He Sold His Brand to Start Gambling...

We at one point through the strategy that we kind of employed, I had the number one selling gel pens on Amazon. I mean, we're selling a container every couple weeks. You had an affinity for gambling. You were telling me about this fascinating new thing you're doing where you're going into the casino and playing a slot machine and your business partner, your buddy is is filming this and just live streaming it out. I was like, "Okay, I don't get it." You're like, "Yeah, you don't get it because it's this is crazy." And you start telling me all this stuff about it. I'm like, "Holy cow. Can you tell us what this new thing is you're doing?" And I'm fascinated by the marketing side of and the psychology side of it and how you guys are going to monetize this and like you said build the community and everything off of this and I think it's pretty cool. You're watching Marketing Misfits with Norm Ferrar and Kevin K. What's up Norm? How you doing man? I'm good. Oh it sounds like or it feels like we've just been doing podcast after podcast after podcast today. Uh, I know. Uh, some days it's that way. Just like our listeners who listen to to podcast after podcast after podcast when they're driving in the car and and and they they is that you right now listening. You're you're driving in the car. You're working out. You're doing something. You listen to two or three or four today. We love you. If that's the case, uh, keep doing it cuz there's a lot of really good ones. And you know what? If you're not interested or you not interested, what am I saying? If you listen to the long form version of uh Marketing Misfits podcast, uh you can always head over to YouTube. We've got a new channel over there for 3 minutes and under clips, and that's called Marketing Misfits Clips. So, give it a listen if you uh if you don't have time for the full 1-hour version. Now, our guest today is someone that uh I've known for a while. Uh, and uh, when I was telling you before when I out in Vegas, a lot of times he and I get together for a lunch or dinner or something and super smart guy who was in the Amazon space for many years, exited a couple different companies there and has now moved on and doing some other things, but he also had his own podcast called uh, with a a partner uh, called Ecom Crew at one point and he's moved on from that. But he's doing some cool stuff. last time I was out there, he's telling me about this little project that he's doing and I'm excited to see where that's at and how he's monetizing that and it's out of the box kind of marketing and but it's actually something that I think a lot of people don't think about that actually there's a there's a huge audience and market for so I think it's going to be interesting. Uh who knows what rabbit hole we're going to go down today but uh I know we're going to get some uh some good uh some good entertainment and some good uh nuggets out of this. All right, so let's bring in our guest, Mr. Mike Jackniss. There he is. Hello everyone. How you doing, Mike? Well, man, I got a lot of pressure. I got to provide entertainment and nuggets now. So, that's right. You got You told me you're going to get up and dance. Uh Okay. Is this a good video game being recorded? There we go. That's That's white people dancing for you 101. White people 101. You learn that in Vegas at uh at at the the one of the day clubs. Well, I just watch when I'm there. No, I don't I don't I don't do the twerking. I just watch the twerking. I've seen Kevin do twerking. Yeah, it's pretty impressive. That's why you have to wear glasses now. You still Exactly. His little button on the side. They they darken so you don't have to see it anymore. Fair enough. Exactly. But see, he's got control. He's got the button so he can just get rid of me anytime he wants. Just hits that button time. I just There are some people that I wish I could do that with him. Have you just you discovered it? He's in the penalty box. Okay. Bye. See you later. So, Mike, uh for those uh listening uh here, um you know, we all know each other from the Amazon world. This is not an Amazon podcast. Uh it's more of a marketing and uh podcast, but just fill them in a little bit about uh who you are and your background. You you've done a lot in the affiliate world for a while and then you moved into Amazon, then you exited that and you're doing some other cool stuff we'll talk about. So, just give us a little uh backstory. The uh the worst part about getting this old is like when people ask this question, the answer gets longer and longer and longer. It's brutal now, right? So, I mean the the short version of it like since I quit my job in 2004, uh I did get into affiliate marketing. I was doing online poker affiliate marketing for like seven or eight years. Did incredibly well with that. Right place at the right time. Kind of got into something that I had a personal interest and passion in. Uh, but it was just not a industry that was really made for me in my personality. The the types of people that kind of hung around there uh weren't the types of characters that I like hanging around with. I I did make some friends there and still keep in touch with a couple people, but that was the exception and not the norm. Uh, versus something like e-commerce where like I just felt like I was everyone's friend all the time cuz it just seemed like a bunch of really great people in general. There's obviously the exception there. There's some people you run into that um aren't the best. But yeah, I was doing affiliate marketing and then got out of the online poker affiliate marketing space and was doing other affiliate marketing and at the time just felt like man like Google's going to do something about this. You know, in some way they're going to start squashing these affiliate sites like bugs. We're not really truly providing value necessarily. It's like you're rating the best Pokémon based on who pays you the most money kind of thing or, you know, it isn't really necessarily immense amounts of value. Even though like some of the stuff that we did in the affiliate world did kind of provide that value. I was, you know, rating WordPress themes or online degrees or online storage or uh treadmills based on, you know, a lot of it was based on who paid the most. And I was out on this hike. I remember like having this conversation with myself thinking I needed to get into something that's going to provide more value and have more stability longterm, less reliance on Google and decided to turn treadmill.com, which was one of our affiliate sites, into an e-commerce site. And then we got into e-commerce. That's how we got into e-commerce. I knew nothing about shopping carts or how to take payments. I had done none of that stuff. This was in 2012. Yeah, 2012, I think. uh ran treadmill.com for a couple years, sold a bunch of fitness equipment, did not enjoy drop shipping. It was just again didn't have the personality fit for me. It was I was not in control of the actual shipping process of the stuff being in inventory, of it arriving correctly, on time, not broken, you know, etc. Most of the people that bought stuff were unhappy for, you know, they they were right, and I I didn't care for that. And so then we got on the private label and that's kind of start when I ran into into Kevin. Um started buying stuff from China, selling stuff on Amazon. Did that for you know the next 10 years until we got out of it uh last year and uh now we're on to something new which we'll talk about here shortly. developed uh one of your private label brands. I remember you've talked about is was color it like adult coloring books that you you developed and you've talked about that and kind of even did a couple podcasts about the the the exit process and then I think when you you've told me when you exited that you're like okay I'm done with this Amazon thing but some something uh the call the sirens lured you back in and you ended up doing another one uh and then exiting that right? Yeah. Well, I mean, we owned uh I think five brands at the time we sold color it. So, that was just one that got jettisoned at the time and it wasn't quite time to to sell the other ones yet. I mean, I I don't know. So, we we were still running the other ones and yes, then I I had more time on my hands, which is a dangerous thing for an entrepreneur. Um and uh yeah, Bill and Andrew and I bought another business. So, I got sucked back into even further in Amazon and we sold that business. It's been almost two years now. Um, and yeah, then at that point I was like, "Okay, now I'm really at the end and I'm going to work on selling these things off." And it it did take some time, but we sold the last Amazon business almost exactly a year ago today. It's kind of weird uh that we're talking about this right now, but we got rid of the last Amazon business and at the beginning of August of 2024. And what what made you decide to get out of Amazon? You've told me you kind of saw some writing on the wall and stuff. What What's the reason that you you decided to move on? Was it some of the writing on the wall? Was it just bored, ready for the next challenge of your life or what was the the reason? Yeah, I mean, I think it was writing on the wall when I talked to you in 2019. It was it was a harsh reality by the time we