terrible job of describing this. It's like a, it's a translation thing, right? It's like, how do I, if I get, if I made a tool for you right now and I gave it to you, would you see the same value in it that I do? Because really the magic happens in my brain, right? And it's like, how do I get that out? And so I guess I'm just saying that I struggle with these digital products because I don't, I can't see that value. Like how can I actually give someone what's in my head?

Jacob Cass (35:25.583)
No, this is a big roadblock.

Jacob Cass (35:53.235)
So this is the big step at the beginning is trying to get your thoughts on a paper on the value that you have, because yes, there are 101 things out there, but no one has Kev Mooney's experience, right? Your experience. So how do you bring that, make it something unique and different and package it in a way that's valuable to the end consumer. So you have to understand that problem at first, firstly, but before we do that, we do spend time getting your thoughts down. Like what value do you have?

And how could you actually productize that? It's a big portion. And you'll be surprised if you just go through the motions of writing things down with a time limit that how much can come out and then you just move on to the next. Okay. Well, let's, let's do this again. Like, how do we, how would we actually create this? What does it look like? So you literally go into those steps and if you're forced with the time limit, you'll be really surprised. So just for example, like that whole system, I didn't have that system before and I wanted to.

Kevin Mooney (36:25.827)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (36:46.519)
Interesting.

Jacob Cass (36:52.883)
figure out a way that folks like yourself could actually go through that and create something and get out of your head. like, I don't have value. I don't know how to do this. So the momentum asking those questions in that right order, gives you an understanding of how to do it. And the problem, the biggest challenge is that people create it and then they don't know how to market it. And this is where I spend a lot of time as well in the case study, actually go through how I, how I did it. And a lot of it is focused on the pre-buzz.

Like 80 % of it is focused on the pre buzz, getting you getting people along on the journey so that you're building with them and they're coming along for the ride. It does mean you need a bit of an audience in the beginning. If you're selling on your own platform. However, if you don't have your own platform, there are other platforms you can sell on as well. So in the creative market places like Envato creative market and, and so forth, just as an example. So all these kinds of roadblocks that I pick up from people.

Kevin Mooney (37:40.654)
Sure.

Jacob Cass (37:50.407)
Like they, don't know what to do. I don't know what to sell. don't know how to get in front of people. Like that's what I walked them through so they can see, I get it now. And then they're inspired to like, okay, let's, let's go do this.

Kevin Mooney (38:01.846)
Yeah, and so how did you come up with that? Did you learn that from somebody else, a coach, by observing the world? What does that look like?

Jacob Cass (38:11.891)
Well, I had to, I, it's by experience, right? You, you, you've released your own product and you go through the motions. You're like, okay, well I'm investing this much. think the first time I really learned was through a course, my first course. I invested in, you know, creating the course. hired a videographer and it was my first course. I wanted to really do it well. And then I had to go through those motions. Like what is the course? Who's the course? How am going to package up my skills? How are they going to market it? How do I get it out there and so forth.

outside of my network. So I actually part in with a different company. They had a bigger audience and so forth. So those sorts of things I learned from, and then I bought out, brought out another product, like a font this time. And I collaborated with a typeface designer to create something. So those are, that's another roadblock. I didn't mention it's like, some people think I have to package this up and I have to do it, which is not the case, right? You can come up with an idea. You can find the, the, the product market fit.

Kevin Mooney (39:05.88)
Yeah.

Jacob Cass (39:10.801)
And then hire someone else to build it out. So I was a creative director. I hired a type designer. also hired a professional type or cover graphic designer for fonts. So I'm a graphic designer, but I actually hired an expert in that space to communicate the value of, of font. it's like working with experts. If you really want to make a great product, you have to think about, or think outside of just you, right? How do you actually.

How would you bring this to life in the real world? If this was actually a physical product, like you have done like drop shipping, what's the process you would go through as well? You can apply that to the digital space too.

Kevin Mooney (39:49.516)
Yeah, that's awesome. And, so you, you did a couple of few digital products and then you were like, Hey, these live in perpetuity. I'm going to now build a community and do public speaking and all of those fun things. Or like, do they all kind of happen at once?

Jacob Cass (40:01.384)
Yeah.

