231: Scaling Successfully With a $25 Product: How Peepers Reached 900% Growth

Austin Brawner: What's up, everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Ecommerce Influence Podcast. My name is Austin Brawner.

Andrew Foxwell: And I'm Andrew Foxwell coming at you live from the frozen tundra of Wisconsin right now. So I'm just saying it's a little bit cold here as it normally is.

Austin Brawner: Always chilly year-round for my taste, but that's okay. I haven't spent a lot of time out there in the summer.

But I want to share something that I'm pumped about today because I love sharing big wins. I've been working with a client for the last three months, and one of the things we've been focusing on was redesigning their subscription aspect of the business.

Big opportunity, under-tapped and so we did some kind of looking at it. We reworked the offer. We redesigned it a little bit. To be honest, it wasn't a crazy overhaul that actually, we decided on the strategy and the changes and the design, it only took about a week and a half to implement. With from 2% of customers taking subscription to 10% after rolling it out.

Andrew Foxwell: Huge.

Austin Brawner: Absolutely huge, huge, huge increase and super exciting. So I always fired about stuff like that, and it always just like reminds me that you don't have to ... Often, there's opportunity right there just waiting for you and it's all about figuring it out and tapping into it.

Andrew Foxwell: Yeah, that's huge. Subscription business, everybody's trying to get going and so that's really awesome.

You know what else is awesome? Our guest today on the podcast, John Hart from Peepers or as I like to pronounce Peepers, because that to me is how it reads. But interesting product, these guys were added on the Oprah's O list.

They've been in business since '93. They got in the Oprah O list and things have continued to grow really, really, really exponential since then for them. And John is the director of marketing and operations for this company. And-

Austin Brawner: Super interesting guy, really, really sharp and you can tell he's been there, I think, they've grown 800% or 900% over the last five years. He's been there the entire time so he's like seen a lot and his role has changed and grown a ton. He shares some really, really interesting stories from his time working there.

Andrew Foxwell: Yeah, definitely. And I think you're going to gain a lot of insight from this episode. We talk about pricing. We talk about the marketing strategy that they're using. We talk about the way that they have really continued to grow. We talk about wholesale. So there's something in this episode for everyone. So without any further ado, let's go ahead and welcome John to the show.

John Hart: Thanks. Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Andrew Foxwell: Oh, we're so glad to have you, man. I feel like we can see clearly having you on the podcast. It's 2020, the year of clear vision which is fitting that you're on the podcast.

John Hart: Exactly, exactly.

Andrew Foxwell: So there's a lot that we can talk about with you and with Peepers but if you could give a little bit of background, maybe 30 seconds kind of your marketing background and how you got to where you are, and a little bit about Peepers as well, that would be awesome.

John Hart: Of course. So actually my introduction to ecommerce was a little unexpected. I graduated with a degree that had nothing to do with ecomm business marketing, anything of that nature and I was kind of a little bit of a directionless 22-year-old I would say. So I got a call from my cousin who had just purchased a package of ecommerce businesses. I think there are four websites in total. And he just said, "Hey, I need help."

And so, I joined him day one which was, I think, day two of him owning the company. Then I knew I was hooked. I loved every aspect of it. And it was honestly the best possible learning experience because it was just trial and error.

We didn't have anybody to really go to. We just tried stuff and just saw what works, saw what didn't. I think one of the first things that I remember from that is I was placing an order from one of our distributors and we were buying the product, for I think, let's call it, $10 and selling it for $8.

So I went to him and it was my first day, and I was just like, "I don't know your goals, but I don't think this is going to go well when we're losing money on some of these sales."

There was a lot to go through. I think it had been ... The business itself had just been unattended for a while when you purchased it, so I think that's why some of that kind of stuff happened. But we experienced some really good growth over the five or six years that I was there. And after that, I moved on to some consulting and joined the Peepers team a little over five years ago.

And then Peepers itself was actually born in 1993 which a lot of people I think are surprised that we've been around that long. And actually the Sammann company, which is the parent company has been around for four generations, so a really long time.

But when Peepers was born, the third-generation owners, they were looking at the reading glasses and the glasses market in general and everything was kind of boring and ugly. So they came up with some really fashionable designs, took them to a trade show and people went crazy. So that's kind of how we were born in 1993.

Austin Brawner: Awesome, and can you tell us about your role and what you're doing today at Peepers?