actually started selling this stuff off, right? Um I don't know. Like I had I I'm kind of like this I come from a generation of realism and not complaining or blaming other people for my problems or whatever it might be. And uh I just had this harsh reality of like this journey has come to an end whether I like it or not whether it's unfair or not or any of these types of things like no one cares about any of that. And uh I felt like it was never going to be any better than it is right now. And it was already getting much worse at that point. Now I remember I had the perspective of like getting started on Amazon in 2015 when like margins were really really juicy and you could sell like a bag of horsemenure and make good money on you know doing it. Uh versus where things are today. The walls have kind of closed in from every direction. you know, Amazon has really put the screws on in terms of fees and now there's tariffs to deal with and you have manufacturers themselves uh in China who have come privy to the fact that hey wait we can cut out this other party and just sell directly. You know, when we first got started on Amazon, my thought was like, "Oh, well, I can cut out these wholesalers and become a direct to seller brand and and uh take their margin and, you know, drink their milkshake." And I think manufacturers in China have now come to that same conclusion. Uh, and the international community is really piled into Amazon and they don't have to play by the same rules as an American. You know, I got to have business insurance for like some knucklehead that tries to sue me some for some weird thing. And I'm I'm not going to cheat on tariffs. I'm not going to take a chance of having the government come after me 101 15 years from now for for not paying the proper amounts of tariffs. And I can't do black hat stuff. I got one Amazon account. I can't spin new Amazon accounts up like uh like chicklets or pez pez dispensers uh like Amazon sellers do or foreign sellers do. Um, and that's just like kind of the the the tip of the iceberg. And so, you know, it just our profit margins had dropped from like 30% net profit after paying my even myself a salary to barely eating out like low single digits. And it was just like, okay, well, what point is this going to turn negative? At what point is the risk worth the reward? At what point do I just go do something else? Now, does that mean like I think e-commerce is dead or that it's a terrible like niche to get into? Not necessarily. I I thought long and hard about what e-commerce brand I would start next that would kind of get around these problems. And but the reality was that that's a multi-year process and a big risk that I just didn't want to take at that time. Um and quite frankly, I'm really enjoying what I'm doing now a lot more. And I'm at a point in my life where my number one priority is to reduce my stress. Like I've uh you know I think that I I always talk about this analogy of stress or running a business being kind of like radiation poisoning. If you're exposed to some lowgraded radiation for a little bit doesn't bother you. Not going to make you sick, not going to hurt you, but you keep on getting exposed to this radiation over a period of time and it starts to like make you sick. And stress uh has a way of doing that. And running a 7 figure, eight figure e-commerce business is stressful. There's a lot of moving parts. Uh it's hard to have the right amount of inventory at all times. It's hard to like deal with a skew getting shut down on Amazon or uh you know a state coming out for you for for taxes or you know whatever kind of crap that just constantly happening um and and not be affected by it. Like I deal with any one thing with no problem. But over a period of time losing sleep and like just not feeling as good and whole bunch of other things and it just it just felt like it was time for me, you know, and That's kind of the the story. So, I've got a I've got actually a comment and a question. Um sellers from Amazon, they you know, starting to get some e-commerce sites go on to Shopify and you talked about tax. What a lot of people don't realize is they got to start paying tax. Like outside of that, Amazon or you know, it could be Walmart, but outside of Amazon, you don't own the customer. But when you're on Shopify and you're doing some major numbers, you got to think about tax. Yeah. And if you're selling over in Europe, I remember uh we we have an agency and uh one of our beauty brands that I was representing and I warned him about this is the VAT tax. He got a this one brand a million dollar um request uh from the government that he had to pay this fat tax. These this is things people are not thinking about and it'll catch up and bite them in the end. But here's my question. You had declining uh profit margin and it's just Amazon. Now you're looking at a buyer, you're presenting it or they might have come to you and they do their due diligence and they see this possible bell curve. What incentive was there for them to buy your business? Oh, we sold it at a low multiple. I mean it was yeah and I was incredibly transparent like I will never you know put money before my uh reputation and just you know feeling good about myself I'm doing the right thing. I mean, I told the guy straight up and he was like, "Why are you selling this business? All the things I just told you and and a whole lot more um you know, was and at the time, you know, last year when I made this decision, uh was coming leading up to the election to to me and I I don't like being in politics on a podcast. So, please, you know, I was trying to be agnostic and and talk about just, you know, being pragmatic about about the situation. Don't freak out out there, people. Uh, you know, this is just what my thoughts were, but it to me it felt like Trump was going to win. You know, it just the way the election landscape was looking. Again, this has nothing to do with what I wanted or didn't want. I'm just trying to tell you what my thoughts were at the time. It looked like he was had a very good shot at winning. You know, the the first debate with with Biden went poorly. They put Kla in. It just didn't look like there was a path for the Democrats to win. And I thought that Trump would win or he was more likely to win at least. And and the biggest concern I had at that point was dealing with potential tariff issues round two cuz like we went through it the first time and I knew how trans disruptive it was the first time and I was just like that could be the straw that breaks the camel's back and I just not only the business but myself like again from a stress standpoint like I I feel so bad now for cuz I still have lots and lots of friends in e-commerce and this has been incredibly disruptive. Um, and I was kind of in fear of that happening again. So, like it was August of last year. Uh, election was coming up in in November. And I was incredibly transparent with the guy who bought it. So, if he listens to this, it's not like he's going to have any like revelations from what I'm saying. Like, look, I I'm I'm concerned about that and all the other things that we just talked about and I just prefer to be done. Like, this feels like this is a good opportunity to be done. And unfortunately, the the tariff stuff has happened and it's been significantly more disruptive than it was the first time around because it's been like it's on again, it's off again, on again, off again. It reminds me of that scene out of Wayne's World where they're playing hockey in the streets like game on, game off, game on, game off. You know, uh I I I feel really bad for people that are having to go go through that. and you know it's just another curveball that you have you've had to deal with over the you know last decade of being in e-commerce. So with your uh account with your Amazon account because you come from that affiliate world or you know how to drive traffic did you do anything different that helped your account from maybe an affiliate point or what did you do to drive the traffic over to your site? Yeah, I mean we had the most success with that during uh owning Color It because it it it was a kind of a brand that was ripe for that. You know, it depends on what you're selling. You know, the last brand that we sold was Ice Wraps. It was actually the first private label brand that I got into. I owned it for 10 years from uh 2004 to 2014 or 2014 to 2024. You know, that wasn't really the best brand to be doing that type of growth marketing with. with with color it it worked incredibly well because you know we can give away something of value to people that cost us little. So you know was like free drawings or sample pages or do uh Facebook lives or you know these types of things. And it was also at a time where you know Facebook was just up and coming. So we did a lot of like give us your email address and we'll give you we'll send you some free drawings or give us make like a a low friction transaction. I love like these microtransaction trying to upsell them, put them into a funnel concepts. And so that worked incredibly well for us. So the the concept was we're going to send you some free drawings, just pay the shipping and handling right after they make that purchase. I used Ezra, my buddy Ezra Firestone's oneclick upsell app. You try to get them to