Jacob Cass (40:06.267)
No, I'm a of a creative drifter, Kev. that's what I like to call, call myself. I do drift between projects and that's a double edged sword. do, as you would have heard, I'm quite an early adopter and have been since the beginning, but that's also, what some people call it shiny object syndrome. And I love that. I do love that because it keeps things interesting, but I've also had gone down some paths that led nowhere and were a waste of, I don't want say time, but.

Kevin Mooney (40:23.906)
Yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh, fair.

Jacob Cass (40:35.849)
I could have been spending that time on other things like, um, know, NFT and crypto and web three came out and I started a company with 10 other people, which was a big mistake. And I learned from that, but it just, um, it made me realize not to jump into things with big teams and keep things small and nimble. And yeah, you don't want too many cooks in the kitchen. Um, but yeah, I learned from all those experiences and that kind of led into, um, a summit that I started.

by last year, my first large event. And I used all those skills of creating a digital product, events, doing podcasts in collaboration, using my network, email marketing, design, like, it's all the things I love and created a really big event. And I'm doing that again this year. It's actually next month and well in September, I should say. And yeah, it's just, love it. All those things like using all your kind of background experience and packaging it up and

giving values to other people. That's really what it's about.

Kevin Mooney (41:38.04)
Yeah, that's awesome. And I'm certainly envious of all of the things that you're doing. And I say that because...

have sort of a roadblock where, know, José had mentioned this in the call that I did with him. He's kind of the spark, the ignition to things. And then he likes to just let other people run with it. And I'm kind of the same way. I don't want to do all those things. I don't want to set up an email list and build an email list and do a community.

I know what the answers are. I'm just saying out loud that I don't enjoy doing all of those things. So I am envious of the people who do enjoy doing those because they produce outcomes, right? They just simply do. And that's got to feel really, really good. And on my side of the table, it feels kind of shitty to not want to do all of those things. No, you probably need to be doing all of those things and then you don't have necessarily all of those outcomes.

Jacob Cass (42:46.131)
Well, it goes both ways. Like I, I'm envious of, I'm envious of things of people that have big visions and can plan really well and don't get distracted. Like this summit that I've done is probably my biggest project today. And that's like a six month project, which was like a surprise that I finished it last year because I'm usually like do something and then change and so forth. And I've always liked that. yeah, I'm envious of people that have big visions, strategic kind of.

We're much more visionary, I guess in a way. So yeah, but yeah, getting on the tools, I've always enjoyed that and I've kept solo pretty much my whole, whole career. and I just like being the lone wolf, even when I was working at agencies, I had my earphones in and I was like, you know, I just did my thing. That's how I like working, but we haven't, one thing we haven't talked about is the blog, side of things. And that was a big.

Kevin Mooney (43:34.424)
Yeah.

Jacob Cass (43:42.365)
big arm of my business for many years. And I had a team at its peak around 12 people and they were scattered around the world. And that was not my designer creative side. It was running the blog and we had a, you know, we had a million page views at one, one point and we're kind of crashed down, a couple of years ago to now we have like 8,000 page view months. So was like this kind of huge roller coaster, experience on the blog blog side of things.

Don't know if you want to go down that route, but I wanted to share it.

Kevin Mooney (44:14.318)
I mean, I do. What do you think happened there?

Jacob Cass (44:17.213)
Well, I know exactly what happened. Google changed the algorithms. So we were ranking one to three on so many keywords and we'll just had so much traffic and we could easily rank because of so many years of blogging and we just knew how to, you know, not gonna say gain the system. We knew how the system worked and we could reverse engineer it and we could rank really well and until it didn't. So Google changes the algorithms, they mix things up and

yeah, pretty much overnight we had this like hockey stick graph, like we just scaled so much, so quickly. And that's when we grew a team of 12. And then over the course of the year, it just went down and crashed pretty much the other side. So it was quite the ride and we were definitely the glory days when we had it. And we had a lot of passive income coming in, because it was like an affiliate driven website. We'd recommend products, on Amazon and Envato and all these other sites.

Adobe and so forth, but yeah, things change. And now we have AI results. have Google, prioritizing Reddit and LinkedIn and community platforms versus smaller niche blogs like my own. So yeah, it was really hard to compete now as a small independent publisher.

Kevin Mooney (45:33.678)
For sure. I mean, it sounds like the SEO game has kind of always been a huge part of what you do.

Jacob Cass (45:42.185)
Yeah, it has been, yeah. It was pretty much my whole business from 2007 to like 2022, I guess, was pretty much all my leads were coming through social and SEO. But then, yeah, a couple of years ago, things changed and I just couldn't rank really. It was hard to rank on a lot of keywords. So that's when I kind of pivoted into marketing on LinkedIn further and also creating a summit and I got into coaching.

