My Wife Quit Her Job So We Built a $1,000,000 Brand

I always focus on the life force eight. And I took this from one of my favorite books which is called cashising. It is the eight emotions that cause someone to buy. The example that I always love to use is Dr. Squatch. They sell soap for men. And we're all dudes, right? Like I don't care what soap I use. So how do you get dudes to buy soap? What you do is you make ads with a bunch of hot women going up to their guys and going, "Man, you smell so good. Man, you smell what are you using? I want to jump you right now." And so what they're doing is they're selling sex, which is one of the life force eight. I think search is dead. You're talking about Google search, like SEO. That's correct. I mean, the writing's on the wall for that, right? Maybe one or two years. And so that is why we're starting up all these other things now cuz for the longest time, search was just killer. You're watching Marketing Misfits with Norm Ferrar and Kevin K. Mr. Ferrar, good to see you again. Another week, another podcast. How are you, man? We are back and I am fine except for the weather sucks again. Ah, that's cuz you live up there in the great white north up there where it's where where the where the sun shines until what times the sun go down? About 11:00 at night where you're at. No, no, it might get uh dark at around 9:00 right now this time of year. Oh, really? That's about the same as Austin's about 8 8:30 or so. 8:40. Um, really? I thought I thought you would uh have uh more longer days uh up uh closer to the uh to the ant to the only days I have is for you, Mr. King. Oh, the only days you have is for me. Well, you know, if if if you you just imagine if uh the days and the time you would have if your wife quit her job, you know, our guest today, that that's that's his that's his that's his slogan. Uh you know, I don't even know if she actually quit her job. I've seen her actually working. I think we'll find out. We'll find out. But uh that that's where where he uh he bursted onto the scene I think uh when he did a podcast and a blog actually a blog I think it was first and then uh that evolved into a podcast and uh they run a business together and uh it's going to be cool but just imagine if Connie quit her job. What would you do? What would you do, Norm? I'd eat you would have mac and cheese and ketchup with ketchup. Yeah. mac and cheese with ketchup and Coke Zeros and you would just be in heaven because you'd just be catered to cuz your wife is so so nice that you would just be like what am I going to do now? Uh I don't have to get up and go to the free I quit my job. There we go. You quit your job. No, but um in all seriousness, our guest today is a really brilliant guy. Uh he he runs a conference. He runs a I mean, we'll find out everything he does, but uh he's runs a very successful ecom business. Uh very influential on his YouTube channel and in his podcast, and I think it's going to be interesting. Uh and I think uh I'm ready to take some notes here. Uh Norma, I think we're going to learn a few things as well today. All right. Very good. So, let's bring him on right now. Mr. Steve Chu, Mr. Steve Chu is our guest today. How you doing, Steve? What up? What up? Hey, Norm. You don't want your wife to quit your job because then you'll spend a lot of time together and you'll fight a lot. So, just kidding. Just I hope she's not gonna listen to your passing back behind there. So true, though. Yeah. Like, no. Go. Please don't quit your job. That should be the name. That could be the new name of your other new podcast. My Please, wife, don't quit your job. No, there's that comedian. Uh, what's that comedian? He's He's I think he's from Texas actually. Steve something. I see him on TikTok and he's always talking about his wife. Do you know the one I'm talking about? or I do not know Steve Carol Carol or something like that. Uh and then there's a lot of Tik Tok videos where people imitate him. They they like take his voice and like put it on them and they sit next to their real wife like in the kitchen and they just recite his lines. It's his his voice and they're just moving their mouth to lip- syncing to his voice. But he's always about you know my wife all the it's it's funniest stuff. It's it's really really but yeah every time I hear that I think of I think of you Steve. I was thinking like his wife had just quit his job. So, actually, how did this all get started? I mean, what's what's uh Tell us your story. What's your background? How did this evolve into where you're at now? Yeah, it all really got started cuz we live in an expensive area. So, I mean, the weather's nice here and uh when my wife became pregnant with our first child, she wanted to quit uh stay at home with the kid. I was fully on board because I never really saw my parents growing up. Uh they're first generation Chinese, always working, so I was on board. But the problem is here, and by here I mean the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, pretty much need two incomes to get a good house in a good school district. And uh actually my kids are about to go off to college soon and I I'm keeping their room around because chances are they're going to be coming back and living with us just because of the housing prices. Anyway, um we she was making a hundred something thousand at the time. uh we needed a way to replace that income and that is when we decided to launch a store selling handkerchiefs and this is back in 2007. We came up with handkerchiefs because when we first got married, uh my wife is a crier. Um she cries at everything, sad, happiness. Uh she knew she was going to cry at the wedding. I'm still not clear whether that was going to be tears of happiness or sadness, but uh she did. and she we spent all this money on photography, so she wanted a handkerchief. Couldn't find them anywhere. We finally found this factory in China, ordered a bunch, used maybe a handful for the bridal party, but then we listed them all on eBay and they sold like hotcakes. And that's how we came up with the idea. So that store made $100,000 in profit our first year. Amazon wasn't even around back then. And then today is a seven figureure business. Uh 18 years later, we're still running it. That's awesome. And along the way, you started a blog documenting it and then that led to a podcast or something like that as well. Yeah. So, what happened was my friends here and they're all doctors, lawyers, and engineers because I'm Asian. And uh they were like, "Hey, you know, I want to do this too because I don't want to be a lawyer anymore." And so, I just started documenting everything, but they never read any of it. And instead, I attracted like a random audience of people who read the blog. That led to a podcast which led to a course which led to a YouTube channel and an annual e-commerce conference which I had the pleasure of seeing you at just a month ago. Kevin. Yeah, I appreciate you you allowing me to crash that. Uh that was very nice of you. I was on my way back from uh taking like a little sbatical in uh in St. Barts and I was like, "Oh, there's a conference going on. Let me let me call up Athena and see if she's going to be there." She's like, "Yeah, I can I'm going to be there. I'm I can get you in." I'm like, "No, I don't." She's like, "No, I got an extra ticket." I'm like, "All right. And I show up and Athena's not there. And I'm like, "Oh, what do I do?" Uh, and Steve's like, "No, just come on in. Just just let him in. Let him in. Come on in." I'm like, "Okay, I appreciate I appreciate that." But so speaking of that conference, you've been doing that in Fort It's always been Fort Lauderdale, right? Since like It's always been in Florida. It's always been Florida. Okay. Yeah. Not necessarily Fort Lauderdale, although it's been there for like the past six years. Uh, yeah. Started in 2016. I want to say you were there one of the years before pre- pandemic. Yeah, I was there like I don't Jesus was there and uh I think Neil Patel maybe had been there at that one too. It's like 2018 2019 somewhere around in that time frame. I think 2018. Yeah. Cuz I was with my ex ex-wife. Um yeah. Yeah. I remember um she was going out and getting drunk and I was going to conf to the conference but yeah. Yeah. Uh, so why do you do I mean so is that audience that comes to that is that from your your trainings and your courses or the podcast because you you have a couple hundred people and it's a different audience. I go to a lot of conferences Norman and I do and yeah there's some of the you know same faces that you see at uh some but you have a quite a bit different nominance and I know you're pretty careful on like screening the uh the exhibitors like one of them told me they had to jump through hoops and verify and show you all kinds of stuff. I'm like, "Oh, good for Steve, man. That that's good." So, why do you keep doing that or where does that come from? So, it's basically because people were asking for it. And it's not course members. Actually, we try to screen for revenue and um get people who are making over a million and whatnot. And you know, of course, there's course members that are there, but I would say the bulk of it is just people in my community. And for some