buy something else. So if they didn't buy it then hopefully when the thing arrived physically at their house and they saw how much different this product was and better than what they had been using else elsewhere you know emails were coming I was a big fan of Clavio still a big fan of email marketing get them into it into a funnel and once we got someone to like their third purchase we we had them for life kind of thing we we can get them to buy anything that we came out with any email we sent out generated money and so our our thing was like and and as it's a snowball and so as As we got more and more people into this funnel and more and more people are buying, uh, we could spend more money on marketing up front to get more people into the funnel. Hey, Norm, you'll love this man. I talked to a seller the other day doing 50k a month, but when I asked them what their actual profit was, they just kind of stared at me. Are you serious? That's kind of like driving blindfolded. Exactly, man. I told them, "You got to check out Sellerboard. This cool profit tool that's built just for Amazon sellers. It tracks everything like fees, PPC, refunds, promos, even changing cogs during using FIFO." Aha. But does it do FBM shipping costs too? Sure does. That way you can keep your quarter 4 chaos totally under control and know your numbers because not only does it do that, but it makes your PPC bids. It forecasts inventory. It sends review requests and even helps you get reimbursements from Amazon. Now, that's like having a CFO in your back pocket. You know what? It's just $15 a month, but you got to go to sellerboard.com/misfits. sellerboard.com/misfits. And if you do that, they'll even throw in a free two-month trial. So, you want me to say go to sellerboard.commisfits and get your number straight before your accountant loses it? Exactly. All right, we could lose money on those first transactions to then make it back on the second and third transaction, hopefully the 10th transaction. Uh, and and that just it just felt like it was getting easier and easier as time went by, which is a fun place to be in business. So, owning the customer was always a key part of you building that list, building that email because you understood the value of that coming from that affiliate world. Yeah, absolutely. And it was always a tugof-war like giving up some of those sales to Amazon where you don't own the customer. But my thought there was, you know, Amazon is the number one e-commerce platform. Like more transactions are happening there than any place else. It was the number one search engine as well. And that ecosystem is detached and separate from that other ecosystem where you're selling on Shopify, getting Facebook traffic, ads, etc. And so my thought was like, I'm never going to get these Amazon sales if I don't, you know, cross-pollinate in some way. And so we we at one point through the strategy that we kind of employed, I had the number one selling gel pens on Amazon, which is a redonulous niche in space. I mean, we're selling a container every couple weeks of of gel pens at our peak. Uh, by taking our our email list and saying, "Hey, look, our new set of gel pens is available over here on Amazon. Um, some people that already had a Prime account or trust Amazon more for whatever reason would go buy there. And the people that were anti- Amazon or felt it more convenient or perceived that it was better for us as a company because we make more money um, were buying it from Shopify, you So, you know, when you take this holistic approach of I'm looking at my overall sales and wherever they come from, they come from, it allowed me to kind of detach from like, okay, I'm like giving Amazon this customer and I can't market to them directly in the same way that I I could or would if the sale came from Shopify. It was a rising tide. It was raising all, you know, all ships kind of thing. Uh, and again, we were we had the number number one bestseller badge for gel pens, which was a hell of an achievement. Uh, we also had at one point the number one selling coloring book on Amazon, um, which was another big niche. And so, I don't know, like, uh, would I do things differently if I can go back and do it? You know, it's easier. I play an arm shell quarterback, but uh, I I still think that it's a pretty sound strategy. So I think with your emails and gathering those emails and building the list, not only do you have the list of uh cap captivated audience, but you're also building a community. Now, did you do anything to expand that community to create just a bunch of loyal fans or raging fans? Yeah, I mean we the the weekly Facebook lives like did that more than anything. You just being in front of the camera every week, interacting with people, responding to their comments went a long long way to doing that. And uh my favorite part is like when you get to a point where those fans are then attacking haters so you don't have to do it yourself because there's always a hater somewhere in the comments. Uh and we were running I mean we spent you know seven figures on Facebook ads. So, you can think about the amount of traffic we were driving, amount of comments that that was generating, and every now and then there'd be some hater that would uh, you know, coming after us for whatever reason. My favorite one was uh we cut off a scammer from they what they were doing was like getting our package and we had a no questions asked refund policy. And I still stand behind that. And you know, because I'm not worried about the one person who's going to scam you. I'm worried about all the people that are not going to take advantage of it, but buy because you have a very liberal return policy. And so our return policy was you can send it back for any reason within 30 days. Doesn't matter. We don't care. So what they were doing uh was ordering something, waiting 29 days, like reordering the other thing, and like then cutting open the box, swapping out the the new thing, putting the old thing in, taping the box back up, and sending it back. um and then expecting like a refund. Um but they were using the uh return shipping like refusing the the package uh as the return shipping. So they had to so they had to pay the shipping. Well, this is mail fraud. And so after like the third time I told them uh and I called the inspector, the local postmaster general, and I think they got arrested actually. So at least they knocked on their door. I know they met me that the postmaster knocked on their door. But uh you know, I think that and and they came and attacked us in the comments and our fans were like, "No, no, no, no, no." Like these guys, that's not how they operate because they were like, "Oh, they won't return my money and they're trying to like, you know, not not stand behind their return policy and uh you know, the commenters like descent on them and just like attack them into oblivion and you don't have to say anything." That's a really good feeling. Um and so yeah, I think that if you can generate that, uh you know, it can go a long way and that's certainly with the thing that we're doing now that is a part of our like written on paper a part of our business plan uh to work on building community, getting loyal fans and really building a tribe. And then you know from there you know traffic, eyeballs, fans, community, you you have that like there's always ways to make money. It doesn't matter the platform or what year it is or what's trendy or whatever. You know, fans like Kevin, I mean, I I I don't know you as well, Norm. I've met you a few times. Yeah. But, you know, I know Kevin a lot better. And I just see the way that people congregate around him and just like get this like, oh, like that's like girls meeting the Beatles in the 60s kind of like thing, right? And you know, that's something that you have to work hard at. Like it isn't like they just immediately fell in love with him the second they met him. is like providing tons of value over a long period of time. Maybe they did, you know, maybe I I underestimated his boy charm, but uh you know, it's just something you build over a long period of time with providing value and like helping people and like being there and uh giving people ideas to start their businesses and they make a bunch of money off of it or get a dream because of it. and they they become big fans and will then buy training and courses and attend seminars or or go to these uh these summits and stuff. No questions asked, but that takes a lot of work. You know, people perceive it as an overnight success, but it sure as hell isn't. And you know, we're trying to regenerate that kind of magic at a totally different. So, in this totally different world, you said earlier you're affiliate in the poker world. So, you've always had an affinity for Do you gamble yourself? You had an affinity for gambling. So, and I know you told me you moved from Vegas and then you moved back to Vegas and it drew you back and and now when I I last saw you earlier this year, you were telling me about this fascinating new thing you're doing where you're going into the casino and playing a slot machine and your and your business partner, your buddy is is filming this and just live streaming it out. And I was like, "Okay, um I don't get it." and you're like, "Yeah, you don't get it because it's this is crazy." And