And that sort of thing, it kind of led into the consulting too. So things changed, but.

Kevin Mooney (46:15.598)
Yeah. Yeah, I experienced some of that when I was doing the scooters early on. We ranked really high and that's where we got basically all of our orders from. And I don't remember what year it was, but there was just a shift in the algorithm. It wasn't necessarily even a big one, but we fell off the face of the earth and nobody can find us. And I was like, oh shit, what do we do now?

Jacob Cass (46:42.408)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (46:45.9)
And then we saw another shift happen on the Amazon algorithm and we dropped off the front page there. I'm like, now both my streams of income for this company are basically gone. it's kind of, it's kind of the reason that I've always had a bone to pick with SEO or the term SEO, you know,

Jacob Cass (47:06.878)
Hmm.

Kevin Mooney (47:09.994)
Everyone's fighting over these these keywords or these long tail keywords or these phrases or things like that But I always thought to myself Why not just create our own keywords? Why not create our own? Searchable term that everyone's looking for then we should naturally rank at the top, you know, have to assume that If somebody searches for just do it Nike's gonna show up but nobody's really trying to

rank for just do it. They're trying to rank for tennis shoes or shoes for outdoor wear or whatever those words are, but they're not optimizing for just do it. It just never really, I could never reconcile that in my brain.

Jacob Cass (47:55.849)
Did you ever use that to your advantage?

Kevin Mooney (48:00.654)
I did for like some tests. we ran, we ran, or we, we wrote some blogs at the agency and we had funky names for it, like chicken coops and kitchen sinks. And if you search those words, we showed up number one for it. And so I would be like, see, you can rank for anything that you want.

But now you have to convince people to search for chicken coops and kitchen sinks. So we ran it in like a test scenario just for fun, but I haven't necessarily used that to my advantage. No, but it's...

Jacob Cass (48:42.321)
Yeah, think it's an interesting idea. And that's why I was curious if you applied it. Because the other side of it is like, you're not getting buyer intent people unless you're marketing the keyword, which is a whole thing in itself.

Kevin Mooney (48:56.342)
Right. So you're still driving the traffic there anyways. It's not necessarily a natural search term. but I still think that there's some sort of value in it and I just don't know what those words are exactly yet and how I could market that to drive someone.

Jacob Cass (49:03.174)
Yeah.

Jacob Cass (49:16.016)
I'll tell you my search strategy. was very simple. was best X for designers. So it's like best computers for designers, best monitors, best masters, best yada yada. And we just did that. That was our keyword by intent people. We could rank well. We knew how to do all the hate ones, hate to keywords and everything. And we just did that at scale. And that's what the, team of 12 were doing. It was pumping out those sorts of listicles. And then you go into a different vertical, like best

for like best simple fonts, best, wine fonts, whatever, or like something brushes. And then you just do that at scale and you just a new keyword. And if you have that system going, like it's so easy and you just, you could just do anything that's much threw anything at the wall to see if it's stuck and you know, five out of 10 would stick and that's fine. That's fine. Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (50:05.591)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (50:10.094)
Sure, absolutely. Did you ever venture out of the creative space and have the best,

Jacob Cass (50:15.751)
Yeah. And that's when shit went down. That's when things changed. So I went in, I got into gaming and then I got into TVs at one point. think we even have air conditioners on there. Like it was like crazy. So we got known as a tech review site instead of a creative site. And that's when it wasn't just our site that got affected, like pretty much the whole industry did like affiliate different sites got affected, but we kind of cut back and we went through like a

Kevin Mooney (50:27.8)
Whoa.

Jacob Cass (50:44.321)
a big cull in of anything that was not related to creative subjects or design and got rid of all of that and deleted like hundreds, maybe thousands of articles to bring back the, the, the niche focused version of our site. So, yeah, cause that's what all the SEO blogs were saying and like the big SEO leaders and everything was saying, like you need to have a focus.

Kevin Mooney (51:02.958)
Yeah.

Jacob Cass (51:13.917)
You have to look at what's been cut because all those like irrelevant articles got cut and you had to look at what actually was getting cut. So it's good. could reverse engineer like, well, Google sees you as this site. This is what you're going to rank for. So you should go in this kind of direction. And that's what we did. And we kind of got an uplift and then they changed the algorithm again. it's a constant battle, man. But there was, there was a good couple of years of like glory days.

