#305 - 5 Nuggets for Business Success with Rockstar Marketer Janelle Page

#305 - 5 Nuggets for Business Success with Rockstar Marketer Janelle Page Speaker 1: Welcome to episode 305 of the AM-PM Podcast. On today's episode, I've got Janelle Page. Janelle is from Utah, mother of four, and just an all-around rock star when it comes to marketing, product development, and launching products. And today, I think you're going to really enjoy this episode. She's got a ton of great information to share. Unknown Speaker: Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast, where we explore opportunities in e-commerce. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, this is the podcast where money never sleeps. Working around the clock in the AM and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, are you ready? Let's do this. Here's your host, Kevin King. Speaker 1: Janelle Page, it's so exciting to have you here on the AM-PM Podcast. I just took this over a couple months ago. It's the podcast that Manny Coats began way back in the day, back in the day when I actually met you and I've always wanted to have you on since they said you're taking it over. I'm so excited that you're here. Speaker 2: Thank you. I can remember one of my first ever Amazon events was the Cancun Mastermind with Manny and Guillermo, Casey Gauss. It was back in the olden days. I feel like we're such the old timers here in the Amazon world. It's fantastic. It's like coming full circle to be on the AM-PM Podcast show with you. Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember that was like May of 2017, I think. So more than five years ago. I think we were doing the Illuminati Mastermind back then. It was Manny, Guillermo, and myself for Helium 10. It's now called Helium 10 Elite. But back then it was called Illuminati. And we put on a big expensive event in Cancun. And someone had mentioned to us, I don't even remember how it came about, but we were looking for high-level speakers. And someone said, hey, have you heard about this woman named Janelle? I'm like, I know, but oh, you got to go watch this YouTube video or they sent us something of you speaking somewhere and we're like, all right, she's got to come and you're like, doing some crazy stuff with video or something back then. And it was like, all right, she's got it. And she's so good. She has to speak twice. Speaker 2: That's cool. Thank you. You know, it's been a great journey. In fact, I mean, I just saw Manny, what, at the last event. What was that? The Prosper Show two years ago. And then ever since then, he's retreated to his private island. I haven't seen him since. Speaker 1: Yeah, he actually, they sold the company in 2019 and he's semi-retired and just came out of that just recently doing some NFT stuff. He's got a project called Bulls and Apes project. Speaker 2: Yeah, Bulls and Apes or something like that. Yeah, I saw that. How'd that launch go? Speaker 1: It did really well. They did that back in May, end of May. He's partners with Guillermo and a couple other guys on that and it did really well. I participated in that. Several other people in the Amazon space participated. A lot of people don't understand NFT stuff. They just think you're buying a lot of JPEGs or something, but there's a lot more to it. And I think they've got something there that's going to do well. For me personally, my investments already doubled since May, so that's great. And they've got a lot of cool new stuff coming, so we'll see where that goes. Speaker 2: No, that is good because my crypto is all like tank. So if you're, uh, that's okay. It always does this. It always comes back. It's not for the faint of heart, but for the newbies in here, they, they get all nervous, like, Oh, my crypto. And they go selling. And I'm like, no, no, this is time to buy. It's on sale. Speaker 1: What do you do in crypto? What do you own? You own some different coin or you did? What's your involvement there? Speaker 2: I got into Ethereum. I mean, if you remember back at the Illuminati Mastermind, in fact, I've had several guys from that original event who still sing my praises because I told them to get Ethereum. Ethereum at that event was like $180, $180. And I just told them, dude, if you don't have any, like, go get some. So a couple of crypto millionaires from that event who still thank me for that tip on stage. But yeah, I love Ethereum. I love Bitcoin. I love Solano. It's not doing, none of them are doing awesome right now. I buy just kind of the major three and four. I don't do any shit coins. It doesn't mean you can't make money doing them, but I really invest in projects I believe in. And I love Web3. I love NFTs. I love the metaverse. I mean, personally, I prefer reality over meta, but I just for what I think it's going to do for e-commerce and just The nature of businesses and contracts that you can make with your, I guess, investors, we probably can't call it that because, you know, we'll have to have FTC regulations coming in or what have you, but I do feel like it's going to change the nature of how we do business. Speaker 1: How do you see that? I mean, I'm on the same page as you. I actually just spoke at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit about how we're using NFTs, tying that into physical products on Amazon and Walmart and stuff. And I'm talking about that at the Sell & Scale event next month in September in Vegas for Helium 10. But how do you see it affecting, like you just touched on a little bit there, but can you elaborate a little bit on how you see it affecting what we do in e-commerce? Speaker 2: Well, I've just finished one of my first Kickstarters ever. And I've always been intrigued by crowdsourcing that model. And when you think about if you take an NFT can allow you if you're about to launch a product or a brand. Kind of that same concept, but with crowdsourcing like a Kickstarter, they give me their money, I deliver the goods and we're done, the partnership's kind of over. Yeah, they may fall in love with your product and become an evangelist, but what if part of that crowdsourcing is that you're giving them a piece of the business or in a form of an NFT, they hold some type of recurring ownership or revenue that's tied to, you know, When you do an NFT, and there's probably tons of different ways to do it, but Gary V's example, he's actually, I always recommend people just go listen to him talk about how he's doing his NFT, because it will get your mind turning about the different ways you could use it with your physical products business or any type of business you want to start. But he literally is giving people ownership in his enterprise that he's growing. And as he does better, they do better. And they buy an investment in his friends group. I don't remember what he calls it, but as that value of that membership... Yeah, yeah, yeah and as that membership increases, their value that they hold, that piece of that membership goes up and they can sell it, they can hold on to it and so they're also invested in the community to make it a better place because that'll increase the value in case they ever want to resell it. So you have like aligned interests, you know, between the people that are supporting the brand or making up, it's not, it's more like I guess just community is what I call it and when you think about brands that do really well, They're brands that build a community around their product anyways. So I just feel like this aligns investors and gives them a way to reward and compensate their original backers in a way above and beyond what you can do besides just now. Everything's so transactional when you look at traditional e-commerce or physical based products and even services today. It's like you