you started telling me all this stuff about it. I'm like, "Okay, so this is like Twitch for people that just want to see people pull a slot machine or living vicariously through you or whatever. So, can you tell us what this new thing is you're doing?" And I'm fascinated by the marketing side of and the psychology side of it and how you guys are going to monetize this and like you said, build the community and everything off of this. And I think it's pretty cool. Yeah. So I mean in January of this year, so we're recording this 2025. So January 9th, we we launched actually uh today's our birthday. We're recording this on our birthday of the our sixmonth birthday of the channel cuz we started recording on the 8th and our first video went up on the 9th. Um so that's pretty cool. Um yeah, we started a YouTube channel just documenting uh kind of almost exactly what you said. It was it's me and my buddy Ryan who I've known for 20 years. uh we sit in front of uh a slot machine, play it every day, and just kind of BS. Hopefully, we win. Most of the times we lose. It's gambling. Let's not, you know, pull the wool over anybody eyes. I mean, like, it's it's gambling for sure. Um but my thought was from from day one was like, okay, the first video is going to suck. It always does, right? It's just terrible. But I'm like, let's just get started and let's put the work in and we'll put something up every single day. So, we record and put up a a long form 30 to 60 minute YouTube video plus four to seven shorts every single day. And we've done it every single day since we it's actually seven days a week. Like we're there every day. I was already there today. Got my my shirt on still. We're going back this afternoon. I'm going to go do a double session today. There's it's a long story. Um but like some days we go get extra content. Um and my thought was, hey, this is a crowded space. Like there are thousands if not tens of thousands of other people that do the exact same thing. There's already some very established people that have a million subscribers. Like how the hell are we going to compete with that? And my thought was like we're just going to be ourselves. Like we are characters. Like I'm doing something and he's doing something that you you mentioned earlier. We're both passionate about. I mean I probably could have got uh been better in life if I was more passionate about investing than gambling or you know something else. But we both love the gamble. Like we don't gamble like ever the rent money or do anything crazy. This is always like between friends. We bet a dollar on everything. It's just something to like you know and we love to gamble like uh you we'll go out drink and play some games like we neither one of us like have a gambling problem. We do it for fun. It's just something that's entertaining. We both love poker which in theory is plus EV. You should win money at long term and I I have. Um but we just love being in the casino gambling. I love the environment, the characters, the the whole thing. And so, yeah, we just started a channel. My thought was over time, like, well, for he will get better on camera because I already been doing stuff on camera for 10 years. I knew I needed to get better doing that, but I was already coming in, let's say, at a five of where I need to be out of 10. He was coming in at a zero. So, like, we've both come up now. And I'm like, people will want to watch us just to watch us even if they don't like gambling is my hope. you know, just our banter. It's almost like a podcast, two guys just just chitchatting kind of thing. And that's really like it started to really click in the last 60 days. Um like we finally kind of achieved what we're looking for. Like the amount of comments that come through, the amount of people that come looking for us and the are buying our merchandise already. Um you can see it in the subscriber growth and the video growth. Like we were on that finally on that parabolic growth trajectory. Uh we hit 10,000 subscribers just before our 6-month anniversary of running the channel. We're on a trajectory to probably hit 100K by the end of the year. Certainly, we'll be at 50K. You know, in the in the world of YouTube, it's the top like fraction of 1%. Most people don't ever get there. We did it in in 6 months. So, I'm I'm incredibly proud of what we've done. And uh you know, I have a pep in my step that I haven't had in 20 years cuz I I love doing this. Like I we we recorded a video today that like I had so much fun and enjoyment like doing that I can't even tell you. Like I know I already know it's going to do incredibly well because it's like it it just checks all the boxes and yeah I mean until it isn't fun anymore. I'm I'm looking forward to doing this for the foreseeable. So walk me through this. So So it's how the cameras on a tripod and you and your buddy are sitting there at a slot machine in a real casino that you've gotten permission from. Yeah. It's always the same casino or you all in the same slot machines or do you rotate around and then you're just sitting there hitting the buttons and maybe calling out what you got or saying, "Oh, damn it." Or, "Oh, getting excited." And then you comment each other, "Hey, what'd you have for lunch?" or "What do you think about this or that?" And it's basically that's that's what it is. Pretty pretty close. I mean, a few things to add there. Like that's exactly how it was to start with. Um, and one of the things I just realized as we're start talking about like building community, relationships, etc. It's like our faces had to be on this thing. Like we originally started was just the camera on the machine. Um and so a few months into it where we really started to see the the growth start to happen. We added two more cameras, two front-facing cameras, one on me and one on him. So we have all three views in the YouTube screen now. Excuse me. So like we're building this relationship through the camera with people. They see what we look like. They see our expressions on our face. Um that really really helps I think build personal connection. Most people weren't doing that. There were a couple people in this space that that were doing that. Um, and then yeah, we got permission from our local casino that I can walk to, like literally right down the street. Uh, so that's the only place we recorded to start with. When you have zero subscribers, it's tough to get anybody to give you permission. So like the fact that they let us do it. I'm very, very grateful for them. Um, we've since gotten permission from all MGM properties, which is kind of incredible cuz they're a big master corporation. uh Rio Elcortez allows us to film there. Several other places on Fremont Street um and then all the Station Casinos properties and then on top of it uh the local casino here station Green Valley Ranch allows us to film table games. So we added that in which is what the real interest I have and passion I have is so we film a bunch of blackjack and craps and bakar and roulette. They allow you to film that. Yeah, we got permission to do that. Is it just the two of you at a backaret table or is there some other normal guests there you have to get releases from or Yeah. So their role is and very understandable rule is it has to be just us at the table. So if there's any other guest there we cannot film them. We cannot film any of the dealers, the pit bosses. We have to keep everyone else off camera. Um and if someone wants to sit down, we just get up and leave, you know, which happens from time to time. But we go over there first thing in the morning when it's not busy. Um, often times we walk up to we walked up to the cops table to play today and they were like, "Oh man, you're the first person that's like walked up here in four hours." Like they were just like the guy was like falling asleep at the table. I'm like, "I'll play with you just to like entertain you for a minute." And they they all love us cuz we tip really well. We we're I mean Kevin knows me. I'm very play and generous by nature. So like um you know and a lot of people that come to casinos are a little bit crunching and not very happy cuz you know they're gambling at at 8:00 in the morning. probably I don't know there there's some cast of characters around that, you know, aren't the best, but um they they seem to really like us there. They're all rooting for us to do well. Uh it's become really fun. Like we got a a hand pay today. Um you know, and they're just so happy for us because like you know, again, we tip well. We're in there giving everyone a high five every day and saying hi, asking how they're doing. So they're yeah, they're always uh they're always rooting for us and it's just it's just a ton of fun. I mean, like I said, just it's been it's been a lot of fun. Uh it's hard to sleep through the night cuz I want to get up and like look at the stats non-stop. It's uh it's in that stage right now. I'm curious. So, we know that uh uh my phone's ringing and it's spam, but but uh going to play the slots or anything, it's always odds are to the house. Yeah. You're playing with your own money. Yep. So typically on average you'd lose. Yes, we do. For sure. Sure. That's very clear. Yeah. Okay. And how are you getting how are you monetizing this? You're going in with your own money. You're losing your own