strange reason, maybe it has to do with the title of like my publications, but I attract women over the age of 35. Huh. And you'll notice that at that event, Kevin, it was probably 60% women this year. I don't know if you noticed that. Yeah, I actually did. Um, now that you say that, I'm thinking back. Yeah, it was. And then a lot of them were in their 30s or 40s. Yes. And then you'll notice that the line for the men's bathroom is a lot shorter than the women's bathroom line, which is which is nuts, I think. But, uh, it's just the nature of the brand, I guess. Now, are you able to make money on this thing? I mean, because events right now are like, "Oh, yeah. I mean, they they it's difficult to make money, and unless you have an ulterior motive, like, okay, we're going to sell a mastermind or we're going to sell something." Uh, there's a lot of them, you know, everybody wants to do an event. It's kind of like uh back in the days when I did a lot of calendar stuff. Every every uh we had a full on calendar catalog and I was buying there's some guy in San Jose that's like got all these exotic cars like hey let's do a calendar featuring bikini girls and exotic cars and they don't realize it's hard to make money. So a lot of people try it but very few people continue. The fact that you've been doing it now for nine years is is not easy. I mean I'm going to be straight up. I think events suck from the running standpoint. It's much more fun to attend an event as you know Kevin right um but it is very rewarding and I think in this era of AI and how everything is becoming more impersonal and automated I think events and anything personal is going to be where it's at is it price point right now what is it that we've all noticed that events have started to decline there's a lot more events but attendance uh is much harder to find yes It definitely is. Uh I actually have no ulterior motives, believe it or not, with the event. Um you'll notice I didn't sell I mean, you were just there. I don't sell anything on stage. I don't even mention my class. Actually, I don't even mention uh any of the other stuff that I do. Um it's really just a way to bring people together. And at this point, it's been nine years and we have a lot of repeats. So, I think of it like a reunion of sorts and people just come back. It's it's much easier to sell tickets this year because we do have that returning audience. Uh to your point, Norm, if I were to start it from scratch this year, you better have like some sort of audience behind it. Otherwise, it's really difficult to get someone to make the investment. Actually, this past year was the most difficult year of all the nine years, Kevin, because it was during that Trump tariffs 145% uh and everyone was terrified and whatnot. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm seeing that, too. And I'm I'm talking to other event people and other people that have I just had I don't know if you know who Trian Turku is in the Amazon space, but this this Romanian genius guy that never comes out of his house and but he has a a monthly mastermind. It's 350 bucks a month. He was doing it with Ben Cummings. Um and I just got an email today says he to this month is the last one. He's closing it down. Now some of that could be for personal reasons. Some of that could be it's just dwindled. But I'm talking to a lot of it's probably a combination of both. I've talked to a lot of people that are just having trouble um getting people to go to events or getting them to join masterminds, especially if they're now if you do it low ticket uh which I have something coming out that's $99 a month and I think that's going to be successful. I think that's a sweet spot where people will do it. But you start getting up there in the thousands of dollars for tickets, it's becoming or for a mastermind, it's becoming very difficult. And that for that reason, like my BDSS next year, it's been a high ticket event and I'm changing it to uh there's a ticket is $497. There's also a $3,000 ticket, but that's half of what I've been charging. Um, and just the market has shifted and I' I'm having to make a making a make a shift in in in that space. Um 497. I don't see how you can even break even at that price. I'm going to sell from the stage. So So there's a The plan is uh I can't at$497. I I that's it's a very basic ticket. So most people are going to probably upgrade to 1497 or 29.97. Uh but if someone wants to come in and they got they can scrap together 500 bucks and I made sure that there's a Holiday Inn across the street. So if they're on a budget there, you know, there's $100. There's a place where you can park your car and sleep in the back of your car if you want to um across the street. Uh or you can spend 250 bucks a night in in the Hyatt the Grand Hyatt that we're in. But I had to make sure that um it appeals to that level person because if someone I was talking to Jason Flatland, the goat of webinars, I think you know Jason, and I'm trying to get him to do my pitch for me and he's he said he'll either come and do it or he'll help write it help me write it. Um, but he's like, "If you can get people to pay 500 bucks and don't have more than 700 people there, that's the sweet spot for actually selling in person." And so on my my rationale is that if I can get someone there for 500 bucks, they probably got a credit card that'll go three, four, $5,000. And if I present an offer that will actually I generally want to help them, not just trying to sell them something. I generally want to help them, but something that will convince them to actually go forward, they will pull the trigger and they're qualified. So, that's But but if I told that same person who has a credit card with $50,000 credit limit, unused, hey, the tickets are $14.97, they're h I'm not going to be there. But I get them there for 500. Um, so I'm I'm changing the model uh because the whole industry and it may fall flat on it space and I may but the last ones I've been losing money on them and I'm tired of losing money. Well, how are you finding this, Steve? Yeah. What's interesting is so so my motives are a little different. Um, I'm actually if I break even on the event, I'm actually cool and and we always usually do or make we make a teeny bit of money, I guess. That's not my main profit center. Um, okay. So, this is maybe it's just my life. Like, I have kids and and I don't get out much. You guys get out much more. I see you guys partying at events and whatnot, right? I don't get out at all. So, like my event is my way of getting out and I don't I'm a pretty frugal guy. Uh so, I don't spend that much money. So, the money I make from both the store and like the content and the classes that I generate, I mean, that's the bulk of my income. the the seller summit is just like an excuse for all my good friends to come together. Uh at this point in the beginning it wasn't like that. Today it's kind of more like that. That's cool. Yeah. No, that that makes to that's why a lot of some people do events is so that's why some people do podcast is I mean one of the reasons you do a podcast you get to get out get to talk to interesting people. You have an excuse and a reason you're not and um you get to expand your network. And it's the same thing when you're doing events. is it's almost like it's like it's not a vacation, but it's a change of pace and a and um like you said, bringing friends together. So, why why do events or podcast stall? You've got both. You're successful with podcast, like Kevin said, and an event. How come others stall? So, you know what? You're you're you're talking about the podcast. And what's funny about the podcast is I only use the podcast to meet people. Yeah. So, uh, the podcast I mean you you just talked about like my worst profit centers right there, right? The podcast and the event. Those are things that you just do for social reasons and in my opinion and it just opens doors. So, whenever I want to have an hourlong conversation with somebody, I invite them on the podcast and more often than not, they actually become a speaker at the seller summit, right? So, that's my way of meeting people. Uh, podcast actually right now it actually doesn't make any money. Um, I used to take sponsors a while ago and it used to generate maybe like a 100K or so in just sponsorship money a year, maybe a little more than that. But when I released that book, I went on like 40 or 50 podcasts and I did so many favors for people to come on my podcast. I think it helped me promote my book that I got burned out from the whole thing. And it was actually only recently that I started interviewing people again. Um, for like the last three months or so, it's just been me and my business partner riffing kind of like you guys without a guest. So, yeah, we do it sometimes without a guest, but I find that the podcast we both have individual podcast in the Amazon space and then we do this one together. So, we're doing quite a bit of podcast and meeting a lot of people, but like you say, we get speakers for virtual events and for uh inerson events. We make connections with people. Norm and I will sometimes like, "Hey, we wanna uh, you know, I don't know Neil Patel, but I met him at your event." And I went up to him and