Franchise at 7 Years Old!? - Cold Calls, Me vs You, and Email Marketing | Kat Parker Merritt #003

Franchise at 7 Years Old!? - Cold Calls, Me vs You, and Worms | Kat Parker Merritt | Episode 3 Speaker 1: I'm probably a college dropout. People have asked me, you know, do you have your master's degree? And I've said no, but I've hired a bunch of people who do. Unknown Speaker: You're watching The Marketing Misfits with Norm Farrar and Kevin King. Kevin King: What's up, Mr. Farrar? How are you doing, my buddy with the beard, the beard guy and Mr. Norm? Norm Farrar: I'm doing fine. Thank you for asking, Mr. Kev. Kevin King: It's always good to see you, always good to be here. You know, this podcast, this Marketing Misfits podcast we started, we got a few under our belt now, but this is pretty cool, you know, doing a podcast with a good buddy and just talking shop, talking business, telling stories. This is pretty cool. Norm Farrar: And we have a lot of misfits, so it's been great talking to the misfits. Kevin King: It has been. We've had some really good guests, and we have another one today that's going to be, I think, awesome. I met her. We had, if you've listened to it, I guess we're putting these out in order. I'm not even sure but David Gonzalez was actually on one of the episodes and he was talking about his think tank, his three-day think tank that he does. If you didn't see that, listen to that episode, go back and listen to it. There's some really good stuff in there. And this is our guest today is someone that I actually met at one of his think tanks and she impressed me and I remember I remember David, I was like, Kevin, you gotta meet this woman, Kat. And I was like, okay, which one's Kat? He's like, oh, it's this one over here. I was like, oh, the smart one that was giving all the good advice to the people in the hot seat. All right, yeah, let me meet her. So he's like, all right, Kevin, you do email marketing, she does email marketing, you two come over here and talk. And so he took us over to like a side of the table in the kitchen there. So y'all talk and they took his phone out. And he took his cell phone out and he put it like right between us and hit record and he walked away. I'm like, what are you doing, David? He's like, y'all talk. And so me and Kat, she starts talking about email and we're talking about different things. Oh, you're doing this and you're doing that. And we're sharing stories with each other. And it was really cool. But I was like, David, Cause I think is what David, he didn't want to miss anything. So he had to go like, you know, take care of other people and, you know, be the host and all that kind of stuff. But he's like, I know whatever comes out of this conversation, I want to hear. So he put his phone down. So I don't know if he went back and listened to that. We didn't say anything on there. It didn't change anything that we did, but it was kind of funny. Norm Farrar: I usually do that with my wife at dinnertime. I put chat GPT on, they have a nice conversation. I go do something else. Kevin King: Chat GPT, does it actually say this macaroni and cheese is not the right way? I like it. I have a suggestion for you. Norm Farrar: Yeah, that's what happens. Kevin King: Well, you see, you just need one of these robots. I have an astro robot in my house. I think. Did you see it when I was? Yeah. Yeah. Little astro robot. And this my mom is a red hatter. You know what red headers are? You ever heard of red headers? So it's a, I think you have to be 55 out of Texas thing. No, it's a national like organization, you know, like EO for entrepreneurs. Yeah, this is a group for They're women of a certain age. You have to be over 55. Most of them are over 65 or 70. And they get together and they wear these red hats and red outfits. And they get together and they go to the movies or they go to a play or go to a restaurant or go play cards or whatever, do little activities together. A couple of weeks ago, my mom calls me and says, Kevin, I need to talk to you. I'm like, what? What's up? She says, I'm coming to Austin. We're taking a road trip the weekend before Easter. They want to go see the Esther's Follies. They want to go to eat some barbecue and do a few walk around Sixth Street. I'm like, wait, wait, wait. Some 70 and 80 year old women with walkers and stuff are going to walk around on Sixth Street where The gangs wear their pants down to their, you know, they show their underwear. Mom, no, you don't want to do that. Stay away from that part. They get to my place and you know, they see the view and they're just, they love it. And like, who did the decorations here? Was it you or whatever? It's like, no, it's me. Norm Farrar: It was Norm. Kevin King: It's like, no, it's my buddy Norm. Showed him the ice cream, you know, that you mistakenly ate. Unknown Speaker: No, I didn't do that. Kevin King: But I had Astro, you know, had never seen anything like this before. So I had Astro play, come and follow me around. And you can tell Astro, this is a little robot. It's basically a toy from Amazon. It's like 1600 bucks, but it will bring you drinks, it will do, it'll do stuff. It's it'll do security, it has a little head that raises up and look on your stove. It's like, did you did you turn the stove off? It'll look and see and alert you whatever. But so I had Astro play the lady in red, you know, remember that song, the lady in red? Norm Farrar: Yeah. Kevin King: And then I had it do a dance. So Astro starts dancing, you know, the little robot moving around and like blinking his little digital eyes and like Adam, they got the biggest kick out of that. It was it was it was crazy. So you need you need an Astro so that you can take that when it's time for dinner and it can sit there and it can make little winky eyes at Connie and and You could have a virtual thing of you on the screen and you'd be set. Norm Farrar: I wish you'd like that. I just have it bring me my Coke Zero. Kevin King: You can do that too because it has two little holders on the back and so you can actually put in, if Connie's in the kitchen, it won't go downstairs. So if it's got to go downstairs, it won't do that, but it'll go She could put your Coke Zeros in the back and say, take these to Norm. And it will literally, you program it to where Norm is, or take these to Norm's office number two, or whatever you call it, and it will actually take them to you and bring you fresh Coke Zeros. And you can tell it, Astro, go back to Connie in the kitchen and get two more. It will do that for you. She can put them in there and it will bring them to you. And the other cool thing is with Dallas, with your dog, you can take the little cup holders out and you can put this little device that spits out dog treats. So you can have it roam around the house. You can say, Astro, go patrol the house. That's what you say. Go on patrol and don't go roaming around the house. And you tell it spit out every five minutes, spit out a dog treat and it'll spit out a dog treat. So Dallas can follow it around and wait for a treat to pop out and entertain your dog. Norm Farrar: Or my kids. Kevin King: Or your kids too. Or Connie could do this with you, like, you know, spit out a gummy. Norm Farrar: Yeah, spit out a gummy, I'd be there. Kevin King: But hey, that's cool. I mean, today, you know, we got someone that's a really good marketer, a really good person. I think you're going to be impressed. We're both getting to know her a little bit better on this podcast, but she's got some cool stories and some cool experience. So I can't wait to bring on Kat. Norm Farrar: Well, if David Gonzalez recommended Kat, Kat's got to be an awesome misfit. Kevin King: I think so. Let's bring her on. Welcome Kat to The Marketing Misfits. Speaker 1: Hi, welcome to The Marketing Misfits or thank you for coming. Kevin King: Yeah, of course. Norm Farrar: Yeah. Any way you want to be welcomed. Speaker 1: Well, I'm excited to chat today, you know, and see where the conversation goes. Norm Farrar: I'm excited, too, because Kevin, after he met you, he was talking to me about this fantastic lady he met. And I can't wait to get into this. Kevin King: So, so, so Kat, what, what's your story? Speaker 1: I, I'm a lifetime entrepreneur. I started my first franchise when I was seven years old. Kevin King: Franchise? Speaker 1: Yeah, here's how that works. Here's what that looks like. I lived in a little farming community called Milad, Idaho. And this was way, way, way before the days when farming communities were cool. And all the rich people were buying up farms, you know, it was like genuine farmers. And I my house was on the road to the reservoir. And we had like a two acre garden