Stop Losing E-Com Customers (Here's What To Do) | Ezra Firestone

If you get to 100 grand a month on Amazon and you just open a Shopify store and set up branded Google AdWord ads for your brand name, you'll make about 5% of that revenue just because of the people knowing about your brand on Amazon and searching for you. >> Most people, they get the customer, then they're on to the next customer. They don't cultivate and take an opportunity of the ones that they already have. It's so much easier to sell to a someone who's already bought from you than it is to sell to a new person. It's not like a net zero effect for SAS where all of a sudden because AI's here, SAS is dead. I just think that certain SASS are going to get hit harder than others. But I'm still all in on SAS, man. >> What's the future of e-commerce? Is this going to become more of an exclusive club? >> I had a guy, I almost invested in his company. The thing that stopped me, 80% of his revenue is from new customers every year because you just kind of don't buy this thing twice. And as we know, customer costs go up every year. If we can't get repeat revenue above 20%. Boy, it's going to be hard to justify wanting to sign on to that party. You're watching Marketing Misfits with Norm Ferrar and Kevin Kane. [music] >> What's up, Nor? How you doing? >> Good. How are you? >> Uh, good. I'm excited. We got We got a good guest. Uh we always have good guests, but uh today is a guest that's uh been been doing this uh marketing thing for a day or two and uh has has experienced a lot of uh different sides of of it from building brands to educating people to creating SAS tools to you name it. Uh he's kind of just an all-around jack of all trades when it comes to marketing. >> Yeah, I uh I met I have many Ezra stories, but uh I met him years ago in Malora. That was the first time >> Malora >> for an Yeah. amazing.com uh event that was out there. It was really great. >> I think it's pronounced Mayorca. Normally >> ah whatever. >> I'm Canadian. I can pronounce in Spanish. Y >> how do you say about I say a boot? >> Yeah, that's good. I caught that one. >> All right. Shall we bring the man the legend on? >> You saw him in Morca, huh? >> Yeah, I did. I stalked him for a little bit. Yeah, >> we'll get into it. And there's there's there's a lot of uh I got a couple of funny stories that he probably doesn't even remember, but uh All true, but uh now he's thinking. I'm going to bring him on now. Ezra Firestone. Ezra Firestone, the one and only. How you doing? >> Happy to be here, guys. Man, I'm I'm real happy to be here and I love talking about marketing. I love um internet entrepreneurship. I love the game. I love the business. I love the people. So, uh I definitely don't remember whatever crazy stories you're about to bring up. I'm interested to to know. [laughter] >> Oh, you you the first one, by the way, I want to clear this up just in case. I've told this to a few people like Kevin and a couple of others, but we were at uh traffic and conversion and I had gone down and was doing something. eating or something and I ran up uh cuz I wanted to catch some speaker. You were running down the hall and I'm out of breath and I'm going [music] Ezra, hey, remember me? And I'm trying to talk to you, right? I'm in I did your um project management uh course. I've done a ton of your courses. I love everything that you uh you're about. So, um and that's not a fanboy. That's just you got great stuff and you're always worth listening to. So, I can't wait till we get into it today. >> Thanks, man. Yeah, I um I have like 300 people on the internet who know who I am, and th those 300 people really like me, which is awesome. And and occasionally at events, people behave weirdly. Like, I had a guy follow me into the bathroom. >> And it's like, dude, I just got to pee. Like, leave me alone for a minute. So, I've had some weird encounters. Um, and [music] I am grateful that uh people want to listen to what I have to say. And so if you know if you have to deal with a couple weird encounters, I don't remember um you uh panting and and huffing. Um but I believe you. [laughter] >> Yeah. And by the way, uh my whole Amazon like I was at the time this was really good. We were, you know, in the six figures. We were selling essential oils. So, I went over and did that uh that trip with uh AMZ with the guys. That trip, I decided to invest in myself. I told my my wife, I'm going to spend the money. [music] I'm going to go over there. And I learned a ton. And it was so great. Like the the notes that I took got me to the next level. And a lot of people don't understand why why go out for this 10 or 15,000. Why pay the money? Well, it came back to me a hundfold. And then the funny part was Kevin and his group were having a an event one week after it. And so I had to fly over to um where was that? Kevin Cancun, wasn't it? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So, uh yeah, my wife was not happy with me for spending around 40 grand. And uh [laughter] but always all and the the the network the network that came out of those two weeks uh really made my next 10 years. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing uh how much value there is in the group of people that you get to relate with and the things they're going through and the ideas they give you and the businesses you come up with together and the problems you can solve. Like it is truly the thing that like I can trace back every significant leap in my businesses to a relationship I made at a live event. >> Like I, you know, Smart Marketer, one of the businesses, I had to shut Smart Marketer down because uh my e-commerce businesses were going really well and I needed to spend time operating those and I didn't have time to make courses and be an influencer and be a blogger and kind of have this information publishing, coaching, speech, speaking, author world, mastermind world. and I was going to shut it down. And then I thought, I wonder if someone else could run this thing. And then I thought, well, Molly Pitman could run it. She was a woman I had met at an event. We'd become buddies. We'd been, you know, collaborating and supporting each other. And here she is now, six years later, CEO, thriving company. She's completely transformed it, running it better than I ever did. So, it's like, yeah, you really, it's it's worth investing in those things. It's interesting you say that that you your e-commerce businesses are doing well that you didn't have time to do the education. Usually it's the other way around in this in this spa in the education space. It's the people that try to do sell e-commerce whether that's Shopify or Amazon or something. They don't do so great at it and like hey let me go sell digital air uh where I don't have to buy inventory and I don't I have to do this and they flip to that and then they lose touch with what they're actually what's actually happening. I've always I've done a lot of education, taught 220,000 people how to sell on Amazon with Helium 10 uh and other Norm's done quite a bit and we always like you got to have your finger in the game. If you're if you're out of the game, uh I I don't know why I should listen to you. Um what what are your thoughts on that the that and the current state of education when it comes to e-commerce right now? I mean, the current state of education as a if you're first of all, I still have that business. I'm involved in it. I'm a I'm a co-owner. I support her. I participate. I'm I help her make trainings and stuff. But you know what? It has gotten so hard to sell educational content. what we we kind of um pioneered this transformation from um static digitally delivered content to ongoing mentorships about 7 years ago. We thought people don't want static courses anymore. We're going to do done with you done for you ongoing mentorships. And that was a sort of a bit of a revolution in the space and a bunch of people started doing that. And then now in today's world there's so many educators. There's so much free YouTube stuff. There's AI. It's very very difficult to sell a standalone digitally delivered educational product that has no coaching, no consulting, no done for you, no done with you, no live. I don't think you can do it for the for the in order to make it actually work financially. And also even selling the done with you done for you mentorship coaching is hard. Smart Marketer has pivoted. The bit the business that I that I handed over to Molly has pivoted to a services agency as its main revenue model. Yes, we do education. Yes, we do. But it's mostly free stuff to get leads that we then upsell into our services and software. We still sell coaching and we still have a mastermind. But it's like as a percentage of revenue, that business went from, let's call it $10 million with, you know, 90% of it coming from education to inverse