John Hart: Sure. So I kind of have a dual functioning role. I'm the ecommerce and operations director here. So I head up our ecommerce department as well as operations department which has really grown a lot over the last 10 years. I think over the last 10 years, we've had about 900% growth. So the operation side has definitely gone through some changes.

Andrew Foxwell: Well, we're going to get into that today talking about operations a little bit, but I think the thing that strikes me and the thing that when we first met really struck out of me was that you have been there five years, which is I would say awhile to be honest in reference to a lot of companies, you don't hear that this much.

And obviously, the growth has continued in those five years. You've taken over and things have continued to really blossom and grow with a lot of different channels.

From a high level before we start to get really in specifics, what do you do at Peepers or what do you think that you do at Peepers that a lot of other people are not doing?

John Hart: Well, thank you first of all. I think, it starts with the top and kind of trickles down but we have an attention to detail unlike I've seen in other companies. So I think that starts with our CEO, like I said, and just trickles down to everyone.

But we care about everything. We care about our packaging. We care about our choices that go with our glasses. We care about minute details maybe like the shipping options and what's the best shipping option that will get to a customer in California versus Florida and how can it be most cost-effective for us and them? We care about our showrooms.

I think we want to present ourselves in a certain way and we go out of our way sometimes to do that. And I think that makes a big difference when we're making decisions just that attention to detail. We don't like to let things slide even if they are small things.

And I think the other thing is just we kind of invest for the future so we know where we want to do five years from now and kind of try to make decisions based on that right now.

A couple of years ago, we made an investment when we were quite a bit of a smaller company. We invested in NetSuite which is kind of our ERP, so at that time, it was a big leap for us and I think because of that, it's allowed us to grow in a way that we want to.

Austin Brawner: I'd like to dive into that a little bit because what from I understand from Andrew and taking a look at your website, you guys have taken a kind of multichannel approach to growing revenue and obviously, NetSuite is one of those things that can kind of help you with that.

How do you guys approach multichannel growth and what are the channels that you guys are currently looking at investing in and growing on?

John Hart: Sure. So I think we have our wholesale channel so we're in over 4,000 stores nationwide. So you'll see our displays, we have a couple of different display options out there. We're in small mom-and-pop gift stores and multi-door chains. So that's one of the channels that we really focus on.

The other channel is obviously our direct consumer business on peepers.com, so that's where I come into play and our ecommerce team comes into play really focusing on delivering the best experience possible on peepers.com.

We want to not just a shopping site. We want to deliver great content, show customers exactly what the glasses that they are going to get or going to look like. And just trying to really enhance that experience.

We also pay special attention to being consistent across all those channels so we wanted to feel like Peepers whether you're in a store that's 2,000 miles away from us or away from our headquarters or on peepers.com or anywhere else.

And then, of course, we're also on Amazon as well which has been ... It's been a really good channel for us over the last three to four years.

Andrew Foxwell: In terms of multichannel, do you see these things ... How do you view the multichannel side? One thing I always wonder is like, with each stage of the funnel.

Do you really try to push more on Facebook and Instagram as an acquisition on the front end or do you utilize display or do you have the prospecting side of it be the retail side and then ... I mean, that's where a lot of the discovery is taking place and then Facebook and Instagram or Google or something else are in between there or SEM is in between there?

How do you kind of slot these things together and what have you learned about the customer journey? Because your average order value, I don't know what it is, but I assume it's got to be not like incredibly high. It's not as if you have a ton of room to play with to acquire a customer and you're doing like tons of branded advertising. And so how are you creatively prospecting, I guess, online or offline?

John Hart: Yeah, we often talk internally about how we kind of run two different businesses and it's true.

So the businesses, both channels seem to grow at similar percentages which is very interesting. So I think our belief and something that we structure is that a customer could be making online purchase and then really love the glasses and then they'll go to a retail store where we're carried and they'll be like, "Oh, it's Peepers, like I have one pair. I need more."

I mean, I think that's the nice thing about reading glasses is if you are traveling and you forget them or we're always coming out with new designs so there's a lot of repeat purchases.

And in terms of top of the funnel, I mean, we definitely pay a lot of attention on the digital side for the top of funnel and really try and drive traffic to peepers.com and get people in the funnel that way.

Austin Brawner: Super interesting. It's definitely a question, I think, that a lot of people have on their mind. It's like do these all play together especially, I think the big one is Amazon and your Shopify site. How did those two play together?