and when irrigation happened, all these nightcrawlers came up. My dad mentioned to me, you know, we live on the road to the reservoir. You could probably sell nightcrawlers and make some money. So he showed me how to go out and grab nightcrawlers. The first night I wore gloves because they grossed me out. Kevin King: What are night crawlers? I'm sorry, I'm not a worm boy. Speaker 1: They're like big worms. Norm Farrar: Big worms. Speaker 1: That you can use to catch fish. So I caught a bunch, put them in a can. Next day, put out a big sign. They were 25 cents a dozen in case you care. And people stopped and bought them. And, you know, that was like a fortune for a seven year old. And I bought a lot of candy and I was really popular. And so the next night I didn't even need gloves anymore. I didn't care. This is when I knew that things that made money made me brave. This is when I learned that life lesson. And so I, we built a box. My dad helped me build a box that you put this moss stuff in to keep them healthy. So, you know, you can sell them on demand and add all these little containers to sell them. And I, you know, at 25 cents a dozen, some days I made eight, nine, 10 bucks. And I realized my friend Shelly, I lived on the opposite side of town on the other road to the reservoir. So I would get enough nightcrawlers to supply Shelly. I built her a box and she had to pay me half of what she earned. Unknown Speaker: So that's my story. Kevin King: That's awesome. Norm Farrar: You know, that's that's big business. I remember going to my buddy's place and he lived on a farm. And in the I don't know, it's nine thirty, ten o'clock at night. There was tons of lights out in the middle of this field. And it was just this group grabbing as many of the worms as possible before the farmer came out to kick them off the land. But it's it's big business. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that was quite a few years ago at that at that rate, but I was a very wealthy seven, eight, nine year old in my community. Kevin King: You had all the cool toys, all the cool, all the cool stuff. Speaker 1: Yeah. And I and I kind of really worked on stuff that made me money. I've loved that independence ever since I was just little. That kind of turned something on in me that said, This is the thing. So, my dad was a salesperson and he would listen to Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Tom Hopkins in the car with me, you know, as I grew up. And so, I would listen to all this really cool stuff. And so, I'm in college. I'll speed this up, but I'm in college majoring in psychology and not to, you know, dramatically age myself, but at the time minimum wage was $2.85 an hour. You can imagine. I needed a job. I was putting myself through school and I saw this ad that said there was a job for $6.50 an hour plus bonus. So I applied and it was a big room with a big long table, people sitting like what you see in a movie, I swear. People sitting down both sides on phones like the kind that you actually have to pick up and dial. Kevin King: They're connected to a wall, yeah. Speaker 1: And these cards and it was selling used car warranties to people who just bought a used car, which sounds horrible. But I was great at it. Um, all the guys that worked there were mad cause I was out selling them and you know, they were young and had families and, and I started making enough money that I was like, I don't think I can afford to go to school anymore. And got into telephone sales, telephone sales management. After that, um, flash forward a few years, started working for authors, speakers, trainers, In starting with Robert Allen, multiple streams of income, even some of my childhood heroes like Brian Tracy, helping them craft their presentations and talk to their audience and enroll people before Russell Brunson, you know, called it the Ascension Ladder. It was just like selling more stuff. And, and create value from the leads and create value for the audience and generate more revenue. And I've kind of felt like I'm the female Forrest Gump because I just kind of accidentally Ended up being good in this space and got to hang out with really great people that people look up to and want to spend time with and help them with their businesses and their sales processes and their marketing. And I really, Kevin, I did a lot of marketing, but not until 2017. It was all sales, but I did stuff called marketing and copywriting. I just didn't know it was called that because I was writing scripts for stage presentations. I didn't know that was called copywriting. You know, I was writing teleseminars, I was writing scripts for salespeople, I was writing, you know, letters to mail out to get leads generated. So I dabbled in it. But then in 2017, I exited sales and just went Full bore online marketing, ran a couple of online marketing businesses that did online launches and a ton of email marketing, built an email list of just shy of 3 million. For those of you who email, that means you have 1.8 million active and learned a ton about affiliate marketing, email marketing. But I really think Sales is like, you have to understand everything about human nature. You have to understand what motivates people, how to serve them. And I think it gave me a good foundation for direct response marketing. Kevin King: Well, psychology is a good foundation. I think that's one of the mistakes a lot of business schools, maybe they've changed since I was in business school, but you don't take enough psychology. Psychology and marketing and sales go hand in hand. I think every business major, if you're going to go to college, which you don't really need to do for most things anymore, but if you're going to do that or if you're not, one of the best things that any marketer or salesperson could study right now is psychology. Go and actually get some psychology books and understand psychology and empathy and how to put yourself in other people's shoes and what are the triggers that make people do things and certain way you do words. They're always looking for a hack or this little trick or whatever but it's the psychology that makes the biggest difference and I think some of the most successful business people have either psychology background or they're natural at that. Norm Farrar: That just reminds me of Brian Tracy, The Psychology of Selling. That was one of his big ones. Speaker 1: Yes. I probably listened to that, gosh, I don't know, 50 or 60 times. Not on purpose, just I was exposed to it and I think there's things I come up with. I think they're my ideas, but I know they just got in there. Over the years of just listening repeatedly, but you're right. And Kevin, there's not psychology in marketing or sales. And I am proudly a college dropout. People have asked me, do you have your master's degree? And I've said, no, but I've hired a bunch of people who do. Kevin King: I love it. I love it. Speaker 1: I encourage my children to like start a business or I brought them both into online marketing. I encouraged my son to start a business, learn online marketing, email marketing rather than go to college. I know there's people that will think that's crazy, but I think it's a better foundation for moving through life and understanding how things work and knowing you can take care of yourself. There's an independence and freedom that comes with knowing how to market, sell, how things online work, how psychology works, what offers get traction and what ones don't and understanding why I think is a huge advantage. Kevin King: I think someone one time said something, I think this is a common phrase out there, but always be selling. Like Kevin, you're always selling. Even when we're with friends, just hanging out, you're always selling. I was like, what do you mean? I wasn't selling anything. I wasn't trying to get him to buy anything. He's like, no, but you're always the psychology of what you're saying. I can see what you're doing. You're motivating people or you're getting them to come to your side or you're getting them to take an action that you want the group to take an action to on because that's what you want to do. So you have a way to actually convince them all that that's what they want to do now and they think it's their own decision. So always be selling. If you're always selling, and I'm not saying being sleazy, use car sales, that's not what I'm talking about, but always be selling. Speaker 1: Well, that's like you said, nothing not sleazy. So I have a really strong opinion about what selling is and what selling isn't. And the connotation people give selling and salespeople, that's not selling. That's that's. Like manipulation, brute force, selfishness. A