to now 10 15% of it coming from education and mastermind and 80% of it coming from done for you services. >> Hey Norm, I've got a quick question for you. I'm trying to manage all my affiliate and creator programs from Amazon, from Shopify, from Walmart, but it's just a freaking mess. I mean, I've got reporting coming from here and there, all these different Slack messages. Do you know if there's like a unified dashboard where I can do this all in one place? >> Yeah, absolutely. And you're right, it is a mess. A lot of brands are complaining about that. But there is a place that has a solution. is called Lavanta and they let brands recruit partners, track performance, manage payouts, send product samples, and even run creator programs across every major marketplace all in one place. And guess what? Brands can spend less time on tools and more time making profit. >> Is that the one that you sent me a link for like a 10% off coupon their gold or enterprise plan a few few days ago? >> You got it. Oh, cool, man. I think I've got that link here. Was it lavanta.ioisfits? >> Yep, you got it. >> le van na.iomisfits. >> Awesome. I'm going to go uh go hit them up right now and get that 10% off. >> Perfect. Me, too. >> Where's that going? >> I mean, here's what I think. I think that if you have an interest in a particular area of expertise, if you're an expert in something, whether it doesn't matter what it is, and you have the desire to make content around that area, then I think it's a really wonderful thing to do because um you don't need a large following to have extremely extremely amazing results. Dude, I have like 63,000 followers on Instagram. I have like maybe 50,000 on Facebook. They're probably the same people. I got like 25,000 on YouTube. And then I got maybe, you know, I got a whole I got 100,000 some odd between my email lists. But like if you look at the sphere of influence of people who actually follow me, it's really small. But that little sphere of influence is worth between Zipify and Smart Marketer alone, not counting anything else I do to that audience, about 20 million a year in revenue, ongoing revenue. And so yes, is that an audience of business owners? Sure. Is that a a [laughter] specifically, you know, a niche that's easy to monetize when you actually have good stuff? Yes. But I think that like the creator economy, the the influencer, the person who is an enthusiast and a educator in a like I just bought a GoPro and now I'm watching all these YouTube videos about how to do GoPro and I'm subscribing to these people and I'm buying from their links and I'm like learning about GoProing from people who are super into that. And so I think that like the days of I'm going to have my core business model be I'm selling you education probably are are more difficult now because there's so much free stuff and I probably wouldn't go that direction. But the I'm going to be a um influencer creator in a particular space and build an audience of people in that area and then sell them things like affiliate offerings or my own coaching and and uh you know ongoing support or my own products that I develop. I I think it's a really wonderful business model. It's just changed a little bit. It's like no longer just you can just sell a course. By the way, when I started I was the only person. It was me and Andrew Udarian and then there was like Ryan Dice and some other people who were doing not e-commerce when back in 2012 there was like two e-commerce people. It was me and this guy Udarian. I was a little little before him. Um and he's still going. He's got e-commerce fuel. He's got the uh which is a really wonderful you know uh forum that you can be a part of. So I got lucky in that I was the only voice. I don't think it's as easy to be to to gain the kind of prominence that I gained within our industry today as it was back then. So in every business, you got three things you got to focus on. Product, marketing, and support and operations. And with e-commerce, it's like marketing is the same level of difficulty as it is in software as it is in information publishing. Support is a little easier in e-commerce than it is in software, information publishing, or other businesses because it's just like return information. So really, it's product. How are you going to develop product? And in e-commerce, that's the hardest part. And so I thought maybe we can leverage existing supply chains to attack different verticals or go after different verticals. I I have a a agency client uh that we run ads for that does dental stuff. They they uh give they she's a dentist. She's been around forever. She's got like a $30 million a year business selling toothpaste and um you know u you know teeth enamel strengthening stuff. And I thought, I wonder if this stuff that she's already making would work on animals. And it turns out, yes, it would. That's an additional use case that we could use this established supply chain for. So, we spun up a brand specific to T tooth decay for dogs. And we just launched it last week. Took us a couple months to to get it up and running, to get our, you know, maybe six months to get all of our stuff together, our packaging, and everything. It's going super well. And it's like we are super focused just on this one problem that we're solving which is turns out one of the biggest problems that dogs have is their teeth decay and then that causes heart problems and it just like a big thing and so we're solving that problem and that's like a large niche but it's still a very specific thing that we're doing and all the content will be about that and it turns out Molly has a dog rescue so we can use that. So, um, I'm kind of rambling now, but I think >> No, I think >> I think the point you're making is to focus. And so many people that when they're in e-commerce, especially in the older days of Amazon, they're just looking for opportunities. Just looking to flip something almost like the old days of drop shipping or something. They let me just put my name, find something, put my name on it, and sell it. And they're not building a brand. I mean, you've done that with with with [clears throat] your uh your other brand, the cosmetic brand. I mean, where you actually, you know, with boom, you you partnered with somebody that and you took them to the next level and you did everything around that and now that's a a multi a huge eight figure business or maybe approaching nine figures by now. Uh, and that's where I think it's at. You know, there's another example here in in Austin. There's there's uh Norm knows knows this one, but there's these guys that started Rhino USA. Rhino US is two kids. They're in their 20s. They started Rhino USA uh and with like [clears throat] 20 grand and they were doing they're they're big in the off-roading place uh off-roading and you know four-wheelers and uh going through creeks and stuff like that. So they they built some straps to help you when when you're uh when you're stuck to pull you out. That has now evolved into they're building their version of Jurassic Park here in Austin. They've got 189 acres. They're doing $100 million plus a year. They just bought 189 acres. I went out there last Friday and got a sneak peek and we were going going uh in these jeeps and stuff into these creeks and up these banks and basically tip tip tipping the vehicle almost 180° almost uh you know up uh and and it's just crazy and like we're people are going to get stuck here. It's like yeah that's the point. We want influencers to come out here and get stuck and then use our equipment to actually pull themselves out and video it and that's it's brilliant what they're doing but that's that's because they're a brand. They're able to do that. they're gonna have their own little store there. And that's what you have always espoused is like quit selling products and build a brand. And how can we get that message across to people because that's a whole different mentality and a whole different way of thinking than just selling. >> What is a brand? We have to you have to ask yourself and the way I like to think about it is ultimately what your business is is a group of people who you're communicating with. That's what your business is. You got a group of people and generally for 99% of businesses, well, let's call it 95% cuz obviously there's just like mass market businesses that are giant behemoths, but for the businesses that we deal with in the in the small business sector, that group of people is sharing a collective experience, right? I am a dog owner. My dog's teeth get sick or get decay. I want to solve that problem. I have a I am a dog owner. uh my dog um you know gets gets joint aches, I want to solve that problem. Like so or you know in the case of boom, I'm a woman who's over 55 who's being sold this idea that that my value is declining as I age and that that