That's a conversation going on in everyone's mind whether or not to sell on Amazon, how much to invest in their own website specifically between those two things, how do you guys think about the relationship between Amazon and your own website?

John Hart: I've heard a couple of your guests talked about this and it's definitely a hot topic in the industry, I think. I mean, just recently Nike announced they're pulling off of Amazon, which was really interesting news.

I think for us, the strategy and the mindset is ... I mean, you see all the stats out there that x percentages of searches start on Amazon especially buying-related searches.

I mean, there's no doubt about it that you're giving up a really big piece of the pie if you aren't on Amazon. It's just something that we, especially over the last I would say year to year and a half, we've really focused on that channel and just come to grips with it that it is an important channel. It's not going away and we just manage it kind of aggressively really.

Andrew Foxwell: Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Like you've come to terms with the fact that it's part of it and you're managing it, you're looking at it and you're saying like, "We know this plays a role," so is there any sort of like change in mentality you have in terms of managing or is it just like, "We know this plays a role and we know it's important so we're just going dedicate, and as we've dedicated more to it, we've seen incremental sales for us."

John Hart: Yes, I think exactly that. So we have dedicated way more time to it internally just managing the catalog, managing our brand page, really starting to manage a lot of the marketing campaigns on there. I think there's still tons of runway for us on there because we are really just getting started. But just with the ... I mean, obviously the amount of traffic that they have, like I said the buying related searches, you just can't ignore it.

Austin Brawner: Yeah, I think it's really interesting and the distinction I always find with whether or not it's tough to land on Amazon like invest in it is it really comes out to market and product and what the goal is. And if you guys want to be the biggest and the best, you kind of have to be there.

Especially for your guys' product like someone is getting on Amazon and they're going to search for reading glasses. That's, in your niche, it's like they just want reading glasses and then they see yours and they're like, "Okay, these are really quality. This seemed to fit the bill."

I want to transition back a little bit to your website because you guys have a really, really solid website, Shopify site, and one of the things that you notice when you land there is there's something called the Perfect Pair Finder. And you can click on that, and it says, basically take a quiz to find the perfect Peepers reader or sunglasses or blue light filtering eyewear.

And you get started and it goes through. It helps you find the right pair, and does a really good job, I thought, and also captures an email. Can you talk a little bit about your mindset around how you develop that, where it came from and what type of an impact maybe that has had on your guys' direct consumer site?

John Hart: Definitely. So the challenge with selling glasses online is you don't know exactly what they're going to look like on, you don't know exactly how they're going to fit. Maybe there's a color differentiation between your monitor and the photo or something like that.

You don't always know and we're just trying to give the customers, I think, all of the tools we can possibly give them to find what they're looking for.

So we have the traditional navigation options that almost everybody has with filtering and drop downs and all that kind of stuff. But sometimes that's not the best path to finding the product that you're looking for.

So we just try to come up with the common questions or if you're in a store, what you're just thinking about while you're trying on glasses or looking for glasses and just trying to help filter down those options with a series or a set of questions.

We do have hundreds of different frame styles and colors to choose from, so we don't want it to be overwhelming. So that's one of the reasons that we created this Perfect Pair Finder.

You can answer these questions. You can select multiple options if you're not exactly sure, because I mean, a lot of times people are just like, "Oh, I want a pair that matches this outfit or I'm looking for something based on this." And so we want to just kind of cover all of our bases in that regard.

So the fun part about it is I think down the line, we're not there yet, but based on these answers that customers are giving and especially if they do attach their email to it, we can start to do more personalization around emails that we send, the experience on the website, all that kind of stuff especially because like I said, we do launch products, new products all the time.

So if we know a customer loved this product and we're launching something similar or an upgraded version or something like that, we can deliver that in a personalized way to them.

Andrew Foxwell: The opportunity there is wild. I mean it's a quiz to some degree. I was talking a client of mine who they had taken the advice off of the quiz kind of episode that Austin and I did in, I don't know, six to nine months ago about building a, I think we called it a 'baller quiz funnel on a budget.'

And they had implemented this and then they had started to and it was a style quiz and then they find out what things people like and are taking certain categories of those people and then were marketing to them specifically on Facebook and Instagram, with obviously creatives that match that.

