Why Most Brands Fail (And How Yours Won’t) | Janelle Page | MMP #021

Why Most Brands Fail (And How Yours Won’t) | Janelle Page | MMP #021 Speaker 1: Hey, just go with what sounds exciting right now and go where you can give your whole heart and give your best because that's where you start to climb in the world because people recognize energy and passion and hard work and commitment and integrity. You take those things with you, doors will open. Unknown Speaker: You're watching The Marketing Misfits with Norm Farrar and Kevin King. Speaker 2: Norm, I think I spend more time with you than you spend with your wife. I mean, what's like this last couple months? Speaker 3: She's not complaining. Put it that way. Speaker 2: I came to your house and we hung out for a weekend, brainstorming this new business we're working on. Then I spent time with you on this Rocky Mountain train, the CMS, going across the beautiful Canadian Rockies, having to smoke a cigar with you. Actually, we didn't even, we smoked a cigar one night, one night out of the whole trip. And then go to Washington DC and do this podcast thing. And every night until three in the morning to smoke a couple of cigars. Sometimes I'm out there freezing even though it's August or September over the holidays. Speaker 3: Like 65 degrees? Who freezes in 65 degree weather? Speaker 2: A guy from Texas where it's 100 degrees right now. That's who freaking freezes in that stuff. That is someone who's not acclimated to that. It's like when I used to go to Columbia to visit my ex-wife and I'd take three showers a day because it's so freaking humid. You can't go outside or you got to take a shower because it's so humid. I'm not acclimated to that stuff. Then I'm seeing you coming to Austin for the think tank and then I got to go with you to Nashville for some other thing. I'm like, man, we might as well just get married now. They allow that up north of Toronto, is that little area you're living up there in the woods? Do they allow multiple... Speaker 3: Hey, look, we even have outdoor plumbing or outdoor toilets and we have plumbing. You know, it's a great thing, Canada. Speaker 2: And you got mac and cheese with ketchup on it. Speaker 3: That's... and ketchup chips, which you still never tried. Yeah. Speaker 2: I go to Norm's house to visit him. He's like, hey, his wife's preparing some meals. You want something to eat? I'm like, yeah, that'd be great. Should we go get some mac and cheese here? Like, oh, perfect. I love mac and cheese. One of my favorite things to eat. Whips out the mac and cheese and then Norm gets this big bowl of mac and cheese. And I'm like, all right, you got a good bowl. That's great. Let's go sit down over here and eat. Norm's like, hold on, where's the ketchup? I'm like, what do you mean ketchup? We don't have any fries here. What do you need ketchup for? Takes a bottle of Heinz ketchup or whatever it is and just empties half the bottle on top of the mac and cheese. I'm like, what the heck are you doing? What are you doing? It's mac and cheese. Speaker 3: That's the way to eat it. Speaker 2: He just polluted this stuff with a bunch of red, nasty tomato sugar. Speaker 3: You know, there's differences in Canada, right? Like when we eat French fries, we have vinegar on our French fries. Do you guys have that? Speaker 2: No, I do mayonnaise. Speaker 3: Yeah, I couldn't do that. Speaker 2: Ever since I went to Belgium, it's the first time I experienced that years ago. I was like, this is really good. So I get strange looks when I'm at a place and I order some fries, like, you want some ketchup? Like, no, bring the mayonnaise. They look at me like, what? What's wrong with you, dude? Speaker 3: That's what I say. Speaker 2: Peanut butter on their waffles, you know? That's not something that some people don't like either. But you know what? It's whatever the person wants, whatever the customer wants is what you got to appeal to. And that's what our guest today, I think is a master at. I mean, she's one of the probably, you know, when we got to know her, like 20, both of us met her, I think the same, well, in person the same time. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: I think that was, May of 2017 in Cancun at an event that I was helping produce with a couple other guys in the Amazon space, she's probably one of the most underrated, most successful marketers on the planet, actually. You might not know her name, but you should know her name. She's behind the scenes of a lot of these brands and a lot of these things that you have no idea. Speaker 3: Yeah, and the one thing that always stuck in my head when she started to talk, I think this was at the 2017 conference, but the broken leg. And she had some picture there and it was just like, it was crazy. Do you remember that? Speaker 2: Yeah, something about, yeah, I think, yeah, she had- A major fracture. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She showed a picture of it. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 2: Like some hiking or bicycling or something. Speaker 3: We'll get her talking about that. Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll get her. Yeah, she'll tell a story. She's probably back behind the scenes right now just laughing it up. Speaker 3: Probably. All right. Why don't we bring her up? Speaker 2: Let's just do it. Let's not torture her anymore. Speaker 3: Okay. Speaker 1: I am. I'm laughing. There's so much here that I need to like unpack because like I'm like where to start. First I have to say peanut butter and jelly on waffles is like the primo. Like that's the ultimate. I agree with that. And then I was like, dude, Kevin, can you speak at my funeral? People are going to say when I die, they'll be like, you know, but yeah, I'm having Kevin speak at my funeral. And then it wasn't, I have only broken one bone in my body, but I've broken it three times. And that's my nose. It's been put back together quite a bit from basketball. You're thinking about, I know exactly what you're thinking about. I had just missed a box jump at CrossFit and I gashed my leg. It went all the way to the bone. I had like 38 stitches. They were going to give me a shin job and I was like, of all the things that need a job on my body, like a boob job, you know, like face lift, whatever. It's not a shin job. Speaker 3: I didn't know you can get one of those. Speaker 1: And it's like so embarrassing. I should send you the footage because it was disturbing. I mean, you can see the bone, you can see the muscle in there. It was, hey, guys, it was like on number 110 box jump on like 36 inches. It's not like a 20, but it makes the story a little bit better. So they don't think of this fragile lady who missed a box jump and cuts her leg open. Speaker 2: Yeah, I did CrossFit like I'm too old now and too old and too fat to do CrossFit now. But I did it like 12 years ago for a couple of years and I remember those box jumps. And I have no balance and I'm the guy that's like falling backwards and like, but now I do step. I do old man stuff. I do step up. So my trainer now will have me, you know, step up and raise a leg up in the air and come back down and do the other leg. I'm doing the old man version of Box Jumps now. So what's up, Janelle? What's your story? Speaker 1: Yeah, what's my story? Guys, let's see. You know what? I always say I went to school to be a teacher. My dad was a teacher. So it's kind of like, oh, you know, and he was happy. I never heard my dad once wake up in the morning, be like, I got to go to work. You know, he loved what he did. And I love learning. So I was like, I'm gonna, I'm going to be a teacher. I mean, I really wanted to be a lawyer, but I was also encouraged that I should pick a profession that would allow me to support my husband in the future. I was raised Mormon. And at that time, women's were really we're to support our husbands have babies. And a lot of that's kind of evolving. Now women more you see more working out of the home, but I'm not active Mormon. I'm not a Mormon anymore, but that background being said, I was like, oh, I wanted to be a lawyer and get my PhD. And then my dad was like, you know, you really should consider like a nurse or like a teacher or something that would allow you to, you know, be a mom. So that's how I ended up as a teacher. I was like, well, my dad's a teacher. I'll be a teacher. And long story short, I went into teaching. You make like $20,000 a year. That was 20 years ago, but I'm sure they're up to maybe $28,000 a year now. And you don't make a lot of money, but you sure do make a big difference in those kids' lives. So I really did enjoy it. I taught history and English. Speaker 2: What grade were you in? Speaker 1: I taught everything from elementary to college. I've done it all. My favorite is the high school kids. I just love that age, you know. But what I tell you why that's important is because I believe teaching school is what gave me an understanding of how to break down complex subjects, simplify them, and anyone who can communicate clearly becomes very powerful. And if I don't know if you guys follow Alex Hermosi, he's got great marketing advice. But I think his power really has come from his ability to