self-centered agenda. And that's not really what sales is. I think it's been the word kind of becomes like, oh, you're in sales because of that. But that's not that's not to me. That's not what it is. It's selling is really giving people all of their options and an opportunity to get all the information they need to know if it's a yes or a no for them. That's all it is. And I think too many people are afraid to try to, like you were saying, you're always convincing people. I don't think you can really convince someone to do something that they don't really want to do or that's against their values. But you should always take a stand. And I think being very specific and certain about who you are and what you stand for is persuasive and people will follow it because we all look for someone who knows who they are and who knows what they want and can articulate it or attracted to it. And I think it can be, it can certainly be Used in ways that aren't awesome, but I think sales is a process of doing things that have the highest integrity. Anything that isn't, I don't call sales. How's that for a lecture? Kevin King: That's good. Did you learn most of your techniques when you're writing for these people on stage and stuff? Did you learn a lot of those techniques through those tapes that you're listening to in the car with your dad or did you learn it? That gave you a foundation and you trial and error when you're working for these companies and in the boiler room and all this stuff. Where did you really cut your teeth and really define and refine your superpower? Speaker 1: Great question. The tapes gave me a foundation of feeling like I knew what I was doing and confidence and understanding, maybe not necessarily how it works, but that it works. Influence psychology. Early on, Brian Tracy, like you said, psychology of selling. Later, people like Cialdini. Influence psychology of persuasion. Yes, you know, those kinds of things have always been very, very intriguing to me and that helped me know. But how I really learned to talk to people was talking to people. You can't learn basketball by reading the rule book. You know, there's a book in sales called you can't teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar. How you really learn that all gives you like foundational theory and understanding. But how you learn to talk to people is by talking to people. And I told you my first job, literally, it's like, and these weren't leads. These were records of people who bought a car. They didn't know we were calling. They weren't looking for a warranty. So if you want to learn how to talk to people, try cold calling for a while, knock doors for a while. Right. And so I to survive, I had to figure out what can I say that engages them, doesn't make them mad and gets them to be intrigued enough to talk to me. Right after that job, I took another one cold calling. Back in the days of the AT&T, the Ma Bell breakup and Sprint and they were all trying to get market share, right? So, I went to work for a company that was calling for Sprint and it was on an auto-dialer back in the days when you could do that. Can't do it anymore. Norm Farrar: Oh, you can't? Kevin King: Norm, you got to stop that. You got to quit. You got to shut that down. Speaker 1: Well, you can auto-dial. You can't auto-dial starting at 00000 and then just dial every number combination up to 9999999. Kevin King: Um, and what about these ones that are doing it now, though, where it's like direct to voicemail? I've seen those services where, yeah, it's like they they've got it figured out where it No ring voicemail, so you can automatically leave a voicemail on everybody's phone without ever reading it. Speaker 1: No, it's pretty amazing what technology is doing and we all get those and it's okay. To me, that's not talking to people. That's a way of marketing or getting your message out, but it would dial and if someone answered, it would get connected to an agent, me. And I literally, instead of saying, Hey, is Kevin there? I'd have to say, Hey, who at your house makes decisions? I don't know your name. I don't know. And so you do a few thousand of those and you figure out this is how I talk to people. This is how I don't talk to people. This is what people listen to. This is what people don't listen to. This is how to get them to like and trust me and listen to me. When I don't really have anything else other than my voice and so a few thousand reps of that and you really understand psychology and talking to people. So that's kind of where I cut my teeth for a couple years. Norm Farrar: I like to know, I take a look and I've talked to a couple of people, my friend owns a call center and I've always asked, how do you do it? Like so much rejection, I couldn't handle it. Like I see one bad comment, you know, one thumbs down in social media and I'm in the fetal position. Kevin King: You got to get some thick skin, Norm. Speaker 1: Yeah. So I don't know. I wish I could tell you here's a difference maker. I didn't really care. So this is someone I've never met. I don't know them. They don't know me. And I think I just came very curious. Like I'm more curious about them, where they're coming from, what's going on in their life. And I just, I don't know what's wrong with me, but I just always thought they must be having a bad day. I never took it personally. I just always decided they were having a bad day. Their dog ran away. They're in a fight with their spouse. They got fired. Those are the only reasons they wouldn't want to talk to me. Kevin King: Or they want to go back to eating their spaghetti. Speaker 1: I don't know where that came from for me in my brain, but maybe it was just early listening to all the motivational stuff programming, but I really didn't ever, even if they were like, you suck, never call me again. I'm really trying to think back to the very beginning. I actually think that's why I was fairly immediately successful is none of that ever bothered me. I'm very logical and pragmatic and I knew they didn't know me. You know, if they did, they'd love me. So obviously this doesn't have anything to do with me. That was just my psychology for some reason. Norm Farrar: I've always just wondered how, you know, you talk about thick skin, we were joking about it, but yeah, for me, yeah, you'd have to have tons of thick skin. I'd be on the ground every day in the fetal position. Speaker 1: I think that's why most people don't do it or the people who do aren't good at it. But it was like a game for me. You make some, you lose some. I think if you take who you are out of it and you realize this isn't a statement on your value, it's just a game you're playing. And pieces move around the board and some get taken and some don't. And you're just trying to master a game, not get validation of who you are and what you are. And you can kind of push it out there and just go, let's just see what happens. And again, just be really curious about people. It worked for me and I learned how to connect with them, talk with them, ask them questions. And I really did. Love finding out who they were and what was going on in their lives and and all about that. So yeah, so Kevin, I got a foundation. That's like a 40 minute answer to your question, but I got a foundation from Other people, but I have done a lot of reps. Kevin King: So isn't that what social media is now? I mean, you run an ad on Facebook or on TikTok, you're interrupting, you're cold calling. These are people that don't know you. They don't know, they're not asking for you to come into their life or their world. So a lot of these same principles of what you were doing where you just said, it wasn't, hello, Kevin. It was like, who do I need to talk to or whatever that those first couple of seconds, Those same psychology principles is what a lot of people don't understand. They think that this is the cool new whiz bang way to do things and I'm the magic, I'm so smart. No, you're freaking just using different technology. It's psychology. What people wrote a hundred years ago about selling to people still applies today. It's just a different process and so it's the same thing. Speaker 1: That is a fabulous point. Like a Facebook ad is cold calling. It is a text or a message, right? It's cold calling. And, um, One thing that I think some people really get right and some people really get wrong is how to do that. Most people want you to know how cool they are or how cool their stuff is. That doesn't work. I think it's doing it badly. The people that are doing it right want you to know how this can enhance your life or how cool you are or what an outcome might be based on interacting with them. It's the