I mean you could think about it from an email personalization standpoint and then that standpoint, it's wild if you start to think about the Perfect Pair Finder on your end of what it could mean, what they're really into, because you don't have to share but I do know that a lot of your ... You have a very large repeat customer rate. That's really common because frankly reading glasses get lost a lot too.

Austin Brawner: Sat on, stepped on.

Andrew Foxwell: Yeah. That personalization side is really big and hearing you talk about it, are you guys thinking about some of these new AI pieces that are clearly going to become a bigger part of online advertising as time goes on?

I've heard that Amazon is testing it. I know that Shopify is testing it where you can try on the glasses, showing a camera, that type of thing. Are you thinking about that at all? And if so, kind of how are you thinking about it?

John Hart: Yes. The camera thing is fun. I mean, I think we've seen it on competitor websites. We've tested all the models out there and a lot of times, it just looks like a live-action Photoshop.

Sometimes, the glasses are covering your mouth and a lot of the times, it just doesn't create a great experience. So that's why we've kind of focused heavily in just our model photography so a customer can see what it looks like on somebody's face, not necessarily theirs. And we think that's a better tool right now that exists.

But in terms of the personalization in the AI regarding that, we've done a ton of research into that. I think that's where we're just deciding how to launch it and this kind of like the early stages of almost like information gathering. So we're trying to put ourselves in the position to be ready for that I think when it's ready for us.

Austin Brawner: What's interesting is that answer matches up in many ways with kind of the feeling that I had on your site, like the time that I spent browsing around. One thing that was striking to me was how fast ... Well, how the execution ... Everything was like you mentioned earlier, there's a high attention to detail. You can tell right away that everything is thought out.

And then the other aspect that's striking to me was how fast your website was and how quick, snappy every time I clicked on anything, it was going to the next ... There was no bloat on the site.

You see that in a lot of clients that I've worked with, they've added a lot of different plugins and all these other things. And you've got this bloat that happens.

How do you guys approach website speed? Is there anything you've learned from being in this for five years around the snappiness of the site and speed? How do you guys set up your websites so that it is able to do that?

John Hart: It's interesting that you ask that. We actually had a pretty big setback a year and a half ago regarding that. We had come up with a brand new collection page, a brand new products page and we were trying to launch it. It had some custom navigation features and custom filter features and we got pretty far down the road and we got into the testing phase and it was actually delivered to us for internal testing. And it just was slow.

And it was one of those things where, I don't know, I think maybe it goes back to that attention to detail because it wasn't slow enough, like it wasn't ridiculous, like we've got to the point where it was okay but it was slower than our current site or the site at that time. And we talked to the team and we are just like, "We can't go backwards."

Even though we're introducing new functionality and some of the stuff is really cool from a speed perspective, we just can't go backwards.

And that was something that ... I mean, it was a tough decision to make because we kind of scrapped it. We scrapped the whole thing really and we moved developers and started over. And it was a very frustrating time I would say but now, it's been worth the wait.

Thank you for the compliments by the way, but yeah, we focused heavily on the speed aspect for sure because we think, I mean SEO perspective, of course, but just the user experience as well. We pay a lot of attention to our conversion rate from mobile and desktop situation and we just don't want those to ever slip.

Because we do know like especially our customers, if they are looking at a lot of different products, you can't have it just loading slowly every time they want to look at a new color or a new style or anything like that.

Austin Brawner: Sure. I want to go into that a little bit more because I do think it's really interesting. I was just thinking about your specific customer and the fact that you guys focus on speed.

The other question I had was one thing I noticed immediately when I was on your new site browsing around was that for the most part, everything is $25 from the readers.

Pricing strategy is something that I don't think it's talked about enough. But when I looked at that price, I was like, Wow, it seems like there's probably a lot of thought to this because it seems like the perfect price for something that is valuable but inexpensive enough that you could ... It's like a thoughtless purchased for many people.

John Hart: Sure. I think we've tried to find our little home in the reader world in terms of price. You'll obviously see readers that are much lower-priced than ours. You can walk in any mass retail store and see that. And then you'll see some that are way higher priced as well.

But we have a specific focus on both our quality and the design of our readers that I think at our price point, you're not going to find both the quality and design aspects from anyone else.

So we definitely have tested enough a quite a few different products, or prices, I'm sorry. And this one seems to be the one where it feels comfortable for both us and the customer.

I think we started to offer new innovations with our products too that other people don't have, so like blue light filtering aspect has been huge for us. We are one of the first people to really push that into our entire product line in that aspect and that lens that we have at that price point is really valuable, we think.