give me your dollar, I give you the service, we're kind of done. There's goodwill, maybe built because my service is great. You tell other people, but if I can make you financially invested in my business, I mean, that's what stocks and people who buy stocks, that's kind of the same concept, except for we don't really have a way to participate. Like I own so many stocks and when have I ever voted? You know, I get my stockholder report or JP Morgan will send me, you know, you can read this, you can go vote. I never do any of that. But I think this makes a more intimate setting. And that's how I like to think of how I want to use it in the future. What I don't know is how, you know, government may get involved. And, you know, because traditionally with stocks, you have so much regulation in how you, you know, do your dividends and your stocks and all that stuff. I don't even know all the right words to even use right now, but that's going to be something I can see them cracking down on because People are giving us money. We're giving them ownership and I don't think they're gonna like that just like how they started regulating crypto. They've started coming into the space and making rules. Speaker 1: Yeah, you have to be careful with NFTs because there's security laws and there's a test that you can do. I'm forgetting the name of it right now. There's like three criteria to determine if something is a security or not. So with NFTs to be very careful, but there are ways to do it and that's what I just talked about a billion dollar seller summit and what I'm actually talking about at uh helium tens event in september but yeah that's exactly what we're doing we're tying it to where some of what we're doing with nfts is we're using it to we're doing sustainable products so we have products so we're finding a community like you said building a community and you could do this on facebook you could do this in other places but there's a difference between someone that just spent The equivalent of $50 in Ethereum or Salon or whatever for an NFT versus someone who's a member of a Facebook group. They have a vested interest and then it's almost like a membership card. And so those people are going to be a little bit more active, a little bit more passionate in most cases. And so we're building a community based on people who own the NFT and we're doing it at a low price and they're not really counting on that NFT to shoot up. This is not a board Ape Yacht Club that they buy for $50 and hope to sell for $100,000 a year later. That's not the mentality that we're looking for. We're looking for someone that wants to take this product, this NFT, to show it off, to use it as a PFP. We have some artwork and we have some different stuff to where they can show that, look, I'm passionate about the environment. I'm part of this group, this community. They can use it across different social media platforms. Then they get to have a say, just like you said, in some of the development of product. They could say, hey, we as a group, we would love to have a baby stroller made out of recycled plastic bottles, for example, and we'll buy that. And they'll participate in the product development. We'll do all the stuff on our side to make sure that it... It's sellable, you know, the margins work, you know, the sourcing works, but then we'll take it with NFTs, you can track, there's companies that will allow you to track from the source, from the manufacturing source all the way through by attaching NFTs to invoices and stuff. And you can know that this really came from the ocean, this really came from, you know, the ocean outside of Spain or whatever, and you can track it, you can provide all that. And then when we launch the product, these people are passionate about the product, they'll go and buy it on Amazon. So, you know, we don't need a search fund buyer, heavy PPC, we've got, X number of people, you know, hopefully hundreds of people or more, depending on the product, that will go and immediately buy it. Then when they buy it, that shoots it up to the top on Amazon or Walmart or wherever. Then other people find out about it that you're just looking for a baby stroller, like, oh, this one's sustainable and that's cool. It's a differentiator. I'll buy it. They then, as part of the product packaging and the inserts and everything we do, they learn about the NFTs and like, what is this NFT? Oh, it's 50 bucks. I'll go give it a shot. So we create this whole flywheel of people coming in, but then All the NFT holders, like you said, they earn rewards based on how much that product sold. So they participate in that product. And so how well that product does on Amazon or Walmart, they're earning rewards. As well, which increases the value of what they just did. Those rewards can be in the form, many different forms, and that's where you have to be careful with securities laws. But then we do stuff, a lot of people, as you know, that collect NFTs, they have a collector mentality. There are people that like to, you know, they're the comic book collector, the trading card collector, there's a lot of collector mentality in that. So we've got a lot of gamification to keep them interested. And then we are doing stuff with NFC, not NFT, but NFC, you know, the little chips that you can put in a product. So if they want to get a certain NFT, we can airdrop them into their OpenSea account, a very exclusive NFT, sustainable product NFT, but only if they bought the product on Amazon. And they have to scan the NFC code and then that airdrops something in there. So there's a lot of stuff that you can do there. And then we're doing stuff where they can vote on community stuff and participate and go clean up the ocean in Long Beach. We're bringing in artists that are taking like old aluminum cans or old beer cans and like making them into little motorcycles, like little, you know, like little pieces of art or little airplanes or whatever. There's all kinds of cool stuff you can do there. It's all fully traceable, and then the more somebody participates in what we're doing, they can see that their PFP will change. So it's like a dynamic PFP. So it'll say that, look, Janelle has really participated in seven projects, so her PFP shows that, versus Kevin, who's only done two. So there's like a status there, and there's all kinds of cool stuff that you can really, really do that people just... Until they see it, a lot of people won't understand it, but I agree with you. I think it's the future marrying Web 3 and Web 2 and there's a tremendous amount of potential and a lot of brands are starting to wake up to that right now. The big ones like Anheuser-Busch and some of those, they're really starting to wake up to how can we take advantage of this and I think it is going to be a major part of the future. Speaker 2: Yeah, and the early adopter phase. This is when when you get in early, you'll do really well later. But I'm wondering, I like what you're explaining. How do you protect dilution? Like so, you know, for those who get in early, you know, I love this idea with NFTs that you reward them and then that increases. And this is some of what the early projects have a problem with is that it gets diluted as more and more people join or if they just mint more coins. So like with the NFT, You kind of have to limit it. You know what I mean? If you don't want, because as your brand grows, if you're continuing to issue the NFTs, how do you make it so you're keeping the value or that value is increasing for the original or early holders? Speaker 1: We have it tied to specific products. So like if you, if maybe we have, let's say just by example, 10,000 people that hold one of our NFTs, then we were able to narrow it down to like the people that did the baby stroller. There's let's say 500 of them did it. Those 500 are getting a heavier participation dose of that than the other 9,500 because they actually went in. They all benefit, but those people benefit more because they participated. They had a say in it. We did like do like PICFU type of polls with them and stuff to see what they like and they participated. It's almost like in a way like a Dow or something kind of. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, DAOs, that's another thing I'm learning more about is the DAOs, but also too, like a network marketing, you know, they're just higher on the tier, like their downline, you know, they have a bigger downline, they got in earlier. Speaker 1: That's part of it, you know, it's the same with any NFT, you get in earlier, you know, you get in on the Bulls and Apes Project or the Bored Ape Yacht Club or any of those, those are the people that often have the major advantage down the road. Speaker 2: No, I think that that whole thing about community, I mean, that's just what I'm huge on. And I've learned that working in the influencer space, like a lot of the brands I've been launching recently are with influencers. And I'm just helping them like become the brand, you know, and they're so used to just doing brand deals, which, you know, can and sometimes are great, sometimes they're not so great, you know. You see these guys, like I've seen some of my influencers have built multi-million dollar brands overnight for these people, like they had brand approaching that was like doing nothing, they promoted their products and now, you know, they blow up this brand and then the brand's like, okay, now thank you. We're not going to re-up on the contract. And so you see this happen to these influencers. And so they're like, man, I'm just going to start my own brand, which it is a lot more work than you and I both know. It's not so easy just to start your own brand. But if they have someone that's an operator in place or can help them, using an influencer to launch a brand is just like game over. And so I'm having a lot of fun with that. And the reason why tying it back into where I was going with the community is they have this community that's And so, when they create a product for their people and they can have a story behind it that says, you know, I made this for people like us because... They just buy, buy, buy. It's like a buying frenzy. Speaker 1: A lot of people think when you say influencers, a lot of people think of the Kardashians or Paris Hilton or some big time person like that, but that's really not where it's at. It's more in the micro. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because you've had great success, like you just said, helping people really find and fine tune that. Where is that sweet spot and why is it so at that sweet spot? Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it just depends on the size of brand you want to build. But I mean, recently, we just did a launch with Matt's Off-Road Recovery. They're like a YouTube channel. And I wouldn't say they're massive, but they've got a great, like, one or two million followers on YouTube. They make great content. They're a team of, well, it's a family. Matt owns a rescue shop. They pull people out of Sand Hollow down in St. George in that area. They get stuck. And he just started filming, you know, his adventures and pulling people out. Well, he has so many people watching, and we help him develop these storylines. Speaker 1: Just to clarify, this is in Utah, this is people getting stuck like going out on dunes and stuff like that, right? Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it makes for like really entertaining. Yeah. Like the, you know, when he's pulling these people out of these situations, there's always a great story on how in the heck did you get your keep in that position or, you know, so that you get some great storytelling and the character development is great. And my business partner at, at Unifish, you know, he is the one that helped develop the storylines and he's also the executive or the co-producer of a show called The Chosen. It's like the largest crowd-sourced story, I guess a movie, documentary about Jesus. I actually haven't watched it, don't tell him that. It's called, have you heard of The Chosen? No, I haven't. If you go type it in. Yeah, yeah. They got a billion views. I mean, they're the largest project ever. Self-funded, millions and millions of dollars. It's just like, it's insane. And they're making Jesus cool again. So their t-shirts are like, binge Jesus. So they're trying to I guess, you know, religion is kind of a dying thing and Christianity is like on the downswing. So I think if they could like, you know, pump it back up and make Jesus cool again, that's kind of like their mission. So he's just really, really good at content development and he understands community and brand building. So he's just doing a phenomenal job with Dallas Jenkins is his co-producer on that show. So I always tell people, go watch what they do on social media, go watch, you know, how they create a brand of raving fans around I don't want to call it a movie, but it is kind of like a Netflix style, you know, has its own app and everything that you consume the content on. But anyhow, so he kind of runs the storylines behind, you know, Mass Offroad Recovery. So they're making great content. You've got all these users and we just launched products. Product after product and the people just buy it. They just love anything that Matt produces. So it's just been so fun to be thinking about, you know, his audience. We understand them. We have all the data in the back end of YouTube and we can see, you know, who's watching our content, where else they are, their comments. I mean, we can test a product before we even launch it by just like, you know, like an RC car for Matt's off-road. We can show it, you know, like a demo. Someone had sent Matt a They made a shelf for, if you look at his station or his station, his YouTube channel, His Morvair or the banana is what he uses to rescue people and someone from his audience made an RC shell of his banana. And so they did a little demo and you had people in the comments, where can I buy this? How do I get one? You know, and it's like, okay, well there's our next product. So we can start developing that. So it's just been, it's just been really fun to do that. I find so much joy in doing products that I know are going to land, you know, versus wondering like, Is this gonna sell or is it just another like, the world, I always tell people the world doesn't need another like lemon or a garlic press, you know, or a lemon juicer. There's just, I just never really enjoyed that Amazon game. It's not how I ever played it. I know people do really well doing Amazon that way, but I actually want to create something unique for a band of raving fans or build a brand that can generate passionate enthusiasts around it because I just find it so much more fun. Speaker 1: So it becomes more in what you're doing, it's more about the community and what they want and then Amazon or Walmart or something else just becomes a place for them to buy. It's not the one-all be-all like a lot of people that are coming into Amazon think this is everything's got to start and end at Amazon and that just happens to be their shopping cart of choice or something along those lines. Speaker 2: Totally, totally like I've always always and I'm you know you know I've managed like and built like I've done over hundreds of millions of dollars on Amazon and I always still only viewed it as a customer acquisition channel. Like to me it's just one of many and that's because I've worked with so many brands