On starting young, unconventional paths, and the future of marketing with Troy Osinoff, co-founder of Juice, an award winning digital marketing agency.
Troy Osinoff is co-founder of Juice, an award winning digital marketing agency. Previously, he created multiple startups with 3 exits before the age of 30. He brought back the only NYC shoe factory after bankruptcy, grew a Grammy-winning recording studio, published a book with Penguin and was head of acquisition at BuzzFeed.
Alex: [00:00:00] Today I got to talk with Troy Osinoff. He's the co-founder of Juice, an award-winning digital marketing agency. Previously, he created multiple startups with three exits before the age of 30. He brought back the only New York city shoe factory after bankruptcy, grew a Grammy winning recording studio, published a book with Penguin and was head of acquisition at Buzzfeed.
We talked starting young, unconventional paths, and the future of marketing.
So, I guess let's get into it. From what I understand, your story starts when you were like seven or eight, getting the cops called on you for selling VHS tapes. Is that right?
Troy: [00:00:42] Yeah. I, uh, I was getting tired of washing cars door-to-door and dragging my little cart around and I had all these old VHS tapes I didn't want to watch anymore. Cause I just watched them too many times I guess and I just set up a little stand outside of my house and my neighbors called the cops with me.
Alex: [00:01:01] So that was sort of the intro to that's sort of the intro to entrepreneurship that sort of set things in motion for you, would you say?
Troy: [00:01:08] Yeah, it was a rude awakening, but but yeah, no, it was, it was I sold a few, a few tapes. I thought was really cool. That can make cash from like non not non traditional job, I guess you'd call it.
Alex: [00:01:18] Definitely.
Troy: [00:01:18] You know, super young. I recognized like there's other ways to make money. So I started, I really liked all things, internet related. So I, uh, I decided to start like making websites. I started doing it when I was really young when I was nine. So I started making websites for the local businesses around the neighborhood. No one was calling the cops on me. I can work own hours and it was, uh, it was pretty, I found that pretty fun.
Like some kids like to color and like, uh, you know, draw stuff and they were a kid. I was never a good artist. So I decided like that was my form of being creative.
Alex: [00:01:52] And I guess that brings us to coding. I think one of the coolest things about you is just how early in life you were learning to code and like leveraging that.
I heard the story of you bugging your parents to drive you to the bookstore so you could hand copy, like JavaScript code and try it out at home. Is that, is that real?
Troy: [00:02:08] Yeah, my parents used to take me to Barnes and noble and it's funny, my brother was picking up comic books or whatever.
And I was in the, there was a section, I guess it was called like development or whatever it was called at the time maybe programming. And I used to just go to all the JavaScript books and I found like interesting snippets that thought I want to try, like, whether it's the contact form, a poll or whatever, it may be.
And I used to just literally having a notebook with me because the books are really expensive. They're like 300 bucks. So my dad wasn't going to buy them for me. Right. So I just go there and just like hand, write the code with a pen and paper. And I go home and try it and hopefully I wrote it down right otherwise I have to come back the next few days to write down the code properly next time.
But yeah, it was a like 20, 30 minute drive each way to the bookstore.
Alex: [00:02:51] What got you into it to begin with were you just really curious about the way it all worked-- it started with websites, right?
Troy: [00:02:57] Yeah. I don't know. So a friend of mine showed me that, like, if you right, click view source on a site, it showed all the code.
And, and I remember just going through like all these big websites, like microsoft.com where we could right click and view source everything. And I used to copy that code and paste it into this thing called angel fire and just see what would happen. And when it didn't work, I tried the bug to figure out why it would like what would make it work.
I messed around with the biggest, see what it would . Do. And like, honestly, it was like, felt like a puzzle to me, or just like messing around to figure it out. And I liked the challenge of it. I liked that I was effectively creating something that anyone in the world could see. I thought that was pretty cool.
And yeah, I just was really just fascinated by like the fact that the distribution of it and the, the puzzle of like, I don't know, like it just clicked with me.
Alex: [00:03:41] It's such a funny story. You have this business card right from when you were that age, pinned on your Twitter with like your pager number and your rates for building websites that you'd sell, right.
Troy: [00:03:52] I was getting ripped off,
Alex: [00:03:55] But you'd like buy and sell video games, apparently? How did, how does a kid get from there to like three startup exits before the age of 30 or where you are now with Juice? Like, what was that path for you?