classic about you versus about me, right? So this is who I am, this is what I have and it's really awesome, you should buy it. I think that's the kind of marketing that makes people frustrated. Um, I think if you can try to connect with people and say, I feel your pain. This is an outcome you could have or a cool thing you could have or cool out, you know, and talk to people and be curious about them. I think that's what works. Kevin King: I always laugh when I get these emails from companies, you know, they call them quote unquote their newsletter or something. Norm Farrar: Yeah. Kevin King: The subject line or the first line of the email or sometimes it's in the subject line. It's finally here. Or something like that. You know, we finally did it. The new feature is added or it's all about them or you listen to the radio. It bugs me when I'm listening to ads on the radio and I hear it's not about – they don't use the word you. They use the word we or I. Our plumbing company is the best plumbing company in Texas because we do this, this, this and this. You need to flip that to the your and you and so many people mess that up. That's how you sell and that's how you convince people. You got to change it to how you're going to solve their problem or make their life better. Or take their pain away or all there's eight different points. I think Tony Robbins says of things that you got to take away. And that's what so many people miss in their marketing and their emails and their cold callings and whatever else. I mean, even like I still I don't answer my phone right now. My phone is on mute. I don't answer it. There's like three numbers. Norm's not even on my VIP list. Norm Farrar: I never get all of them. Kevin King: So you can't. You can't get a hold of me and my voice message actually says something like, hi this is Kevin, I'm not going to answer your call and I'm not going to listen to your voice message. It's actually what it says. I'm not going to listen to your voice message and I'm not going to answer your call. If you know me, you know how to get a hold of me. And so I get 20, 30 calls. I've had my number for a long time, a day, and they just all go, you know, someone marks spam. I don't listen to them now. And they call and it's like, Kevin, hey, Kevin. Immediately when that happens, hang up. Or if I hear the delay where it's like, hello, and you hear it's almost like a second or two second delay where it's clearly connecting, an auto dialer is connecting to a system, it's hang up. Norm Farrar: Cat, I figured it out. I know how to get a hold of Kevin King now. I am going to spoof the number. In Austin. That's it. That's it. Now I know how to do it. Kevin King: You guys know I'm expecting a call though. You have to know I'm expecting a call from somebody in Austin. My pizza is being delivered. It's the Uber guy trying to get a hold of me. You got to know when that happens and then you might get me. Norm Farrar: I'll just call more often. Speaker 1: Yeah, make sure it says doctor on the caller ID. Kevin King: Spoof the caller ID. Speaker 1: So that's why that stuff was invented, Kevin, is for people like you. Because you're too difficult. We can't figure it out. Kevin King: I'm a misfit. What can I say? Speaker 1: So I think that that pattern interrupt you're talking about, In a way that works for people is really, really important. But even like let's go to even sales today, right? Like there's billion dollar companies. That makes sales with a deck, a slide deck. And so the sales process is, this is who we are. This is what we do. This is our product. These are our product features. These are the benefits. This is how come it works in a company. And it's really cool and you should buy it. And I look at it and I'm like, these are the most sophisticated, highly paid. Kevin King: That's what they learned at Harvard when they got their MBA. That's the way you're supposed to do things. Speaker 1: Yeah. But they forget that the person they're talking to is a person. You know, they forget that They're that human being is making a decision. Those human beings are making a decision. And I actually think and by the way, I'm not saying it doesn't work. It works to the tune of billions of dollars, but there's also they have so they have other things working for them like name recognition and social proof and You know, peers that use it and that kind of stuff. But otherwise, I don't know. Kevin King: Money raised from VCs that they can just blow through and not really worry about or from doing an IPO that they can, oh, OK, we just waste a couple of million bucks. So it's no big deal. Speaker 1: Yeah. But tell me that the people making tell me that the people making those slide decks, the marketing department there and the people doing sales, talking to people ever say, Who are the people we're serving? How do we connect with them? What is the pain they're in and how do we really help them understand to get out? I just think we've kind of lost some of those basics and then you have, you know, new people, new companies that need to sell and they're not big and they don't have brand ambassadors and they don't have social proof and they don't dominate market share and they mimic those same strategies and wonder why they're not getting anywhere. Norm Farrar: But when you got a company that does it right, you feel it as a consumer. You know, there's a certain companies out there that just treat you perfectly. You don't feel like you've just been sold. You don't resent the sale. You actually want to go back and buy more. Kevin King: Who's someone like that, Norm? Who are you thinking of? Norm Farrar: Well, I can tell you a company here in Canada, one that does a great job is M&M Meats. They, first of all, top-down culture, but the way that they sell is fantastic. They follow up properly, so it's a lead-up to the sale. You don't have to go in and buy anything. When you do go in, you might get a snack, you know, just to get you tempted to buy some more products. Kevin King: It's a grocery store. Butcher. Norm Farrar: It's a frozen meat store. Kevin King: Okay. Okay. Norm Farrar: Yeah. So I like that company. Another one that's huge in Canada. You might have heard of them, but it's Tim Hortons. And their loyalty, their brand loyalty, it could be 6.30 in the morning, minus 20, minus 30, and there's cars lined up to get a bloody coffee. That's not even that great. But they're just their quality, the way that they treat their customers, their customer service, everything about them is fantastic. Kevin King: They're actually coming to Austin. I just saw on the paper here. Norm Farrar: Not very good coffee. In my opinion. Kevin King: 16 of them are opening up in Austin. They're expanding, helping franchise in here. I don't know if they're going to have worms though, but they're going to have some bad coffee. But now that I know, I'm going to go get in line and go, I heard good things about the service here. Norm Farrar: Yeah, but the coffee sucks. Kevin King: Give me a donut. Speaker 1: You know, I see this. This is when you asked, you know, who's like that, even simple things like you have fast food giants. And I'm not I'm not a super fast food connoisseur, but I notice things. I notice patterns. Right. And you have giants. You have Wendy's and McDonald's and Then here comes this little upstart called Chick-fil-A. And I don't know when's the last time you went through it. Every once in a while, like I might need a Diet Coke or something. So, you know, there are places where you drive through or you go in and you order and you're interrupting them. The worker's very busy, very harried. They have a lot going on and it's really annoying that you have to order and like get your food and get changed and then, you know, get the hell out of their way. And it's just very like, do the job. And then you go to Chick-fil-A where they train or even In-N-Out where they train for culture. And if you say, could I do this? They say, absolutely. And if you say, thank you, they say, Oh, my pleasure. Like this is corporate, this is culture. And I and I and so when I noticed as I'll drive by, and the line at Wendy's is maybe this long, and the line of McDonald's is maybe this long, and the lines at In-N-Out and Chick-fil-A are like, longer. Kevin King: Stretching out and blocking traffic in the street sometimes. Speaker 1: I don't know that anyone could argue the food is, maybe it's better. I don't know that they could argue it's that much better. But even just look at how, it's my pleasure to serve you today. It's my, like, if it's about the customer versus about You know, get up, you know, go through, do your number, you know, 42. Yeah. You get in. So I