where we have such Better distribution, I wouldn't say better, but I do think it's better to not have everything in one, all your eggs in one basket. I just think that's just not great. But, you know, when you look at, you zoom back out and you look at all the models for getting your product out to people, you've got retail, you've got your own D2C site, you have Amazon, you have Walmart. And you have wholesale. I just feel like it's such a better strategy to do it that way. And I've watched, that's how brands really grow fast too. It's like you become omnipresent. People see you in Ulta. They see you in Target. They see you on Amazon. You know, you follow them around on YouTube. It's just, whoa, this is everywhere. So I prefer that. I know there's a lot of people that just do Amazon. It's not my favorite thing in the world. Speaker 1: So how did you get into this e-commerce thing? I mean, what's your backstory here before? I know we'll talk about kind of what you're doing now and a little bit more in just a second, but what's the backstory? How did you get into this thing of e-commerce or Amazon or whatever? Speaker 2: I was a school teacher back in the day like 20 years ago. I was teaching high school. I was 19 years old. I graduated early through college and I became a teacher and I was teaching seniors. I literally had a guy that had been held back so he was 19 in my class, my first year teaching. So we're like the same age. So that's how I got started in my career. And I was teaching history and then I learned later I got certified to teach English. And on the side, I started writing for some companies, copywriting. I learned copywriting because I was like, man, teachers, I don't know if you know, they don't make very much money. And so I was making $20,000 a year as a teacher and I wrote some copy and I was making more in a month writing copy than I was in a whole year of teaching. So that was kind of how I started getting into this world of marketing. I started going to these mastermind events like Yannick Silver. And I'm trying to think of if anyone's in like the direct D2C marketing, like internet, not D2C, sorry, like internet marketing world, there's all these like famous names and copywriters. And I got immersed in that world. And so I would start writing for a lot of different like direct sales companies. And I, one company I started writing for was Progenix and they were this new supplement company. And I was doing a lot of their copy and they wanted to bring me full time into their marketing. And I think that was probably for me one of the best experiences ever because the guy that was running the marketing department at Progenix, he had formerly launched Billabong and sold it. And then he was partnered with Hurley. I think his name was John Hurley. They were the partners that started Hurley and then sold that to Nike. And his name's Paul Gomez. He stayed on with Nike as the action sports director, you know, um, He built out the sports action industry. You know how Nike's whole strategy with athletes evolved? That was him. Getting athletes like Michael Jordan and how we have C. LeBron and Colby, that's so commonplace to us now, but there was a time, it's like the earliest of influencer marketing, where he came out, we're going to get these athletes, we're going to wrap them up, we're going to have them promoting and wearing Nike stuff. So, I got to work with him for several years and just, he was a genius. I mean, he literally, I think he had dyslexia. I typed all his emails. I did all the work, but he literally just followed that guy around and was like a sponge. And we built out the same type of strategy for this progenics company. It was the athlete strategy. We went And we found CrossFit, which was this new kind of sport. It was like in California, they were out on a ranch doing workouts and there was like a hundred people, right? And we decided, you know what, we've got this supplement company. At the time we were at trying to do the Arnold and get bodybuilders. And then we'd be the next weekend, you know, meeting with, I don't know, some other kind of meathead convention and trying to be all things to all people. And it was like, you know what? We're going to go all in, laser beam focus. He always called it like the spear, the top tip of the spear. We're going to go after crossfitters. We're going to basically, you know, make our bet here. And it gave us crystal clear vision on who our market was and the kind of words to use because it was like crossfitters, they didn't go to the gym. They went to boxes and they didn't do workouts. They did wads. And so like this idea that you could actually, you know, create messages that resonated with the target audience and you could You could then customize a product specific to these people. That was like, I know it sounds so like no duh, but back then it was like a huge shift for us. And we really, it just laser beam focused all our marketing. We knew exactly what magazines to be at. We knew which events we'd be at. We knew which events we wouldn't be at. Because we were the CrossFit company. We were making supplements for CrossFitters. So we were at the CrossFit Games. We became the official supplement sponsor of the CrossFit Games. We locked down every single top tier CrossFit athlete. Like to be a progenics athlete was like the dream of every young CrossFitting kid. And so I managed that athlete program. I think that's where I kind of developed this love for influencers. I mean, that's kind of all it was back then. We called it our athlete strategy. But I taught them how to use iPhones. At the time, iPhones were kind of new. Not the iPhone new, but the concept of like, hey, Tag Progenics, you know, when you're working out and show the shaker bottle in your picture. Hey, wear our shirt. I literally didn't even have to pay. I mean, if anyone's a CrossFitter here, you'll remember we had Chris Spieler, Jason Kalipa, Matt Chan, like all these guys who won the CrossFit Games, like, you know, and then all the women too that were winning. And they did nothing. We didn't pay them at first. It was literally just giving them supplements. And that's how we built, you know, our company into the largest supplement. I mean, we're a multi-million dollar company, very easily doing that strategy. It was really awesome. So I know you were asking my background, but I'll pause. Speaker 1: No, that's okay. I mean, so what happened? So from there, what happened? So did you sell that or did you exit out of that? Speaker 2: I'm still an investor in Progenix and I still have vested interest. I mean, Progenix became huge. They built their own blend facility. We have warehouses now and all these things, so still invested in that. They've had so many lawsuits and legal tie-ups that that's kind of been rough. That's one thing I think a lot of business owners don't realize is how How important it is to have, you know, your ducks in a row. I mean, we had a product called More Muscle. We would get sued all the time because someone who took it didn't feel like they got more muscle. You know, so finally we just changed the name. And like, they're never going to win that lawsuit, but they can sue you and you have to go to court or settle. And if you start settling with one person, It's just a slippery slope. I don't know if you've had this experience, but it's just a nightmare. You're having to constantly fight lawsuits like that, so be careful with how you name your products. There's a lot of things I've learned over the years. How did I transition from Progenix? I left Progenix. I think I just got to where I wanted to be the boss, I'll be honest. I was running the marketing department Under Paul and you know, sometimes I don't do well if I'm