said, "Hey, would you come on the podcast?" And he's like, "Yeah, sure. Uh, message this assistant or whatever." Who knows where that'll go down the road. Maybe we'll work into something, maybe not. But we get to actually we get to pick his brain. Uh, which is which is cool. Uh, and then like you said, you know, we try to leverage it. We're what we're doing. It's difficult to sell sponsorships like you said, uh, on a podcast. It can be done, but you need some numbers uh to really justify it. And we're still building this one out. It's only a year old. But where we think we can do it is like taking this content and turning it into a newsletter. So, taking like a transcript of this, creating an article of every episode, creating an article, and then supplementing that with some additional marketing stuff that's not on the podcast, you know, just kind of like I do with my billion-dollar seller. So, and I think that in conjunction because that can actually make money on advertising because people it's easy to track results there. If I someone buys an ad, we know how many clicks and sales they got. You can track it. It's more difficult on a on a podcast. And so, like I think that'll help get the podcast going, it'll help this flywheel and that'll generate leads for what Norm and I are doing with Dragonfish and some other things. So, I agree with you though. They're they're not profit center. So, what is a profit center for you? Is it is it the because your office expanded beyond handkerchiefs? I mean, you're doing a bunch more stuff now, right? Yeah. So, uh yeah, we sell more than handkerchiefs. Uh we sell uh personalized napkins, towels, personalized aprons. Uh I think in this day and age since Amazon's just getting way more competitive and Amazon's really squeezing everyone. Uh we've been focusing a lot more on our brand and I think personalization is something that's a major pain in the butt that people in China can't do quickly. and without the personal touch. So, we've actually focused everything on custom printing and custom embroidery now. And that's kind of like our moat. Is this mostly wedding type of stuff or is it It's actually every occasion. So, what I did is I chat every occasion and we have stuff for every possible holiday. Now, I kind of love Hallmark because Hallmark made up all these holidays over the years. So, we have something for everything and anything. And and our, you know, our theme is, you know, you want to remember those special moments. And what I started doing, and this hasn't launched yet, you guys are hearing about this firsthand, is uh I'm launching a YouTube channel for our store now where we're going to tell like the romance stories, the stories of friendship behind the embroidery. Oh wow. And uh the goal of that is to just create mind share for the company. And there's going to be a form where you could submit your own stories. And so I think in the long term uh you know by featuring people's stories that's where the connection is going to hit with the brand. That's really smart. That's actually that's a really good idea. So you're going to start off with like you and your wife's stories or you got No, I have a bunch. I've got like because I've been doing this for a long time. I've got a whole bunch of these stories. U the way we're doing it uh is I I wish I wasn't the one doing this because my wife wants no part of it. But I'm the one narrating these stories. And what we're doing is we are using uh cartoon mock-ups of the people cuz a lot of them like they're fine sharing the story, but they don't want to be a part of it. Meaning like they don't want their real names used just for privacy reasons. Some of them do. That's fine. But I'm just narrating the story and doing a really good job based on a form that they're filling out and telling the story. And so I'll ask them, you know, how did you guys get together? What is some conflicts that you had early on? How did you resolve them? what's the end story and sometimes they'll submit a photo and then I just use midjourney or whatnot to convert that into you know kind of like a cartoon so it's not really um described we'll see how whether it works or not like who knows it might flop and it probably isn't going to do well in the beginning but over time I'm sure our customers are going to want to watch these videos and whatnot 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 automates 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.commisfits. sellerboard.commisfits. And if you do that, they'll even throw in a free two-month trial. So, you want me to say, "Go to sellerboard.com, misfits, and get your number straight before your accountant loses it?" Exactly. All right. How long is the video? It's We're talking like three minutes. Okay. Yeah. Um the al the other goal is to also start a Tik Tok channel for the brand. And this is one where I'm a little more iffy on. This probably won't launch until later this year. It's going to be what it's like running a business husband and wife style. And you got to understand my wife's a very private person. She doesn't like being on camera. So the the deal that we reached was I'll do all the talking and she just gives me a bunch of disapproving looks and that's the channel really. So she she's going to be like you're going to be like pin and teller where she doesn't talk. She just looks at you and you say everything. Well, here's the thing. Like I'll give you an example. One of them will be like, "Hey, what is it like working with your spouse on the business and I'll say something and then maybe like she'll say a few things, but you know, she'll she might just be like not be able to come up with anything." Like what are the good parts about working with your spouse? Which, by the way, if anyone's listening here, generally not a good idea. Uh because we used to fight. I wasn't even joking about that, Norm. Early on, we fought all the time uh until we kind of compartmentalized everything. So she's in charge of operations, I'm in charge of marketing. So how do you separate that though? Like if you have a disagreement I worked with my wife at the very beginning uh when we had our first uh son. It was tough to separate that. How how did you do it? How or how do you do it? Uh it it's actually exactly what I said. She's operations. Yeah. And then I'm essentially all marketing and everything. She chooses product and whatnot. And occasionally it overlaps. Uh sometimes, and this actually annoys her to no end, if she goes on vacation with her girls girlfriends or she goes on a girl's vacation, what I do is I go in the office and I go to my employees and I'm like, "Hey, I'm just going to shadow you." And then I'll be like, "Hey, why are you doing that? Why are you using paper for that?" And then what happened last time is she came back from South Korea and I had implemented a whole new, you know, system of fulfilling orders. and uh she was not happy. But today it's actually really I'm a coder, right? Like this is kind of what I used to do like optimize stuff. Like thanks to AI and everything like my life is exciting again. And so I've been using a lot of that stuff to automate the internal workings. Like anytime I see a post-it note I get pissed uh when I walk in the office. That's great. So So that business is is thriving. Uh you sell a little bit on Amazon, but a lot of it's straight off your own website. It's actually mostly the website now because um this is what happens also like let's say a product gets suspended that ruins my wife's you know demeanor for like an entire week and we fight because she's so pissed off. Um and I'm I'm thinking to myself now like I'm a little bit older than you guys like it's just not worth it. So I I sell on Amazon so I can teach it. So, I'm, you know, so I still have products up there and I still follow the best practices and whatnot, but no, uh, we don't, we don't emphasize it anymore. I don't think you're older than us. I think you're quite a younger than I don't Well, actually, you know what? You're right. You're right. I take that back. I don't think you're older than us. I have to correct you on that one. I just normalization. You see his ankles has fles in his ankles. Wait, are you guys I just turned 50. Are you guys over 50? Oh, I know Norm, you are, right? No. No. What do you say? I'm 49. I haven't even hit 50 yet. No. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're we're above you. Uh both of us. A little. Just just just uh a little above you. Above you. Uh but no. So you said earlier that business kind of runs and you make your money. So you're still making money off the course stuff. I mean that's one of the reasons. Um Okay. And that's is that how to what is the course? Is it how to build a a DTOC business? how to do use Shopify or how to do uh how to basically how to build a brand. I mean it's essentially kind of what you guys teach, right? Both you guys have classes, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Essentially the same thing except mine is much less Amazon focused. So my philosophy is uh validate on Amazon and then focus on your branded website, get emails, SMS and that sort of thing for repeat business. Are you doing anything with social commerce like Tik Tok shop or Instagram or influencers or creators right now? Yeah. So, Tik Tok shop in my opinion only applies to a certain subset of products, right? So, if you're selling anything consumable, uh, subscriptionbased or anything that really has a strong brand and where you can actually make money on the sale, uh, Tik Tok shop is actually, uh, acceptable. But in general, I would say 75 80% of the people selling stuff, Tik Tok shop might not be the best platform. And we can talk about that if you want. Yeah, let's talk about that. I mean, we've had several people on that on the shop. We just had a girl um that we interviewed recently that's doing 21 million selling pants on to apparel on Tik Tok and she's doing zero on Amazon. Uh zero. Uh and then you know, you hear others and I hear stories from the Amazon world, Norman, and I do that. I tried this. I reached out to a thousand people and nothing's working and nobody's promoting and and we just recently had Gracie Ryback on. She's like, "Yeah, this a lot of people don't know how to deal with the creators and the influencers. They don't know how to approach this, right?" And there's all the there's a whole science to it. And and it's also like she even said the same thing you did. She's like, "Yeah, there's a lot of products I just like, no, this is not going to work. Uh it's not not appropriate." So, what are your takes on what's the best way? Because that's a hot shiny object right now in a lot of ecom circles. And so how do you go about advising to do it or not to do it? So most people fail because when you start you have zero visibility. You're not even allowed to get affiliates or anything in the beginning. You have to make 2,000 bucks first before you can even solicit anyone, right? And uh you guys are going to love this. I I'm sure you guys are familiar with Tik Tok shop, but the way you do it now is you give away product in return for a review. Yeah. Remember those days? Yeah. Like Silico, they're they're big in that. Yeah. hits the hall. I was like, "Well, I heard that. I was like, ah, I I know how this model works." The good old days. It's It's like November 2017. Yeah. So, you get past that 2000, and it's just a numbers game, right? You got to solicit affiliates, uh, creators, and you you reach out to the creators that have an 80% post ratio, which means that they're more likely they're 80% of the time they post about whatever free product that they get. And it's just a numbers game. You can reach out to 7,000. You can track like how many samples to post they get. Is there tools that there's a number. It's called a post ratio or something like that. Oh wow. I didn't I didn't realize that. Okay, cool. Yeah. And then you can solicit 7,000 and maybe single digits will reply back. Let's just call it 5%. And uh so you're giving away a ton of product. The goal necessar isn't necessarily to make a profit, but there's this halo effect on everything, right? There's a halo effect on your Amazon store. There's a halo effect on your Shopify store, but you have to have like the funds to be able to absorb all the free product. This is assuming, by the way, you have zero followers and no Tik Tok presence, by the way. I'm sure your friend who sells pants, she probably has a Tik Tok presence. Or is it all affiliates? It she has both. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. If you have nothing, then this is the way you got to do it. It's just a numbers game. You're contacting 7,000 people every single week. Uh getting people to create videos and then you run ads on the ones that are decent. Rinse and repeat. And Tik Tok is moving. I mean, they were doing a lot of incentives like free shipping and discounts and just to get everything going. And now they're cutting way back on that. They're like, "All right, now it's time that and they're they're moving in the same direction that all the other platforms like Amazon have moved. It's like, all right, much less organic uh reach, much more towards the paid side of things, and really um so the golden days are almost over. Uh they're at the tail end right now. Well, that's what Greasy said. Yeah. On on TikTok. Um and I think a lot of people don't realize that. Yeah. I mean, everything comes to an end, right? I mean, remember Amazon back in 2014. Uh it took a while for that to happen, right? Amazon was still amazing, I would say, until 2018ish, 2019. I'd agree. Yeah. Yeah. No PPC. It was Can you Do you remember those days? Yeah, I remember. I remember I remember everything. I remember the uh where you could leave reviews and as long as you put the disclaimer in there that I got this product in exchange for uh my for my opinion or whatever, all that stuff. Yeah, it was crazy times. You know why I remember November 2017 so well is I paid $30,000 for reviews on my Dead Sea soap. And I woke up one day and that $30,000 worth of reviews was just gone overnight. And that was on one soap. That was just on one. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So I mean what's A lot of people don't understand this. Steve, can you explain? They don't understand. They come from the uh the Amazon world because that's where a lot of the courses and stuff were originally gearing everybody. The guys with the Lamborghini saying, "Oh, you can make all this money. Buy it for a dollar, sell it for 20, make $19 profit on every item, you know, all the misleading stuff." Then they don't realize, you know, then it became like everything needs to be on Amazon because the aggregators, the aggregator boom, all they want is Amazon stuff. And now everybody's like, "Nope." Even people like Scott Deetsz who helps people sell their business, he's like, "No, you need to be multi- channelannel." Amazon just needs to be one of them. And that's really um difficult for a lot of people because they think that they don't understand the difference in drive. One is you don't have to drive the traffic. You just got to you got to sit in front of it. And the other one you got to drive the traffic and then it's a whole different animal when you go DTOC. And how do you teach people to make that mind shift or the differences of how they got to approach different channels? So, I think the big difference is if you're going from Amazon to DTOC, like sometimes your product just isn't good for DTOC, right? Um, like on Amazon, uh, there's a buddy who is selling utensils, right? Nothing special about these utensils, but he kind of got in early, uh, made a moat and started started making money. You got to have some sort of angle with the DTOC store about why people are going to buy these things, right? And maybe you could have some sort of angle. Uh the way I teach the class is I always focus on the life force eight. And I took this from one of my favorite books which is called cash advertising. It is the eight emotions that cause someone to buy. All right. So uh the example that I always love to use is Dr. Squatch. All right. They sell soap for men. And we're all dudes, right? Like I don't care what soap I use. I walk into the hotel, I'll use whatever is there. My wife looks at me in horror like, "Are you going to use the stuff that comes out of dispenser?" I'm like, "Yeah, I don't care." So, how do you get dudes to buy soap? Right? What you do is you make ads with a bunch of hot women going up to their guys and going, "Man, you smell so good. Man, you smell. What are you using? I want to jump you right now." And so, what they're doing is they're selling sex, which is one of the Life Force 8. Right? So, when you're selling when you're going from Amazon to your store, you're responsible for the marketing. And it's not just a key word. It's really just triggering someone to buy based on their emotions because there's nothing really new in e-commerce. Like everything that's being sold out there is basically a commodity and it's up to you. So take take our products, right? It's just a piece of fabric. A handkerchief is just a piece of fabric. But when you frame it like, you know, uh a wedding handkerchief where you can dry your tears of joy and this is just something that's a keepsake of your wedding day, that turns into something completely different. and all of a sudden that piece of fabric you can charge, you know, 25 times more than the actual value of the product. So, so what are some of the other Do you remember what the the Life Force 8 are off? Yeah, there's um I don't Yeah, you're putting me on the spot here, but there's enjoyment of life, keeping up with the Joneses, uh protection from loved ones, um sex. Sex. Yes. How many we at? Is that five? But um I already said keeping up with the Joneses. It's probably a a fear of loss or something. Uh it's not fear of loss, but that that's more here. Let me just pull it up here, guys. Putting me on the spot. No, it's a cool thing. The audience would like to hear. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Hold on. Cash advertising life. I think it might be the same thing that uh Anthony Robbins talks about in some of his talks. I don't think he calls it the life force eight. I think he calls it the eight triggers cuz he always used an example of a a purse. Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. Survival, enjoyment of life, life extension, enjoyment of food and beverages, freedom from fear, pain, and danger, sex, comfortable living conditions, to be superior, care, and protection of loved ones, and social approval. That's the life force eight. Now, in your experience, uh, do you focus on one of those or can you combine them into into a same offer? Do you got to do different positioning? Like in the soap example, they you say the example with the the hot girls and getting the guy to to do that's a sex thing, but can they combine these into one ad or do you need to like, okay, now they have another ad that's uh, you know, the fear the social one of the fear of being at a party and everybody's running getting away from you because you stink uh your underarm stink or something like that. Yeah. So when you're running ads, um, so the way I set it up is each ad set targets a different angle. So one angle might be sexual companionship, one might be like you just smell bad and you got bo because the copy and the creative are going to be completely different for that. Right. Right. And this way and meta is really good at finding out who's interested in what. And so what ends up happening is uh those ads that are targeting one life force will be shown to people who care about that and the others who are interested in sex will target a different set. And so you got to target different angles and just see what works. You can combine them. Like if you look at one of Dr. Squatch's really good ads and you can look at every one of their ads in the meta ads library. They've combined that with smooth skin, no harsh ingredients and whatnot, but they focus on the sex one first and then they have the other value props. So, can you take one of those eight and let's say you have, you know, eight eight different silos of people, okay, appealing to the certain emotions. Are you building separate communities around those people? communities. Um, so there's different landing pages for each and if you're getting emails, they're going to be tagged differently, right? And so when you send out your campaigns, your your copy might be different for each segment. But let let's use the soap example, right? Like there's sex and then there's some of the other things regarding the soap. They can be combined, right? Right. Um it's just really I I always think of running ads as like panning for gold. You try different things and you see what hits and then you double down on what works. And so yeah, you can combine things. If you have room in your ad for something else, you would definitely put put those attributes in there. Cuz just because you care about one thing doesn't mean you don't care about the other, right? So let's say your primary the primary reason you're using Dr. Squatch is to attract the opposite sex. You might still care about the fact that it works, that it doesn't have harsh chemicals and whatnot. That's just not the main thing that you're emphasizing. What's up everybody? Your good old buddies Norm and Kevin here and I've got an Amazon creative team that I want to introduce you to. That's right Kevin. It's called the house of AMZ and it's the leading provider in combining marketing and branding with laser focus on Amazon. Hey, Norm. They do a lot of really cool stuff if you haven't seen what they do, like full listing, graphics, premium A+ content, storefront design, branding, photography, renderings, packaging design, and a whole lot of other stuff that Amazon sellers need. Yeah. And guess what? They have nine years active in this space. So, you can skip the guesswork, trust the experts, there's no fees, there's no retainers, you pay per project. So if you want to take your product to the next level, check out House of AMZ. That's houseofamz.com. House of AMZ. Now I see you have huge opportunity not only for your brand but for these events that you're you're uh building as well. So they're two separate things. the people that are, let's say, uh, buying your linens or your handkerchiefs or whatever they are, the napkins. Um, you've got something set up specifically for them, and then you're targeting and retargeting them with, are you doing the same thing with multi or repurposing of content? Are you you said that you were building up the what was it? Uh, the cartoons, the embroidery, the Tik Tok. just curious about what other things are you using like you're just repurposing all this content. What about newsletters? What about other forms of social media? What are you doing to to build this up? Yeah. So, our store is actually going through a transitional period right now because I had focused the last decade on ranking in search. Okay. So, we were number one for wedding handkerchiefs, ladies handkerchiefs, a whole bunch of other things. I think search is dead in you're talking about Google search. Like Google search. That's correct. Okay. Google search and I think that's going to I mean the writing's on the wall for that right um maybe one or two years tops and so that is why we're starting up all these other things now cuz for the longest time search was just killer right and then we have all our email flows in place so that depending on what someone buys we have separate flows for that in Clavio so uh the example I always like to use is someone orders like uh cocktail napkins from our door, we'll automatically cross- sell them in Clavio with our matching dinner napkins and lunch napkins. And so once someone makes a purchase, they get automatically guided to related products. Sometimes it's just based on it's usually based on what they bought. But if it's weddings, that leads to a different set of flows talking about special occasions, their one-y year anniversary, and that sort of thing. So, we have all that set up. It's really like the top of funnel stuff that we're losing with SEO or I'm predicted to lose. It's still actually okay right now. Um, but I think the writing's on the wall. I saw Neil, he just did something recently where he said like look the fundamentals of some of SEO still keep doing it because it it is read by the AI and still still used at least at this point. But be prepared because it's it's changing uh rapidly and with all the AI overviews and and where people aren't having to scroll. So speaking of that, I mean, what are you doing like for the store especially for your DDC site for AI AI commerce? If someone people are going to quit going and typing in Google saying, "What are the best uh uh napkins for my wedding?" They're going to be they're going to ask uh chat GPT, "Hey, I've got a wedding. It's 47 people on the countryside. Uh we're doing this, this, and this. What are the best napkins for it?" and it's going to spit back and say here here's five and here's the link to Amazon or here's a link to their their Shopify site or whatever. How are you how are you preparing for that shift? Yeah. So that there's two prongs to that. One is content and just kind of addressing those issues so you actually have a chance of showing up. But the second one is a little harder which is getting press mentions uh regarding your products. No one knows exactly how AI is going to get optimized, but I'm willing to bet that if you can rank in Bing right now, then you'll probably show up in Chat GBT or OpenAI. And likewise, if you're ranking in Google, you're probably going to show up in Gemini and whatnot. And you know, ever since AI created this huge spam problem, like everyone just regurgitating the same stuff online, um Google has only been ranking real businesses. So, if you have a standalone blog, like my wife quit her job.com was amazing until like the last two years when basically Google decided to destroy all independent publishers essentially, right? Unless you have a blog associated with the business like an e-commerce store or a service, you pretty got much got decimated, right? So, I don't know if that you you have a blog, right? Do you guys have a blog? No, I don't. I don't have anymore. My newsletter is turned into a blog by default on Beehive, but it's not really something. And I get a little bit of traffic off it, but it's not something I push. Yeah. Well, I used to belong to these mastermind folks with of just bloggers for many years. And these guys were making seven, even eight figures just off of affiliate revenue. And uh that all went away in the span of one year. Oh, yeah. So, so now I mean to answer your question, so now do you do a blog for your your your customized products brand? Yes. So, blogging still works as long as it's associated with a real business that Google recognizes as a business. Okay. So, are you using all the tools at Google like uh the Google My B knowledge panel and Google My Business and all that all that stuff? Yeah, we're soliciting reviews, real reviews. You know what? Google's so confusing. There's Google reviews and then there's sorry, there's Google business reviews and there's Google product reviews. I'm doing both. So, the distinction is Google business reviews is the star rating that shows up in like Google Maps and whatnot. And by just getting reviews there, Google recognizes you as a real business. Um, and then there's product reviews where Google solicits the reviews for you on your behalf. like you put this little piece of code there and then this this popup happens and it's Google's popup. You have