think the same principles apply. And I love, love, love to see companies like that. Kevin King: Chick-fil-A, I mean, you're right. It's about culture. They're based in Atlanta. And they actually, to own one of those, you have to go work in one for like a month. You can't just buy a franchise. You can't just say, here's my money. Okay, we'll support you and you know, here's the plans and here's the way the franchise works and here's the manuals. You have to actually go work in one. You have to qualify. There's a waiting list to actually get on to actually get one of these. It's a pretty high franchise fee. It's not like $75,000 or something like that or $50,000 like a subway or whatever plus your build-out cost. It's pretty hefty. And then once you do it, they're not even open on Sundays because it's a religious company. So six days a week. Norm Farrar: And they're in football stadiums that they play on Sundays. Kevin King: Yeah, they play on Sundays, so they just close. They don't even open, but they still pay. But their model, like you said, is they've gotten to be so big where sometimes the line is out blocking traffic in the street. So the one, there's one here in Austin just had to close for three months and renovate to fix that problem and to like reorganize the drive-thru lane. Yeah, and they paid the employees. I think they get, this is, wages are going up now, but When the minimum wage in Texas was, well it still is, seven something an hour, I don't know what the number is, $7.35, $7.50 an hour, they're paying $16, they're probably paying more now. So they were paying decent wages. And the way they come out, they have they built these drive through lanes where there's like three of them. So instead of one or you're like you go up and you're waiting in line do to do and then you get to the speaker that nobody can hear you and you have to repeat. You want to watch what you want? What you want? I want to I want to diet coke and some chicken nugget. You want some some some what some nugget? You want some sauce with that? After you just tell them nuggets? No sauce, please. Oh, you want sauce? You know, whatever, you're screaming to the thing and then you're waiting forever to get the food and when you get up to the count the thing and still not ready and you know, like, where my fries, where the fries at? They bring the fries over. It's but with Chick-fil-A, they have people standing outside. You know, and they have this organ, they even have one here that has a chute in Austin. So there's like three lanes, and somehow they get it figured out. So that the cars go in different lanes, and this chute comes over. And it actually there's someone standing there to pull it out of the chute, like a bank chute, you know, bank teller chute and give it to you. And they've got people standing out there, like you're saying, Norm, doesn't matter if it's negative 30 degrees or whatever, taking orders, smiling at you, Holding that there's no misunderstandings. There's no speaker to speak into. There's no nothing. It's just, it's a very pleasant experience and you might have 50 cars in a drive-thru line, but you get through there in three minutes. Norm Farrar: That's what I was just gonna say. Why can't other fast food joints, you know, just take a look at what they're doing? And, you know, Kat, you were talking about, you know, going into another franchise and they really don't want your business. You know, they're probably paying that minimum wage, but it's the culture. Top down and that's something you take a look at the Chick-fil-A's of the world. In Canada, I'm very surprised that it's not the same response. Same great service, but you don't have the lineup. So if you really want to get through a line quick, come to Toronto. But there's there's all sorts of other fast food facilities out there that you just wonder where the heck the culture is coming from because they're just so negative. Kevin King: Well, you look at McDonald's, but you look at McDonald's on that point real quick. They reengineered, they redid a lot of their restaurants 15-20 years ago to put in an extra window. Sometimes, in some cases, two extra windows so that one could take the money and to be more efficient and then another one that you drive up and they give you the food. How many times you go to these restaurants and it's busy and most of those windows are closed or boarded up? They're not even using them anymore. It's crazy. Speaker 1: My favorite is you pull up and you pay at a window. And the next window where they have the food, they're holding it out. Like we're in a relay and I'm just I've tracked how many times they don't say thank you. And I do say thank you. Like, thank you for my food. And they're just like, But here's the other thing, like I said, I observe. The job pool, the employee pool is the exact same, literally in businesses that are next door to each other. They have the exact same pool to recruit from. So it's not that the people are different. Kevin King: It's the training and culture and systems. Speaker 1: It's training and culture and that's, we've kind of gotten off on that, but it's like that's marketing, that's sales, that's let's make it about you instead of let's make it about me. And how can I serve you today versus, you know, how can I use you today to make sure I stay in business? I think it really just is an illustration of What marketing works and what marketing doesn't work. Kevin King: You look at Chick-fil-A's commercials that we're speaking about this. You look at their commercials that they run. The big thing right now is two people sitting on a couch and one of them is a Chick-fil-A worker wearing the outfit and the other one is someone that they met coming through the drive-thru. And they're showing that interpersonal relationship, that this is a human being, that, hey, I'm Kevin. I work at Chick-fil-A and this is Kat. I really loved, you know, serving her and hearing her story. And every time she came through, I already knew she wanted the crinkly fries with no salt or whatever they say. But then you look at a McDonald's commercial, it's half a year away, which is not bad marketing either. I'm not saying that's bad. It's totally different. It's not about that relationship and that's where we're moving now in marketing with AI and with all the interpersonal stuff that we've lost, that getting back to that personal connection is super important. That's something that Chick-fil-A is emphasizing that most of the other fast food places aren't just as an example and that's marketing. Speaker 1: It is and it's sales. It's again, they're remembering they're not going Chick-fil-A is the best. Our chicken's the best. It's the most tasty. You should buy it. Kevin King: They do say save the cows in their ads, you know. Speaker 1: Yeah, they do. They do. It's a cute thing. But going back to sales, you know, my approach always has been if you really are in sales, you should do far more listening and far less talking. My philosophy is questions are superior to answers because if I can draw out who you are, what you want, what you need, I can get a picture of what works for you and what doesn't work for you. And that's a philosophy I took into email marketing. So one of the biggest, and there are other people that teach this, but one of the biggest changes we made when I took over email marketing that made a huge difference is I hired a team of copywriters We did a couple of things. One, we had an avatar that was a real human with a real human picture that worked at the company that was the signer of the emails. That doesn't mean they wrote the emails, but it was like if you signed an email Joe and you called the company, there's like a Joe that works there that looks like that. I think that transmits some feeling that you just don't get otherwise. And then the writers would take whatever was going out that day and write it to fit the niche of that list. So if that tag were Christians, they would write it differently than if the tag was like interested in crypto. So those are two different things, but you could take the same offer And position it for that market and why they might want to look at it and why they might not want to look at it and why it made sense to them. And then one hard and fast rule we had is every email is written to one person. So every writer, when you write an email, I want you to look at this product, this offering that we're emailing for, and I want you to write the email to your friend. Kevin King: Be actually thinking of them, their name and them in your mind as you're writing and not just saying, write it to a general friend, but think of my buddy Norm. I'm going to write this email to Norm