doing all the work and not getting all the credit. That's just human nature. And so it was like, okay, it's time for me to, you know, go do my thing. So I started, I left and started my own agency and that's how Kickfire Marketing was born. And so Kickfire Marketing, that's when I met, you know, Manny and all those guys I was teaching I guess that was a couple years later, but Kickfire Marketing started out as just a marketing agency. I was working with doctors, lawyers and dentists and helping them kind of blow up their practices. I was really good with video, which is you probably saw one of my video marketing. I could get a video ranked on the first page of Google and just bring these guys tons of leads. And like I was working with some of the largest surgeons, you know, in Las Vegas, there's this guy, Tom, and he has this bariatric clinic. People fly in from all over the world. We made him like a medical destination. And we'd have the princes of Saudi coming in to having a bypass surgery and it's become, they call it medical tourism. And they would watch our videos. I created a YouTube strategy for these guys. So I've been into YouTube. I always tell people You know, because everyone's like, you're the Amazon guru, you're the Amazon queen. I'm like, well, I do know a lot about Amazon, but I actually know a lot about YouTube as well. And I kind of marry those worlds. So a lot of times when I'm presenting at Amazon conferences, I'd be presenting about how to use YouTube to grow Amazon sales and do a YouTube channel strategy. And so that's how come I'm still so tight knit with the YouTubers, because I've always kind of been in that world as well. So, I started Kickfire Marketing and during that time as I'm growing all these agencies, doing all this stuff, I saw this course and I was like, that looks pretty interesting. And so I bought the course, I think it was like $2,000 or $4,000, I don't even remember. And I took that course and I was like, hmm, I want to bring, I'm a drummer, you know, so I play the drums. I was like, I want to start sourcing drums. I'm going to bring over drums and just sell them because that's fascinating to me. So it's just going to be a little side fun project and that's how I got into e-commerce. I started bringing over musical instruments and I told my partner at the time at our agency what I was doing and he was like, I want to start a brand. And he's like, I've always wanted to, you know, manage a toy store or own my own toy store. He used to manage a toy store in college and he was like, I've always wanted to start a toy store. And I was like, a toy store? Like, why would we do toys? And he's like, no, like, trust me, toys in Q4 would like blow it up and we could like do such cool stuff. And he starts telling me about the Diablo and I had never even heard of a Diablo. And we go on Amazon and they're like these Like yo-yos that have sticks and string and so that's how we got started, the Kickfire Diablos. Then we did, we started the classic toy line, Kickfire Classics and our whole thing, I took everything I had learned at Progenix and with supplements and I applied it to toys. And it was this idea of like, okay, who's our target audience? And it was like, dude, Who's going to buy toys for kids? It's like, dude, moms and grandmas. And I was like, and what do moms and grandmas complain about in 2017? If you remember back then, it was like, all of the kids are going to mush because they just sit on their tablets all day. And like, that was the big worry. And so we just made a story that totally captivated their hearts. And we just blew it up with like, hey, man, get your kids off the screen with classic toys. Get outside and have some good Good old-fashioned fun. We had kites, yo-yos, skateboards, you know, trying to think of everything we did over there, juggling balls. And with every product that we launched, there was a character that taught them the skill, you know, with tutorials and video and we had video libraries. And so I just used all that knowledge of marketing and video marketing and list building to build these brands and it was just a whole lot of fun. And so how did I then start making, you know, money and clients? I started, I always produced content at my agency. I would tell people what I was doing and I had like a weekly hot seat and I was doing a hot seat about KickFire Classics and just talking about it and I ranked my videos about Amazon and started showing what we are doing on Amazon and I got inquiries. I was just getting flooded with inquiries. Can you help me with my Amazon business? Can you help me do this and that? Can you come speak? And I was like, all right, time to start a second agency. So we spun off We called it Amazon Wranglers, but I got a cease and desist from Amazon because I used their name. So we changed it to e-commerce wranglers. And I had a whole second agency and all we did was service Amazon companies or businesses wanting to sell on Amazon. And I'll be honest, I was probably the person that most people hated because it was a lot of the Chinese companies that contacted me. They wanted us to help them with their listings. I had a whole strategy, which is funny because I taught this years ago, but now everybody teaches it. You know the original image storyboard optimization because I did so much ads when I say like magazine layout ads when I was with Progenix we did a ton of magazines and I just applied that concept to the Amazon carousel, the image carousel. It was like I created each image like it was an ad and pretended that nobody would ever read my copy. And I started teaching people that. And now everybody, it's like common sense, but make your images so that they sell your product. Hands down, you got seven of them, you got six in a video, nobody's gonna read your copy. And that's kind of my history and how I got into Amazon. And then everybody always likes to know how I ended up doing like 100 million a year. And that was at my agency. I was helping obviously Amazon sellers and a company contacted me, Nutraceutical at the time. And they were trying to hire my agency to help them take their manufacturing plant. So Nutraceutical had like 40 different brands. Actually, they had 70 different brands, 4,000 SKUs. They're one of the largest aggregators of supplements. And I was trying to get off the phone with them because they were, you know, just, I picked, I don't usually answer my phone when people call. And I did. And this guy starts asking me all these questions about Amazon and selling on Amazon. I was just trying to be nice but also trying to get off the phone and I just told them that hey, you know what? You probably couldn't afford my agency and we really wouldn't be interested in your business. We're more boutique and you need to build an in-house team. You're just too massive. And he was like, well, what if we were to hire you to build our in-house team or basically acquire you and have you come over to Nutraceutical and help us go direct to consumer, help us as a manufacturer, get rid of all these people who are just on Amazon selling our products. We want to take control of that, optimize the listings. If you think about it, I was kind of perfect for that role. I'd spent the last few years doing that, not only for my own brands, but for hundreds of other brands. And here they were basically one of the largest aggregators in the space. I think they are actually the largest aggregator in space. And they were like, come do it for us. So that's how I would say I got like acquired or recruited, became their VP of e-commerce and Amazon and built up a hundred million dollar business just on Amazon. I would say Amazon and iHerb, multiple. And then I expanded to Walmart, built out their