Kevin Mooney (51:30.04)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (51:34.35)
Those sneaky bastards. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I remember that whole time period. I remember I probably saw all of your best X of Y. I was probably just like these fucking guys, man. What are they? my gosh, I can't stand this. I know it serves a purpose. get it. So where do you think the SEO stuff is going now with all this AI?

Jacob Cass (51:49.673)
Most likely.

Jacob Cass (51:54.355)
Yeah.

Jacob Cass (52:07.677)
Well, yeah. So the last year I had our first client who found me through AI, through Tratchity in, in, in, in particular. So they're looking for best freelance brand designer. I was number one when they've. Yeah. That's what that, yeah. So I didn't, I hadn't, optimized anything like that. I didn't have an article. didn't have a keyword on my site or anything that was related to that except for, you know,

Kevin Mooney (52:20.504)
Were you on the best train again? We're back there. Wow.

Jacob Cass (52:35.665)
My homepage had had brand designer and some of the H1 tags and things, but it was just through, well, how chat GVT works. And especially on the web and scraping and everything. like it's references of your, your name and keywords in that kind of realm. And that's what it would have picked up just because of all the history from blogging and, know, just being on the web for a while. He picked those sorts of things up. So I didn't optimize for chat. And I think that's a whole new game that we have to learn, but

It's getting increasingly more complex because it's not just about keywords. It's about all everything. It's like, it's measuring your social, influence is measuring like your, what books you have out, what podcasts you've been and what, like how many videos you're on and everything. It's just, it's a holistic kind of network of your, your name and what you've put out there. And basically it's all about trust and should Google, does this, is this relevant? Is it trustworthy? Is it going to help?

solve the problem of the person that's searching for this. That's really what it comes down to. So if you can do all those things, then you're going to come up first in search.

Kevin Mooney (53:42.816)
Yeah, I've done. I've done that search. I've searched for myself not by looking or asking. You know my name, but I've been like what are the best branding agencies? What are the best marketing agencies and?

Jacob Cass (53:58.166)
Yep. But they're sneaky. Chad is sneaky. It's like they know you. They're like, I'm just going to stick Kevin to this one.

Kevin Mooney (54:02.24)
Yeah. Yeah. What's, what's really interesting right now is it's, it's pulling, I do show up in there. Of course it's going to tell me me, but it's, it's pulling up the agency that I had previous to this that is since closed down, but I've, I've mapped the domain to my domain and things like that. So I'm kind of pulling some of that old juice over here, but it still ranks.

Jacob Cass (54:18.053)
Okay. Yeah.

Jacob Cass (54:26.587)
Yeah. Is that recently? Cause I'm curious. it was just a recent search because they should have been updating, should be updating the data set by now.

Kevin Mooney (54:36.79)
Yeah, I would say it was within like two months or something like that. So yeah, it's weird that it still shows up and I don't know why, but I know that domain existed here locally for 15 years. it is now officially down and off the web. So I bet if I looked again, it would be gone.

Jacob Cass (54:42.544)
Okay, interesting.

Jacob Cass (54:53.448)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (55:05.41)
Yeah, I don't know that the AI thing is, is pretty crazy. I don't, I guess it's probably not even AI it's LLMs, but it's a, it's a wild thing out there and people are freaking the fuck out about it. And I don't, I don't know. I don't know exactly what to say about it. I suppose.

Jacob Cass (55:20.253)
Hmm. Yeah.

Jacob Cass (55:28.463)
It's, it's a topic. It's a hot topic, right? Every day you see a discussion about even in my own private community, like this pretty much every week there, there's like a couple of posts written about like, like, what do think of this? And like, how do I do this? Or, you know, the CC kind of symbol, there's always something anyway. it is a hot topic because people are losing the jobs. It's a real thing. And the landscape is changing, especially in the creative industries because

Kevin Mooney (55:32.568)
Ha ha.

Jacob Cass (55:58.995)
The whole model is changing, especially for agencies. The bottom rung of, I guess, design in general is being eroded. So, you know, small startups, they can just go to Canva, get a template, customize it. Design is becoming more commoditized, which is a shame, but it's also a good thing because it's an opportunity for creatives to become more strategic and kind of get into that partnership role. saying you have to be a partnership, but it's going to be.

you're going to provide more value and more value means more in your pocket as well. If you know how to position yourself. And I think it's, yeah, I think if we use it as an opportunity to actually be more than just a designer and I'm not, I'm a designer. I'm not saying just to design it by any means. just mean, thinking more strategically, providing more value. That's kind of what I'm alluding to.