communicate so effectively, he can take complex subjects and bring them down. So it's very, very simple. And anyone who can do that wins. I mean, that's why Reagan won the election, right? He was a great communicator. So that that and being in front of people and being able to hold their attention. I mean, try holding the attention of a bunch of, you know, 15 and 16 year olds, kind of difficult. So I think what's probably given me the skill that's helped me make the most money is that ability to clearly and effectively communicate or to sit and think about a concept, a complex problem, and how to break that down into something that That's the heart of marketing. You understand a person, get into their head. What is the problem? What's the solution? How do I convey that? How do I grab their attention? The whole crux of grabbing someone's attention is the hook. All of those things, I think, as I started studying marketing later, because I wasn't making very much money teaching, and I became a single mom. I had four kids under the age of five. I was like, I'm going to be poor if I'm just a teacher. So I started studying copywriting because I taught English and I was like, okay, I started writing a newsletter for one of my buddies that had a company and he was paying me more money. I was making more money writing for him and copy than I was making teaching. And that's when I was like, okay, marketing is kind of my jam. And that's how I started into marketing. I mean, there's a lot more backstory, but people will get really bored with all the details. I just, I just, why I say that is because my kids right now, I've got three kids that are the college age, right? And they're all like stressed about what am I going to be? What am I going to do? And I'm like, what you start out doing today is what we will not be doing later. You know, and it's not like the old generation, an electrician for 50 years and retired with a pension. I can look at all the different things I've done and they've all built on each other and pivoted and there's opportunities that come knocking and I'm like, hey, just go with what sounds exciting right now and go where you can give your whole heart and give your best because that's where you start to climb in the world because people recognize energy and passion and hard work and commitment and integrity. You take those things with you, doors will open and then you get to choose. Do I want to do that? Does that sound fun? And that's a very different way of walking through the world than, I have to work, I have to get money and I have to, you know what I mean? It's like, what feeds my soul? Speaker 2: Norm, you started out as a Chippendales dancer, didn't you? And now look at you. Look how far you've come now. Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm more of the Chips. I dance around chips. Speaker 2: I think that happens a lot. You hear those stories a lot where people go to law school and they grow up their whole life, I want to be a lawyer. People have been telling them, you're good at arguing, you're good at debating, you should be a lawyer. They go to law school and they get out and two years later, like, I don't like this. Uh, and they end up doing something totally different. Uh, and that happens a lot. I mean, I'm fortunate. I went to school for business and marketing and I still do business and marketing, but that's been my passion since I was three years old. But for a lot of people there, there is a big pivot there and you, you don't really discover yourself sometimes till later because society tells you what you should be or parents tell you what you should be. Uh, and they try to based on what their experience is and that not may not be what's best for that person. Speaker 1: It's so true. I've read so many books, but it seems like a general theme running through them a lot lately is like, find that thing where time disappears, you know, that flow state. I mean, because if you guys ever have that, I have that in a lot of different things. You know, playing any sport, time totally disappears for me. Doing things like this where we're talking, engaging or teaching, time totally disappears. Deep work, when I'm thinking creatively, time disappears. Where you're happy, you're in the moment, you know what I mean? You can't think about anything else. If you can teach your children or a friend who's struggling, what should I do? It's like, have them get in tune with when does time disappear for you? Speaker 2: Because you'll never work it. That's a good way to break it down simply like you just said in Simple Complex is find something where time disappears. I like that. That's actually a really good way for all entrepreneurs and business people. There's people like, for example, I do a newsletter and when I sit down, it takes me two to three hours to write this newsletter. Time disappears. That three hours goes quick. At the end of it, where do you go? But for somebody else, that would be like torture for them to sit there and try to do that. And so what for you right now, what is it that is it the branding? Is it the marketing? Is it the the consequence? You're constantly doing new things like new challenges, new projects. Is is that what it is that drives you or what is it that that makes it my favorite? Speaker 1: That's my favorite thing. It's like birthing a baby. You know, I like I love starting out with a new company or consult. It's like they come in and they have all these issues and they just want you to kind of look And I love to get in and start diagnosing and be like, oh, this is what you need to do. Or starting a new business. Everyone's like, why do you have so many businesses? I'm like, that's the funnest part. When you get to sit down and be like, what's the story? Who is our target? What's our differentiation in the market? How do we position ourselves? How do we deposition the competition? How do we just lay the foundation so that everything hereafter is easy? Because if you do that foundational work, Then everything, the ads that you run, the influencers that you go after, it's like you've got this roadmap. You know exactly what to do next. I think analysis paralysis happens or confusion with brands is because they don't really know who they are. They're trying to figure out after the fact. We don't talk just Amazon here, but I see this problem a lot with Amazon sellers because they got into the business on this idea that they just got to find a product, find an opportunity where they can go into a marketplace and make a product and make some quick sales. And that for me is really hard then to try to build a brand out of that because you were looking for a product and you weren't thinking about a person and you weren't thinking about this brand that you were going to build and what comes next. And you know, they kind of start like piecing together a bunch of product opportunities and they're selling an umbrella over here and a watch over there and maybe a kitchen gadget. And it's like, now we got to go in and try to make a story out of this. It's a little bit more difficult. It can be done. But for me, it's more fun to sit down and think, what problem do I want to solve? Who's my person? What do they need? Because then that determines, when you know that person, the need, it determines what the logo is going to look like, what the tagline is going to be, the colors. That psychology, I think, is very important to building a really solid brand. Speaker 2: When you go in and you do this with somebody, you're high energy and you're full of ideas like boom, boom, boom, boom, like a machine gun, boom, boom, boom, boom. For someone that's in the corporate world that's not used to that, they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, slow down, slow down, slow down. Do you get that where it's like, this is too much or do they like, oh, this is great. I never had been with anybody that was so full of creativity and ideas. Speaker 1: Yeah, so try not to fire host them. If they've been hired as a consultant, you usually have a roadmap you're working through. Usually the consultation, I don't do free consults, but they'll have heard of me, speak somewhere, and they want my help. Then it's like, hey, let's start with the lowest hanging fruit. And usually it's like, dude, your website's not selling anything. Let's just start right now. We've already got traffic. If you bring someone in, a consultant, I think they should actually help you make more money first, right? Like there can be like, so you walk in, you're a plastic surgeon and you see this person, you're like, whoa, there's so much I need to do here, right? But like, let's start with the lowest hanging fruit. Like let's fix your teeth because the smile, you know, or your eyes, like I don't need to be like reshaping the whole body first, but let's start with like what everyone's going to see like in a Zoom call. And if your mask isn't covered up, maybe it's their eyes we fix first, you know, in 2022 when we're in COVID. It's like, where can we get the most bang for our buck first? Because we're going to fix that. Because if you help people make money, then they can invest in your services further and have you help them fix everything. I don't know if you guys have had this before, but when you hire someone and they sell you on their services and they come in at the end of the day, you're just $10,000 poorer. Speaker 3: Seen it, done it, bought the t-shirt. Absolutely. So is there something consistent that you see that people just don't get? Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's because I do a lot of speaking in the Amazon space. They just don't get till they hear someone like me speak is they don't get the importance of having a brand and why that matters and why why they're not selling anymore why their sales started tanking and I'm like dude it's simple math. You're trying to compete as a middleman against the Chinese manufacturer and you're both selling you know the dog leash. They're gonna beat you 10 times out of 10 because they can sell it cheaper and Amazon's a price driven platform. So, you know, your product has no unique differentiation. There's no positioning and you're trying to just, you know, sell another Me Too product. It's just, to me, it's so obvious, but they've never heard someone verbalize it. And the minute you verbalize it, they like have this aha moment. But they're just sitting there, and you'll see it still. Kevin has an incredible BDSS group. It's worth going to one event just so you can get access to this WhatsApp group. So you have new people come in, and they'll be like, man, I don't know what's happening. My organic rank's tanking. I'm throwing more money at ads, and just nothing's going right. And I'm like, I don't even have to look at this person's listing. I don't even have to know anything. That's right there. I just know, oh, that person doesn't have a brand. I mean, everything's tanking. Nothing's working anymore. I'm like, did you drive your own brand demand off Amazon? To me, Amazon's a sales channel and I don't care where my people buy. I'm totally channel agnostic, right? Just buy my stuff. So my job is to create demand, desire, awareness for my brand, my products, and then they go looking for me and they buy wherever it's convenient for them. Speaker 2: And now a word from one of our sponsors, one of Norm and I's favorite tools, Stack Influence. Speaker 3: Are you looking to quickly boost new Amazon product launches or scale up existing listings to reach first page positioning? The influencer platform Stack Influence can help. Stack Influence pushes high-volume external traffic sales to Amazon listings using micro-influencers, and guess what? You only have to pay with your products. They've helped up-and-coming brands like Magic Spoon compete with Cheerios for top category positioning, while also helping Fortune 500 brands like Unilever launch their new products. Right now is the best time to get started with Stack Influence to crush it during this holiday season. Speaker 2: That's right, Norm. Sign up today at stackinfluence.com or click the link in the video below and mention Misfits, that's right, Misfits, M-I-S-F-I-T-S to get 10% off your first campaign. Head over to stackinfluence.com right now. Before we go too far down, what is a brand? A lot of people think it's just a logo and a name, but what is a brand to you? When you say you're not a brand, you're just selling against the Chinese, what does it take to be a brand or what is a brand? What's the definition of a brand? Speaker 1: I think when someone sees your logo, they have a feeling or I know who that is. I belong to them. I'll give you examples like Patagonia. North Face, Apple, and everyone's like, oh, I can't be those. I'm like, oh, well, that's a big one. But look around your home and be like, where have I bought multiple things that are the same? I look at my kitchen products, and I'm like, Whirlpool's a brand. I buy a lot of Whirlpool. I buy a lot of LG. But in a sense, I don't feel anything towards Whirlpool. You know what I mean? Or LG. So they would be a brand, because maybe some people do. But to me, I don't have a feeling that I belong with them. But Patagonia, North Face, I mean, I even think like Cotopaxi, for me as a person, those are my people. Because those people have a feeling. Like, look at their advertisements. They're always showing someone out in the outdoors. They're doing adventure. It's like when I put on my Cotopaxi hat or my backpack, dawning an identity. Can you inspire that? Or even if it's just like a pet supply, when I open up my perfectly paws chewables for my dog, do I have an affinity there? Or was it just because it was a Prime Day special and it was 50% off? Because that's what we're trying to create. And that's why I say it's the story that does that. After they purchase the product, the experience that they have with you and your company that creates that affinity. So maybe when we say a brand, I do think it's important that the logo looks nice. And I do think it's great that you look sexy because sexy sells or that at least matches your avatar and their identity. But we're creating an experience. I like to use like C.S. Lewis who like he had The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and you think about Lucy and the kids would enter through that wardrobe into a different world. So when you have a customer that comes in and has an experience with your brand, what are the experiences? Is it a new world? How can we create a new world? You know in Narnia there was like all different kinds of words and creatures that you never saw anywhere else and it was like, whoa, they were in Narnia. And then when they left Narnia, they knew they weren't in Narnia anymore. Think of Harley Davidson. They have a total culture. They have a total world that they bring people into. And now you're in Harley's world. You freaking tattoo their logo on your body. So I probably haven't ever, I appreciate you asking me the question because I want to now like, how would I write out what a logo is? I'm verbally processing it right now. But that to me is what I'm thinking about. I try to bring them into a world that they know when they're there and they know when they leave it. Speaker 2: Just like the wine, which you said it earlier, a lot of it, there are many aspects, but more of the major ones, identity. It's like, why does someone buy a Louis Vuitton, spend $3,000 on Louis Vuitton handbag? Yeah, the quality is probably a little better. It's handcrafted, but other people like, I don't need a Louis Vuitton handbag. A $30 one from Walmart is good enough to carry my stuff. It's an identity. It's like, I feel like I've made it. I belong or I'm something that I'm really not, but I want to show that I'm something better than what I am or whatever it may be. Speaker 1: It's like status symbol. Unknown Speaker: Or identify. Speaker 1: Yeah, identify. I want to belong. I mean, we're herd creatures. Human beings always have been. So like, how do you, when I taught school, I'd see this, you know, there's the cool kids. And everyone's like, I mean, how do you get in with the cool kids? It's just like, Make your brand. You want to be what everybody wants to aspire to. You know, the brands I've worked with for a long time, Glamnetic, we do the press on nails, magnetic lashes. Like we have so many people trying to get into the press on nail space because it's so massive. But like we're the cool kids. We're the innovators. We do collabs with all these like awesome brands. Like we are setting the like pace and the standard and the cool factor in that category. So everyone else can try to be like us, but we are the cool people and we have to, but we can't let up on that, right? We have to keep doing innovation. We have to keep creating a story, connecting with our audience and, and doing things that are different. Uh, what I'd say, absurd, unique, just that people are like, wow, we just want to keep wowing people. Like, oh, I can't believe they thought of that. That's so cool. Speaker 3: You know, as you're saying that Janelle, I'm thinking about, we've talked about this on the podcast before, but Kevin and I go to events and we have cigars. And the second somebody comes out with a cigar, You're part of us. And it just happened. Kevin, you were just, you know, when we were sitting down talking, where was it, Washington, you know, how we just got to instantly have trust or build trust with people who you've never met before, but they're coming and sitting down and having cigars. We always see this. It's not a brand, but it's who you want to identify with. Speaker 2: In this case, what Norm's talking about, just to illustrate it a little bit better, we're sitting outside on this patio, it's Norm and I, and we're in our own little section. There's two other guys walk up, and they have a cigar in their hand, and they haven't lit it yet. If they did not have a cigar in their hand, there's plenty of other seats around. They would have gone and sat in these other seats. But instead, they saw that we were smoking cigars and they walked up and said, do you mind if we join you? And we had no idea who they were. They sat down, but they were instantly in with us because of that, what you said, that herd mentality, that identity. Like, these are cool guys. They're smoking cigar. We can sit right here with them. We don't know