websites. And yeah, so I think that's what everyone was like, how do you do so much on Amazon? I was like, well, it evolved. That's where I am. And just in June, I actually exited Nutraceutical, June 23rd. So we were going to go public. Gosh, what day were we going public? The night before we went public, I have to go look at the date, Kevin. I can't remember. But we didn't go public. They pulled back. And that was kind of not devastating for me, but I was really excited to say I'd gone public and then I was going to exit. And the night before when the CEO called and let us know that they were pulling out, and they had all flown to New York to ring the bell and everything. We still don't know why. I mean, we can all have our Hypothesis and we're probably not supposed to talk about it, but don't know why they didn't go public. They never told us and they said, we're not going public. And then here I was like ready to exit. I built out a whole team. And so the last six months I've just kind of been there being like antsy as heck. I started Unifish. I've got my other brands that I'm building. And finally it was just like, can, how do we keep it? So I keep my membership units or my stock, you know, in the company, but no longer, So we had a great exit together. I guess we call that where you got bought out basically. Yeah. How I could leave and do my thing. And I do have like, I do have a semi non-compete for a year and I'm not allowed to like take the employees and team that I built there, which is fine. I wouldn't do that anyways. I'm still a vested, you know, Holder of stock there and I wanted to do well, but I am free to do my own thing, which was the hardest thing for me. I'm not going to lie. I'm very entrepreneurial. I was the CEO of my own company working for corporate, even though, you know, they were great. There's things that I love, many great people, like it kind of crushes your soul to work in a big cog in a machine. It just wasn't my favorite ever. Speaker 1: So how did you do all this? You have like 26 kids or something like that, right? How did you do all this and manage an entire classroom of children? I'm exaggerating here. She doesn't have 26 kids. She has a few. Speaker 2: I've got four kids. What's funny is I had four kids under the age of five and so I always tell people, if you can survive four kids under the age of five, everything else is pretty easy. I started with twins and twins is like, I think that's the only way to have twins because if you had other children, I think you'd be too busy and you'd probably, I don't know. I actually, twins was awesome. It was trial by fire. I'm not married so I don't have to nurture any relationships. So I think that's what's different about me. When people always say, how do you do so much? I'm like, well, I don't really have any friends or a partner. So like I literally can work all the time. And people are always like, Hey, I'll set you up. I'll set you up. I'm like, no, no, don't set me up. I'd be a terrible, I can't be set up because I'm married to my business by choice. I love what I do. And then my kids, you know, my kids are my priority with, with my, I don't even consider it work. I've never thought to myself, I have to go to work. I wake up every morning so excited and I don't know if you feel this way, but I literally have to tell myself, no, you need to go to the gym first, you need to eat before you get on the computer. Because once I get on the computer, I'm like, it's like time warp, you get in flow and then it's like nine o'clock at night and you're like, where'd the day go? Speaker 1: You're really big in taking care of yourself too, making time to actually take care of yourself with exercise and nutrition and everything, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I think that's another secret because people always be like, well, how do you have so much energy? And I'm like, I don't know. Like I've never drank caffeine. I've never had coffee. I've never had alcohol because I grew up Mormon. I'm not Mormon now, but in Mormonism, like you don't drink, right? You don't have coffee. And so I never had those habits anyways. So it's not like a moral high ground. It's just that all my friends that do drink or have coffee, they've always are telling me how they wish they could quit. So I always thought, well, why would I start? They're all wishing they want to quit. You know, so I feel like eating, I don't eat sugar, not like I have had sugar before, but I just eat clean. People would tell you I eat very healthy and I'm very strict with my diet, but I don't feel like I am just because I just prefer to eat oatmeal and salads. I'm a pretty simple person. I think it's more like how Steve Jobs just picked an outfit and he wore it every day. I literally just have certain foods that I just know are always in my fridge or in my pantry and it's kind of what I eat. When I go on vacation, you know, then it's like, okay, I look for a subway or a salad and if not, I just eat apples and bananas and nuts. I'm pretty simple and I'm not a foodie. I think it's funny because I'll go with friends on a trip or, you know, like I just did a YouTuber convention and everyone's like, oh man, we got to go here and we got to get this food and they're like, what do you want, Janelle? I'm like, I don't care. Anywhere I can get a salad. And they're like, well, what if it doesn't have a salad? I'm like, well, I'll just eat later. Something, I'll stop and get an apple, but I don't, I won't like, They'll try to get me to try something like, oh, you got to try this molten chocolate cake. And I'm like, I've had cake before. I don't really want it. It doesn't do anything for me. But what's funny is my kids will tell you I'm a sucker for earning money. Like I don't need to earn any more money, but I am so money motivated. Like if somebody came to me and like just this weekend, I My sister was laughing so hard because a friend came to me and said, man, I need a website built. And I was like, well, I'll build it for you this weekend. Because they were saying they were going to need to pay like $10,000. I'm like, I'll build that for you. I'll do it for like five. And she's like, you don't need the money. You're like, why are you doing that? I'm like, well, A, I like money. And I was like, just the fact that I can make $5,000 on Saturday, just making something I enjoy doing, why wouldn't I? And so it's just funny. I recognize that in myself that I'm very money motivated. Speaker 1: So what is this with a kickstarter? Speaking of money motivated, you did some, tell me about this little kickstarter that you did. I saw you post on social, you said something, you did a little call out to me and I'm like, what did I do? Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it was your billion dollar seller summit. You planted a seed. Speaker 1: Oh did I? Okay. Yeah. I was like, what did I do? I was like, oh, okay, great. I'm glad it worked for me. What did I do? Speaker 2: Yeah, let me bring you full circle. So it was that Billion Dollar Seller Summit. You had a speaker and I forgot the name, the gentleman, I need to look it up so we can give him credit, but he did a presentation on Kickstarters. And, you know, I've never thought about doing a Kickstarter before, but after his presentation, I thought, Dude, I should do a Kickstarter. Especially when you have someone with an audience, why not pre-sell it? You won't tie up your cash. And so I was like, okay, I made it a goal. I think I've told you this before. When I learn something, I can't just consume to be a consumption junkie. I have to take action. So I listened to that presentation. I'm like, okay, I got to do a Kickstarter. So, I just went to Sean, who's one of my partners, and if you guys like motorcycles, which I love, if you go to Bikes and Beards, it's his YouTube channel, he's a great job, you'll love his content, but I was like, Sean, let's launch a product. So, he'd always been wanting to develop this fast detailer, is what he calls it, it's like a spray and wash, you can go watch the Kickstarter, it's awesome. So, we decided we'd launch this product. And Daryl and all my partners at Unifish, this is a project we're going to do together. And I decided I'm going to do a Kickstarter because I literally could have just driven those sales to Shopify. But from what this guy was teaching, he was like, you know, when you do a Kickstarter, the beauty is if you can use your audience To drive a bunch of traffic, it's kind of like the algorithm on Amazon. There's an algorithm that if you have so many, if you hit your funding goal within so many minutes or that first day, you'll hit the trending page. And when you hit the trending page on Kickstarter, all that organic traffic that's naturally on Kickstarter has an opportunity to see your product. And so then you can like double your sales. So that intrigued me because, you know, it works on Amazon, you know, the same kind of principle, get organic rank and you do more, more sales. So, that was the goal. My goal was I wanted to do a six-figure launch because, you know, everyone said it's hard to do a six-figure launch anymore on Kickstarter because the platform is so saturated and covered with junk products. So, that was our goal. We launched on Kickstarter. We drove all the traffic instead of to a Shopify site or our own site. We took them all to Kickstarter. We funded within 15 minutes of the kickoff of, you know, Sending the traffic, we funded and our funding goal was $30,000 on a $40 product. So we hit that in 15 minutes and then we hit six figures within, I think it was three hours. And I was like, I did not expect to do it all in one day. I thought, you know, my goal was 30 days to have a six figure launch. We did it in four hours. So, the thing that I learned, though, is that hitting trending page, I don't know if a bunch of these gurus, this is what I love about, you know, this space, you have gurus and then you have people who've actually done it. And I was like, all right, it's like trending page literally did heart, I mean, 10,000 extra bucks. And you have a Kickstarter fee that's 5%. So technically 5% of 100,000 is what? 5,000 bucks? So I still made 5,000 extra dollars by doing Kickstarter. But the kicker is, my Kickstarter closed on July 30th. I don't have my funds yet. So they've got $141,000. I should get it on the 14th of August. You get it two weeks later, which is kind of a pain. And then the backers, like I'm just basically getting an Excel spreadsheet that I got to like upload and then, you know, try to Get into my 3PL and ship it out. So I'm kind of in my head thinking, hmm, will I do another Kickstarter? And I talked to a friend who does a ton of Kickstarters. And he was like, you know what, Kickstarter five years ago is totally different than Kickstarter today. And he's like, Kickstarter five years ago? Heck yes. You hit that trending page and like you would double your sales. So like we would have done, you know, 300 grand instead of 150. We did 142 or something like that. And I was like, okay, well, maybe so. And then he also said, and Kickstarter is kind of like now just like a gaming, but does really well for games and like anime stuff. And if you go look at Kickstarter, you kind of see, okay, yeah, I see that a lot. So I do have an influencer who wants to do, he's got a pretty decent sized channel, like a bento box and he's in the anime space. So I do want to do one more Kickstarter. With him in a different category, just to see if that makes a difference. Because if you think about it, like Fast Detailer, it's a very niche product for motorcycles. And I'm like, you know, maybe the addressable market on Kickstarter organically, it's just not, there's not a lot of motorcyclists. You know, in most motorcyclists, Sean's channel is almost, you know, one and a half million followers. We could have tapped that market. From there, I guess what I'm saying is there's probably not a lot of guys on motorcycles hanging out on Kickstarter. So I don't want to diss Kickstarter just yet. I want to do a few more experiments before I say definitively whether I think it's worth it or not. So I actually am going to do... One with a more tech, I'm developing this flashlight that I'm gonna do probably October, November on Kickstarter and then I wanna do this like anime gaming bento box and see how that does and then we could discuss whether I recommend it or not. And I'm doing a new launch in about 30 days where I just, I could have done it Kickstarter but I'm just gonna do it pre-sale on my Shopify site and my goal is a million dollar launch on that one. I'll let you know how that one goes. That's going to launch on September 1st. Speaker 1: What kind of product is that? Speaker 2: This is in the automotive space and so I don't really want to tell you the exact product yet just because I want it to be kind of shock and surprise but it's in automotive and it's nothing like revolutionary I'd say but it's actually just marketed really well and it's got a cool name and the packaging is cool. Speaker 1: So if you had to give these entrepreneurs out there that are listening to this that are most of them selling on Amazon and some of them selling off Amazon like five key pieces of advice like this is on your entrepreneur gravestone. These are the five Janelle's five rules of business. What would those be? Speaker 2: My number one rule is you find someone who's smarter than you, that's done what you want to do and you pay them to short circuit your success. I mean, literally that has worked for me. I mean, if you think about it, my very first, when I, you know, Paul Gomez, my mentor that I would say, he doesn't know he was my mentor, but we're still close. I actually just saw him at my sister-in-law's funeral and I told him, you know, how much he's just done for me over the years that he didn't even realize just by working with him. You know, me being able to absorb as a sponge, this guy, Who had built and sold two very successful companies. So that was a mentor. When I started my agency, I hired a business coach. That was Daryl Eves, who I've mentioned now we're business partners. But he had a marketing agency and he was doing very well and I hired him. And it was a lot of money at the time. Like it stretched me to pay for him. But you know, he helped me land a six figure client within my first 30 days. I couldn't have done that myself. We stayed in touch over the years and now full circle, you know, we're doing several businesses together and it's just been fantastic. So, you know, I think that whole idea of a mentor or paying someone, you know, short circuit your success. I mean, that's what, I mean, you probably would agree with that too. Haven't you had mentors and you are a mentor. I just find it highly valuable. So I'm grateful for those people and I wouldn't be where I'm at today without them. So that would be number one. Number two is you've got to work. I'm not the smartest person. I'm not the most talented and I remember even in sports, my coaches always told me like, man, you're a hustler. Hustler kind of sometimes maybe has a negative connotation, but I consider it a compliment. I'm not hustling and swindling people, but nobody will out-hustle Janelle. If somebody told me they would pay me $10,000 to go shovel manure for an hour, I would do that. No work is beneath me. I grew up poor. It's not a sad story. When you make a joke about a lot of kids, my parents had six kids and my dad was a teacher and my mom