Kevin Mooney (56:51.65)
Yeah. Do you ever spiral out of control with this, this topic and think, cause Heather crank was just telling me about the diary, this diary of a CEO episode with a mogul. I can't say his name right now. The,

Jacob Cass (57:05.737)
Hmm.

Kevin Mooney (57:13.812)
ex CEO of Google, something like this or technology guy. I don't, I don't know. well it's a, I haven't finished it, but it's kind of like duping glue. It's like, we're going to have AI leadership in the world and it is forming clusters of patterns that are learning from each other and moving on. And I guess my question is, do you ever spiral out of control and say, what is, what are we doing?

Jacob Cass (57:15.761)
Okay. No, I've been listening to it.

Jacob Cass (57:26.291)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (57:43.552)
If this shit is going to happen and the robots are literally on the way and they're taking over, what is going to happen? Do I just learn farming now? Is that what I'm supposed to be doing?

Jacob Cass (57:51.919)
I don't usually get freaked out. I have a bit of a barrier. don't read the news. Well, I don't watch the news. I should say I kind of scroll Reddit for some headlines here and there, but I don't really buy into all of that. try not to like, sure. Whatever way you look at it, you can probably put a doomy glim on anything. but yeah, AI is one of those fundamental shifts. I'm not going to downplay that. It's, it's like the industrial revolution. think that's the one of our age.

I love the prospect of it and how powerful it's been for me, just like LLMs in general, LLMs in general. But yeah, like if you look at other industries, which we, often, you know, we just kind of stay in that bubble, but you think about other industries and how they're being revolutionized. Like in medicine, for example, it's just like, it's crazy what's being done. And like at the end of the day, it's like, it's software, right? AI is about software. And we kind of have a.

The creative industry kind of thinks about it like as Gen A, Gen AI versus like this idea of it being more than just, yeah, anyway, a whole other topic.

Kevin Mooney (58:54.092)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (59:00.152)
Yeah, no, it's okay. I was just curious if your brain spirals out of control like mine does. I think that I always lean back on some level of logic and just like trust in humanity. But I certainly am known to spiral out of control sometimes. Yeah.

Jacob Cass (59:17.417)
Okay. All right. Fair enough. Nah, I'll just like look the other way. I'm like, nah, I'm just going to get on with my day.

Kevin Mooney (59:24.108)
Yeah, very cool. So I'm, I really want to know about the brand builders Alliance and, what that is like. You don't have to tell me how you built the damn thing, but I'm just so curious about this community and you know, where, where it came from, what the idea is behind it, where it's going. cause I'm relatively new to these things.

Jacob Cass (59:48.891)
Okay, cool. So for context, the brand builders Alliance is a membership community for brand builders. So designers, creatives, anyone that's kind of getting into that strategic space is there to help them master brand in and build a thriving creative business. So we have three pillars, which is community resources and mentorship. So it's just like kind of hybrid approach to a community. Often you'll get communities or memberships focus on.

mastering branding or how to build a business. This is a combination of both of, and that's kind of our focus. So where this membership came from was backtracking a few years, when COVID started, know, people were stuck indoors. started to masterminds and I started, and I really enjoyed that. kind of got into coaching and yeah, running masterminds and that led into starting my first community.

And I ran that for one or two years and that kind of fizzled out because I set the price too low and I spent too much time and over delivered there. And I learned from that. kind of trans that transition that into a higher tier offering with coaching support, brought in more support. I learned from all those experiences. I interviewed brand builders and designers and really tried to understand what they wanted. And that's when the.

community 2.0 came out. So I transitioned from that one community to the brand builders Alliance. And yeah, we've, started in February this year and yeah, it's been going really, really well. How we got it off the ground was I ran a summit last year for brand builders. This was the first virtual event that I've run. was a four day free virtual event for brand builders. I had a goal of 5,000 attendees and we ended up getting 23,000 people registered. So it was like a major.

success and from that, the people that attended, I kind of got them into the paid membership. And now we have some really great people growing their businesses and we can really see the impact. So that's, that's why I'm also doing the summit again this year. It was a major success. I've done it again this year. And the idea is to continue the brand builders Alliance and get people from the summit into the Alliance.