Austin Brawner: I want to dive in one more question, Andrew, about this specifically because I think it's really interesting. You mentioned testing-pricing and going through that process. What is that process of testing pricing look like for brand like you guys?

John Hart: Sure, it's a good question because we tried to balance being promotional versus non-promotional because we do have quite a few, email is a big channel for us and we do have quite a few sales on a monthly basis.

That's one aspect is if we are doing a promotion, what is your margin still looked like during that time period.

And then because of our wholesale channel too. So we just have to make sure that all of our pricing is consistent and that's something that we're kind of focused on across our channels is consistent pricing no matter where you're at.

Austin Brawner: And so you guys are actually testing like do you split test it on the website? Are you in that path or are you mostly when you're talking about testing pricing, is that from a promotional style of testing?

John Hart: It's into more of a promotional side. We don't do any split testing with pricing at this moment but we also do have different tiers on the side for when we launch all of our new stuff, obviously it comes out on one tier. But then as we're forced to discontinue products because we are releasing so much new, and as that stuff kind of starts to go on sale, we're testing different tiers for those prices, for those sale items especially.

Andrew Foxwell: Well, I appreciate the context on the pricing piece. I think that's big. That's something that very few people do, is test pricing. People want to test more pricing, so I appreciate it, awesome diving into that more.

Another one that you do and we've talked about briefly but more people are asking about it in terms of a diversification standpoint is around wholesale and how you find new wholesale partners, how you build out that side of it.

How did you even begin that ... How do you find new partners within it? But how do you strategize around the wholesale side of the business in terms of growth?

John Hart: Well, I think it starts with our sales team. We have an awesome sales team. Our CEO has a large sales background. We have a national or a sales director who ... she comes from an amazing background of sales.

I mean, it's a heavy emphasis for us is growing that wholesale component. So we go to quite a few trade shows across multiple different industries. We partner with independent reps to help us get us in new stores as well. I mean, it's a major component of our business and something that we're heavily focused on.

Andrew Foxwell: On that side, when you are thinking about you're building out obviously. You have a sales team that's going into building that wholesale accounts. Is there more that you do to support those stores once they're there? Or is a lot of it like on the display itself that is big part of it or do you say we're going to also run ads or do you tell them about your online ads and things like that?

Because the reason I ask the question is, one ... I guess it's twofold. One is that wholesale partners that I've seen other brands launch what they've done a lot of is they'll run lead ads in some cases to get more wholesale accounts and people are interested, that's one thing.

But then there seems to be very little in terms of strategy around supporting retail partners or wholesale partners. Even if you're not doing things that are specific to their geo but you're saying, "Hey, FYI, we're also spending this to help support that product," and helping those retailers feel good about that partnership. Is that something you guys are doing as well? And if so, kind of what does that sharing look like?

John Hart: Sure. We have done a little bit of promotion with some of our wholesale partners. One of the things that I think we're really focused on right now is supporting them from a product standpoint.

So we want to give them the products that we know is going to sell at their store. And obviously, that comes into play with us understanding who their customer is. And maybe their customer doesn't like the oversized frames that we have even though it sells amazing in certain areas of the country and sells amazing on our website, it might not fit for the demographic that comes into their store.

And I think that's the key piece that we've really started to focus on internally, some of the NetSuite stuff that we're working on right now is all around just giving the store the right assortment, so they can turn the glasses and have success with our program.

Austin Brawner: You've been at Peepers for about five years. How has your role evolved and with that amount of growth, I imagine you've had to kind of reinvent yourself and reinvent your team in what you're doing? How has your role changed? And what is your main focus these days?

John Hart: It has changed dramatically, I would say. I think the first two to two and a half years, my primary focus was just moving us onto new platforms.

My first year, year and a half with the company, we actually did three things all at once. So we changed domains from peeperspecs.com to peepers.com, which was a huge improvement. We moved to the Shopify Plus platform and at the same time, we pretty much completely redesigned the entire site.

It was an interesting year and honestly, we did it all at once, which was not recommended to us but we thought it was the right strategy. December or something of 2015, it was launching on Shopify, launching on peepers.com, totally different website experience. Luckily, we did our due diligence and it worked out really well.

And then the second year was, or second, third year was moving us onto NetSuite. We had a whole team of people obviously was not just me but we did that transition and that's kind of where the operations role for me really started was that move to NetSuite.