to try to convince Norm to come to my events. Yeah. Speaker 1: So if you were emailing about coming to your event, really, what would the email say? I promise it wouldn't be anywhere close to what you're writing to send out to your list. And the more you can talk to one person, like email should not say you guys, all of you, everyone, you know, you all have been following me for a while. It should only one person's reading the email. So talk to me. It's just you. And address the concerns I might have, address what it might do for me. And those aren't just fun cultural things to do. It increased revenue, it increased deliverability, it increased interaction. When we would say, hit reply and let me know what you think, people would do it. We had people writing and saying thank you, which is very fulfilling and revenue went up and unsubscribes went way down. We actually could email people more often and not have as many unsubscribes because of how we were talking to them. And I have a friend that worked with me briefly during this time and he sent an email today and I actually thought it was from him to me personally. And I was like, good for you, man. It's like, hey, Kat, I need a quick favor. I'm struggling with something and I need your opinion. And I'm like, oh, cool. And then I realized, this isn't just to me, this is to his list. And I was like, good for you, good for you. Cause that's how you would write, you know, if you're writing to each other. And so those same, like make it about the other person, get in their head, speak to them, transmits through sales, through marketing, through email philosophy, to fast food, to friendships, to podcasts, to everything. Cause it's engaging. And people know when they're welcome and they know when they're not. Kevin King: We used to do that with one of my companies before AI and all these things about using AI to create avatars. We were selling to men, primarily, and they're buying. I had to get into the head of these guys. I would read all the customer service emails. I was on the front lines a lot of times getting those so I could understand these guys. I got on the phone sometimes and talked to them and you could just see these are lonely old guys and they're dreaming about different things or fantasizing or whatever it may be. And so I would get in their head and we created actually, when we developed a new website, this is probably 1997, 98. We overdid our completely overhauled our website, hired this guy to come in, like really make a nice website when nice websites weren't the thing. You know, HTML5, I think it just come out or something like that. So we could do a little whiz bang, maybe it's later than 95, maybe it's Early 2000s, but anyway, we actually sat down and created six customers. Actually, we gave them fake names. Instead of Joe, we said, this is Tom. But Tom was modeled after these five customers. I knew from talking to him, I knew their emails. And so this is the guy. This is the overweight gamer that's sitting in there that just never had a girlfriend. His fingers are full of Cheeto crumbs. Norm Farrar: That's the one he always said. Kevin King: And everything. How do I market to that guy? And this is the truck driver that's always on the road. And this is the businessman that has a separate P.O. box for all the mail he doesn't want the wife to see for all his girly magazines and whatever else he's getting over there. And then so we had all these avatars. And when I sat down, I figured out Back then, Thursdays was the best day to mail email because people got paid on Fridays and it's right before the weekend, right before they shut down. So I figured out Thursdays and I can't remember what the time and I even figured out down to the time by doing testing. So that's when I would gear up for the week and I would sit down and write these emails and I would actually segment the list as much as I could. I couldn't do what you can do sophisticated now, but a basic segment, very basic, very, very basic. I actually send it out with those people in mind when I'm writing it. I'm actually thinking of Tom. Here's Tom. He's got Cheetos on his fingers right now. He's got a big soda next to him and whatever. How am I going to convince him to buy? That's what I did. It works really, really well. We built a big company off the back of that. Norm Farrar: But Kevin, we talk about that even for Amazon sellers, and they don't do this. They don't create the persona. They're selling to everybody. It's a shotgun. It doesn't make sense. So what you were doing back then is something that doesn't matter if you're selling on Shopify, if you're a solopreneur, or as you get a bit larger, Spend the time, do the research, know your, we always say this, but you got to know your audience. And if you don't know your audience, you're leaving tons of money on the table. Kevin King: I mean, Kat, you had a you gave me a great example. When when we met this email that you did, we were talking email. It's probably on that recording. We should get the recording and like, but I forget what I say I probably myself. But, but it was, uh, you told me about y'all are doing, you're working, helping a political campaign or something. It was just a cool, cool little fascinating thing. The way you did it is you, uh, you said you sent one email in the morning and then you segmented the list. You said another email in the afternoon, you segmented the list and then you said a killer email at night. Can you, do you know what I'm talking about? Can you, can you tell the audience that story? It's pretty cool. Speaker 1: It actually was for something different than a political campaign. Kevin King: Okay. Okay. Speaker 1: But I wanted to know, The kind of the one of my list were conservative and what we're not right and I want. Could you mark to conservative versus progressive people differently? They want different things. Their values are different. And I wanted to know. So it was around the controversial 2020 election pre-decision, but during the running four years ago. And so what I did was I sent an email in the morning that said, Biden disappears your retirement. Super controversial. And then I sent an email in the afternoon that said, Trump disappears your retirement. Not to be partial, same list. And then I looked at data. I think some of the lessons there are don't be afraid to be controversial. Like we didn't have any more unsubscribes. I think we don't go far enough, but I wanted to know who the people were and I wanted them to sort themselves so that from then on I could speak to them differently. Fascinatingly, we had many more conservatives on our list and the Biden disappears your retirement. got all the clicks. And so I knew my list. I knew what their concerns were in the upcoming election, so I knew how to write to them. But I also knew the ones that weren't that, so I could tag them and segment them. And again, it wasn't like I was trying to be right or finding, you know, like, oh, people think like me. I don't really care. I want to know. Like I said, I'm very curious. I was curious. Will people be worried that Biden's going to take their money or are people worried that Trump's going to take their money? Let's see. And it turns out that that night we were able to run an email that talked about the concerns around having a certain party in office and having retirement at risk. And then I knew that those people were probably more likely to Be prepper minded. Alternative currency minded, you know, precious metals, maybe crypto to protect themselves, right? Because that's what they let me know. And it was it created a window in that election period that was wildly successful for us with emails, because we were able we were willing to take that risk and learn what our people really thought and talk to them in that way. Not in the way I want it, in the way they want it. Norm Farrar: I think Kevin has a newsletter, BillionDollarsSellers.com. And something I saw was, I don't know, third or fourth edition, Kevin, you, the naked woman on the balcony. And there was controversy around it. Some people, some groups didn't like it, and they threatened to unsubscribe. And you know, I said, Well, are you worried about that? And he goes, Hell no. They're off the list. You know, they're not. We're not marketing to those. Kevin King: I had it happen twice. I ran another one that was an ad for Aston Martin. Actually, I think it might have been a fake ad later but I thought it was a real ad and somebody else that's pretty prominent in the space said it's a real ad and so I showed this Aston Martin ad and it's a picture of a sexy young girl wearing little mini skirts. Have you seen this ad, Kat? You know