who they are. Then you start talking to them. You get to know them and you tell stories and it goes from there. But if we didn't, hadn't, were not smoking cigar, they would have not come. Do you mind if we sit with you? That would not have happened, period. They would have sat somewhere else. Speaker 1: Signaling, 100%. I literally just went on a Harley Davidson ride through the Rockies. I've never driven a Harley, okay? And I had no, I borrowed some gear, you know, from friends that had a do-rag that had Harley. I had my leathers, my chaps. I'm like, you know, you guys know me. I'm like this. We would pull into these towns, get off my Harley and these big dudes, Harleys would walk over, best friends, like out of the gates, like they were my peeps. And I just thought this is the coolest. And it was just such like the marketing reinforcement. I'm like, this is signaling at its highest. They immediately assumed I was one of them when they had no idea. I had no freaking idea what I was doing, you know, but I was in the in crowd. They would never talk to me before that. Speaker 2: What about Harley though? It's an interesting point. Harley just had to backtrack on something that they did where they did some inclusive stuff. This movement right now with everything's woke and inclusive and there's some brands that have been getting backlash. Budweiser got some last year. It just happened with Harley where- The one percenters, they're the ones that stood up. Speaker 1: Yeah, and the a lot of their their people said this is not okay Could have told you don't do that Harley those are not your peeps like that's just the stupid you know What happens I because I sit in enough boardrooms and enough see a corporate world where you get someone in there Some woke person which is fine. I'm not saying don't be woke whatever you want to do, but that person had an agenda and And then pushed it on the team and there was not courage or an understanding of who their avatar was. Somebody because of this, you know, what we all are afraid to, you know, get canceled or whatever needed to stand up and say, this is not our people. This is not. What we say, and I'll tell you, I work with a lot of YouTubers and celebrities and some of these people know exactly what they stand for and they understand their audience and that would never happen. I'll share an example and I don't think he'd mind me sharing, but Bikes and Beard is named Sean Kerr. He has one of the largest motorcycle channels. You have to check it out. He's really good. But he is all about God, America, like conservative, like he turns off the right and the liberal population like you wouldn't believe, right? But that's okay. Those are not his people. Well, we signed up for this platform and it required on the signature line that he uses pronouns to use his texting platform. And he said, he was like, I won't have that. And they were like, well, then you can't use it. And we'd already signed the contract. We'd already did substantial five figures contract and there was no release out of it. And this was like a what? And we were going back and forth. And he was like, he was willing to walk away from the money to just be like, he's like, if I did that first, I don't believe in it. He goes, my audience No way. No freaking way. And I was just like, you know what? This is someone who understands his brand and he is the brand. And that's the kind of integrity you need to have. Someone has to understand that brand. And that is why the bigger a corporation gets, I think the more difficult that it becomes for them to maintain that connection with the audience. Because think about all the mergers and acquisitions you see happen in a space, right? They come in and they buy up these small brands. We're the founders, super passionate. They're involved intimately. They've cultivated this audience. Then you get an aggregator comes in, buys up the brand and that connection, as soon as that founder leaves or isn't intimately involved or has now a board meddling or a CEO and all these other cooks in the kitchen, the audience starts to get like, what was that? You know, how did that happen? And everything gets off brand. It takes a lot of self-discipline, a lot of understanding of who you are and who you serve to maintain that integrity. It's so important. Once you lose trust of your audience. Speaker 2: I think a lot of people don't know who their audience are. They don't, and they're afraid. Everybody tries to please everybody and forget the wokeness or whatever, all the stuff that comes with that or the cancel culture. But even before that, people try to, they don't want to upset anybody. They want to be, and if I always say, if there's someone, if you don't have someone that doesn't like what you're doing, you're doing the wrong, you're doing something wrong. I have this with my newsletter. I've given examples in the past where I ran a story and I get negative comments back on that story, but also at the same time, I get 10 times as many like, thank you for writing that. Someone needed to do that. That's staying on brand, but it's so hard for a lot of people. To actually stick to their guns, I mean, the big brands, Harley and Budweiser and all these, they feel like they got to evolve and it's cost Budweiser their market share. I mean, their market share went, they were number one and now it's one of the Mexican beers and Budweiser is way in the tank. And that's what did it. And people were like, we don't want to be with you. You know this like your avatar. I think you gave an example one time of you were helping a client. I think it was power tools for women or something. And they came to you for some advice and they had some ideas about how to do it. You're like, no, no, no, no, no. You're doing this all wrong. These things need to be pink. They need to be this. They need to be this. Can you talk about that a little bit? Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so I worked with a YouTuber who, she's phenomenal. She has like a DIY channel, let's see, Design to the Nines, but now it's Athena Power Tools, but actually she had Aletha, she had to change the name, she got a trademark infringement. But long story short, she, women's power tools, she's always been like, man, I want to launch a line of female power tools. The only thing out there is pink Barbie dream house tools. If you think about it, she's building houses. You think about a woman who needs a little dinky drill. No, she needs DeWalt quality. I always told her, strong enough for a man but made for a woman. I stole it from Secrets Tagline. It was one of those deodorant ones. I'm like, that's going to be what we use. We don't need another pink crappy drill. She loves diamonds. She loves her jewelry. She was like, Oh, like a Tiffany box. I'm like, dude, you just nailed it. Like Tiffany blue sparkles. Like if we could get sparkle in the paint, like some and cheetah print, you know, and she's like all girl and frill. It was like a match made in heaven. Like, and then the case would be like a Louis Vuitton bag because this, our avatar is not the person on Amazon who wants a cheap drill that they're just getting their wife like a pink one. We're going after women who like, really build stuff and yet really are in tune with their feminine energy. It could be a man who's in turn with, I don't care who, but it's going to be a beautiful drill. They can be like sexy cells. Like this is going to be everything that you want in like, this is the blingiest. There's nothing out there. Have you ever seen a blingy drill? Like we should pull up pictures. The thing is beautiful. And, um, you know, and then we had to create the story around it, you know? And that was basically that all All throughout centuries, the power tools for women have been made by men. Men have bigger hands. We still want a hefty drill, you know, that we can have torque and that, you know, it's perfectly balanced, but we need a smaller handle. For women, our hands are smaller than men, right? And we aren't necessarily, I don't want to say as strong, but men are, I mean, I hate that we can't say that. If I say this, my girls get so mad at me, but I'm like, men are stronger than women. I'm stronger than a lot of men because I work out. But it's true. Put a guy and a girl in a cage and they're both fit. The guy's going to clobber the chick. So it's a fact. All right, so we gotta have it not so heavy or we gotta do something with the design that makes it so I can hang sheetrock all day and not have my shoulder burn out as fast as it would if I was using DeWalt or whatever. So we thought about all this stuff. We thought about how it needs to spin. It needs to rotate. It needs to sound beautiful. It needs to look beautiful. And we built a beautiful drill. And I mean, the story that I think I was very proud of us for not going down because I know the PR that wanted me there is like, dissing on men. I hate that. I hate that in order for a woman to be powerful, that we have to put down men. I'm like, we can both be powerful. And you've seen that in our culture a lot. Like the Barbie movie. Yeah, it's cute. But I also walked out of there being like, did we have to make men look like a bunch of bumbling