And then over the last year, I think the biggest change has just been hiring awesome team members to help grow the company in both the operations and ecommerce department. We have some really strong people that have made a huge difference and so I could be a little bit less executional and more strategic for both those roles.

Andrew Foxwell: That's something that you've been there five years and I know that that's a big part of what you do. It is actually keeping people around and focusing on the culture, which everybody has challenges with that, I think. But also the people that do it well, do it really well.

What does this look like to you from a standpoint of retention of employees and in keeping people happy and kind of where they're at? Is it around building challenges for them and helping them realize the challenges and that part of it?

Or is it helping show their role in the overall growth or is it both? Is it financial? How do you from a high level think about it kind of keeping people happy and keeping them around?

John Hart: That's a good question. I think the unique thing about Peepers is how much everyone cares. And I don't know the reason for it exactly. I think about it quite a bit but one of the things that I always tell people is like we constantly have employees traveling or just going on vacations or just going anywhere really.

And they go out of their way all the time, just stop into a store that carries Peepers and just check out the display. So we get a picture a lot of the time or we'll text, email at night about Facebook or Instagram ad that we saw.

So I think that's just the unique part about working here, is I don't know. It's just a really good group of people that is invested in the company. And I don't know necessarily how to tell somebody to replicate that.

But we do try to invest in our people in our employees. We have yay days if we hit our monthly revenue goal. We'll do something crazy or something fun. We just put together a murder mystery day. I can't even begin to tell you how hilarious that was, but I don't know how much work got done that day but it was really fun.

In the summer, we had this ridiculous like 90-foot inflatable obstacle course in our parking lot and we did races through there. I don't know, it's just kind of some of that fun stuff.

We do quarterly outings with the company. We quarterly lunches where people from different departments, get to go out to lunch with each other. People that don't maybe normally interact. I think it's just like that connection outside of work, so you can work better together.

Austin Brawner: And just to give context, you may have said at the beginning of the episode, but how many employees are in your department and then how many employees overall are working in that headquarters?

John Hart: We have over 40 people that are at headquarters. The operations department is pretty strong. I'd say we have around 20 people there. Ecommerce team is little smaller than that. And then overall, we actually have, I think, seven or eight remote employees as well, so that's just kind of our investments into just finding the right people for the right role.

We actually do have an office out in California. We have a Hong Kong office and then we have employees scattered across the country just because we want to find the best talent and keep them here.

Austin Brawner: Sometimes, I'll hear pushback from clients I worked with about getting together for a quarterly offsites and quarterly events and planning and that sort of thing, investing, taking the time because they feel like they don't have time to take a day or two off.

And it's really reaffirming when you hear a company of your size investing like that because everybody has too much going on. If you don't take the time, they like get out and look at the big picture, you can't be effective day-to-day, so I think it's an awesome way for you guys to keep people around and also keep people engaged.

It's probably the reason that you get those texts in the middle, late at night about Facebook ads and people checking in the different stores and that sort of thing.

John, it's been really awesome. I want to follow up with the one question, final question. But before I do, where can our listeners best connect with you if they are interested in learning more about you or connecting with you?

John Hart: Well, I'm not super active on social media to be honest. But definitely connect with me on LinkedIn or anybody can feel free to shoot me an email at john@peepers.com.

Austin Brawner: Awesome. Well, the last question is I'd love to ask you based on some of the stuff that you've been working on and things that you are excited about from basically recent successes.

What's like one thing that our listeners could take away and kind of get to work today to see some results to drive more sales or just something that has worked for you recently that you could share? It doesn't take too long but it's kind of like a quick win.

John Hart: I think I mean from our aspect, so we deal with a lot of third-party vendors. I mentioned the developer story earlier about having to change developers. And I think a lot of ecommerce people are in the same boat where they might not have a robust team so they do work with a lot of third-party vendors.

I think one of the most important things that we learned over the last couple of years is establish that connection with that third-party vendor. So it should just almost be like your internal culture that you work on have that connection with them.

And if you're constantly dreading a call with one of those third-party vendors, it's probably time to move on. I think that's the best piece of advice that, a) we try to follow. But I think that can make a big difference.

Austin Brawner: If it's a call you're dreading, just rip the Band-Aid off.

John Hart: Exactly.

Andrew Foxwell: John, thanks so much for joining us, man.

John Hart: Absolutely. It was great. I appreciate it.