Troy: [00:04:04] It was, a very random path of trying a lot of different things.
Yeah. I mean, when I was yeah, when I was younger, I made a site called like make a gif. Which one of the first, like, I couldn't, I really love gifs I didn't know how to use Photoshop at all. So I couldn't really make them, I got so good at the point of like MS paint that I used to like zoom in like 800% on MS Paint and edit it pixel by pixel, because I just didn't know how to use Photoshop. Um, but I really liked gifs and I couldn't figure out how to make them. So I figured I couldn't the only one that problem, so I worked with some developers and figured out that I can combine multiple images and make gifs. And then I saw the domain makeagif.com was available. So I figured why not. And that's how makeagif, really started. And then I realized I wasn't the first person-- only person with this problem. So I started ranking for all the related keywords. Like how do I make a gif, gif maker, gif creator, et cetera. So we got, you know, millions of people on the platform, making gifs had that exit thankfully, got acquired by a media company in Canada.
From there, there there was a bankrupt shoe factory in Midtown Manhattan. Some of them, some of the wholesale because they couldn't, I went bankrupt because they couldn't handle the net 90 payments from from like Bloomingdale's Nordstrom, all these big, big box stores. So I pulled, I funded them, pulled them out of bankruptcy, went direct to consumer only.
And helped make them profitable by, you know, keeping that margin payments treadaway like when people come up to the factory, cause we're the only shoe factory in New York city and really embracing New York city and embracing. Other than that, like the old school manufacturing of New York that just like, kind of went away over the years.
Thankfully it's still around and still profitable and still the only shoe factory in New York city today on 38th street also helped a friend start up a recording studio up in Harlem. Went on to win a few Grammys with, are working with artists like Drake, Kendrick Lamar. Yo-yo ma Eminem et cetera.
Um, then had a tumblr that was like I wrote on a whim cause a bird one day that went viral because Howard stern talked about it. I published a book with penguin, thanks to ICM and sold the rights to Fox to that. That turned into a TV show. Then yeah, I did a lot of random things after that like I was head of digital marketing for the world's largest HVAC distributor, doing 5 billion a year in sales overseeing all their digital marketing strategy. Never had a full-time job before that. So I kind of wanted to see what was like for a 5,000 person org to be running. So I jumped in there to see what that was like.
Interesting experience, uh, having led, I was like 25 at the time we're working with the executive team there. I was the youngest one by like 20 years. So that was a definitely interesting experience. But yeah, well I was down there eco, I was starting to get more, given my toes more to e-commerce launched a bunch of drop shipping stores that I turned into a non dropshipping stores when I started ordering inventory, but learned e-commerce a lot better.
Like created a few seven figure e-commerce stores. And like as a side project, pretty much I was working full time and then like Pokemon go became popular at the time. So I launched uh, this thing called Pokematch with some of my friends. It was like a Pokemon go dating app, with 300 thousand active users on it.
And then the iPhone seven came out and we made an iPhone the first iPhone seven case, with the headphone jack built-in after Apple removed it. Sold about a million dollars worth before apple told me I couldn't do that. Launched a bunch of other projects along the way, and then got the attention of Buzzfeed and, and Buzzfeed reached out to me to be head of, uh, customer acquisition because they wanted to get into E-commerce.
So I helped them turn like their brand Tasty, number one cookbook in the world in 2017 help them turn home. Second to the top Campbell company, online, a bunch of other projects working like 3m Lego. Bunch of other brands along the way. After doing that for about a year started didn't really want to work for anyone anymore.
Met my co-founder at my agency now, Michael. And we decided why don't we launch an agency? Cause we never really liked our agency experience. So we joined forces, launched juice, turned buzz feed into a client and in four years later and. Grew out a pretty great agency, like 25 people. We also launched a development agency, a partner David called peachy which creates Shopify stores and a lot of randomly enough, a lot of VC websites.
And yeah, it's been been a great experience
Alex: [00:08:00] Sounds like quite the ride. I mean, it's such an unconventional path, right? You dropped out of what pre vet you invested in this Grammy winning recording studio. You have this tumblr blog published as a book, you know, usually you just hear people getting like a degree and sitting at a desk for like 30 years.
I mean, how, how do all these different things --
Troy: [00:08:18] That's my nightmare.