what I'm talking about? She's leaning on the – she's on like an island kitchen. And she's leaning on the kitchen, looking back over her shoulder, wearing this really short mini skirt with her leg hiked up. You don't see anything, but the ad is for Aston Martin, the car. And the tagline is something to the effect of, what do you care if it's for used Aston Martin, sorry. It's like the tagline was something like, what do you care if it's used? So I was like, that's really good. So I actually ran that as an example of a good marketing thing to segment an audience in my newsletter and I got Some women really upset demanding I issue an apology and Demanding like on some social media forums. This is more than the naked girl in balcony one norm and demanding and I was like, no I'm not That this is there's nothing wrong with that. If you don't like it go somewhere else And gosh, I wish everyone was you know, I really think nobody wants to offend nobody wants to in nobody's segments their list You know, it's amazing to me how many people have a list of 30,000. I have a list of 30,000 Amazon sellers or something to that effect, a master lab and way more than that, but that's what I consider the core list and I segment them. I know who has bought the last virtual event I did. Did they buy the replay or were they on there live? And I market to them differently with different emails. They get separate emails that go out to them. I know who's actually come to an in-person event. You have to market to them differently. Then you do the virtual events and that's something that surprised me because I teach these advanced Amazon tech tactics and then my events, my in-person events $5,000. My virtual ones $997. I have similar quality speakers on both giving similar quality strategies and stuff. The in-person one is more about the experience, it's about the content but it's also about the experience because we do a lot of like fun games and competitions and different kind of things as you don't normally get in an event. And the crossover, when I first started doing them, one virtual year and one in-person a year, I thought these would be the same people. And I quickly realized this is two different audiences. Even though it's the same type of content, the same kind of thing, the same brand, there's only about a 20% crossover. Only about 20% of the people that come to the virtual go to the in-person, only about 20% of the people that come to the in-person. I actually pay to go to the virtual. And so I had to start marketing to them differently. And so I segment based on that. Most people don't do that. They just blast their list with the same message to the same people that, Hey, come, come to the virtual, you know, it's happening now or come to the in-person, but you've got to mark them differently. Speaker 1: They blast their list with their stuff and affiliate offers they like. I, I got really curious what affiliate offers does the list want to see. And so, most offer owners or list owners, if they don't like something, they decide their list won't like it. They decide for the audience. Oh, they would hate that. And I was always like, let's see. Let's mail it and see if they hate it or like it. And a lot of times stuff that people would be like, Oh, that you should, you know, maybe that's an offer people wouldn't like. They clicked it, they bought it, and I said, okay, they tell us with their clicks what they want to hear about, what they want to own, what they want to buy, what problems they want solved. Too many people decide that information in their office, in their chair, what the list wants, what they want to buy, what solutions they want to have. What problems they might have, what offers they want to see and I think you figure it out by sending them and kill the losers and double down on the winners in terms of categories. Kevin King: There's so many people, they don't clean their list, number one, which we've talked about, you and I talked about in person, and that's a big, big thing is I don't care how big your list is, it's how good is the list. A list of 1,000 good responders is way better than a list of 100,000. And cleaning the list, not only for deliverability, we can get into a whole discussion, but one of the things I like about, I do a newsletter and it's twice a week. Thanks for the shout out there, Norm, for the Amazon space called Billion Dollar Sellers. It comes out every Monday and Thursday, but I use Beehive and Beehive, I can track and segment everybody that clicks everything. It's not about the opens. You'll see a lot of newsletter people are, oh, we've got a 70% open rate. I'm like, no, you freaking don't. I want to see this. And how many of those are Apple people where it's automatic opens? I don't really care about your open rate. I care about your click rate. Your open rate is meaningless, totally meaningless. It's just like a scroll rate on social media. This many impressions is how many clicks did I get? How many people actually, there are some bots that click stuff. So you got to be, you know, take that in the security box that click every link in there. So you got to factor that in a little bit. But how many clicks, then I segment those people. So like what you're talking about, I can see, instead of me saying what should be in my newsletter, and the first I was throwing stuff against the wall, I'm putting travel stuff, I'm putting About me, I'm putting AI stuff, I'm putting hack this and this. Now I know after doing this for eight months now, I know what people are clicking. And I can segment them. Everybody that's ever clicked on an AI tool link, I can segment them into an audience. And I know, okay, I have 8,400 active subscribers. I clean the list every 30 days. If you haven't clicked, if you haven't opened, And clicked, not just opened or clicked, opened and clicked, you're off the list. Had to kick Norm off a couple times. He's just too busy. He's like, I didn't get the news, I didn't see it. I was like, dude, well, you haven't been paying attention. Oh, yeah, yeah. Norm Farrar: Can you just send it to me? Kevin King: Just tell me, just tell me what it was, Kevin, just tell me. So that I can take those people that over time have clicked any kind of AI tool. And I know, okay, 872 of the people I've shown an interest in clicking on an AI tool and I know out of those 872, 406 of them have clicked every single AI tool that I've ever done. Those 406 people are prime targets for me to go either to sell an affiliate deal to or to sell something myself or whatever and charge a premium for that and say, I've got 406 people here. Do you want to target them? I can target them laser sharp and talk directly to them. I know exactly what they've been clicking and most people, they don't get that granular. They just throw stuff out there. Norm Farrar: They don't check the stats. Kevin King: No, it baffles me. Norm Farrar: Yeah. Kevin King: How many people do I hit and delete on people's emails that I get in the Amazon space sending me four or five emails a week? I haven't opened one in six months. Why are they still sending them to me? Speaker 1: Because they're doing it wrong. Kevin King: Well, some people out of this philosophy, they say, it doesn't cost me anything. I'm going to keep sending it because on the outside chance that one time he's going to open it. Speaker 1: So, I know some people think that I wish you were right. I wish that is what everybody thought. I'm afraid they don't even think that far. I think they're just unaware like you just send emails. Like I really do think that's about as far as the thought goes is you have to email your list regularly, so they do. And they don't know about cleaning the list and they don't know about taking your non-clicks off. I'll tell you one thing we did that was very, very productive was every 10 days we would look at top opening subject lines and top click-through CTAs. And in the 10 days we take the top open subject line and the top CTA and combine them and send that to our inactives, not unsubscribes, inactives. That was the best strategy we ever had for reactivation. Kevin King: That's good. Speaker 1: Because the rest of that pool told us this is what we're paying attention to. This is what we want. And so we would every 10 because you can send your inactives occasionally. And I figured top open subject line, top click through CTA, that's probably our best shot. And it was our best because there's reactivation sequences. There's Hey, we miss you, you know, all that stuff. This worked better than that. Norm Farrar: You know you talked about the you factor just a second and I want to give you an example not so much an email but we have a managed service