Two Ecommerce Podcasters Walk Into a Studio…

Two people who each host a top ecommerce podcast sat down and recorded a single conversation for both shows. Brett Curry runs OMG Commerce, one of the most respected Google and YouTube ad agencies in ecommerce, and hosts the *eCommerce Evolution* podcast. Matt buys and builds ecommerce brands. So they did the obvious thing and interviewed each other. ## Summary This is a peer crossover, recorded once and aired on both the eCommerce Podcast and Brett’s *eCommerce Evolution*. The conversation splits cleanly into two halves. First, how to run an ecommerce business the way an investor would, even if you never plan to sell. Matt walks through what he actually looks for when acquiring a brand (culture and the founder before the numbers), the three ways to grow any business, why a 5% price rise can mean roughly 40% more net profit, and how turning buyers into subscribers and members can take an exit from a 3x multiple to an 8x one. He also covers the roll-up play, why strategic buyers pay the most, and Michael Gerber’s *The E-Myth*. The second half is Brett’s territory, which is YouTube ads in 2026. Half of all YouTube is now watched on a smart TV, which changes everything about creative. Brett explains the five things a YouTube ad needs, how to turn winning Meta creative into YouTube winners, the mashup format that consistently performs, and why measurement is the trap that makes most people quit too early. Key sections by timestamp: - **00:00** Two podcasts, one conversation - **01:30** Buying a business, culture and the founder over the numbers - **11:52** How a small brand competes with Amazon - **13:25** Jay Abraham’s three ways to grow a business - **16:49** The price rise founders are too scared to make - **20:04** How a business is really valued (3x and EBITDA) - **21:33** Turn buyers into members, 3x to 8x, and the roll-up play - **25:53** What private equity actually cares about - **27:59** Build a business that runs without you (*The E-Myth*) - **31:12** Why half of YouTube is watched on a TV - **37:34** Turning your best Meta ads into YouTube winners - **39:15** The five things every YouTube ad needs - **43:00** Where to start, mashups of your top moments - **47:56** The measurement trap (incrementality and attributed brand search) - **51:30** Where to find Brett (and Matt) ## The Three Ways to Grow a Business (13:25) Matt first heard this from a Jay Abraham lecture when he was 18, and it still shapes how he reads a set of books. There are only three levers. 1. Grow the number of customers (he splits this into new acquisition and repeat customers). 2. Grow the frequency, how often a customer buys. If someone buys once a year and you get them to twice a year, all else being equal, you have doubled the business. 3. Grow the average order value, how much they spend each time. The clever bit is the maths. Grow any one of these by 10% and the business grows by 10%. But grow all three at once and the business grows by about 33%, because each lever multiplies the others. > “If you grew your customer base by 10%, your business grew by 10%… But if you can grow all 3 things at the same time, your business grows by 33% because you start to see this geometric effect.” — Matt Edmundson ## The Price Rise Founders Are Too Scared to Make (16:49) Most brands Matt looks at have not raised prices in a long time, usually out of fear of losing customers. When he runs the numbers, the increase almost always wins. For his businesses, a 4 to 5% rise has a minor impact on customer loss but a major impact on profit. > “5% increase in price is something like a 40% increase in net profit depending on your profit margins. That’s a massive chunk of change right there.” — Matt Edmundson The other lesson here is conviction. You need real belief in the product (and in its quality) to hold a higher price, and Matt argues for buying and building only in a lane you understand. Amazon, he points out, can beat a small brand at almost everything except being you. Own that, and it is the one thing a commodity broker cannot copy. ## Turn Buyers Into Members, and a 3x Becomes an 8x (21:33) A billionaire client told Matt years ago that you value a business by taking net profit and multiplying by three. That raises the obvious question of how net profit is really defined, which is why people reach for EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation). But there is a number Matt thinks ecommerce founders underuse. Take a brand making £1m in EBITDA, worth perhaps £2 to £3m at a standard multiple. Change nothing about the sales, but convert those customers into subscribers, or better still paid members, and the same business can be worth closer to £8m. The revenue is identical. The mechanism makes it predictable, and predictable revenue is what investors pay up for. Brett backed this up from a friend’s recent agency exit. What the private equity buyer cared about most was simple. > “Really, all the private equity company cares about is the durability of the revenue… subscribers, much more durable. It’s predictable… instead of 3 times multiple, we’ll pay you 5 times multiple. Or 8 times multiple.” — Brett Curry Two more moves came up. The roll-up, because there are far more small businesses for sale than buyers for them. Matt describes the inverse pyramid of buyers, where bigger businesses attract more bidders and higher multiples, so merging four or five firms into a £5 to £20m group both finds you a buyer and raises the price. And the strategic buyer, the competitor who already has the warehouse and distribution, who values your gross profit rather than your EBITDA and so pays more. Matt’s beauty business sold that way. The underlying advice is older than all of it, which is read Michael Gerber’s *The E-Myth* and build a business that runs without you. ## YouTube Is a TV Platform Now, and That Changes the Ads (31:12) Brett has run YouTube ads since 2016 or 2017, and the platform has shifted under everyone’s feet. Somewhere between 50% and 60% of all YouTube views now happen on a smart TV, and that is the YouTube app, not YouTube TV. It is also the number one podcast platform. People engage with podcasts on YouTube more than on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. That matters because YouTube creative is its own discipline. The good news, which is new, is that winning Meta, Facebook, Instagram or TikTok creative can now work on YouTube if it meets the right criteria. Brett’s five things a YouTube ad needs: 1. **30 seconds or longer.** Assets under 30 seconds rarely drive meaningful scale. 2. **A voiceover or someone speaking on camera.** People watch YouTube with the sound on, and adding a voice lifts engagement by around 30%. 3. **A product demonstration**, seeing the product actually in action. 4. **Social proof**, whether that is reviews on screen or UGC in the ad. 5. **A clear call to action**, because most people will not click on their own, so you have to tell them what to do. The format Brett singles out as a consistent top performer is the mashup. Take the best moments from your 10 to 15 strongest videos and order them into a single 16:9 narrative, hook then demo then proof then desire then objections then a call to action. That landscape format also opens up all the TV inventory. > “What is consistently a top performer, or the top performer, is creating a mashup of those top moments… how can we weave those moments from these top 10 or 15 ads into one narrative?” — Brett Curry ## The Measurement Trap (47:56) The thing that makes most people abandon YouTube too soon is that it is genuinely hard to measure. In-platform metrics severely undercount it, and so do multi-touch tools like Northbeam and Triple Whale, because they are click-based and most people do not click on YouTube. Often they cannot, because they are watching on a TV. What they do instead is search for the brand afterwards. So Brett measures three different ways. Incrementality studies through a service like Haus, which runs scientific geo holdouts. Conversion-lift studies that Google and Meta can run at the user level. And one metric you should ask your Google rep for by name, **attributed brand search**, which shows how many brand searches each campaign drove after people saw the ad. Haus found that a YouTube campaign showing a 1 ROAS in platform is, on average, actually delivering around 3.4x once you account for the incremental impact. > “If you just look at in-platform metrics for YouTube, severely undercounted… most people don’t click. Most people are on YouTube to watch their favourite podcast.” — Brett Curry ## Today’s Guest **Brett Curry** is the CEO of OMG Commerce, a Google, YouTube and Amazon ad agency widely regarded as one of the best in ecommerce. He hosts the *eCommerce Evolution* podcast and is a long-time student of two questions: how to make marketing work, and how to prove it did. - **Website:** omgcommerce.com - **LinkedIn:**