Alex: [00:08:18] How to all these things come about? Like, do you really seek out tons of different things to be doing or does it just happen organically?
Troy: [00:08:26] Um,a lot of it's organic kind of just putting myself out there and see what opportunities come and and kind of weigh the options as they come.
And obviously there's a lot of opportunity along the way and just kind of just figuring out what's what's my time is best used on and kind of a lot of it's going-- instinctual, just going with my gut, what I really believe in, and I want myself behind. So, I mean, a lot of them, I get like path has been no rhyme or reason versus just kind of keeping down the path of learning and problem solving.
But yeah, I mean, it's been a very interesting ride.
Alex: [00:08:59] It sounds like it. So I want to get quickly into what you're doing today at juice with some crazy brands, right? Like Buzzfeed dollar shave club, Kenneth Cole product hunt I mean, You seem like you were really early to a lot of big trends in marketing, you brought back, like you mentioned before, the only New York city shoe factory, after bankruptcy, by switching to direct to consumer and influencer marketing, like well before either of those were even a big deal.
When it comes to brand building, what would you say people are maybe behind the curve on today?
Troy: [00:09:29] I mean, there's all different. I mean, different areas of that, like a lot of companies like don't focus enough on their customer experience. Customer likes listening to that customer service really feeling community around their products and being more thoughtful about what they're putting out versus just assuming what their customers where the people behind the brand want versus actually communicating with them and building that community and a back and forth with them and having that dialogue.
Also a lot of brands and just kind of look what everyone else is doing and kind of mimic everyone else. And when you do the same thing as everyone else, you're just kind of blind and you're not going to stand out. So not enough friends go against the grain and just mean unique. Yeah. I mean, if you don't, if you're not, if you're just the same as everyone else, no, one's gonna notice you,
Alex: [00:10:08] Right, yeah. I think that's the great thing about the internet, right? Just how it sort of democratizes leverage. You can be like anyone in the world and in theory, reach billions of people. I mean, on the other hand, There's more competition to deal with, but it looks like you're doing that better than pretty much anyone else.
I mean, is your, is your secret to digital marketing proprietary? Can you share your methodology a bit?
Troy: [00:10:28] No, I mean, we thankfully, have-- we built a really great team at Juice to I'm proud. Like we pride ourselves and kind of out of the box thinking and really in depth thinking of the brands we're working with, like nutritional, like thing that probably most about traditional agencies that.
No, they'd all thought it all at the same, like cookie cutter approach and just launch ads, they don't work launching more ads with no rhyme or reason behind it, but across at juice, it's important for us to actually go beyond just the ads we're launching and understand what actually happens when someone gets to your website, what path they take, do they go to the product page?
They look at the FAQ, where are they reading on your site? And try to make informed decisions to really understand not just the path, on your site, but the mindset of someone on your site, what would leads them, to each different outcome, whether it's making a purchase, whether it's leaving subscribing to your mailing list and how they got there.
So we actually have to go beyond and just pretend as if this was our own company, how will we grow it and what levers we would pull rather than just launch some more ads and see what happens and the thought like, and the thoughtfulness that goes into this is just something that most agencies and brands don't really take the time to consider.
Alex: [00:11:32] But it's really from a user's perspective, right? Like you're going through, step-by-step like if I was, you know, on the app or on the website or on the checkout page or anything else, like, what am I actually interacting with? What am I looking at? Like that kind of thing. Right?
Troy: [00:11:46] Yeah. I mean, exactly. And unlike it's the data is it's a lot of time in front of you to learn from like their tools.
Like Hotjar for example, that effectively like a DVR for your website, into the full mouse movements of where everyone goes in your website and people don't realize like on a subconscious level, they move their mouse where they're reading. So you can see exactly their reading, where they're clicking the paths that they take.
And you can collect a lot of information from these. Even like in brief visit on your website, you can learn a lot about the potential customers or existing customers when they're coming back to see what they're looking for.
Alex: [00:12:18] Definitely, you know, there's this, there's this quote that I think about a lot when it comes to brands, I think it's from Naval Ravikant, but it goes "The most accountable people have singular public and risky brands, Oprah Trump, Kanye, Elon."
I know juice deals with companies for the most part, but do you have any strong convictions on building personal brands?