everything is anti-age, anti-rinkle, and everyone's telling me that I am um losing value and that that my life is just going to get worse from here. And it's like so that's a group of people that I'm speaking to about a particular experience they're having. And if you can understand who are you talking to and what are the experiences they're having, you can relate with them through content, education, entertainment, etc. that you produce. I mean, you guys are doing it here, right? You're producing content that's for business owners that's designed to add value to their life that's based on the experiences they're having that hope I don't know what you guys sell, but I'm sure eventually you sell something. hopefully build some relationships, some intimacy, some connectedness, some good feelings towards you guys so that then when this audience when you ask them to go take an action, check out a product that you might get a commission on, buy something from you, join a service, an event, they're likely to do it. And I think that ultimately when I think about my brands, I'm like, "Okay, and it's interesting because I have this brand. I just I just uh I own 30% of this company here. It's uh Safe Sleep. We're a cell phone radiation uh protection case company." And uh it's a eight figureure brand. And what's interesting about this brand is that a great product by the way. I'll send them to you guys. Um, and you know, listen, everyone is selling you the next thing's going to kill you. It's the microplastics in your under in your in your testicles. It's the pesticides on your food. It's the EMS radiation from your phone. Everyone wants to sell you on some that is going to kill you. You're going to buy into whatever you buy into. I happen to inherit this fear because my mom when I first got a cell phone when I was like 14 was all freaked out about EMFs and had the little sticker on there. Turns out those things don't work. But but it's like you buy into whatever these things you buy into. And I bought into the EMF one. Um and these cats saw me on a webinar talking about my safe product and they reached out and they're like, "Hey man, we're we're smart marketer customers, consumers of your content and that's our product." And then we end up going to business together. Um, the point is that that this business is very interesting because, you know, you get the like tinfoil hat people, you get those cats, you get the like, you know, um, the make America healthy again moms who like don't want their kids on getting radiated from the iPads. You get like the random hippie dude out in the country, you know, wearing an arrowhead necklace. Like so I have so many different avatars and so the brand is a little more difficult because I have to like cohes all that and speak to them in a way that is going to resonate even though it's like a very wide swath of different people. And so what I've been doing is tagging them and communicating with them differently based on who they are and what they came in on. And so our advertisements now, it's like I've got ads that are um you know, moms talking about protect your kid from this iPad radiation that then go to a landing page. It's like talking about that that then when you click on goes to my general site with all my products. So I've got like a funnel for that person. And then I got another one for the like I'm a you know the 5G towers are killing people and the the people who are a little bit more into um quote unquote conspiracy theories and I've got so it's like so in that in this brand I branch the content out from an advertising standpoint to attract people based on where they're coming in from. But then my ongoing like okay let's imagine you buy you buy you buy into the idea that your cell phone here's another interesting just to sell you on this a little bit in the 40s the tobacco companies knew that their [ __ ] was toxic but they but nobody found out until the 80s cuz they paid off everybody. Well when you go into your cell phone you go into the like general about legal there's a notice in there for RF exposure. It tells you this thing is radiating some [ __ ] on you. So, um, big tech knows that that this is a problem. But the point is that once you buy it, so you you came from wherever you came from, you got, you know, we got your attention however we did. You were one of our avatars that we were reaching. Some some people are not even problem aware. I just explained to you guys a bunch of people who knew about the problem of EMF. There's also people who are not problem aware who you have to educate and get them in. But once they buy then now I have generalized mass market sort of you've now bought in from wherever you came from to the idea that overexposure to EMFs is not a good thing and now my ongoing branding education is very like technical educational world event like for example um there was a uh theory going around so the 49ers have like uh an don't quote me on the numbers but I want to say it's something like this 11 times higher um tendon and joint injury uh in the last two years or three years across their roster than any other football team. >> And one [clears throat] of the theories that came out was that their practice facility had moved literally right next door to this giant cell tower, you know, station that was radiating stuff and that that was affecting their ligaments. And this became a national news story. It was on all the big podcasts. Not that we necessarily believed that uh but it's interesting to our audience and it's interesting to think about and what if that is the case and what are they saying about it and so that's like a piece of content that we might send to our audience because they're interested that's more of like that's not like a hey this study came out from Sweden that shows this thing because we'll have that kind of content as well. Point being our brand has become about the problem that our product solves but we're getting people from all different swaths. We're educating people about the problem and then once they come in, we're keeping them entertained and educated through current events that are happening in the world, educational stuff that's like sciencebacked and we're trying to like uh coalesce this community of people around this um experience that they're all sharing which is they're all technology users and somewhat potentially afraid of that technology. >> So I'm kind of um I want to know more about the microplastics for my testicles product. You happen to have one? I I don't have the product. >> It's a net. It's a little net you put around. It's like [laughter] they call it a ball sack. >> Oh, there's a there's a there's a supplement now they're saying that dissolves the microplastics. Basically, there was the study that came out that said that uh the average person had like a credit cards worth of plastic in their body. Um and uh there's all the you know, I am not personally b I am not personally afraid of the microplastics. I do not think that is the thing that is going to get me. Look, something's going to get you eventually. I'm not concerned that it's going to be the microplastics. So, I'm not really worried about that one. But a friend of mine is very, very concerned about these microplastics. And you shouldn't drink out of aluminum cans because the aluminum cans have a have a liner in there. And he's got all kind. He's terrified. >> Well, I think you said something important there. Two things important is that most people don't do in in marketing, especially in e-commerce, is they don't segment the leads that the incoming leads. They just they have one message for everybody and they don't break it down to like the the three different examples you gave for the the hippie and the the [clears throat] this person and the that person, that person, and then everybody's getting the same message and they go, "Yeah, this this marketing doesn't work." And then the second thing that you said I think is super important is is most people they get the customer, then they're on to the next customer. They're on to the next customer. they don't they don't they don't cultivate and and maximize and take an opportunity of the ones that they they already have. It's so much easier to get to to sell to a someone who's already bought from you than it is to sell to a new person. And so many brands and so many people ignore that. Uh they might send out a little newsletter or a holiday sale or something like that from time to time, but they don't double down on that. And one of the best ways to do that in my opinion is with email. And can can you talk about what what you do and and about that? >> I think I think from inception of your company, you have to understand that you are two things. Okay. You're a product development company, which means you have to be from the very beginning intending to build a portfolio