idiots in the show? You know, maybe I'm looking to I'm reading too much into it, but I'm like, it doesn't take for a woman to be powerful to denigrate men. And that's where we're not going with this drill. We're not going to talk about female empowerment in any type of way that paints men in a negative picture. She loves her husband. I love men I date. So why would I make men emasculate them? I don't want to live in a society where men have been emasculated. So that was really important to us. Speaker 2: How important is a story to a brand? You just, you mentioned it there and talking about the story, whether it's a real story about the founder and the pains and struggles and they went through and why they made this product or if it's a made up story like Aunt Jemima or something like that. What, what, how important is story to brand? And I think that's something that a lot of people are missing out on. Speaker 1: Yeah, I personally don't want to work with any projects now that don't have a compelling story because to me, it makes all the difference. As the marketer who comes in that gets to create the creatives and build on the story and push it out, I like to be behind a true, awesome, compelling story. Because yes, you can make them up and you can do all that. You can fabricate them. But to me, if you're going to have a spokesperson, which I find works really well in the day and age that we live in with influencers and getting out there and having a founder facing the public. It's just such a slam dunk. It's like that's where I want to be. Like I literally just, it's funny that you asked this question because last week I'm working on a pickleball supplement and we've got a bunch of athletes and one of the key athletes we were working with, I was meeting with her and I just didn't feel the passion, you know, and I'm sitting there being like, look, I can be playing pickleball or launching this supplement and if I don't have a founder that I feel has this passion and this fire and this story, it's like, That's what's going to carry this. So I went back to the team and I just said, I'm out. And they're like, what? What's it going to take to keep you in? I was like, the only thing we can do is we've got to get more athletes. And I've got to sit down with them. I've got to see who's got the story. And maybe it's going to be a bunch of athletes that we build a think tank and we bring them all in. And then we craft that story. We go, this one right here, I'm not excited about it. I'm not going to do it. And they were just like, Dang, but that's where I'm at now anymore. I need someone that is super connected to their audience or wants to build that audience that I can feel. When I talk, you feel it. You feel that there's something in there. You feel the energy. That has to be there because energy connects. It's a living, breathing thing and it touches people and it can cause action. That's what we need. Speaker 3: I've talked to a lot of Amazon sellers and one thing that they'll make their logo before they even know their audience. They'll start to sell. They'll have a tagline. They'll have that brand story, but they don't know the audience. And so they're already two or three steps back. You got to get that audience first. And we try to tell people, Do spend the time and then build that. I mean, Kevin, when you came down just to get the foundation, we spent the full day just looking at, you know, how can we be slightly different? Who are we going after? And, you know, then we started. Just so many people, I'm going to do something red and blue. Here's the tagline. Here's the name of the company. I'll go and I'll just press a button and AI will come up with the name. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 3: Nope. Speaker 2: You had your guy on this. We're doing something called Dragonfish. We'll be announcing more details later, but there's five components to this thing. It's not an agency or something like what people are out there. There's five major components to it. Janelle, you'll be hearing from us on some of these, I'm sure, and we'd love to work with you actually on some of these as well. We came up with these five concepts and we put them to name them. We created a way to name them. It's very unique. I don't want to give it all away right now. It's very unique. We had to describe each name. We used a little bit of AI to help us in the brainstorming process as well. It's not all written by AI. We did a lot of it. Help us refine this. Brainstorming, it's like having 100 other people in the room to throw back ideas at you. And then we did it and then Norm went out to his art guy and said, OK, make some designs around this that represent each one of these little five little sections. And they did that. And each one's a different color. And then we analyzed the colors and like, no, this we ended up switching them around a couple of colors around because, no, this particular thing means Movement forward, and you can't have a red on movement. I'm just using this as an example. A red color can't be movement forward. That's stop. So movement forward needs to be green or whatever it was in this case. But it's that level of detail, and we haven't even launched this yet, but we know our avatar. There's a big thing in the avatar. This is who it is. These are the people that we're reaching. These are their pain points, and this is how we're solving them. Speaker 3: It took all day to name the five. Speaker 2: It took all day just to do eight hours to do that of concentrated like brainstorming. Speaker 1: And that's the attention to detail that wins. And that's what I always try to tell people. I'm like, you know, when you see something, you're like, oh, that's beautiful. And you don't know all the work that went into it. And the more you become a connoisseur, like I think about like cheese or wine or something that people and chocolate, you know, when someone actually learns the processes behind it, then they can actually appreciate how different that is. But when you're oblivious to, you know, what is behind the scenes, you just know that, man, that was good. And so, well, you know, a lot of people that we market to, they don't understand all these things, but when they see it, they're like, oh, I want that. But they couldn't articulate what it was, it just, that looks good, or I want that, you know, and I see that so much. And when our job as educators in this space is peeling back those layers to help people see, I spent eight hours picking the color because there was a psychology behind what I did that would create an emotion in you that would lead to action. Then they start being like, oh. I mean, they just don't know what they don't know. This is why we're good at what we do because we've sat and we've broken down. We've peeled back the layers. They think we have some mysterious magical power. Everything is a formula. Everything is a law. Everything can be taught. They're all principles. We understand marketing. And we masterfully, that's why you guys are marketing misfits, marketing mavens, marketing masters. But you understand the rules and the laws that govern the universe of converting people into buying happy customers. It's all and it can be taught. And so that's why people listen to your podcast, because every episode you have, they're going to have aha moments. And they're gonna be like, Oh, my Gosh, I didn't know that. I remember when I was learning marketing, I could look back through my life at everything I've ever bought and how I've been manipulated or coaxed down that line or why things resonate with me. It was opening a Pandora's box for me of how my brain works and how marketers get in there with my pulling on my heartstrings and the hooks. It was just a world that I love. It speaks to me. Other people, it probably bores them to death, but those people like to look at spreadsheets and I don't. So, that's the beauty and I believe that's why the world is advancing so fast now is because we all have such access to education and information that we can teach people things and they go and they take it and they improve upon it and the iteration becomes so quick that I've never seen such an acceleration in talent and growth in every area. I played like not professional sports, but I played competitive sports my whole life. And I look at the kids today at that when I was playing at the college level, high school level, and I'm like, They're like how the pros were back in the day. And I'm like, you think of the access these kids have today. They can go on YouTube and watch drilling tutorials for like, I look at the ball handling skills of some of these kids and I'm like, they're watching tutorials on YouTube to learn how to do dribbling that I got to go once a week to my coach and practice, you know, with the team. These guys are out in their backyard dribbling, dribbling, you know what I mean? Think how amazing. I get the chills just thinking about the rate of progress because we're so open with information now that people have access to this. Somebody in Africa now can take the same information that we were privileged and they never got and they iterate and they improve and it's just changing the