Jake Mix

$0 in advertising, yet 2x the sales…

Trader Joes knows how to build a customer experience instead of a fancy advertising system.

No commercials.
No loyalty program.
No coupons.
No sales. Ever.

And yet, they pull in about $2,000 in sales per square foot which is some of the highest numbers in American grocery.

I stood in line there recently just... noticing.

The cashier spent 90 seconds genuinely chatting with the lady in front of me about their frozen orange chicken (which I also love).

And it finally hit me... the ad budget didn’t disappear or doesn’t exist..

It got spent on things people can’t help talking about:

- Hawaiian shirts.
- Hand-drawn signs.
- $4 flowers by the door.
- Discontinuing your favorite snack so you mourn it publicly.
- Employees who actually seem happy to be there.

Trader Joe’s doesn’t buy media.

Their customers ARE the media.
And every grocery haul is a commercial someone films for free.

My marketing brain loves it...

They made the store itself so interesting that advertising it would almost be redundant.

What’s the last store you recommended to someone without being asked? And what made you do it?

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Be careful what you drink…

Everyone thinks THESE machines are about creating a fun drink, but Coca-Cola is actually tricking you into making their next product.

With 100+ drink combinations, my brain short-circuits trying to decide what to make.

Sprite Peach? Sure.
Coke Zero Raspberry? I’ll try anything once.
Mello Yello Strawberry Orange? Let’s see what happens.

But here’s the part that’s even more genius… and the part where Coca-Cola knows more about you than you know about yourself (as it relates to soda)…

Every drink you create is data.

Every combination, every flavor, every repeat order tells Coca-Cola something about what people actually want.

Instead of asking consumers what they’d buy… (because that’s boring)

They watch what millions of people choose when no one’s telling them what to drink.

That’s a much better signal.

The Freestyle machine has essentially turned thousands of restaurants into one giant, live R&D lab.

Consumers think they’re customizing a soda.
Coca-Cola is running millions of product experiments every single day.

Some of the flavors that eventually show up in bottles and cans were first proven inside those machines.

The lesson?

The best companies don’t just build products.

They build systems that help them learn faster than everyone else.

Because the company with the best feedback loop usually wins.

What’s your favorite drink combo? I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours

Should I move to Codex? Get it together Claude… what’s happening?!

The perfect email cadence?

It really depends on 2 different things…

1. How do the stats look, especially unsubscribe and open rate?

If either one of those are above 3-4%, you need to slow down and look at your list. Clean all the bounced emails out, segment accordingly, and ensure you don’t run into any deliverability issues with Gmail, Outlook, etc.

2. How much are you providing value vs. selling them?

People hate spammy and sales emails all the time. When you send 2-3 value emails providing solutions to problems that your customer has, you can get away with sending a sales email every once in a while AND it will do far better than just spamming people all the time. Ensure you are always providing value.

If your stats are looking good AND you are providing value more than you are selling, you can easily get away with 1-2x per week without annoying your customers.

And in fact, you’ll build a better relationship too, which is the ultimate goal.

Questions? Feel free to DM me.

Terrifying but worth it.

The power of email and SMS 🔥🔥

Few businesses do it. The ones who do?

Massive results with almost zero marketing spend.

If you want to implement the same text for your company, DM the word “SMS” and I’ll send you some info.

Social media for business owners 101…

1. Know your customers problems
2. Speak to them

Do it again and again and again.

Marketing was never supposed to be easy, but it’s often too complicated.

The fastest way to lose a repeat customer is to do exactly what almost every business does.

J***y newsletters nobody opens, or coupon after coupon until they tune you out completely.

The fix isn’t complicated. Send value until you’ve earned the right to sell, then sell. Roughly three gives for every ask.

Day 1 of 30. Real marketing questions from real business owners, answered in 60 seconds, no script. I know this stuff. I want to get better at saying it.