of offerings. You just can't make it in e-commerce today. I I had a guy I almost invested in his company. The thing that stopped me, 80% of his revenue is from new customers every year because his portfolio is just not one. I'm not going to get into his category because I think he would be upset about that. But basically, you just kind of don't buy this thing twice really. And as we know, customer costs go up every year. And it's like he's got if we can't get repeat revenue above 20%, boy, it's going to be hard to justify wanting to sign on to that party. How do you get repeat revenue up above 20%. Yes, you email, you SMS, you entertain, you educate, you run merchandising and sale events, and we'll talk about that in a second. But more importantly, you develop products that the community is interested in. And then not everyone's going to be a home run, but you only need one home run a year because the more fish hooks you have in the sea, you guys know this from the Amazon game. I have an Amazon company. I I I sold it in 2018. The guy ran into the ground. I just bought it back a year ago and turned it back on. And my goal was to develop 12 products this year. I only got three out, but it's like the more fish hooks I have in the sea, even if they're base hits, the more revenue I can generate. Now, of course, that makes things more uh complex from a logistics and operational standpoint. So, you got to be good at that. But you also discontinue products that don't work. But you have got to develop. You have got to launch. That gives you the ability to make bundles. That gives you the ability to cross-ell. As an example, in Boom, I I didn't create my business partner who has passed away um in Boom created this category of cosmetic called a multi-purpose blush stick. And basically the idea was, hey, you know, I'm 55. When I was 20, I needed a 100 cosmetics. One for my eyelid and one for my earlo and and now I just want to simplify it. This these three things, get rid of your whole cosmetic bag, buy these three multi-purpose blush sticks, they can do everything for you. And it was revolutionary and it was genius and it was awesome. Um, and then over time we began to add, okay, some people just aren't interested in blush. Maybe they want lip gloss. Maybe they want mascara. Maybe they want under eye cream. We started like opening up the avatar. Uh, uh, it's women over 55, but then it's like, what other thing? Well, they're using sunscreen. And so, um, we would survey our audience, figure out what they're interested in, have our best customers be our R&D team, send it to them, get their feedback, and we are a product development company first and foremost, and then we're a marketing company and a education company. So, you're both a product development company and you are also a media company. Now, being a media company does not mean you have to create things. You can curate content off of YouTube. You can be a knife company. I got a guy who sells knives. He sends video to his audience, post it on his blog. It's an embed of YouTube video from Emerald Legosi using this Bearclaw knife technique, chopping the onions. And he's like, "Look at this amazing knife technique. It's called the Bearclaw. That's how you do it." You know, it's from Emerald. Go check it out. Hey, by the way, these are our six knives you can use for that. So, but you have to also be a media company. Whether you're curating content, making your own content, uh, or a combination of both, or getting your customers to make content on your behalf, or buying paid creator content or influencer content, um, you're going to need to do both. You're going to need to entertain, educate, and yes, the mediums that you're going to use are email and SMS because those are really the only two communication mediums you have outside of advertising. And you want most of your advertising budget being used to generate awareness for the brand, not really being used to engage the people you already have. Sure, some of it's going to be used to engage people already have, but most of your 80% of your ad budget you want to go to awareness generation. And so, you're using paid advertising, email, and SMS to engage people. And not just to say, "Hey, buy my stuff. Hey, I got a new product launch." know to say, "Hey, check out this interesting article about the 49ers." So that when you inevitably at least once a month do a merchandising event, try to sell them something, have a new bundle, a new product launch, it's not the first time they've heard from you or seen about you since the last time they bought your product. >> So Norm and I um have an a we do a lot of things, but we we have a new agency called Dragonfish that does email marketing. And because we what we found in teaching and educating a lot of these e-commerce brands where we're well known in that space is that most of them suck. It e they either don't email or if they do uh they they suck. Um and [clears throat] or a lot of them don't even have a list. They don't even understand the value of a list or they're like afraid like what if I send them and three people unsubscribe? What am I going to do? I might offend them. Um and so [clears throat] we're like there's a massive opportunity here because I've I've made millions and millions of dollars off of email over the last uh 20 years. And so we [clears throat] we decided to do this and we're doing warm email. So we take their list and we help them maximize that. But we're not doing the traditional way of we're going to build your welcome flow and we're going to build your abandoned cart. We don't touch their current system. We don't touch their clavio. We don't touch anything that they're doing. We're the we're the side girl. We're we're your side hustle on the side. We set up brand new domains that we control reputations of. We set up brand new everything. And we we go out there. And we have the full foundational infrastructure underneath it that most people don't understand and don't know how to do right you know with all the technical side side of it and we control it. And then on the cold side we do intentbased. So we're able to actually we have direct direct line to the actual data source of with within a couple hours of someone typing something on Google. So if they type in what's the best shampoo for hair loss, we know who about 70% of those people are within a few hours. We have their email address, their business, their personal and business email address. We have their LinkedIn. We have a whole bunch of demographic data on them. We feed that into a system that cleans that data through multiple steps and then feeds it into a cold email sequence uh on a whole separate system, a whole separate infrastructure. And it's very technical and sends out uh emails to to get new customers coming in who are in market and have intent right there. But we know based on the keywords what level stage of awareness that they're in. So the marketing, the emails that we send are tailored towards that stage of awareness. And then we have a whole system of 24 different AI prompts right now. We're going to consolidate this that are extremely detailed where we analyze I just showed someone last week and I he said this is like world class. This is like next level. Um and we analyze and create these brains to actually do this entire process. There's a lot of AI involved and a lot of humans involved too to actually to go out and to maximize this. And we're targeting like like Norm said different avatars. We we create avatars and every message is like who is this avatar for and what what what is it saying? And and that's a level of of precision and execution that just most people don't do and don't understand. And um it it baffles my mind how people don't understand this and they just think they can go to chat GBT and just say write me an email to my customers and and have it uh actually work. And [clears throat] there's our one of our messages I'd like to get your take on this is that we're telling we come from a world where most people started on Amazon that's all they do. They might have a Shopify site on the side but most of them don't. And we're like no in today's world with AI and everything you've got to be omni channel. You've got to be a true brand. You can't just be an Amazon. you use Amazon. You should use Amazon because that's where a lot of people that's their shopping cart of choice and maybe you want to launch there because it's easier. You don't have to generate the traffic, but you've got to get off of that and you got to be doing the omni channel and become a true brand to succeed. What's your take on on that on on the omni channel? >> Yeah, I think that um money and skills that a lot of people don't have in e-commerce. >> Yeah. Uh the interesting thing is like if you get to 100 grand a month on Amazon and you just open a Shopify store