business and one of the people that I was looking after wanted me to check out plastic shoe stretchers. Again it's not email. And so when I did the research, I went back to him and I said, these are horrible. Don't invest your money. There was two and a half, three star reviews only. The best one was three and a half star. Seven different people are selling this on Amazon. Don't do it. I found a wooden shoe stretcher. One was 60 cents cost. The other one was I think it was two bucks. But you could sell these for ninety nine dollars. And you could sell a hundred thousand dollars a month where the other one bestseller was thirty five hundred. The guy just, you know, I want the plastic shoe stretcher. So sometimes people are their own worst enemies. You know, it's that you factor what you want rather than what your audience wants. Speaker 1: Yeah, you're convinced it's people would rather be right than successful. I learned that a really long time ago and interesting that for that person being right. and is more important than doing what would be successful or making money. I'll be wrong if it pays a higher check. But I found out over time, most people aren't that way. Being right, being in control, like he decided something and data is not going to change the decision. You know, again, it's about an inability to be curious and let data make your decisions. There's some attachment to being smart or right. That's a higher value and it's interesting to watch. Kevin King: This is always the way we've done it and this is what works since granddaddy opened the company in 1872. So this is what we're going to do. But the thing that doesn't change on that is still the psychology. So the psychology of why people buy doesn't change from 1872 to now. But the methodology and the way you transact has dramatically changed. Speaker 1: You know, I remember the days. It was late, the later 1990s and the first 10 years of the 2000s. There was an uproar about junk mail. Do you remember this? Kevin King: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Speaker 1: People were freaking out. I get too much mail, junk mail in my mailbox. It's annoying. The USPS was trying to legislate stuff. You could opt out of junk mail. Mailbox, people were refusing mail that didn't have a first class snap. I don't see anything in the email marketing world right now that isn't completely parallel and reminiscent of those days. And I think it's much to do about nothing. I think as long as it works, you do what works, right? And now people are going back to physical mail as a solution. It just kind of cracks me up to watch this. Kevin King: It's a brilliant new idea, the 20-somethings, the 30-somethings like, oh, this is the hottest new thing. If we actually put this flyer in the mail, we can mail this Yeah, winning and postage and everything for like 55 cents. And that's way less than the $3 per click for on Facebook. Norm Farrar: And isn't that hilarious? Kevin King: Yeah, it's it cracks me up every time you see that I, I still to this day have one of my businesses is I have a direct to consumer site, or direct consumers business 17,000 people that have been buying from me until they they buy those calendars that I talked about earlier, they pretty much buy until they die. So it's almost like a a recurring deal. So, you know, I do get the letter, I get stuff back in the mail because we do physical mail and, you know, sorry deceased, you know, the little screen, the yellow sticker on it. Oh, that was Tommy Smith. I remember Tommy Smith from 1998 when I talked to him on the phone. I'm like, damn, Tommy's gone. There went a bunch of money because every year it was 200 bucks. Whatever. That's me. But we still get, and this baffles people when I say this, I've said this on several podcasts in different places, I do six figures a year off of that business with checks and money orders and envelopes. People like with handwritten envelopes and I get, if I haven't sent out my, because I sent out a physical flyer in October because calendars are seasonal and say you can buy from me, pay $9.95 shipping and handling for a $19.95 calendar and take a couple of weeks for it to get to you because I'm going to send it. Advant ground advantage or one of the cheaper ways on Yeah, yeah used to do media mail till they got on to me for the calendars are not media mail counters with pretty girls in them is not media mail This is for education. This is like well, I'm educating the dudes. Come on. There's a So I actually got in trouble for that. But I did that for a while. And but I, I get they'll write me letters that if I haven't mailed in October, I get I haven't gotten my flyer yet. But then I tell them on the flyer, I put on there sold on Amazon, go if you're an Amazon Prime member, go buy it on Amazon. And some of them do what that does is it instantly launches me on Amazon with no, no advertising, no nothing that that is the advertising. And they buy multiple calendars. So I'm in the shopping carts with My calendars or I have variations of my calendar. So variations of my calendars are grouped together and then they go buy something else and I get in the frequently bought together and then you get start seeing it's getting seen on other listings that just magnifies. But when I tell people I get checks and money orders in the mail and it's like Christmas every day going to see how full the mailbox is. They just like really people I have to explain what a check and money order is to some people. But to six figures of business, it still exists and it people still Still, look at their mail. They might sort it over the trash can, but if you do a good job, it's the same thing you said earlier with that first couple seconds when you're on the phone, what you say and what you do determines, does that get put in the other stack or I'm going to take another look at this when I get back up into my office or into my room or whatever, not put it in the trash. It's all marketing and that stuff works. It works really, really well. Norm Farrar: All right. I hate to say this, but we're way over time. I can't believe. Kevin King: We're just getting started. Norm Farrar: I know. We're going to have to have Kat back because this is the tip of the iceberg and time just flew. So there's one thing I have to ask. We ask this of every guest. So we have one question. Do you know a misfit that might fit into our podcast? Speaker 1: Ooh, probably. I know I do. I just have to go through a process of having them come to mind. Norm Farrar: Whenever they come to mind, you just reach out and let us know. Speaker 1: You got it. Norm Farrar: But how do we or how do people get a hold of you? Speaker 1: Oh, they can email me. Good old email and make sure you write it just to me. It's my name Kat, K-A-T Parker, P-A-R-K-E-R Merritt, M-E-R-R-I-T-T, which is also my Facebook and Instagram at gmail.com. Norm Farrar: Fantastic. All right, Kev, anything else to say? Kevin King: No, I just want to say thanks, Kat, for coming on and sharing. This has been fun to talk shop, and we could keep going for hours, I think. Speaker 1: It is really fun. You guys are fun. You're knowledgeable and sensible, which I wish wasn't uncommon. But it is, and it makes it incredibly enjoyable. So thank you. Norm Farrar: Well, that was fantastic. Kevin King: No, that was awesome. Now, you know, you didn't know cat before. Now, you know, you know, cat and how awesome she is and how amazing. Norm Farrar: Well, I knew we were going to hit it off as soon as we started talking about do worms. Kevin King: I saw your eyes light up when you're like, what the heck? I had to stop. Remember, what are you guys talking about? What are these things? I'm sorry. I'm not. I'm not. I haven't been on a fishing boat. Norm Farrar: I'll bring some with me the next time I come to your place. Kevin King: OK, put them under my pillow. Norm Farrar: Yeah, you put gummies under mine. I'll put that under yours. Kevin King: There you go. Hey, well, this has been fun. We've been talking for a while. I hope everybody enjoyed this. Make sure you go back and hit subscribe on the channel here for Marketing Misfits. There's been some great guests. We had Mark DeGrasse. We had David Gonzalez, we had Steve Simonson, we had Katie Wells, we had a couple episodes where you and I just shared a bunch of really cool stuff. And we've got a lot more amazing guests coming up. So this is going to be fun. We're just getting our feet under us on this podcast. So it's going to keep getting better. And it's been great so far, but it's going to just keep rolling. And hopefully you will all join us for the ride. Norm Farrar: All right, we will see you on the next Marketing Misfits.