money. Are you making it back from views on uh YouTube? Do you have sponsorship? Norm. You're forgetting about the valuable player points that we earn. Oh. Oh, yes. Yes. The 12 cents that we get back on the uh on the free. Wow. I forgot about he gets a free meal. He needs a free free hamburger at lunch. Yeah. No, it's it's an investment. Like I mean we kind of laid out a business plan. I mean we're so far ahead of schedule that it's kind of silly at this point because I I thought it would take us about two years to get to where we are right now and we've done it in 6 months. But um yeah, we're we're right at the point where just based on YouTube revenue alone, we're pretty much covering our gambling losses. Um which is pretty cool. Actually, we're if if the last couple days go out, you know, the next 30 days, we'll be covering our gambling losses and then some. And then we obviously have expenses of editing and uh other things that we do um to just run the channel. But uh for right now like we're the only income that we have period is from YouTube. Now a quick word from our sponsor Lavanta. Hey Kevin, tell us a little bit about it. That's right, Amazon sellers. Do you want to skyrocket your sales and boost your organic rankings? Meet Lavanta, Norman and I's secret weapon for driving highquality external traffic straight to our Amazon storefronts using affiliate marketing. That's right. is achieved through direct partnerships with leading media outlets like CNN, Wire Cutter, and Buzzfeed, just to name a few, as well as top affiliates, influencers, bloggers, and media buyers, all in Levant's marketplace, which is home to over 5,000 different creators that you get to choose from. So, are you ready to elevate your business? Visit get.lav.io/misfits. That's get.lav lavanta l e v a n ta.io/misfits and book a call and you'll get up to 20% off Lavanta's gold plan today. That's get.lav.io/misfits. Like we aren't exercising or or utilizing what's going to I think eventually be our income streams which will be merchandise. We do get we do sell some shirts. We do make a but we're basically selling them for for cost right now just to get our stuff out there. Um we'll have sponsorships for sure like I know the other big guys have sponsorships that are very lucrative. Uh there'll be affiliate opportunities in there whether it's gambling affiliate stuff or just selling protein bars or something that you might have embedded in the in the in the show or traveling or maybe you know with a local like agency here that like helps put together Vegas trips or something for people coming from out of town. there's there's a lot of opportunities once you're 100,000 plus subscribers um that are tough to kind of put together until you're that size. But you again, we're on that trajectory. I I know what that looks like cuz I've been in that space for 20 plus years. And it's just a matter of time before the the revenue far surpasses the losses and you know, and then supports us make a living out of it. And you know, my my biggest goal right now is to get my buddy. he still has a full-time job dealing poker. Um, and I want him to be able to quit his job. So, like we're and we're we can see I think we're going to be able to do it this year. Like I think by the end of the year he's going to be able to quit his job. This will support that and and a whole bunch more which is pretty incredible uh in year one. Like we thought it would be 3 years before he quit his job. I think you know as long as we stay on the same trajectory we'll we'll get to that mission. walk me through how YouTube pays for this for those listening like how you said you're you're almost like breaking even and starting to to be positive now. What how do So if you got 10,000 subscribers, not all of them are showing up on every video. So it's not like 10,000 people are watching each time, but so are you getting like it's I don't know YouTube pay like 12 cents per thousand views or 15 cent or is that how you're monetizing it? And people are going back and watching past ones, so you're making a little bit of extra change off of those, too. Or how? Walk me through the process of how that works. Yeah. Yeah. So, you make zero dollars for having subscribers. That equals nothing on YouTube. It's it's all about watch time. So, you get you get paid for watch time. Uh, and they use RPM, you know, it's basically how much you make per thousand views uh on YouTube. And there's shorts and then there's long form videos. that the shorts are pennies per thousand views. I mean, it's basically nothing. They they did just release an update uh and said that they're going to start paying as much per hour viewed. Uh not necessarily number of views, but consumption time viewed as long form on shorts. I haven't seen that quite yet, but they just announced it and we'll see if if it comes to fruition. Uh, you know, I probably shouldn't be discussing this, but it's you and whatever. Uh, we're getting $15ish per thousand views is our RPM. Uh, way above what I thought it would be when we walked into this. I thought it would be $4. I was kind of just judging from other things that we had done uh on YouTube. Um, you we had an e-commerce channel, we had a hobby channel, uh, we had that fiveminute pitch thing that we did. So, like I had a few data points. I thought it would be on the low low end of this. We're actually way above what I thought it would be. Like I mean $15 to me is uh is incredible. So I think a lot of that is because we have a very long video and people are are consuming on average 18 minutes. Like that's our average view time on a video. It's incredibly high. Like I mean I think it's one of the reasons why we've been so successful in YouTube continuing to promote our our videos. Is this live? No, it's all recorded and they're they're, you know, up there. It's just a regular video, you know. It's not live. It's recorded. It's not like we haven't done any uh streaming or live yet. It's all we post the video. So, the video is like from the day before or from a week before you you or or something. We're about a week behind. We post we have Are you doing the editing or you have Phil guys in the Philippines? I was doing it to start with and I had to hire we have two full-time editors right now, but it just the volume of stuff we're posting is so incredible and taking those three camera angles and getting the audio all synced and uh you should watch one of the videos. We we put the production value is really high. What's the channel? It's it's called Desert Dens because we're degenerates that live in the desert. So, all right. I'll check it out right now while we're talking. But uh the production value is is like Kevin, you've known me for a long time. Like my I was talking to Ryan. I was like, "Look, my goal is to create the best channel on the internet on this subject matter. It's going to take us time." Like I don't know exactly what that's going to look like yet as long as we get like a little bit better every day. And that's not to take away anything from there's some really great content creators out there that still do a much better job than we do. But my goal is to be the best, right? And so we don't ever like rest on our laurels. Like every day we're trying to like make things slightly better. We added, like I said, we added the other cameras at one point. We hire a professional editor that's way more talented than I am with like transitions and stuff and he adds like little captions on stuff. And we're about to add like this mascot to our thing that's going to like be a third party kind of like talking to us and like trolling us a little bit. And we have like little movie clips in like little tiny stuff that like no one else does. Like we we see most people in a casino like taking their camera, holding it like this in front of their face, not saying a word and that's their content. Like they hold it up to the machine. They don't have their face. It's like they're holding it to their face facing the machine barely ever talking. You know, my thing was to make this something that people would want to watch again whether they're into slots or not because it's just an entertainment on top of the the gaming part. And so we're and like I said, we're getting there. Like it's getting and and now you see the comments. It's actually phenomenal. Dozens of comments on every video about how they love our humor, our our banter, our style of play. We don't do a lot of the oh that was close or shoot we're like you need a bonus or you because that's all we did was hem and hall about like the machine not paying out for 28 to 30 minutes. Now it's like 2 minutes of 30 minutes we're doing that and the rest of the time we're like talking about our friends just being in town the pool party that we had or a concert that we went to reading comments from a guest giving away something just rzing on each other being like dude like you know you you got a hat on and it's like keeping you know your brains are like about to fall out if you don't take the it was something you know whatever like stupid crap are each other um and it's fine cuz like that's what we do anyway We just make fun of each other. Yeah. Yeah. Pro talk. It's pro talk. But like we've had to make it PG cuz like we can't curse on YouTube without getting demonetized and um a bunch of other stuff. So