and set up branded Google uh AdWord ads for your your um brand name, you'll make about 5% of that revenue. You make about five grand a month on on um Shopify just because of the people knowing about your brand on Amazon and searching for you. So there's like a 5% um sort of attrition rate from Amazon to Shopify which is kind of nice. Uh, and then of course you can supercharge that. And yeah, I mean obviously I'm I'm Shopify DTOC first, but I will say I have a brand right now that's only Amazon because the reason I have it that is because the CEO in place, so the way I do it now is I'm no longer the CEO of any brands. I have operators in place that I support through strategic direction. I'm not operating. I'm like um, you know, I'm like composing. Um, and my CEO is really good at Amazon. knows how to launch products on Amazon, knows how to run ads on Amazon, knows how to deal with merchandising and promotions on Amazon. And it's like the energy, the the value. If if my Amazon business is 5 million, which it's about I think we can go to 10 million faster on Amazon than we can adding um DTOC for this particular brand. So I think it does it is about the the brand owner and the operator. In an ideal world, would you immediately open up a Shopify store, get some uh some very simple ads going, uh get an email and SMS list? Yes. And the reason you would do it is not even so much that it's necessarily going to add a bunch of value because obviously it's going to take you a while to get that going, figure it out. You may or you may not, but it's going to make that brand more valuable. A brand that has 10% of its revenue on Shopify is more valuable than a brand that only has that has 100% of its revenue on Amazon. So, if you can split and diversify where the revenue is coming in, your brand when you go to sell it is far more valuable. And if you can hook up with some folks like you guys who know what they're doing and get somebody to help you with email, get someone to help you with SMS, get you someone to help you with ads, then yeah, you should definitely have your own site because the problem with Amazon is you don't own the customer and they can you you get negatively reviewed all you guys know all the problems with Amazon that people attack you and you get taken down and Amazon rips you off your supplier and makes your product themselves and it is a nightmare over there. you get you it's it is problematic and it's also really wonderful because you know 47 cents at every dollar in America is spent over there and they're growing by 10% year-over-year and um you kind of have to be there. Uh but yes, I think in an ideal world, you are both on Amazon and you have your own platform. And I think I wouldn't probably move to my own platform until I was, you know, 10 20 grand a month on Amazon. You know, I had some revenue. I had had product market fit. I had a good business established then. Okay. >> Yeah. I had a well a couple of companies that I was working with, they were doing beauty as well. Their probably average order would be about 65 bucks. The guy had 180,000 emails. 180,000 emails. And he never reached out to anybody. He was afraid that he'd offend somebody. And I'm just sitting there shaking my head like, "Come on. Come on." He wouldn't go on Shopify. Had no Shopify store, just Amazon. And I was trying to work with the guy and nope. to the day that I left him. Um, he's still not doing any email marketing. >> Baffles my mind. Uh, we have a guy right now that came to us got 800,000 >> emails uh in in this category and has hardly done anything with them and we're like, dude, you're sitting on a gold mine. I mean, there's a gold mine there and it's a recurring revenue product. Uh, but what is a mistake that a lot of people make that it's a different mindset when it comes to DDC versus Amazon? Amazon, you don't have to drive the traffic. D, you got to drive the traffic. Uh, what what's a big shift that a lot of people need to make when they're actually trying to grow off of Amazon? >> Hey, Kev, have you ever felt trapped running a business or just burnt out? Yeah, that's happened a time or two. Um, how how would I find out if what I have is actually worth something if I'm looking to to exit it? >> Well, I think one of the best things they could probably do is go to an expert that understands the market sentiment right now. First one that comes to mind is is Quiet Brokerage. And here's why. They're going to build you up. They're going to understand your company. And at the end of the day, you're going to know how to maximize your valuation. So, the very first thing you need to do is go and get your free confidential uh valuation at quietllight.com and then, you know, let the games begin. >> Awesome. What was that website again? >> It's quiet.com. >> Awesome. I'm going to head over there. So, with Amazon, you do not need to create direct response marketing assets because Amazon does it for you. They they've optimized the page for you. They tell you what bullets to put in there. They give you your six images. You know what's really interesting about this? The one thing that Amazon business owners understand better than traditional DTOC operators is um is image carousel optimization. So, um, infographics in the image carousel, badging over your image carousel images, sales videos in the image carousel, because on Amazon, what you really have to sell is that image carousel, and then your little bit of bullets and your title, and yes, you have your A+ content and whatever else, but it's like that's really what on mobile is going to sell it. And so Amazon business owners do understand how to generate direct response e-commerce uh good carousel assets, but they don't understand sales pages. They don't understand advertising videos. They don't understand uh email marketing sequences and flows. And so it's a skill set of learning how to develop assets that you're going to use in your marketing uh from email and SMS to your website to your ads. And it really starts with the ads and then it goes to the websites and then the email and SMS follows. And so I think the thing to get good at thing to the thing to learn is how do I make assets that are going to compel people to consume the content and then engage with the content? And that that is like how do I make a good video ad? How do I make a good landing page sales page? How do I make a good email flow? And I think that is the core difference. on Amazon, you really just focus on product and then yes, you focus on your PPC marketing on Amazon and your merchandising on Amazon and shipping your products in there and whatever. But the but the but it's like Amazon does so much of it for you because all the buyers are there and it's also your sales platform. It's both the traffic and the sales platform. On e-commerce outside of Amazon, you have to build your own sales platform and then drive your own traffic. So, it's just a little bit it's a little bit more difficult. And I think the thing to remember is that it takes more time. It takes a little more time to dial in the messaging, a little more time to dial in the ads, a little more time to figure out what converts. And I think a lot of people quit before the miracle. [snorts] >> What are you doing with AI? >> What am I not doing with AI, man? >> Okay. Okay. >> All right. Are are you >> are you promoting because I haven't seen this, but are you doing anything? Are you promoting anything uh with your a >> Go ahead. So I will I will tell you there's kind of three levels of AI user. There's the uh person who just sort of engages and talks to the chatbot. There's uh the person who has uh you know claude co-work and or or something similar where they're using a hosted um uh agent to execute things for them to build decks for them to write emails for them to connect to omnisend for them and build out email flows. And then there's the person who is using you know Open Claw or Hermes uh and building specialized sub agents uh to go out and execute specific tasks. Um that's kind of like you could give you could sort of write the three avatars of AI usage pretty that's a good generalization of it. And um I have a lot of so I'll talk to you about what we're selling at Smart Marketer, but implementationwise within my company, I have all three of those avatars within my different companies. Um and I am uh doing my best to enable my team uh to AI enable my team in the best way I can for the different use cases and outputs that their workflows require. Um, and you know, in my Zipify product, I have a bunch of products. Uh, I have a bunch of AI built into Zipify where we're using AI on the back end to make that product better. We're using AI to develop and build new and ship new products. So, I'm using AI as a developer to uh, you know, because your AI is as good as your data layer. So, at Zipify, I have 14,000 stores