no control over what it says and if you click yes, Google sends your customer an email where they rate the product. H and so you can't game that. This this popup, it's a code you put on your exit page of Shopify or something or That's correct. As soon as you make a purchase, this code pops up on your success page and it says something like, "Hey, would you like to share your experience with this shop when you get your product?" And if you click yes, uh you set this like what the time period is. So like two weeks later when they get their product, they will get an email from Google that says, "Please leave a review for Bumblebee Linens" and whatnot. Okay? And then that goes on your product review rating which all goes into your Google trusted store rating. Um I have it displayed on Bumblebee Linens. If anyone listening wants to go check it out, just click on the like the lower left. Um all these things I believe and no one knows this for sure will help to contribute to more visibility uh once AI completely takes over. Yeah, it is a problem. Um, I just had on my other podcast, I just interviewed a a Chinese girl yesterday and she's like, "The Chinese are having from the Chinese sellers from China are having a hard time understanding branding and the culture of the US and that's becoming more and more important to your point earlier. Uh, more and more important." So, she actually is coming to NYU. She's in Shinszen for the summer right now, but she just finished her first year of two years of getting a master's at NYU in New York in branding to learn like how h how to how's the West brand and she's going back and teaching that uh to the Chinese sellers like this is what you got to do. This is how the Americans think. And one of the things that she said is that I was like, so I was pushing her to break down where you how don't just give me generalities, but tell me specifically how are you figuring this out? um you you told me the three bullet points, but what what tools are you using? And she said, what was interesting is she said that there are some tools out there, you know, you can use chatbt and to figure out the avatar and there's all these kinds of prompts that you can do to figure stuff out or but she's like that stuff is misleading. And I was like, what do you mean it's misleading? said because here at NYU they're they they my professor told me don't use the chiefts because it's inaccurate because it it feeds off of other inaccurate information that's been posted in blogs and other stuff or people people what people think is the truth you know one influencer or one uh guru says something and then everybody just uh repeats it across other things and it becomes becomes true when it's not true. He's like be careful of that. We've got a a library here on the campus that we spent $60 million uh putting books in. Use the studies actually studies of you know the psychological psychology studies and all these different studies and you're going to get much better results of how to actually do this. And it was a very very good point and I see that as being a problem just on the ranking side of what you just said is like what is what does it trust because I could throw out use norm service and throw out a lot of press releases and those could just be some bogus kind of fluffer and but if it trusts those or should it it I I see that there's a big issue there like what what are they going to use to actually verify who they show? Yeah. I mean, this is one thing that Google's doing that you can't really game that that easily. And Norm, I you clearly have experience with this when you lost $30,000 worth of reviews uh off your Amazon listing, right? I mean, people game this stuff. Um this is why Amazon is is so uh easy for it's like math, right? That's why the Chinese sellers have have succeeded. So, I said the exact same thing. She said it's just it's a math thing for them. formula, right? It's a formula, but it's becoming less and less of a formula with AI and they're freaking they're freaking out. Yeah. I mean, DTOC is not Well, it is kind of formulaic, but just like the messaging stuff is is not right. Figure out what people want. Uh instead of doing book using books and whatnot, which is I I that's the first time I heard that. I mean, just studies studies not so much. Yeah. Like professional studies from uh MIT and all these top places. Here's a piece of advice that that's really allowed Bumblebee Linens to do well. And I I think we've we've been around for 18 years. And one of the reasons why is because uh we have a lot of repeat customers. Now, you wouldn't think that wedding, you know, wedding products would have repeat customers. uh despite the fact that the divorce rate in the US is ridiculously high. But um every now and then we get some large customers and we actually just call them up and we ask them if they're planners or what what are they using this for and whatnot. And if they are a planner, we give them a coupon code and we give them a custom rep, a dedicated rep, so that whenever they want to place an order, we take care of it personally over the phone or whatnot and we make sure that that product gets to that event on time. But over the course of just making these calls, like you get an idea of what your stuff is used for, and it takes time for this to happen. Uh, we also sent out a survey as part of our post-purchase where we ask questions about what people are using things for and you just have to bribe them to fill out the survey. Like tell them you give them free product or a big coupon code or whatnot and you can get a lot of information there. One of our key questions on that survey is do you typically plan these types of events or whatnot? And then those people get a phone call. Yeah, that that's the ask method. Uh Jason, what's his name? Levesque or whatever. Leave. Ryan Leesque. Yeah, Ryan. Ryan Leves. Yeah, that and that's what a lot of people they just don't do that. You don't want to ask people like 50 questions, but three or four questions or five questions, a lot of people will quickly answer those and but you can get so much insight off of that and and tailor to what So, how are you using AI in your business? Are you using AI to analyze your customer profiles and create these audiences on Clavio or is it still the oldfashioned way of just tag them and uh and and are you using anything there? Uh, Claio's new AI features are still recent, so I actually haven't really dug in too deep. So, AI uh, sorry, Clavio will now allow you to generate uh, automatic segments uh, with AI. Uh, the way I've been using AI right now is automating a bunch of different things. Um, that yeah, I haven't really dug into too much of the automated AI for marketing just yet. That's next. But you're a coder. You should be like in there like like you this should be like your dream. Uh so my dream is I've been automating a lot of stuff for my wife quit her job actually. You talked about repurposing podcast and stuff. Yeah. So those every single podcast is like a gold mine of Tik Toks, uh Twitter posts, uh you know YouTube shorts, whatnot. It's Yeah. So you're going through your old content and uh having AI slice and dice it and and post it for you. Yeah. And then what I'm also working on the marketing front for e-commerce is this Facebook automation where uh from a Google sheet, you you put like your photos and like a little blurb and it automatically generates the copy uh and whatnot and then automatically uploads it to Facebook ads manager because you got to rotate these things. I typically rotate my ads uh once every week there's there's new adets. So that that's the way I've been using it. not necessarily on like the creative front, but more the automation because that frees up my time to do other things. So, let's talk about new marketers, new brands. What do they need to do right now and what are some of the mistakes that they're making? Um, from the DTOC side or from Amazon? Uh, it could be either. I mean, I I personally think Amazon is only going to continue to get worse. So, I think everyone needs to focus on DTOC. that that's that's always been in my opinion for like the last five years actually. Um, and so when you're thinking about a product to sell, when you say Amazon getting worse, do you mean more competitive or you mean what do you I mean squeezed margin squeezed? It's actually less competitive. I think I read that somewhere. Uh maybe it was your newsletter, Kevin. Was that your newsletter? Did you There's Yeah, it's Marketplace Pulse just put out a study that says there's a lot less uh sellers coming on board now, so it's opening it up a little bit, but yeah. Um, yeah. Doesn't mean it's going to get cheaper, though. I mean, Amazon's got to make earnings, right? That's right. Uh, so anytime someone, and I teach this in my class, anytime someone comes up with a product to sell, like I have them to run the numbers and all the standard stuff, right? But then I have them think about like the angles that they're going to take in order to sell this. And these days, I don't I don't like people just selling individual one-off products. I like people thinking about selling a family of products that you can expand into all using that same angle because uh when it