we had to like get rid of the like nasty bro talk, the real bro talk and like figure out a way to reinvent our bro talk to be to be PG. And the vast majority of people watching are older women. You know, they don't want to be hearing that crap. So we got to be careful uh and gear it towards our our core audience. But they they love us. Like they they absolutely love us and we love them. Like that's been like we gotten to meet so many people now and it's just it's cool because we know they're watching for the entertainment. You know that it's like we watch all these other channels but now we like watch yours more than any cuz yours is the most entertaining. Like I that fuels me to want to go do more of that and we got some other ideas that we're working on. Do you think these women are watching or are using it as like background noise when they're taking care of their baby or they're doing something around the house or in the office or whatever? I mean, most of the women that are watching us are their kids are long gone. Like they're older older women. Um, you know, a lot of times they're widowed. You know, one of our fans that comes in unfortunately lost her husband recently. Um, we've asked them this question because I'm just curious that the And we have a lot of men that watch too, don't get me wrong. Um, but the number one answer that we get is they love playing. They have a budget. They can't play all the time because they have a budget. So, they watch us to either get ideas or to feel like they're also playing. You know, they want to kind of feel like they're there playing with us and that they had they wish they had more money to be actually playing the slot machines at that time, but you know, the best they can do is is watch and uh which is interesting, you know. So, and they they seem to again the average consumption time it might I mean I'm happy if they turn it on in the background. That's good for us and let it just run. However, they consume it, but it does seem like based on like the first few times that this happened, it blew my mind cuz people like would come up to us, oh, we watch your channel and I would be like, yeah, okay, whatever. They just see the cameras there and they got us confused for someone else that they watch. But then they would start telling us like intimate details about like every video that they had watched. I'm like, these guys are not only watching, but like they're really consuming and hanging on every word that we're saying, which is really freaking cool. Now, it puts a lot of pressure on us to, you know, continue to do a better and better job, but like I said, for right now at least, it's been a ton of fun. So, you can't go over to Tik Tok right now. I I'm assuming they don't allow any form of gambling. Yeah, it's been kind of contentious. We we're posting there. all of our videos. We're getting Insta banned. I a friend I'm still in a mastermind that I've been in for almost 10 years with some really good friends in e-commerce. Um so we still talk once a month and I mentioned that and he's like I see stuff on there all the time like all these gambling videos and so I just kind of consistently posted on there and all a sudden they were like allowing every one of our videos to be on there. They were doing really really well and now we're back in this like they're denying and they put strikes on our account situation. So, it seems like they're kind of anti-gambling on Tik Tok. Uh YouTube, however, uh has put out a bulletin in March of this year explicitly allowing it. Um you just cannot promote online gambling. Um uh and what about uh producing ads? Can you run ads on on your channel? Well, yeah, we on YouTube. Yeah, we run I mean it's the YouTube algorithm runs the ad. Yeah. Um, we could embed our own like reading a script ad if someone paid us directly. We just couldn't we cannot promote online gambling. Like that's the one thing we can't we can't promote. It's pretty loose. It seems to be pretty loose and it's been pretty lucrative as well. Like I said, it's the CPMs are quite high. Um, and we're getting views. I mean, like all of our videos now are getting thousands of views. Like this time 2 months ago, we were lucky to be getting a couple hundred views per video. It's starting to really, you know, like I said, you get that parabolic move. And I I think our first I think we recorded our first 100,000 view video today. I'm pretty sure we nailed it. Like I'm very excited to release this video. Yeah. I'm looking here. A lot of the videos are like a,00 500 5,000. So, and it says you've put out 74 videos. So, it's a numbers game basically. I mean, by putting up that's more than one a day if you started January this year. That's that's that Oh, yeah. Like I said, we put up uh you know, six, seven videos a day. We put up one long form and like four to seven shorts. So, it's a it's a numbers game and then you start after it's that same old thing that when you do a podcast or you do a newsletter, people say just stick with it. Most people give up. It's numbers game and after after someone just you know what this is actually perfect. Remember, Norm what I told you last week so that we need to do with ours that you got to post every single day for what did I tell you? Um, yeah, someone told me you have Yeah, it was really smart person said you got to post on YouTube for 180 days every single day and then the magic starts. And I like that's basically exactly what you just said. It's half a year and you just said like, "Hey, we're finally turning the corner." So maybe it's not exactly 180, but it's it's that consistency and and it it builds that little cycle in the algorithm like, "Okay, these guys are serious. They're serious content producers. Let's uh that that that's so that validates norm what basically um we were just we just heard. So so it was about day 150 to 160. If you look at if you sort by like latest video on long form you'll see like all of a sudden every video gets more than a thousand views like I just did it by popular 45,000 32,000 28 but those are all all recent. Yeah. Two week two weeks ago. Um two four days ago. Two weeks. Yeah. So you just turned Yeah. Just in a couple weeks ago you turned this corner. Eight days ago. Yeah. All your talk ones are like in the last two weeks. Are you looking to quickly boost new Amazon product launches or scale up existing listings to reach first page positioning? The influencer platform Stack Influence can help. That's right. Stack Influence pushes high volume external traffic sales straight to Amazon listings using micro influencers that you only have to pay with your products. They've helped upandcoming brands like Magic Spoon compete with Cheerios for top category positioning while also helping Fortune 500 brands like Unilver launch their new products. Right now is one of the best times to get started with Stack Influence. You can sign up at stackinfluence.com or click the link in this video down in the description notes below and mention misfits, that's misfitts, to get 10% off your first campaign. stackinfluence.com. So you you just stay. So that I think the moral here is if someone's going to try to do something whether it's whatever it is post daily, more than once daily if you can and then stick with it. Just write it out. Just don't think this is not working. Just stay with it. And if it's a passion of yours, then you shouldn't be enjoying. And that's another key. You said, "Hey, I'm having fun. I've I've I've never felt better. I've, you know, really enjoying life and this doesn't feel like work." Um, and you're going down there and doing it. and you didn't need to support yourself. You you were able to you have the your partner has another his job and then you you've done well for yourself in other ventures. So, you're okay. So, you're able to play to to play this game. Uh not no pun intended. Um and the hardest thing I've had to do for work in the last six months is to sit here and talk to YouTube for now. There we go. Yeah. Well, we we appreciate that. We apply appreciate that. But I think this is a cool marketing thing, a cool thing for people that are out there that like I don't have a lot of money to get an e-commerce or I don't have a lot of money to start this. I my dream is to have my own clothing line or whatever it may be, makeup line or something. But hey, I need to get something going and build a community, build an audience. And then if that if that's their dream is to have their own clothing line, maybe, you know, if that was y'all's dream, you at some point you're going to be able to leverage a community you've built here into, hey, buy our our gambling clothing line and or something and then everybody's going to be walking down the strip wearing a DGEN um shirt shirts uh DGN shoes and and whatever. The top guy in the space did, you know, similar podcast uh after he was already, you know, much more popular. you disclosed that he was they were doing 3,000 orders a day for merchandise off of a wow a gam it was similar to what you're doing correct yeah so I mean that's kind of like our goal like I mean I'd be happy with hundreds a day you know whatever it might be but I I see that as being like a huge uh revenue center for us that's why we did it so early you we already have the store we already sell you like an average of like one a