was a stay-at-home mom. They would never say they were poor, but you knew we didn't have a lot of money. I remember going out to eat a few times and when we did, you shared fries or a hamburger. That's not like, oh, poor me. I'm just telling you like I remember just like a happy meal like you didn't get a happy meal in my family you know because those are like $3.99. You got like the 99 cent burger and that was it. So, you know, this idea that, you know, I could work and I think that's why I still so money motivated because I'm like, oh, I just I love that, you know, money doesn't have to be an issue. You can work and I'm very conservative with my money. I love to invest. I love to multiply it. I have a lot of fun doing that. It's kind of like a game. I also love to help other people. I think money is a beautiful tool. I remember being taught like in church one time that like money was the root of all evil. And I was like, no, it's not. And now people say, well, it's the love of money that's the root of all evil. I'm like, I still have issue with that. I think money is a beautiful, wonderful tool. And it's one thing that changes things in the world. You have to have money to make a difference. I guess we could argue with that. You can make a difference by being a kind person, too. But you know what I'm saying. So work. Work would be number two. And then number three, integrity. I feel like if you are a man or a woman of your word, you will go very far in life. I know that I choose to do business with people that I know, like, and trust. And if someone is not honest, like, I just won't do business with them. Or even here that, you know, there's any shady or any type of that going on. I just, like, won't touch them with a 10-foot pole. So I always tell people, guard your integrity with your life, you know. So that's number three. Gosh, do I got to get to five? I think, like, I always say when I was hiring too, and I still hire, I build teams, like, Attitude, aptitude and integrity. Those were my three rules for hiring because I'm like, if someone has the right attitude, like they gotta be a joy to work with, right? Cause I don't want to work with people I don't like. Because that's why I like working. It's fun. Aptitude. That just means a willingness to learn. People need to have basically cognitive abilities to learn quickly or want to learn. And then integrity. If someone's honest and I trust them, I'll give them the keys to the kingdom. So I think those things right there, my five, I guess the next one is be nice. I always just feel like Be kind like a mother Teresa Gandhi Jesus teachings all those wonderful people It's just like man if you're just a good person, and I really believe my brother always teases me He's like man. You're such a humanist, but I believe people are good, and I I don't I don't want to see it any other way You know I've been burned a couple times, but for how much I trust people and give people the benefit of the doubt I could have been taken advantage of so many times, but I found that most people are doing the best they can and I Yeah, I just feel like there's a lot of great human beings and I just I really love people. So those are four or five or who knows how many I just said. Speaker 1: That was awesome. That was awesome. Janelle, I really want to thank you for coming on today and sharing this. This has been very interesting and I think the audience has gotten quite a bit out of this today. If people want to reach out or learn more about you, what's the best way to do that? Speaker 2: Yeah, let's see. I always tell people you can be my friend on Facebook. I still have the best story ever when I was a kid. My kids were saying something and I was trying to make them eat their vegetables, which I don't do anymore, but my little boy looked at me and he's like, I'm not your friend. And his twin sister looked at her and said, she doesn't care. She has like 2000 friends on Facebook. And I thought that was so funny because I was like, I didn't even know they knew about Facebook. I don't even think 2000 is a lot and I don't even think she knew the right number, but I just laugh so hard. So on Facebook, I always tell people, become my friend on Facebook. I'm Janelle Page. You can easily find me. My website's JanellePage.com. You can follow me on Instagram. I don't really post anything exciting. It's just I think people are disappointed. They hear me on a podcast and they think, oh man, she's probably dropping truth bombs. And then they go to my social media and they're like, she's just doing handstands and traveling around the world. There's no business here. Speaker 1: Well you did a handstand, you did a handstand when I first met you at the Illuminati and I remember at that event at the last day you're like alright everybody come up on stage and you tried, you got as many people as you could to come up on stage and y'all built a pyramid. You built like a pyramid on the stage of people. Yeah, that's right. Nothing's ever too serious, it's all about having fun and enjoying people and enjoying life for you. Speaker 2: That's right. And you know what? Speaking of sell and scale summit, I'm going to be there teaching a yoga class. So I was telling people, dude, you need to come because like how cool would it be to be in a downward dog next to like Kevin King, Gary Vee and Nelly. Speaker 1: I don't know if I'll be participating. I might be watching that one. I don't know. My ability to stretch is pretty limited. But no, it's going to be awesome. I actually asked them. I saw that on the schedule because they're doing this event a little bit differently than a normal event. It says morning yoga or something like that. I asked Bradley, I think, what the heck is that? Who's doing that? He said, oh, Janelle. I was like, ah, OK, that should be pretty good. That should be a lot of fun. Speaker 2: It's going to be a real good bang up time. Yeah, I hope that people, I don't know when this is going to air, but hopefully anyone, if you heard this podcast, come find me and say hi. I'd love to meet you. Speaker 1: Yeah, the sale on scale is in just a couple of weeks, so definitely come if you're already planning to come, definitely say hello to meet Janelle in person or haven't bought your ticket yet, why not? You need to come on out and meet Janelle, meet the whole team and it's going to be an amazing event, a lot of fun, a lot of good information, a lot of good networking. So Janelle, I'll see you in just a few weeks at sale on scale. Until then, don't work too much, take at least an afternoon off one day. Speaker 2: I will. I will. Deal. Speaker 1: All right. Thanks Janelle. Wow. Those last five nuggets from Janelle were worth listening to this episode alone. As you can see, she's done a lot. She's an amazing marketer. Lots of great ideas in there in this discussion. I hope you enjoyed being a fly on the wall. And don't forget, we'll be back again next week with another really good episode. Before we go, don't forget the Sale & Scale Summit is coming up in Las Vegas in just a few short weeks from now. Hopefully I will see you there. It's at the Virgin Hotel in Las Vegas. I'll be speaking, Bradley's speaking, Janelle will be there, like she said, leading yoga. It's gonna be a great event, so hopefully you can make it out for Sale & Scale. And before we go, just today's little nugget of wisdom to leave you with. is this one. You can either be judged because you created something or you can be ignored because you left your greatness inside of you. It's your call. Once again, you can either be judged because you created something or ignored because you left your greatness inside of you. It's your call. We'll see you again next week. Unknown Speaker: Let's get started.