comes to DTOC land, it's not about like the first purchase. It's about just selling a whole bunch of different products to like the same people over and over and over again. And that in my opinion is how you create a business that lasts. So these are just the extra things you need to think about. That's a good point that I think a lot of new people that back to Norm's question about about the new people, they don't understand that they're just looking for that next customer. They're looking for the next customer and the next customer, the next customer, and they don't understand what a gold mine they're sitting on of current customers and and whether that's you have your own line like you you teach to actually extend to that or if you don't still use that audience and sell complimentary stuff or or sell um you I I do this with a calendar business. I have a calendar business. We print these calendars in South Korea for a couple bucks a piece, sell them for $25 a piece on Amazon and our own website and other places. But that audience is also interested in other count calendars of with a similar subject matter. And so I expand that out to a hundred different calendars and I make, you know, I'm I'm buying those wholesale and reselling them and just, you know, Keystone markup. But that adds to the bot significant money to the bottom line. I'm using that same list of people. And for that same reason, Norm and I always talk about this that people are afraid to email their list. They're afraid to like, what if they get mad? They're afraid to send them out. And do you do you really show people like and teach people like, "Hey, look, maximize what you got. Um, come up with ideas to actually sell them something else cuz they already like you, I already trust you." Absolutely. Like one of the examples I give is like over the holidays, I'll email like 15 days straight or every time I do a sale, I email someone seven times. You'll be able to tell like what their threshold is based on how they behave. But in general, when I'm running these sales, people are on your list for a reason. They want your emails. So, you got to get over that. Hey, what's up everybody? Kevin and Norm here with a quick word from one of our sponsors, 8 fig. Let me tell you about a platform that's changing the game for Amazon sellers. That's right, it's called 8Fig. On average, sellers working with 8ig grow up to 400% in less than a year. 8FIG offers both funding and free tools for e-commerce growth and cash flow management. And here's how it works. 8ig provides flexible datadriven funding tailored to your exact needs. You know, they could fund anywhere from up to $50,000 all the way up to 10 million. 8FIG gives you free tools to forecast demand, manage inventory, and analyze cash flow. Visit 8fig.co, that's 8fig.co, to learn more or check the link in the show notes below. Just mention marketing misfits and get 25% off your cost. That's 8fig.co 8fig.co. See you on the other side. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's Yeah. It amazes me when Norm and I we talk to somebody and they got 200,000 800,000 emails. I'm like, "Ah, I'm afraid to email them." Like, why? Uh that's true, by the way. that amount. Yeah, it's I'm not exaggerating. It's had 800,000 emails of customers, paying customers. Yeah. Not like opt-ins for some some crazy stupid thing, but paying customers, and they're afraid to email them. Just just recently, there was 280,000 of a skincare company I'm working with who will not send out an email. And I I just talked to a guy, met him at the MDS event in Vegas, came up to our booth, and he sells fireplaces, like fireplace, you know, these these electric fireplaces and fireplace accessories and stuff. And he got a list uh from a buddy of his of 235,000 distributors of fireplaces or stores of fireplaces, and he's afraid to email them uh because he might upset somebody. And I'm like, dude, this is millions of dollars you're sitting on right here. Um and and it and he I had a call with him and and I think I might have convinced him actually you need to do it. Um but but it's um it's crazy what people will or won't do with with that data. Um and that's how you build companies. That's how you build brands is going back to people. I mean I get it actually. U at least in Asian cultures you know you don't want to feel like you're disturbing someone. Actually, this whole marketing thing has always been tough for me because uh I like hiding behind a computer screen. I don't like talking to people and a lot of things that are required for running a business involves taking that initiative and actually making contact with somebody. In this case, it's email, right? Yeah. And then some people take it per it took me a long time u because sometimes these emails would bounce back to me or the reply would come back to me and I get somebody on there that's like you bunch of you know they just raving ranting like you b this is just a scam you quit emailing me uh you know go blah blah blah and some nasty words or whatever uh to your mother uh and I I would take it personal or someone would argue with me like uh this product doesn't do what you're saying like yes it does u and it I just had to say all right look I'm just unless I there's a trend and I'm getting tons of these. Obviously, I got a problem. If there's a couple Yahoos that are sending this back, um, just ignore them. Uh, and and just to move on. And that's that's difficult for some people. They take this is their business. This is their their pride, their passion, and they're tied to it. And they take it personal. Yeah. I mean, uh, we've all been public for quite a long time. It's it's it just takes a little getting used to. Uh, I once pissed off the entire Etsy community. Uh, and I was getting hate mail from Ets Etsy people every like three seconds a new hate mail popped up and so I crawled into a corner and uh, it was due to a blog post that I wrote and I ended up taking down the post. Did it say that anymore? Etsy people were evil. No, I so I I'll tell you what I said since a long time ago. I basically said Etsy is like a gold mine for product research because you have a lot of creative people in there who are never going to scale their business, right? So you can get a lot of great ideas, product research from there. And then that for some reason, that's truth. That's true. It got transformed to, hey, this Chinese guy is telling people to copy our products and massproduce them, you know, and steal our ideas. And I was like, what? No, that's not what I wrote. That's not what I wrote. Yeah, that's what I meant, but it's not what I wrote. So, what what motivated you to do a book? You you wrote a book. Uh put that out a couple years ago. Can you tell us about the book and what what was your inspiration motivation behind that? Yeah, it's always been on my bucket list. And uh so my mom who I'm very close to, she does not understand anything that I do. Like she understands the sales of handkerchiefs, but she doesn't understand the blog, the podcast, YouTube channel. She thinks it's like a waste of time. uh she does understand books though because she reads books and uh so I I wrote the book and my only goal with the book was one to you know just to reach out and get my philosophies out there but two it was the Asian tell the name of the book tell it's called the family first entrepreneur okay and uh the premise is you know at least for me because I didn't see my mom or my parents that often uh I started a business so I could hang out with the kids more So, um, it's not about scale. Actually, I did fall into that trap where, you know, once, uh, Bumblebee Linens had some early success, I tried to scale, scale, scale, scale. Ended up driving my wife nuts. And we just kept fighting every day. And, um, and then she went up to me one day and she broke down. She said, "Hey, you know what? Like, we don't spend that much money. We don't need all this money. Why are we putting our pedal down? Why why are we putting the pedal down to the metal and killing ourselves just for some artificial growth numbers that just because you set some goals? And that was just kind of the main theme behind the book. So, I'm a lot more chill now. I've dialed back and uh everything that I do now has a family first motif to it. That's really cool because in Western culture a lot of people it's just it's about the how much money can you make? That's the status symbol. That's the the I'm I'm not successful unless I have $100 million in the bank or I'm a billion TV in every room. But yeah, I'm I'm of the I like my my comforts. I'm I'll spend some money. Norm knows he's been to my house. I'll spend some money on some gadgets and some comfort stuff. But also I I'm not about I don't need $100 million to do that. It's what is figure out what's important to you in your life. If it's your family, if it's your comfort, if it's travel, if it's whatever. And once you have enough, you have enough. And why enjoy it. You're only here once. It's tough to get to that point, though. Um, it is for a lot of people because I'm a pretty aggressive guy. But, I mean, it's been really good. It's been good for our marriage. It's been good for our family. And so, now I always ask myself, hey, is this going