Jacob Cass (01:02:11.847)
So we can help them build their business and on a year round basis, not just on a, you know, four day, kind of sprint.

Kevin Mooney (01:02:19.564)
Yeah, that's really cool. saw. I saw you posting stuff about it and. For whatever reason, I didn't join, but now I'm a little I have some FOMO that I didn't join.

Jacob Cass (01:02:35.259)
Yeah, there's one or two people from the core community in there as well. And yeah, there's, good stuff going on. So if you're, you're always welcome as the dancer.

Kevin Mooney (01:02:46.914)
Yeah, when does it open back up again? I know it's closed for waitlist right now.

Jacob Cass (01:02:51.645)
Yeah, it's close to the moment. We have a wait list. So we open a couple of times a year. That's so we can onboard people and make sure you have the right experience. We have the summit coming up in mid September and that's when we're going to open up again for the summit. So it's going to be open for that whole time where you can join. There's no wait list or anything. It's just, if you're at the summit, you can actually get access to join and then we'll have like a welcome party and we'll start the process again for Q4.

Kevin Mooney (01:03:20.238)
Very cool. You said something that has been in my mind for a very long time. This undercharging and over delivering idea. I have no idea how to balance that in this digital product community space. That's one of those blocks. Like A, I don't know how people are gonna actually see the value of what's in my head and B,

Jacob Cass (01:03:33.277)
and

Kevin Mooney (01:03:49.078)
I don't know what to charge and how I don't over deliver. Can you kind of just share some thoughts around that? I'm interested.

Jacob Cass (01:03:57.245)
Well, it's, comes back to the product, right? It's the classic four P's. have to understand your product, your price, how you promote it, where you're to promote it. And if you get any of those things wrong, can, it can really affect the bottom line. You're. You know, growth and everything. So you have to, you don't always know and you figure it out along the way and things do change and adapt. But when it comes to community in particular, you know, you're dealing with people.

And everyone has a different understanding of value. People are there from different backgrounds. They had different levels. They're there for different reasons. Building community is notoriously difficult. And I'm not talking about like a bolt on community here. It's like a place where you feel connected and you you show up for each other and you know, there's resources there to help you grow. There's, you know, there's different types of communities that there's, there's ones for connection. There's ones for transformation, like an educational side of things.

There's ones that are combined both. So understanding all of those things and who your audience is and what they're giving out of it is important. Generally, if they're there to make more money, you can have a higher ticket price. If it's there to, you know, it's like a hobby, for example, you'll have a lower ticket price. So you have to understand the goals and who's there and why they're there to help dictate the right price.

So for me in the beginning, set, people were there to connect, but they're also there for to build their businesses. And that's where I went wrong. There's, because I wanted to over deliver and help everyone. And it was, it was becoming more of a burden and I was, I don't want to say resenting, but it was a lot to show up for the amount that I put on the ticket price. So that is kind of what I learned. So if you think about the mathematics behind it,

And the scale, let's say you have a community of a hundred or 200 people and they're all there, print, paying a low price. still have to tailor to all of them and give them value. and if you do that at scale, it just gets even worse. You have more people to tend to, need to hire more support and so forth. And the economies of scale just don't work. So that's what I learned. So this one, I have less people, a higher price. You can give them more. And that means less churn.

Jacob Cass (01:06:23.869)
more impact. So you have to think about those sorts of things. And that's what I learned. So that's where I'm at now.

Kevin Mooney (01:06:31.33)
Very cool. Yeah. I mean, you said all the things that I think about. It's just like, how, how does that, how do you actually do that? What are the actual things? And that's a rhetorical question, right? But those are the, those are the concepts that have been kind of flowing around in my head in the exploration of going down this path. Is that something that I

Jacob Cass (01:06:36.651)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:06:57.046)
want to do? Is that something that I can do? Can I deliver that value? And certainly what is the price and what are the things that I'm delivering to them of value? It's, it's a lot. It's not like I'm going to go shoot a hundred workout videos and sell you my workout videos. Like pay me 50 bucks a month and you have access to all my videos. It's not quite like that, at least in my head.

I think that'd be kind of boring too. think that the community aspect sounds a lot more fun and engaging.