world. It's an exciting time to be alive. Speaker 2: Hey, Kevin King and Norm Farrar here. If you've been enjoying this episode of Marketing Misfits, thanks for listening this far. Continue listening. We've 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? Speaker 3: Well, this is an old guy alert. Should I subscribe to my own podcast? Speaker 2: Yeah, but what if you forget to show up one time and it's just me on here? You're not going to know what I say. Speaker 3: I'll buy you a beard and you can sit in my chair too and we'll just, you can go back and forth with one another. Unknown Speaker: Yikes! Speaker 3: 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. Speaker 2: Make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like Norm. Oh. Speaker 3: Janelle, on our collective minds trip that we just did, this proves your point a hundred percent. We're going through Calgary and we had the Olympic ski jump, you know, and I don't know the bigger jump. They can't use, they had to shut down the jump because of the speed, the way that they've changed the sport and the training, the actual jump, the skiers would hit the highway. So they had to close the jump now. Speaker 2: Yeah, like 25 years ago or whenever it was in the Winter Olympics and they had this open where you could go and just play on it or train on it. But like Norm said, they had to close it to the public because the training has gotten so far advanced. The technology and the way that the current people back then could not have jumped. It's too close to the freeway. Freeway is 100 feet away or so, whatever it is. It's a long ways away. And now it's too big of a risk that people are going to come off of there and land on the freeway versus that would never happened in the Olympics whenever it was 20, 30 years ago. Speaker 1: I love what you guys do too. You guys are big on masterminds. You bring the community together. It's just genius because we know about mirror neurons. I don't know if you understand. I've heard that. When I'm playing pickleball and you're my partner, if I play with someone who's better than me, my game improves immensely. If I'm playing with someone that's less I'll match that. I'll kind of play not as good. They may step up and play better because they're playing with me. To me, that's true in everything. Think about when you get in a mastermind, a room full of movers and shakers that are doing exciting things. You step up your game. You learn things. That's the beauty of a mastermind. You could have a mastermind of—everyone wants to get into Alex Hermosi's mastermind. I've got to get into Tony Robbins mastermind. No, you just need to be in a room of people that are on the same trajectory. They have a generative force driving them to always do and be a little better because that synergy between one person doing that and you're all doing that, the lift is astronomical. And that's what we need together. You know, the confidence, bouncing ideas off each other. Like, I'm raising my game. I'm trying this. It gives someone else freedom, courage, the ability to try it themselves. And that's all marketing is. We're just doing, we're failing fast. We're trying to see what doesn't work to stumble onto what does work. And then when we find what does work, we throw a whole bunch more resources behind that. And it never stops because everything's changing. And the rate of change today is unbelievable. I think it's a hard time to be a marketer in the fact that how much that you have to like learn and stay on top of because it changes so fast. I felt like, wow, I feel like I've got to constantly be well, I want to say two things because I do believe you feel like you do need to stay up with everything. But I also find that the more things change, the more they stay the same, like the principles of marketing, always the same, right? Speaker 2: Human psychology has not changed at all. The technology is different. The way you deliver it might be different, but the underlying principles, you can go read books from a hundred years ago on marketing and they still apply today. Speaker 1: Yes. And so it's such a beautiful thing about our industry is that the more things change, the more they stay the same, but there's just always something new that you could be doing and trying. Like there's so many things. I wake up every morning like, I want to try this. I want to try this. Like I still want to try this and this and that. You can't get to them because you really still haven't gotten all the juice out of the one lemon that's already bringing in a bunch of, you know, making a bunch of lemonade. So it's like, I gotta make sure I tap that whole vein dry before I worry about all the other shiny objects. But So much I still want to learn. I don't know how people retire. Speaker 2: I don't either. Where do you get your inspiration? Is it from reading? Is it from watching other marketing people sitting down and just scrolling through YouTube going, that's cool, that's cool? Is it just trial and error? Or is it just things just come to your head? Where's your inspiration and your, like you said, staying on top of things come from? Speaker 1: You know, I've been a voracious reader my entire life. I read several books a week. I consume podcasts like crazy. And I'm very athletic. So I don't want to just be watching marketing. I'm watching everything under the sun from like, how to build new cars, you know, like how the NASA sent up the rocket, like, because everything that you I've read this a long time ago. So you remember Scott Adams that did Dilbert, the cartoonist? Yeah, he said his goal in life, he's been very successful. He's like, take different like categories, like, you know, so over here, like he did comedy, office, and like, there was one other thing. And he's like, then you mash them together and get them to collide and find where they intersect. And that's like the genius zone when you can take totally disparate things, and like throw them together. And then where they overlap, that's the money. And I always just thought about that. I'm like, you know, I think a lot of problems is people get so one, they get in one vein of thought, you know, they're all into like, let's just say, you know, race cars, and that's all they do. And they can get really, really, like, almost super, can you say autistic anymore? I think I can, because I have like, autistic nieces and nephews, but like, they get really, really hyper focused on that. There's a genius that comes when you can take something from another category and layer that on. I don't know, for me, that's where my insights come. I'll be watching something on real estate and I'll be like, oh, that's really interesting how they built their portfolio that way, how they were aggregating through like creative finance. And then I start thinking about how I'm having this problem over here with a brand, you know, that's like kind of needs some infusion of cash. And I'm like, oh, I could take that, you know, idea from over here, how they did it in real estate to build their empire. What if we tried that in the e-commerce space? And so had I not been in a different segment, that idea would have never came that you could apply over here. I am a YouTube expert. That's why I think when I started doing video ads on Amazon, I would crush it because I took what I knew from YouTube, applied it to Amazon in the ads there. Anytime you can learn something over here and come apply it over there, I think that's where I win. And so everyone always says, oh, focus, focus, focus. And I say, I actually think my strength is the fact that I am so eclectic, I'm everywhere, that I can pull from all these different, the generalist can then be pulled down into a specialty, whatever platform I'm on at the time, I can take those principles and narrow it down in the laser beam focus. And it works for me. But there's one thing I want to say is that I do think People think they're more special than they are. And everyone thinks, oh, I wish I could do what she does or he does. And I'm like, you know what it is? It's just don't give up. I've learned that I just have a tenacity. Is that like a pertinacity or something? I'm tenacious. I'm not going to give up. I will win. I don't quit. And I don't chase stunt costs or anything. But I'm just saying like, if somebody else has done it before, and they've been successful, I can do it because I know that everybody else out there is pretty much just human too. So if they did it, that just means they were willing to put in the time, the hours. Yeah, they may have more natural talent but I know hard work can get me where I can win on that. And I just don't give up. I think that's what people need to do more of. And they skip around too soon. They jump into something. They think it was going to be all awesome. And then after a couple of months, it's not working. They're like, oh, this doesn't work. Screw this. And they jump to the next thing. And that's their whole pattern in life. It's like, pick something. Go all in. And you tell me after five years if it's not working. Because I've never seen an overnight success. In fact, every success I've seen has been five to 10 years in the making. Speaker 2: It's interesting