day or something it's not it's not huge but the fact that anyone buys it at all blows my mind and it's it's just there to like continue to snowball, more and more people show up in public with with the merchandise on. Uh I think I see you have a newsletter here too. When I click on uh desertdens.com, it goes to a newsletter sign up. Are you actually just collecting leads right now? Are you actually doing a true newsletter? Just collecting them. Yeah. I mean cuz like you and I know like I mean email is so important. uh just we are a little bit overwhelmed with it sounds easy and it sounds like I'm not doing any work but it actually is quite a bit getting all this content up and I'm just trying to like I've gotten much better at like realizing I can't do everything like if there's a hundred things that need to get done for this business like what's the most important thing to like focus on right now is it really the email or the look of that website or you know whatever I just there's something there so people that type it in don't fall into a black hole we have some rules and stuff up there for one of our promotions if you go to that URL, it's there, but it's mostly for shop.esarddjens.com is where the Shopify store is, which is on a, you know, a Shopify uh domain. It's just just kind of there. Now, can it look better? And should I build it out? Should I be sending out an email every day? Yeah. And we're going to do that, but we're just trying to like keep up with the editing and getting the videos out and making those as good as we possibly can. And we feel like we can like breathe a little bit from that cuz we are trying to hire one more person right now. then those will be like the next steps and certainly you know my hope is that yeah we're doing a lot of stuff with email and then we can promote online gambling in those emails right because it's not on YouTube and those CPAs are $300 to $500 you know this is no actually in in the newsletter I'm as you know I'm big in the newsletter business and I've done a lot of research the biggest opportunities are in the quote unquote banned topics you know cigar smoking um uh sex um uh gambling and so if you build a list here and you're doing it right. You're not you're not ready to commit to that. You're doing what's moving the needle and but you're capturing the leads as you go. So you you're not going to start from zero. And then when you do that, I think this that could blow this up where you're doing affiliate. It's almost like wrapping your entire 20 years into one where you you can go back to the affiliate stuff, make money off the affiliates, and then have other people come in, advertisers and sponsors that want to reach this audience. And then then you have the product side which you are well versed in fulfillment and product. So, it's almost like a wrapping all of your past experiences and talents around a passion that's fun. I mean, uh, getting old sucks, man. Like getting out of beds like I hear Rice Krispies every morning and this that and the other, but you know, it feels like a cheat code for business. Like you said, it's taken 20 years worth of knowledge and laser focusing on this one thing right now. And yeah, I I see huge opportunities on the email part. like I as I start to talk about it, I get even more excited. And and we've already we've been talking like what is going to be the hook that gets people to like to the site to sign up cuz we're going to be taking them from, you know, from a YouTube video trying to get them to sign up for our email. And we're like, what's the what's the lead magnet here? Like in color it was the free pages and for our tactical site. We had like this prepping guide for for ecom crew. It was like how to get started on Amazon. We've been talking about lots of things of like ideas or maybe multiple ideas uh to get people over there. Uh and once we start building out that email list, I think yeah, it's another whole another whole revenue center. It's cool. Merchandise revenue center sponsorships. A couple of the big guys uh do cruises. They they they you pay them for the cruise. They rent out the whole damn boat and they're making you probably a million dollars a cruise or something. There's all kinds of opportunities uh in this space. And I'm, you know, just trying to take it one step at a time and not get ahead of our skis. Like, I mean, we just hit 10,000 subscribers. We're not in a million, you know, but I think we can get there. Like, I I I think we're going to be in a million a couple years from now. And when we're there, that's when again, parabolically, like not only does the the views go up, but all the other things like it opens up all the other gates. Uh, and yet with the previous experience, I feel like it is kind of a cheat code. Are you doing these t-shirts print on demand? Okay. It's all print on demand right now. Yeah, we will warehouse them when it makes sense. Um, we know a few people in that space that have already actually talked about doing them for us and doing the fulfillment where they'll stock it and they make the shirts, but we got to be at a volume where it makes sense to do that and then we'll just be making better margins at that point. It's really a margin game. But yeah, it's all print on demand right now. And it just again I've been trying to like focus on the things that's going to move the needle as much as it can right now. Like and I might be wrong about that ultimately like you got to make the best decision you can at the time but for right now for me that's like producing the best quality content. So that's got us in the casino for you know several hours a day and me like working back and forth for a lot longer than I'll need to in the future with an editor to like tweak all the little details that I care about. But once he every time I tell him something, he gets it and I don't have to tell him again. And we're we're getting close. Like we're close to where I want the final product to be. And Norm, he's got a a a shop store. So I'm looking here at the mugs and hats. So he can get Google business profile, right? And and hopefully hopefully you've got uh the Google knowledge panel. I have uh I set up a Google Shopping and uh Google business profile. That last thing you just mentioned, I'm not sure what that is. Oh, yeah. We could talk later. But uh you got it. It gives you it puts you as an authority. It's Google's vetted um from your profile to your brand to your company. You can vet each one of them. And when it does that, it'll put together a panel. So when somebody's either searching your brand or your name, um it'll come up in a panel format and uh it just gives you a huge amount of credibility and a lot more exposure. And then Google business profile um I know that like the back of my hand and that's awesome as well. Uh just putting out content. So if you're putting out content, why not put it out there, too? What was the thing you call a Google panel? Yeah. Uh, Google knowledge panel. Google knowledge. And then that's that's it. That might take a few minutes and it takes anywhere from one to five days to get approved. Um, but what you really want to focus on is the Google knowledge graph and because you had the podcast and because of the people that you know, uh, that should explode. Okay. I will definitely go play around with that. Yeah. you know uh you would have loved working uh working with my dad. Yeah. Yeah. Uh back he the facility we had in Auburn Maine the back wall had all slot machines. Oh that's cool. And we we uh cleaned a lot of the what we what he came up with was it was a waffle. They used to go in and uh clean each of these uh casino machines. So yeah, we were licensed to all these different casinos to go and clean them. So the the main company in Japan sent over a bunch of G slot machines for us to practice with. I heard practice makes perfect on slot machines. I heard that. I heard practice. Practice makes perfect. Yeah, that's what the keep trying. Yeah, the lottery say practice makes perfect. Oh man, that's that's awesome, man. It's a really cool and different uh different um I like it. I think uh it's definitely different. You know, it's it's cool to pull back the curtain a little bit and see how the these different models are working. Like you said, some people are crushing it in this space. It's it's like Twitch for gamblers. The top guy in the space, several of them. There's several there's several people making seven figures a month profit doing. And are these guys all mostly in Vegas or they at different places around the world? They're in Vegas. They're in Vegas. And none of the casinos are allowed to sponsor this. I guess they can't. They're they're uh one of the guys is sponsored by an by an online brand. Um, I don't really want to get too much into it because I'm not sure what I should and shouldn't say or whatever on the show, but um, I don't want to mention the name, but like it's one of these companies that you hear commercial, you see commercials or hear commercials for all the time and they uh, they do like fantasy football and other sports betting and they now have uh, casino online casino. Google I believe like what I said they can't promote online gambling. You can't promote uh unimproved online gambling. So some of these brands that they they have approved, this is one of