The Re-Hire Nobody Saw Coming

Coach Taylor (0:00)

Hey, this is Coach Taylor. I'm here for a special edition of the Ecommerce Playbook Podcast. It's been a minute, it's been a minute, but got some exciting news today. So today, I'm bringing back a special guest, not just as a guest, no, no, no, but as a resident, as a reunited part of the whole. And we're going to tell you a little bit about how it happened. So, you ready? Welcome with me.

The one, the only.

SPEAKER_2 (0:30)

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Coach Taylor (1:21)

Mr. Nick.

Nick Shackleford (1:22)

Shackle, bruh, babes, ka-boom.

Coach Taylor (1:26)

You didn't see that coming, did you, Internet?

Nick Shackleford (1:28)

No, I didn't.

Coach Taylor (1:29)

No, he didn't. No, sir. But here we are. So this episode, we're literally physically near each other. You can see here, Nick is back in the office hanging out, and we're announcing something really exciting.

It's not that we're partners in Commerce Roundtable, already did that part, check. It's not that we're running Hyrox together in Anaheim December 3rd or 4th. Come support us.

Nick Shackleford (1:52)

Second one.

Coach Taylor (1:53)

We need your support. But it's that we are back in business full time together. Nick, the prodigal son, Shackleford is returning to CTC, and we're here to tell you why. So Nick, welcome back, Lin.

Nick Shackleford (2:05)

It's been eight years. It's been a long journey.

Coach Taylor (2:07)

Yeah.

Nick Shackleford (2:07)

But I mean, you were joking with me right beforehand. You're like, you had to go get way more tattoos, sell some paraphernalia and learn a lot of things. Yeah.

Coach Taylor (2:15)

Nick needed to go travel the world, sow his wild oats, start a illicit beverage of drink. Like you needed to go and go on a journey. Every young man does before they return home. But I want to start actually, because I don't think it's been a long time since people probably know the very first story of how you came. I was thinking about this the other day of how you first showed up at CTC. So I remember we were in our old office, which is now the NELT Boys office. If you looked that up on the Internet, that's where our office was. And we were interviewing for a strategist.

Andrew was there. Was Scott there?

Nick Shackleford (2:49)

Scott Framer was there.

Coach Taylor (2:50)

So two.

Nick Shackleford (2:51)

Kaitlyn Adrian.

Coach Taylor (2:52)

Kaitlyn Adrian. A bunch of legends still in the game. And this guy came in for an interview.

And you showed me PPE wrappers. Do you remember this?

Nick Shackleford (3:03)

Not only do I remember this, I was very proud of this.

Coach Taylor (3:05)

Yes. Okay. So at the time, Facebook, we were still fairly early to Facebook because that wasn't really why we started the agency. We started more as an organic social influencer thing. And so this media buyer guy comes in and he's like, oh, do you guys run PPE wrappers?

And I was like, what's a PPE wrapper? And like, I felt pretty proud of my business manager knowledge. And he's like, no, this is what you need to do. You take your post ID, you run a separate engagement campaign using the post ID, and you pay for engagement to boost the post, drive down CPMs and improve your performance. And you help me set up a PPE wrapper on all of our ads. And my mind was blown. So that's, do you remember that?

Nick Shackleford (3:43)

It was the existing post ID. Yes, it was like the book, it was less the PPE, which look, some of you guys out there are going to be like, yo, that shit, that was pretty incredible. And I was like, some of you are going to be like, I remember this.

Coach Taylor (3:54)