and all of their um, upsell, cross-ell, purchase data, price points, offers, discounts, etc. So that brain, that layer of data, the AI can do a lot with that. There's a lot of information there that I can use to say, okay, you know, now in Zipify, you just click a button and AI will build the funnel for you and test it against your human built funnel. And a lot of times our AI is winning. So I'm using AI to um on the developer side as a service provider in a million different ways that are not relevant for e-commerce business owners. Now, a smart marketer has developed an AI tool called Gary. And what Gary is is Gary is a brain of all of the it's it's a Hermes agent. So, it's like it's like Nvidia's version of Open Claw. So, it's spec it's agents that are living on servers that are executing things on behalf of your brand. Okay. Um but that are doing so that are your brand connects to Smart Marketer. We build this out for you and then you manage your agents via Slack, but we we're managing all the agents in the back end and the Nvidia and the Hermes and all the hosting and all that jazz. So, what it what Gary does is Gary has every course we've ever written, every video I've ever done, every mastermind I've ever produced, every event me or Molly's ever spoken. It's got the whole brain of everything that Smart Marketer is. And then it has Gary who's the main agent and then Gary has sub agents underneath him. So Gary has all the context and then the sub agent is like the CRO agent. So the CRO agent MCPs into Shopify and can develop for you, can run split tests for you, can build pages for you. Um then it's got the email agent and you can name these little agents and the email agent MCPs into Clavio or Omnisend and can build out your flows and can write your emails and can design them. And so it's like uh specific outputs for e-commerce businesses that are informed by the smart marketer brain that then have >> [clears throat] >> uh that that's Gary. Then Gary oversees the agents that are doing the outputs and then you sort of say yes no to what the agent and it does analysis for you and suggests things. Hey, I noticed this about your Facebook ads. It's running it's got all your it's also connected to all your data sources, your Facebook, your Amazon, your Shopify, your Google. So it it has all the smart marketer data but also has all your business data. And so it can look at all your business data and then give suggestions and then also do outputs. Um now anyone could build this. You could go build this on openclaw yourself. This is not like a but you wouldn't have the smart marketer brain and a lot of people are not technical enough to build and manage and host their own agents. And so we we do that for you as a service. One of our services that we'll do for you. >> That's the power. I mean the power in AI is distribution and data. Uh, and so if you got the distribution and you have the data, then you have a moat. Without without those two things, it's it's very diff very easy to get copy copied, duplicated or or put out to pasture. Um, >> I think it's so true that like there's not a lot of uniqueness now even in like like dude, I have a like Zipify is a big business, but anyone could build it now. It's like there's no moat around building that. You could build it if you spent the time and the energy. And it's like, so who has the distribution? Who has the ability to market the product? Who has the ability to retain the customer, especially with AI? It's so easy to vibe code things. Now, of course, vibecoded products are not going to hold up under enterprise level stress, and so there's, you know, you're still going to need developers, but but yeah, it's a good point, man. It's AI has removed a lot of moes. I I look at coding like the uh the you know in Austin especially we have a lot of food trucks and a lot of guys will get into to prove a concept uh they can get into a food truck for you know 10 20 $30,000 and start their taco stand and if that really takes off then they get into brick and mortar and they become more quote unquote enterprise vibe coding is almost the same thing like hey let me prove that there's a concept for this >> uh and then if this works then I need to take this to the next level of enterprise but even in that I mean you're in the SAS business. There's a lot of people that say SAS tools are dead because now it's all about the data. You know, you look at Helium 10 and uh and Amazon, they're struggling uh and because the the the sellers at the lower end are turnurning out fast. The the sellers that have been around for a while are doing well and but they're s sitting on a minefield of data and just open up an MCP to that data. And that's the next step. It's like I don't need to go into Helium 10 and be limited by what their what their filters are when I have MCP. I can go in there and do my own thing. So what where's where where's SAS going? I mean we just with Dragonfish, we won't use a tool if it doesn't have MCP. And you just mentioned Omnisan. They just recently added MCP. Uh and if we actually have canceled tools and move to another tool at, you know, delaying three or four weeks of doing something just because it has MCP. >> Yeah. Um, I think SAS is changing. I still think there's great opportunity in SAS. Like as an example, uh, we we just launched a tool called, um, Thumb Stop. And I think our website is either it's getth thumbtop.ai or use thumbtop.ai. You can check it out. Um, and I should really know the website. I think it's use thumbtop.ai, but it might be get thumb.ai. and it and and it generates email images, social ad images, uh Facebook ad images, uh organic social graphics, um you know, axon end cards and animations. So, it's an ad generator. Right now, you could go to Nano Banana and generate your own ads, but my tool has 30 or 40 customized prompts that I wrote that are specific to creative that I'm seeing working across my ad agency that then connects to your product and you can say, "Okay, for this product, I want a before and after. For this one, I want a founder." So basically it's like yes it's a vibecoded app but and it is connecting to a readily available um you know image generator model in nano banana but it is with my own um sort of um IP added on to it and also there's people aren't that technical most people aren't going to go and like sign up to Google and figure out how to make their own images they just want to click okay good connect my product yes okay now I can get a 100red ad images uh in these different styles and I think that there's still great opportunity in software. Um, you just have to have some level of unique IP and the ability to market and sell. And I do think data aggregators, I mean, yeah, if your whole thing was data and analytics, AI's killed that. AI killed a lot of things. AI killed customer support in America. AI killed, dude. What are what are the Philippines and India going to do? half of their uh workforce was like customer support for on phones and email and chat and it's like already that's cut down by like 80%. Because AI is doing a lot of it and so I do think there's a lot of disruption happening but at the same time you know when when uh when the internet came out travel agents which was billions of dollars in industry they went away so those people figured out that that whole industry was gone. So, I think industries come and go, and I don't think it's a um like a net, it's not like a net zero effect for shop for SAS where all of a sudden because AI's here, SAS is dead. I just think that certain SAS are going to get hit hit harder than others. Uh but but I'm still all in on SAS, man. It's my favorite business because SAS is it's hard. It's the hardest business, but it's like it's it's has the highest profit margins. It has the longest stickier. Like I have people who've been on Zipify since 2015. They've been here the whole time. It's super sticky. And I Dude, Dude, you guys remember Lead Pages? Remember that? Way back? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> I still get a I was an affiliate for Lead Pages. I I have not talked about Lead Pages in 15 years. Like I'm literally since like 2012. I still get affiliate commissions. Who the hell is still using Lead Pages? How am I getting commissions from that? I don't know. But SAS is sticky, man. And so I believe in SAS. I love SAS. I think SAS is actually easier to get into now because of AI and I do think that niche SAS makes a lot of sense and you have to be a good marketer and once you try to go and get more than 100 or 200 or a thousand customers on there then it's a you're not going to do it vibe coding it. you're going to have to get a real development uh >> is the new lead magnet instead of download the PDF of uh you know recipes or whatever. Uh and now it's like use this tool to accomplish something really really fast and give me give us your information. It's it's one of the best lead magnets there could be. >> I built one actually that you guys can check out. So, I have this um KPI sheet that I run my business off of, and every week it tells me um my sales by channel, my percentage of marketing spend to total revenue by platform. It's like, okay, I I this this week I did a million dollar in sales. I spent $300,000 on paid advertising, 20% of that was on Meta. So, it tells me that. It tells me new customers versus repeat customer revenue and percentage rate. It It's got a bunch of really wonderful data points all coming from Shopify, Facebook, Google, and Amazon. And I was pulling all this manually into a spreadsheet, distributing that to my board. And now I I built an AI bot that MCPs into these uh platforms, pulls the data, and displays it. And it's like that for an e-commerce business. I literally run my business on this spreadsheet. I look at the spreadsheet every week, and I can tell, man, why is our discount rate so high? It was 25%. We're not running a sale. Coupon must have gotten out. Somebody look into that. Like, I can tell what's happening. and um we're going to use that as a lead magnet. So, it's exactly what you're saying. It's like uh it's the best for lead magnets. >> Now, I want to go back to the marketing side again. Is there anything that you're doing for AI that I mean, you shouldn't be touching with marketing. So, there's lots going on around marketing and AI, but should we leave something alone? Should that be left to the marketers? I mean AI should never create from inception your identity. So as an example, we build a brain that writes all our copy. I'm sure you guys have copy bots, right? But that brain has all the historical human written stuff. our mission statement, our brand statement, our product descriptions, our um you know, emails that we sent out, our articles that we've written, like who we are and what we think and why we think that way and what our history is, that was created by us. I'm not letting an AI create my identity. Now, once the AI has all the context and all the historical stuff and knows who we are and what we stand for and what our customers think and what our reviews are and all the all the data, sure, will I let AI write all my stuff and then have a human edit it? Absolutely. But I would never let AI um initiate an identity because I feel like there's this is going to get woo woo, but like there's a there's a spirit to a brand and when you're putting something into the world, you're like making a contribution of spirit into the world, an energetic imprint. And I want the energetic imprints that I am putting into this world to be of of real heart. Uh, this is sounding crazy, I know, but it's like I wouldn't let AI uh be like be the inception point of of who I am and what I believe and what I stand for and what I'm talking about, what my products are >> personally because an AI is genuine an amalgamation of what everyone else thinks. And I just think that that is lazy. Um, and you know what else should it not do? I mean, you got to have someone checking it cuz it hallucinates and it screws up data and it gets things wrong. And so it's like you can't just let it run. You got to have somebody overseeing it, checking it, making sure like, you know, I have I have uh and of course you have like that's Gary's job, right? Gary has these sub agents. The sub agents produce work. Gary checks it before sending it to the human to make sure it's good. So you can also put an AI layer of of um you know, redundant checking in there. But but I think that I if it I wouldn't let the AI just autonomously operate. Put a human in there. Make sure they're looking over stuff because the AIs are still confused about things often. Um and then you know some people would argue that the code that it spits out isn't uh um super great uh for like your Shopify website. It's not going to load fast. Like people have issues. I'm like you know what this AI knows liquid. It's liquid is not that difficult of a language and I'm fine with it. And I have not seen any any performance uh decrease by using um AI written code for my Shopify site. Uh but some people would argue that um >> well some of that's because it's generic. I mean you you tell claw to go write a a web page, it'll go write it and it'll functionally probably work, but there's it still makes mistakes. And if you guide it, if you if you have a web developer, like you said, the humans in the loop guiding it and then then stress testing it against a [clears throat] few different things and going back and forth with it and then saying, "No, fix this. Now, fix this. Now, fix this." You can get it pretty damn good. Uh, and but that's where most people don't do it is they just output it one time. It's like, "Oh, that sucks. That can't do it." It's like, "No, it actually can do it if you actually know how to guide it." uh and how how to put in the guard the guard rails and and all that kind of stuff and and [clears throat] it can be extremely effective and you still need a human. I'm not saying that discounts the human but it can be extremely efficient and effective. >> I built an agent. I called it Kevin >> and I had to I had to shut it down because it kept insulting me. [laughter] >> Oh, that that's a good that was a good agent then. that that that was a good agent. Um, [clears throat] so what are you seeing with a how is AI affecting marketing right now? How how I mean other than people using it? >> Here here's the sad re the sad reality. >> The sad reality is that that AI is enabling you to operate your company with fewer human employees. And so you know when you talk about pay like in e-commerce okay e-commerce is what I know don't ask me about other business models but but e-commerce I know and um and e-commerce you you have a generalized P&L structure that you need to adhere to or you will go out of business. As an example if you are spending more than 35% of your revenue on marketing it's not going to work. I'm sorry. It's just not. If you make a million dollars a year in revenue and more than 350,000 is spent on marketing, you're going to go out of business because it's unlikely that less than 25% is going to be spent on COGS and it's unlikely which is cost of goods. Unlikely that less than 20%ish is going to be spent on team like you have these buckets, right? You have you have marketing, you have general and administrative, which is like contractors and employees and you know salary. You have cost of goods sold. You have shipping and insurance. you have like these buckets, right? And with AI, what it has done is it has made so that you can have the GNA line item lower. So if you were so so so you need more revenue per employee essentially to compete in the industry in order to stay up with uh what's happening and have the money you need to run marketing and operate your business. Um you have to run it leaner and AI enables that. And the good benchmark would have been sub 20%. If you're running um your e-commerce business, it's a million dollars in revenue and you've got payroll and contractors and all that stuff under 200k. Okay, can make that work. People are now trying to do that at 10%. At 8% that's kind of like becoming the standard. I'm stop still probably running closer to 15 to 20. Um but but that is what AI and is able is enabling. It's enabling one individual to have more output. Um, and it's not great for the uh job market and for the workforce. Um, and in order to compete and stay uh relevant, you have to be AI enabling your team because you're not going to be able to move as fast. You're not be able to operate as quick. You're not going to have the kind of margins you need if you don't. And so, we talked to people in our mastermind about about um that it's the CEO's job to do AI enablement because the team members don't want to. They're afraid of it. They feel like this thing's coming to take my job. I don't want to use this. I want to do my work. And so a lot of people are resistant to AI we have found. Um and ultimately I think where we're going is um more sophisticated knowledge workers who are using AI to achieve their outcomes um as the norm versus larger teams with gradient knowledge knowledge worker levels like you know super advanced knowledge worker to like basic knowledge worker who's just doing like you know responding to to refund requests like the the lower level knowledge work is going away and it's being automated. >> 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 [laughter] 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. >> So Kev, it's the top of the hour. Do you have any other questions for Ezra? >> Um what [clears throat] what's what's the future of e-commerce? What's going to what's going to happen? Is it going to continue? I mean, you look at the numbers on Amazon, 