to take away time from something that I need to be doing with the family before I take on that new project? And it's actually helped me from shiny object syndrome, which uh I'm pretty sure we all have. I I'm speaking for myself. I don't know if you guys have it, but I'm always honest. Yeah, in our relationship, me and Norm's relationship, I always just ask him, "Is it going to tickle?" Nice. But, you know, just talking about what we're talking about before the tickle. Um, you know, I I saw that too back in the uh mid 90s. No, no, it was in the early 90s. Oh, just one sec. Thank you, Connie. More coffee. So, uh, that was a time of learning and also a time of really not keeping up with Joneses, but you think you have all these comforts. You have the two cars, you have a big beautiful home, big yard, big everything. And due to circumstances, all of a sudden, I woke up one day and there is a tow truck backing up and repossessing one of the cars. I had to go bankrupt because my uh two partners ended up uh cooking two books. So, at 28 years old, I ended up with about four $500,000 in debt the the same week my son was born. and all of it. When when that happens, you learn that there's a lot of crap that you just don't need in your life. And so once those seven years are over, then you reook at everything. And actually, when you get out of that comfort zone, it gets pretty scary because you never want that ever to happen again. But uh family first, I can see that. And then living within means. And a lot of on young entrepreneurs especially don't live within their means. They have one good hit, they think it's going to last forever and then they get kicked between the legs and then they have to be a little bit humbled. So, just wanted to put that in there because, you know, we all talk about success or, you know, keep not keeping up with the Joneses, but living too comfortably, sometimes way beyond our comfort zone, and then you find out at the last minute, h maybe I'm spending a bit too much money. 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. You know, I get made fun of a lot um because I hate paying for SAS apps and and and these days, like with AI, like you can literally write all your own apps really quickly. There's all these apps in the the Shopify app store that basically don't do anything and then they charge 50 bucks a month. I personally think that the app store is probably going to take a huge cut at some point uh once people like I I coded up um a loyalty program uh last year in probably a little over a weekend and this is an app that the only reason I did is because they wanted $500 a month uh for my store for it and I was like well screw this. So I fed in I fed in the YouTube video that introduced all the features like they have a YouTube and then I fed it into chatb. I'd say okay write me out all like the the frameworks that I needed to make this app all the database tables write me the helper functions and it actually generated probably 75 to 80% of the code for me and I just integrated into my cart. It's going to get a lot easier than that going forward. Um yeah that's happening. Yeah, I I just saw some stat people coming that just recently graduated back in May from college with computer science degrees are having trouble getting jobs now because so much of it is being automated. And it still takes a human on that final round, but a lot of that work can be they can do one senior programmer can now do five things that by himself that he used to have to have a team underneath him to be doing a lot of the the grunt work. And um yeah, that that industry is changing and the people that have a background in that have a major advantage right now, I think. And no code software and the vibe software and some of the stuff. Yeah, I I've given it a try. Uh I don't think a regular person can code up something completely from scratch just yet. No, you need you need a little bit of background. That's what I was saying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mainly because like it might put out something pretty good in the beginning, but like you give it further prompts, it like breaks what's already working and then Yeah. I don't know. It It's almost there though. I think 80% were there. Okay, it looks like we're at the top of the hour. Steve, we have one question we always ask our misfits if they know a misfit. You know, I was going to say Neil Patel, but it sounds like you guys are already having him on the pod, right? Yeah. Uh, have you had um have you had Mike Jackniss on your pod yet? Uh, not on this one. I've had him on the AM podcast, but not on not on this one. He's he's a good guy. I like what he's doing with his his little project. I'm assuming he's still doing it with the the casinos. Yes, he is doing it. He's he's getting a lot of traction. Uh he's a guy who's like super intense in whatever he does. Uh I just saw him like last week and every time I see him, he always injects a ton of motivation. So, for example, on his channel, he's putting out seven shorts and one long form video per day, right? And here I am bitching about like putting out one video, maybe even two videos a week. And so if Mike can put out eight videos a day, I can suck it up and put out one video a week. Yeah. No, Mike. Mike would be good actually. Uh that's that's a good recommendation. I appreciate that. Yeah. If if people want to reach out to you or follow you or learn more about either your brand or your your trainings or your events, what's the best way to do that? Or read your blog, what's the best way to do that? Yeah, I would just say go over to mywifequitterjob.com and then just sign up for my email list. I'll keep you alerted of, you know, my events and I always do these free workshops where I literally don't hold back. Three-day workshops. I think the next one is uh I don't know when this is coming out, but I have one coming out next week where I just go three straight days, answer questions and whatnot. And uh the goal of the workshop is for you to have uh your own website and a strategy for finding products and making sales at the end. Very good. Awesome. All right, Steve. Well, thank you so much for coming on and uh this is awesome. Thank you. All right, guys. Appreciate it, man. I did it. Hit that button, Norm. Oh, you did it quicker than Oh, you did it really well. I think I think you must have hit another button cuz I saw you disappear. Did you hit the No, it's called uh 49 years old and having to pee. Oh, okay. Okay. That's a special button. That's a big one on the right. Big button. Like what's that Staples that says that was easy. Screw everybody. I don't care what you're talking about. I'm out of here. Hey, that was a good stuff. Steve's a sharp guy and I like I like a lot of what he what he's doing. We didn't even get in the story where we got kicked off we got banned in uh China uh at Alibaba show for talking too much about Amazon on stage and we thought it was about solar panels or something. But uh yeah, no uh definitely go check out uh my wife quit her job and check out Steve's stuff and uh good guy uh has really good intentions and uh super smart guy. Uh and if you want more super smart stuff, how do they do that norm? They they they can watch some stuff or go somewhere. What's there's a few Kev they can go to marketingmisfits.co. They can go over to our YouTube channel. We have a marketing misfits podcast. And for the shorts, we have the marketing misfits clips which is doing exceptionally well right now. Also, uh one thing we didn't talk about at the beginning, sometimes we do, and that's the collective mind society that's coming up. You want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, the we've got our CMS 3. This is our third year to do this where this is a trip that uh there's no presentations. It's not a it's not a conference. We get about 20 people together and go do have a fun weekend. We've done the F1 uh in the past. We did a a train ride across the Canadian Rockies. And this year we're doing cigars in Tampa. And some people are like, Tampa, cigars, why? Why? Because Tampa is the world's number one city. the the for cigars. I mean, it's not Miami. It's not actually Cuba. It's actually Tampa. And so, we're getting together a group of 20 people. Come down, join us for a weekend in Tampa. We're hitting 10 different cigar bars. We're go doing top of the Tampa Club. We're doing couple of the top couple of the top restaurants, a cigar cru sunset cruise with drinks and smoking cigars on a on a schooner. Uh it's going to be an amazing time uh of networking. And even if you're not into cigars, uh as long as you can stay in the smoke, uh you're welcome to come because it's not about the cigars, it's about the people. And and these are really cool events, uh networking events. So, we're doing that November 6th to the 10th. And you can get all the details and find out more about it if you go to collectivemindsocciety.com. collectivemindsocciety.com. Uh all the details are there and you can apply to come uh join us. And it's not not expensive. It's reasonably priced. Uh so uh love to those of you interested check that out. All right everybody, thanks for coming. We will see you next Tuesday. We'll see you next Tuesday. Uh take care.