Jacob Cass (01:07:32.371)
Well, you have to think about the difference, right? That's the fitness industry, obviously just to continue that thread is notoriously difficult and competitive because it's easy to enter. But again, the people that you want to listen to, they have a personal brand. have a personality that you, you do or don't gel with. And you have to realize that your flavor is not for everyone, but there's going to be a lot of people that enjoy your flavor.

Kevin Mooney (01:07:56.526)
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Cass (01:07:59.881)
and you're what you bring to the table. So that's the difference. Um, it's how you do things in your experience. And I think that's what a lot of people get held up on. You say like, someone else has done this before. Like who gives it? Yeah. Who gives a shit, you know, way and bring your experience and your flavor. Cause you'll find your people.

Kevin Mooney (01:08:00.322)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:08:11.49)
Right.

Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:08:19.79)
Yeah, that's cool. It's encouraging. Not necessarily like I needed a pep talk or a pat on the back or something, but it is encouraging to kind of hear that. Like, yeah, you're right. There is somebody would like to hear something similar, but from me and certainly from you.

Jacob Cass (01:08:39.305)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's something I hear all the time. It's kind of the, the import. don't want to say imposter syndrome, but it's like a mental, it's a mindset kind of game. we put these blockers up on ourself. So we have to get over that and just take action and build along the way. It doesn't have to be perfect. You can iterate. And that's something else I've learned actually is that stop bringing out new things. Like you can improve the ones you have.

and do a 2.0 version of them. So that is another common mistake. you know, rather than building out, you know, 10 different courses or 10 different products, like there's this like one place to get it all right. You can sell one thing instead of selling 10 things. So there's lots of things to think about.

Kevin Mooney (01:09:10.232)
Sure.

Kevin Mooney (01:09:21.944)
Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, very cool. So what's next for you?

Jacob Cass (01:09:30.769)
I've been burning the midnight oil on this summit. is mid September. We have 40 speakers over four days. It's a hybrid event of live events and prerecorded keynotes. And there's, it's going to be good fun. We have live panels, we have design battles, have, Q and A's, we have all sorts of good stuff there.

on strategy, design, business, marketing. So yeah, that's what's next. And then I'm going to continue building the brand builders Alliance next year or before after the summit. So those are my focuses. Now I'm doing a little bit of consulting client work, but it's become increasingly more difficult to serve two audiences because I'm serving creatives and brand builders, people in that space. And then if you send mixed messages, you know, trying to, you know,

do identity and consultant work. It's getting more difficult. I used to be able to do this so easily because all my work came through SEO, but as we learned that kind of has dried up, it's become more difficult. So yeah, I've had to kind of choose, choose one path versus the two like I was doing. And that's just the reality of things at the moment, cause you can't, you can't do it all. yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:10:30.668)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:10:45.976)
For sure. Do you see a life past the things that you're doing right now? All of the activities, summits and communities and digital products. Is there anything after that? Just straight retirement and travel hit another 88 countries?

Jacob Cass (01:11:02.997)
I got four kids, so I'm not going anywhere at any time. I'll be working for a long time, but I love, I love it. And, know, I, I wake up and look forward to going to work and like, I'm very grateful and fortunate to be able to say that. like wanting to stay up to work on projects like that is, that is what I, you know, I really enjoy. So for me, I feel very fortunate to be in that position, even though I am, you know, working, working a lot, but that's.

not a choice.

Kevin Mooney (01:11:34.06)
the name of the game. I get it. I absolutely get it. Cool. Well, you probably got some work to get to. You've been talking about this summit,

Jacob Cass (01:11:44.337)
Yeah, that's I might hit the gym. I have been a bit lazy. So I'm going to go to the gym and yeah, and back to work. So thank you for the invite. And it was good to finally meet face to face and talk shop. It's always good to share. thank you.

Kevin Mooney (01:11:51.502)
Cool. Well, I'll let you get out of here.

Kevin Mooney (01:12:00.706)
Yeah.

Kevin Mooney (01:12:04.288)
I appreciate you coming on and sharing your background and what you're doing. And for me, it's just fascinating to hear from somebody who's done it.

As a creative in this industry for a long time now, we see people out in the world doing these things, but it's not often that we get to have a private intimate conversation where you can just ask any question that you want. So I appreciate you coming on. Well, I'm happy that it went easy. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Jacob Cass (01:12:31.177)
Yeah, well you made it easy, man.

Jacob Cass (01:12:39.047)
You're welcome. Thanks, Kev. Stay in touch.