them, but it's not approved in Nevada. So like these guys travel to a different state multiple times a month to like make content for that uh that a state that where it is allowed cuz uh Nevada's really uh controlling about gambling and you know obviously there's a lot of money be made here and the landbased casinos have the whole thing like kind of cornered. So like none of the fantasy football stuff's allowed here or none of the online gaming stuff's allowed here cuz they've lobbyed to to kind of but it's just a matter of time and so I see a lot of opportunity longer term with all that like when online gaming is approved in Nevada and we can and hopefully we'll be big enough to be able to be in a good spot to to get affiliate deals for that and it'll be an approved site for Google. I think all that's going to kind of come together at a really good time for us. It seems like we're on the right path for that, which I'm What happens if YouTube decides, uh, you know what, we're not going to allow gambling anymore? Yeah, it's scary, dude. Um, we've had it happen before. That's how I end up here, uh, or end up in e-commerce. Um, I have actually made a decision to start another channel, uh, in a not in a completely different space. Um, just because of this, I don't want to do it. I because I've been very happy focusing on one thing and I'm at a point where I really realize the the trauma of trying to chase two rabbits. Um but I feel like I kind of have no choice cuz I do not want to be in a spot where if two years from now that happens, I'm starting over from ground zero with nothing. Um, and so we're going to be doing a very similar concept, um, but in a different niche that isn't gambling, uh, starting probably in August or at least September. Why not? Like right now, uh, you're a one-legged stool. Like Kevin said, what happens if you get shut down? Yeah. Doesn't You've got the content. Why don't you just take the content and put it onto a different channel as well? Oh, it's everywhere. I mean, we have Facebook, it's on, but YouTube's really the only long form content platform. There really isn't any like you could Twitch. Like, we could certainly do that. It is allowed there. Uh, but that's live streaming. We'd have to, you know, be there. Um, and it's not edited and as highly produced as what we're doing now. I mean, we could produce something. I think that would be good. Um, but yeah, the the you know, Instagram and and Facebook, they're they're short platforms. Uh, Tik Tok doesn't allow it. So, we're unfort I mean it was doing incredibly well there. Um but they're they're not they're not allowing it. Um I'm hopeful that YouTube's going to continue to allow it. I mean they've come out with a bulletin. I was really worried about it at the beginning, but then they they I saw this email come through. I was like I'm about to have a heart attack. They're they're they're squashing this. But they defined exactly what it is that they were allowing and not allowing. It seemed crazy before. So I know what I'm saying here. It seems crazy to me that they would they would stop it. But yes, it is a it is a concern uh to the point where we are going to to have another YouTube channel totally outside of gambling uh about something else that I enjoy just as much. Um, and we're at a point now where the workload's starting to diminish a little bit on this. And I can I think I can create I'm getting good at like how can I create the content, put it in a spot, train an editor, and have my goal is to be at a point where my camera time is the only effort I had to put into this and someone else is taking care of everything else. Um, but we're going to start working on building our subscriber base, getting our videos up for this other other niche in a way that that doesn't stress me out and gets us at least gets us started just in case if at any point in the future we get slam dunked on um, we have a backup stream of income. Hey, Kevin King and Norm Ferrar here. If you've been enjoying this episode of Marketing Misfits, thanks for listening this far. Continue listening. We got some more valuable stuff coming up. Be sure to hit that subscribe button if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast player or if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify, make sure you subscribe to our channel because you don't want to miss a single episode of The Marketing Misfits. Have you subscribed yet, Norm? Well, this is an old guy alert. Should I subscribe to my own podcast? Yeah, but what if you forget to show up one time? It's just me on here. You're not going to know what I say. I'll I'll buy you a beard and you can sit in my chair, too. We'll just you can go back and forth with one another. Yikes. But that being said, don't forget to subscribe, share it. Oh, and if you really like this content, somewhere up there there's a banner. Click on it and you'll go to another episode of the Marketing Misfits. Make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like Norm. Well, we are at the top of the hour and at the top of the hour, I always ask our guests if they know a misfit. H I know lots of misfits in the gambling space, but uh probably not one that's fit for this. I think all the other people we all know uh mutually. So, so if people want to follow you guys, it's uh it's Desert Dens on YouTube or Desert Dens.com. Uh, is there anything else if anybody wants to uh to reach out or to follow you or any other place they should they should check out? Nope. I didn't come on here to promote anything. So, I appreciate the the plug on that. But most people watching us probably don't care about about slots. So, people on here are going to watch you to reverse engineer what you're doing and see like, hey, how do how can we do something like this for our brand? And I I'm always happy to help. I uh I I am a abundance mentality individual. Um, you know, there's there are trillions of views per month to be had on YouTube. I am not going to ever have them all, right? And so I'm just going to go be me. There's going to be people that absolutely hate and never want to watch it. And that's totally fine. They can go watch your thing and you can go be the the other the other views and we're just going to be us and uh the people that that enjoy us and want to watch our thing will be the ones those will be the views that we get, right? And I think that that's an important point of view to have. I appreciate you coming on, Mike, and sharing. This has been uh this has been great. Yes. And I'm going to remove you, but don't go away. Okay, I won't go anywhere. Uh oh. How do I Oh, you got to hit that button. Oh, I did it. You can't. Ah, there we go. Well, I Oh, yeah. I see it now, Norm. I see it. The wheels spinning in your head. Man, if I could just do a cigar smoking channel where I just sit there and like actually sit there on my back porch and just smoke a cigar and talk about it and show my little AI tool that uh tracks them and researches them and uh uh then I'd be in heaven. I don't I don't need uh all this dragon fish or all this other stuff. I I just I can just be sitting there me and my Coke Zero in in Dallas. You be you me and my Coke Zero in Dallas. That sounds good. You know what was kind of kind of scary? Like I was listening to Mike and then you asked a question and you said when I pulled back the curtain and I sat there and I went I remember the time Kevin pulled back the curtain and it was freaking scary. But and that wasn't anything to do with marketing. It was just Yeah. That that that was a traumatic for you. I remember you had to see a counselor for a while after that. I did. I did. I almost went blind. It's temporary. But hey, the podcast is not temporary. This this podcast is every single Tuesday. You know, we're trying to be like Mike. Uh but but we're doing it once a week. We're not doing it several times a day, but we we got to up our game. We are doing some stuff on YouTube and Tik Tok. What are we doing there, Norm? You got it. So, we have two channels on YouTube. One is for long form and that's marketing misfits podcast and the second one is for the shorts and it's marketing misfit clips and there are three minute and under videos. We've also got the Tik Tok channel going and that's marketing misfits and that one's going really well. Yeah, we haven't been banned yet. Right. You said I haven't banned yet. I haven't used enough. No, no, that's that's YouTube. I got to keep you. Yeah, I'm good trying to I got some soap here. Uh I don't know, some guy in Canada made it and I just rub it in my mouth every time I say a bad word. Uh drop a quarter in the jar. Uh the jar is not going up anymore. I don't know what's going on, but uh I know what's going on for you guys listening is you should be listening to the Misfits podcast by subscribing to this channel, by hitting that like button, by leaving us a comment, or if you liked what Mike said, you know someone uh that might enjoy this, be sure to forward this episode to them because I'm sure they will appreciate it uh and introduce them to the Marketing Misfits. You know, we're here every Tuesday. Norm, I guess I'll see you again uh next week with another incredible guest. Or maybe it'll just be two us two talking. Who knows? Who knows what the day will bring, but all right everybody. We'll see you next week. [Music]