you say that because I agree 100% with what you just said that I'm I'm especially when we come from the Amazon space, everybody just it's all Amazon. You look at they go to only Amazon events. I go to ClickFunnels. I'm going to Mr. Beast show. I get into these other worlds because you can take stuff from those worlds and mix them. I read 39 newsletters a day basically. I spend a couple hours every night reading. Some of them are crypto. Some of them are general news. Some of them are Amazon. Some of them are ecommerce. Some of them are marketing. Some are psychology. It's a whole range of stuff that I'm interested in. And I'm able to pull things from those. If you look at like the newsletter I do, The Billion Dollar Sellers, it's not only Amazon. Everybody else has an Amazon newsletter. It's Amazon. Here's the latest hack. Here's the latest tactic. It's our latest. Everything 100% is related to Amazon. Maybe here's a YouTube thing. But you look at mine, I've got travel stuff in there. I've got psychology. I've got occasionally crypto things. I've got other things because I'm bringing these worlds together. And that's one of the things that makes it different. And I think a lot of people, when it comes to marketing, you stay in your little fishbowl and you stay in your little box. And that's where you try to maximize that box. But a lot of times the best opportunities are exactly what you said, outside the box. And bringing something from another world, whether it's a pickleball world or it's the camping world, real estate world, like you said, and bringing that in. Because there's lots of great ideas and other genres and ways they're doing things differently that can be applied across. Speaker 1: And you know what I think too? I've always done is I just have quiet time. I mean, I walk three miles a day, which isn't far, but sometimes, you know, we're always consuming, consuming, consuming. And when you're consuming, you can't create. So it's good to consume, you know, like you said, you get the inspiration, but then like, when are you sitting and just letting that All that information that you've put in there, just let it bubble up and percolate into this idea that's like an aha moment because we need some quiet time. There's beauty that will come in those silent moments. Anymore, most people only ever have a silent moment in the shower and that's why everyone says, oh, I get my best ideas in the shower. I'm like, well, yeah, because it's the only time you don't have your AirPods in and consuming information. I have a lot of times where I'm getting awesome ideas because I'm just able to sit, be quiet. You don't have to meditate to do that, but you could, but just let it percolate. Speaker 3: My three o'clock cigar. Speaker 1: There you go. Speaker 2: You sit in person, you're like, hang on. Except when the spiderwebs get there. You're like, ah. Speaker 3: Nope. Don't like spiders. So if there's anything, if there's some mistakes that people are making out there, and I think we covered a few of them earlier on, but what do you see? What are the common mistakes people are doing when they're trying to build a brand? Speaker 1: I think jumping around too much from trying every new thing. So I see that they'll say, well, I tried Facebook ads and it didn't work. And it's like, well, okay, show me what you did. And they'll be like one or two ads that they ran for a couple of weeks and it cost them $2,000 and they didn't get one sale. So Facebook ads don't work. And you're just like, okay, first off, you got to try hundreds of creatives. Let's just even start with 20 creatives. And you didn't even try a different audience. You went with one audience with one creative. They just don't understand a realistic expectation. First, I think it's They didn't have a realistic expectation of what it was going to take to make it work. So they jumped to the next thing. Then they went and tried YouTube. I tried a YouTube channel. I tried to create content and it didn't work. I said, well, show me what you did. You go, you look at their channel and they got like five videos, which is good. Sometimes they stop after only three. And you're like, do you know that it takes anyone nowadays tell you a hundred videos. So just even cut your teeth on it and you've got to build this back library of content. They just don't understand what it takes to be successful. It's like the person who thinks they could build a brand and exit six figures or seven figures or eight figures in one year. I don't know. Very many people do that. Yeah, we'll have anomalies, but that's not to anyone that had an exit. It's at least three to five years and it was a whole lot of work. So that's the biggest thing is they're jumping from thing to thing and saying it didn't work. And I would say, I'd rather say pick one thing and don't you dare quit until you make it work. Because if Facebook ads is working, which it is for thousands and thousands of companies, they've figured it out and you're not stupid and they're just a human being and you can figure it out too. But you keep thinking, oh, maybe this other thing over here is going to work because this isn't working yet. You're just always on the cusp of figuring something out right before you jump. You didn't put the time and energy. It's like relationships. Someone gets married and they figure out, oh, this didn't work and they go to their next one and that didn't work and it's like, you know what a relationship is? It's work. So if you want to be in relationship, find someone that you want to work with, but that's the game you're playing in relationship is you're going to be working to stay together. And whenever you decide that person doesn't work, well then you take you, wherever you go, there you are. You go into your next relationship and you get to decide, do I want to stay and try to work with this person? I think people don't understand what success truly takes and it's a grind and it can be fun. That's why with Kevin, he loves his newsletters, but that's a grind. He's grinding out, putting in time, but it doesn't feel like a grind to him. It's just how we describe differently semantics, but I'm just saying don't skip around. Pick something, get it to work, then move on to the other thing because it works. It works. There's other people doing it. You just haven't figured it out. You're the problem. And maybe that's what we should say. You're the problem. Speaker 2: What's the most powerful thing in marketing? Speaker 1: I always say it's the story. You don't have a story. Stories sell. You have a good story, then there's so many mediums that you can tell it. And in fact, if you even suck at marketing, but you have a good story, you'll win. Because we've been conditioned from childhood to listen to stories. The minute you started telling the story about how you came up with your colors, even though that's probably the most boring thing, it's not even what you would think was a great story, you had me because you started telling a story. How I sat there and I was like eight hours, like why'd I pick the red? I wanna know how this all came about. Anytime someone says, oh my gosh, let me tell you what happened yesterday. That's a hook. I didn't have to think of something super creative. It's like, oh, here comes story time. I learned that teaching history to high school students. You know, they had been in history. They thought it was so boring. They had a coach that was teaching it. And I was like, History is the most exciting thing. It's like story time after lunch every day. Today I'm going to tell you about how thousands of young men were like wasted on Utah beach, you know, with machine guns and like, they're all just sitting there like they knew from that day. I came in teaching at 20 years old, this high school guy in the middle of the year, he was a coach and he got the boot and I'm done student teaching. They need someone to fill. I get pushed in with all these kids and you know, they're, chewing on their gum. It could totally be a Hollywood movie. Like, who's this chick? I mean, I could date her. Like, I got a 19 year old in my class and I'm like, they all hate history and I walk in and I'm like, Dude, this is like, I just tell story time every day. And like every single one of those kids, history was now their favorite subject and they all want to be history teachers. I'm like, that's the power of a story. I mean, I'm like, how did that guy botch that? It was just story hour every day. And you know, he just would have them reading a textbook. Textbooks are so boring. We could tell a story every day about how this world came to be. And they were like fascinated. I had them wrapped around my finger. Speaker 3: The brand story to sell to your customers is one thing, but it's also just a great way to have all the buy-in from all your contractors. One of the things that we used to do with some of the brands that we used to work with is, yeah, you have your brand story, but then keeping on track, but you'd make it where there'd be the buy-in for, you'd have your hero, you'd have your villain, you'd have the pain points as, you know, represented as somebody. And this way, the, all the contractors would all of a sudden