200 200 2.1 million sellers last year down to 1.6 million this year. You look at the number of Shopify sites that go under. And you look at Tik Tok where it's 1% of the of the sellers in Tik Tok shop making 60% of the sales and on and on and on. Is this going to become more of an exclusive club uh where the people who are already established are going to do well and the newcomers good luck or or is there still opportunity in e-commerce? Hey man, there's there's nine figure businesses built in e-commerce every year. So there's clearly still opportunity. Um there's more competition the market there there's more consolidation uh between Tik Tok and Amazon and Meta and you know and everybody's fighting for the checkout. Shopify wants you to use their shop app. They don't want you to buy on Apple Pay. They want you to use Shopay. Google doesn't want you to buy on on Shop Pay. They want you to buy on Google Pay. Amazon doesn't want you using the Shop app. They want you in their app uh using their one-click purchase where they get the commission and the the percentage of the sale on the credit card charge. So, the big players are fighting for checkout. That's really the game in e-commerce. Tik Tok wants to check out, Meta wants to check out, Google wants to check out, Apple wants to check out, Amazon wants to check out, Shopify wants to check out. That's the the big battle a foot right now is for checkout. And um Shopify is dumping hundreds. Well, Shopify is dumping a lot of money. I'm co-developing uh some stuff in their app with them, but they have the shop app which is you use this on your phone. It's uh it's the shop app where basically it's like Amazon. It's one app. All the Shopify sellers are in there. You can add multiple products. You can click with one purchase. You can shop. It's like Shopify's answer to because Amazon's real easy. It's like you've got all the sellers in there. You can add all the stuff to one order. You can click purchase. It tells you when it's coming. It's got all the follow-up. So, Shopify is developing that. And I think that um the thing about e-commerce for sellers is that we have to understand that uh more and more the sales are going to the platforms and less and less to our websites especially with uh once AI enabled e-commerce really rolls out and you can buy in chat GPT and you can buy in claude and like um you can already buy integrated social commerce inside of meta that's 5%ish of people's sales on average. So more and more sales are happening at the uh engagement layer. Amazon being an engagement layer, shop app being an engagement layer, you know, ChatGpt being an engagement layer, Tik Tok being an engagement layer, meta being an engagement layer, less and less sales are happening all the way back on your website. So the engagement layer and the commerce are sandwiching together. And so what we have to get good at as e-commerce business owners is being present on all the engagement layers and visible on the engagement layers through paid advertising, through organic optimization, so on and so forth. I don't really believe that it's harder today than it was 15 years ago. In fact, I think it's easier. There's more tools available. There's more education available. I think the difficult part is producing products with good enough margin that enable you to survive because it's a tough, you know, it's not just e-commerce. It's like it's a tough economy. Uh people are being squee the middle class is being squeezed from every direction. Those are our buyers. And so people's money goes 25% less far than it did four or five years ago. Now, do I think that lasts forever? No. Do I think it's actually easier to launch a brand and find a supplier and make a good product and develop a product and deal with international trade and all kinds of stuff today than it was any other time in history? Yes. Do I think it's still a wonderful opportunity for e-commerce? Yes. Do I think you're going to need a little bit more upstart capital than you did previously? Yeah. Barrier to entry is a little higher, you know, than it once was. So, I don't know. There's pros and cons on either side. I'm an ever I'm ever an optimist. So, I kind of feel like I'm launching, I'm investing, I'm developing, and I believe that I will build I have yet to build my best brand. Um, and I think it's the same for anybody who gets into the game. And look, are the statistics that like most people fail? Yeah. That's just business in general, though. It's not just e-commerce. And so it's like I don't know. Um if you're hanging out with guys like you, you're much less likely to fail than if you're not. So the people listening to this probably have an edge. >> Good answer. >> I would agree with that. >> If they want if they want an edge, how would they follow you or get in touch with you or uh keep up what's what your world is doing? >> Smartmarketer.com is my blog. Um, Zipify, zip ify.com is my Shopify apps. And I'm on social media, Ezra Firestone on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. I'm I'm all over those places. I mostly use in I'm mostly an Instagram user in my own personal life. I've kind of fallen off of Facebook, so I don't really have much going on there, but my team still posts over there and stuff. So, that's where you me >> as much as it's worth. I've taken a bunch of courses and they are awesome. It's the team puts a ton of effort into it, so you get what you pay for. Ezra, you do a great job. All right. Now, at the end of every podcast, we always ask our misfit if they have a misfit. Do I have I have many misfits. [laughter] Um I think Drew Sinaki would be a great guest. Um he's fantastic. I think um Chris Lang would be awesome. Upand cominging e-commerce entrepreneur, amazing guy out of out of Hatch, New Mexico. Um yeah, he's great. You should talk to him. >> All right. Well, we will get in touch with him, but uh Ezra, >> thanks so much for coming on the podcast today. This was great. >> My pleasure, boys. Enjoyed it. >> Appreciate it. Thanks, man. [clears throat] See you later. All right. How'd you like that? >> That was good stuff, Norm. That's uh good stuff from one of the smartest people in the space. Uh one of the smartest marketers that's Oh, that's why it's called Smart Marketer. One of the smartest marketers out there that's been doing this uh for a day or two. Um uh really enjoyed that. That that was that was great. >> Yeah. You know, I I think you know I'm a kind of a systems guy. Kind of maybe. [music] Anyway, just a little bit. Um, I geek out on that sort of stuff, but uh, he had a a course that I took and I think it was right around the time Molly Pitman [music] kind of came on board, but it was his project management uh, course and it was really good, very thorough. And uh, you know, I I don't know if that's still around. I'm sure it is, but uh, that really helped me organize uh, my dayto-day with my team. Well, you should organize your day around listening to the Misfits podcast, right? Every Tuesday. >> Well, of course. >> Shouldn't that be part of your daily organization or or >> should be on everybody's calendar? >> That that should be. So, how do they do that? Well, they can go over to YouTube and if you want the long form, you can go to MarketingMisfits podcast or if you just want 3 minute or less uh snippets uh that's marketing misfits clips [music] and you can also hit up our new uh newsletter and that's at misfits.news. It's a great newsletter. We've had a lot of people uh give it a lot of praise and they've given us a lot of feedback. So far all good. Fingers crossed. >> Yeah, it is good. It is a good newsletter and it's it's growing and and we got something else coming soon too, Norm. Uh what's a little Murderbot something? What What's that? >> Oh, uh [laughter] Misfit Mayhem. I think that's >> Yeah. Yeah. Misfit Mayhem. Uh so what can you tell them about that? Well, if you've ever gone to uh or if you went to Prosper last year or you went to the uh event in Nashville that Kevin held, you probably saw the Murderbot Ring. Well, we've turned that digital and now we're going to be launching it in uh I I'm not sure exactly when, but we're going to have small segments where we're going to allow anybody who's on live to bet on the uh mur murderbot and instead of knives, it's going to have cigars. So, it's pretty cool. I don't know if you want to add to that, Kev. Uh yeah, just uh watch for an announcement on social media from us. Uh or if you're on our email list or get the newsletter, we'll be announcing those will be live events. Um we'll record them. They they'll get replayed, but they'll be live events that you can participate in to win all kinds of cool prizes. Uh but other than that, we'll be back here again next Tuesday, right, Nor? >> All right. Very good. We will be back next Tuesday. All right, everybody. See you later. Take care.