Troy: [00:12:37] Uh, I mean, having a personal brand and audience is definitely is helpful. We've definitely launched brands around these types of people like we helped randomly enough, the largest fragrance influencer who has a very unique program.
His name is Jeremy fragrance launched his own fragrance line. And the fact that he's so out there and different, and sometimes controversial, like it definitely garners a lot of attention and we help them sell millions of dollars with fragrance. Like even a mid-core like kind of a quarantine where no one was going out in public we still had people buying millions of dollars worth of fragrances from him and people were barely wearing deodorant just because he was such a polarizing figure in that time. And like such a out there guy, like just garnered so much attention.
Alex: [00:13:17] Right. So is any attention, good attention, or do you sort of think about it differently?
Troy: [00:13:24] I don't subscribe to that. Because I think there definitely could be negative attention. I mean, depends what your out-- like your overall goal with that is. Sure. But I definitely, I can understand where that thought comes from, but. I, I, I'm not a big fan of the negative attention.
Alex: [00:13:35] No, I get that, I get that.
So what do you think the future of all this looks like? I know you've been like a bit involved in the crypto sort of blockchain space. I mean, NFTs seem to be all the rage these days and there's this like narrative, a lot of people push that we'll all be looking at each other's crypto wallets and companies will really be leveraging NFTs.
So I've got to ask, like, do you buy it?
Troy: [00:13:57] I think NFTs are cool. I think they're not going away. I think there's kind of like a shot gun approach, to NFTs at this point where like everyone and their mother wants to launch an NFT. I think there'd be a lot of utility for it. I just, a lot of that in its current state, I don't think will last, but I think application to like art and different collectibles make, there's like a perfect application there.
I just yeah, I think that. It will, the NFT space will evolve a lot and we'll have like legitimate use cases for currently, like most of them are kind of just be like a little bit of money grabs.
Alex: [00:14:27] For sure. Is there maybe a specific tech that you're eyeing right now because you know, being nine years old, sort of getting on the on the curve of the internet, you were pretty early to that early to direct to consumer early to influencer marketing early to a lot of stuff.
Is there anything you're really looking at right now that maybe people should be paying more attention to?
Troy: [00:14:45] Hmm, that's a good question. I mean, I'm always looking at new things that are launching within the ecomm space, I focused a lot of time on like e-commerce and social media. So I mean , there's a lot of interesting tech coming out to understand like user behavior and customer behavior and your websites and stuff like that. The automated copywriting and that goes into this, like caught, like we work with a client like Copy AI, for example, like that, it's just super interesting for like the AI side of things, copy writing, and and long form content.
Super interesting. You understand the analytics, the customers, and your website, like a lot of different technology that's coming out and getting a lot better over time. But one single thing, it's hard to kind of pinpoint. A lot of interesting things coming out, strong AI space.
Alex: [00:15:24] Definitely. So maybe a bit more broadly, what do you think the future of brands and marketing looks like maybe 10 years from now?
Is there, are there any really big sort of trends that you see emerging that you'd say, yeah, this is probably something that everybody's going to be partaking in, you know, several years down the line.
Troy: [00:15:45] I don't know. The trend that I see is this brands having kind of like their own personalities. I don't know if that's like a 10 year horizon trend, but like a trend going on. I'm seeing now whether it's like the Wendy's or whatever online brands that are standing out, because I think it's like to the point earlier talking about is like that, you know, if everyone is the same and no one's unique, like everything's gonna to blend in together. So when brands started to take on their own personalities and have their own personas behind them and own like perspectives on sense of humor or maybe serious, whatever may be, but brands like actually being unique. Like they are as a brand, as a personality within social media, I think is going to keep growing and you're going to start having people more interested in following these brands and following their path.
Alex: [00:16:27] That makes sense. And what about, what about for you?
What's the future for, for Troy look like? I mean, you've been all over the place, so it's tough to really gauge any trajectory here. Any, any plans, anything in the works?
Troy: [00:16:39] Got some things that we're announcing soon, can't say quite yet. But excited about the next few months.
Alex: [00:16:46] Awesome. Well, thanks so much for the time and it was a, I know you're super busy, so it means a lot that you do this.
Troy: [00:16:51] Yeah, of course. Happy to. Thanks for having me.
Alex: [00:16:54] Cool. Have a good one!
Troy: [00:16:58] You too!