start to understand what you're trying to achieve. And a guy, his name was Jeff Sass. He's been on my podcast before. He, I never, I touched on that before he showed me what he was doing with a large brand he was working on. And I thought, this is genius. Like now you have the, yeah, SOP and processes. That's one thing. But if you can give it to them, everybody understands exactly where they're going, exactly who you're targeting and what they and who they should represent or how they should represent the company. Fascinating. Speaker 1: Oh, 100%. Have you ever heard of Joe Dispenza? He's like, he's really cool for like, you know, transforming your thoughts and your brains. And he's pretty popular. So you have to get him on your podcast. But you know, I've been told my whole life, you should meditate, you should meditate. And I'm always like, I don't want to sit still and like, just hold still and think, you know, or don't think at all. When I finally heard the reasons why you should meditate, so the reasons why, and this is what you're doing with, you're creating this story, but also just helping people see like what the big picture is. I do this anytime I'm working with employees or a brand. It's like, let's back up and tell you why you're doing what you're doing. When people understand the why, they can endure any how, you know, that's what we would always say in concentration camps. When they understand like they have a why or a purpose, then the how, they'll figure it out. Same thing in a company. Help them understand the why we do something. Then if their job really sucks, they'll at least be able to do it because they can endure anyhow because they're behind the why. And I'm telling you this because he explained what happens when you enter like theta wave or beta and alpha and how the brain works and like how you can have coherency in your brain waves and what that does with your heart and then your regulated breathing. When I understood the mechanisms of why you sit and meditate and breathe, It was like, oh, game over. I get it now. OK, I can train. I'm rewiring my brain. It wasn't just like sit still and meditate for 15 minutes. I was always like, why? And they say, oh, it just helps you be calm. But when I learned that I'm in training my brain into a different creative state, almost like a hypnosis, and you learn what it does for your blood pressure, how it can heal and regenerate your cells. And this isn't woo-woo stuff. He's doing science. That makes it be like, oh, I got it. And there's a lot of people that work that way. Some people can just intuitively feel like, oh, that feels great. Those are easy ones to win. But we're trying to win by logic, because most people think that marketing is logic. We all know it's an emotional decision. But you want them to buy on emotion, but then they have to be able to back it up with logic. They need to understand whys. And so, you know, this whole thing that I'm explaining about Joe Dispenza, who makes meditation, like the whole why and how and why you should do it. He's got more people meditating now than have ever been meditating in the history of like planet Earth. And they understand why they're doing it. And it's a concept that applies, you can incorporate as you do your marketing. I help people understand the story, help them have the emotional connection, so now they have the logic to back up why they made that decision and you win. Because that's all you need for people to feel good about what they just did, which is buy your stuff. Speaker 3: Well, Kev, am I going to see you meditating the next time I see you? Speaker 2: I think you might see me like in this little, little space. Give me my 30 minutes. I got ideas coming. I got lots of ideas coming. I don't meditate, but I've tried it. But I do spend time just thinking, like she said. It's not in the shower, but sometimes, well, sometimes it's in the shower. But a lot of times, my best ideas, I'll think of a subject line for an email, or I'll think of a headline for something. And it's not when I'm sitting at the computer writing the damn thing. It's at another time. It just hits me. And I like to email it to myself, you know, I should I got to write this down right away or I'm going to space this out. And so those are the times when you separate yourself from the daily work and the daily creative, the daily task is sometimes when the best things emerge. Speaker 1: Yeah, you'll catch things because you love your newsletter. When you were describing to me how much you think about your newsletter and all the time you're spending researching it, that's so now in your subconscious, this thing that you love. Anytime you see something, you'll be picking out things. It'll be like, oh, that'd be perfect for my newsletter. It's not like you walk around being like, I got to find the next subject line for my newsletter. That's someone who's making themselves do a job. You are so deeply passionate about it that it is running as a default hardware program in your brain, in the background. So that anything that, see, it's like, oh, I could use that. Speaker 2: I have 472 files right now in a folder. My system is convoluted. I don't have some Google Drive that's all organized. If I sit down and write the newsletter, what am I going to write about today? It's like, which of these 472 things am I going to actually choose the sixth that I'm going to do? Someone can push down. Some of them are still there from a year ago, and they might get emerged back to the top at some point. I'll clip something. I'll clip a screenshot of something, throw it in there. Here's a story. I'll throw it in there with just a little tagline on the name of the file is AMZYT or something. I have no naming system or nothing, but that's how everything just goes in there and it's just becomes this like fishbowl to fish out things. What am I going to and how How can I curate them together? Sometimes it takes a while to build something. There's a story coming out on the $800 tax, but there's seven different stories that have emerged over the last month. Some of them are timely and some of them are evergreen. Now all seven of those are getting merged together into one concise short story that'll show up in there. It's curation. It's a process and that's not work to me. That's fun. I'm learning. I'm staying on top of things. When Norm and I got back from Washington DC, I had over 140 or something newsletters to read. A lot of people say, I'm just going to delete them all. I'll just catch up to work. No. I actually sat down on Saturday and spent six hours going through every single one of them and read every single one of them. I don't read every word. Speaker 1: No one will ever be able to compete with you. You know what I mean? That's where you know you're in your zone. There's no one's going to beat Kevin at the newsletter game. You know, this is his jam. And I love, you know, someone out there sitting there who's thinking, I'm going to try to, you know, create a BDSS style newsletter to take down Kevin. You'd hear him talking to be like, Oh, forget it. Speaker 2: Like, because Norma said that. Norma's like, how do you, how do you do this though? What do you, how do you come up with all this stuff? Speaker 1: But that's what everyone, everyone has something like that. Speaker 2: Everyone has that. Everyone has that. Finding that one thing, like you said, you start out thinking you're a teacher and you found it for you is the marketing genius. Everybody has that and it's okay to pivot. It's okay to not be what your parents wanted you to be. Speaker 3: There is a book out there called The One Thing, and if you haven't read it, it's awesome. You can get it on Amazon. I forget who the author is. Speaker 2: A real estate guy from here in Austin that started one of the top real estate companies. Speaker 3: Yeah. Speaker 1: That sounds amazing. No, I do. One thing though, the one thing I do want to tell, because I have a couple of friends and siblings that are just like, I wish I could find something like how you found the thing you're passionate about. And I said, you know, there's two ways to live your life. It's like mine. I don't, I work all the time and I don't feel like I'm working because I love what I'm doing. It sounds like Kevin's feels the same way about what he does. And then I have friends that are just as happy. And guess what? They work a job and it's like they punch a clock and they get out. And when they're not working, they are playing like you wouldn't believe. You know what I mean? They play hard. And their job is just the means to derive the money, the security that they need so that they can get out of work and go do all the fun stuff. And I don't know there's one right way. For me, I love this way. But I would hate for anyone listening to this podcast who's like, I just don't feel that way, you know, because there is another like, The ultimate goal is to feel peace, happiness and joy, right? And it's like if it's what you're doing is working and you go in and you know, it's like you're not feeling like you hate your job, want to kill yourself, but you're like, Hey man, I earned good money. I get, or you know, make enough to do what I want to do. I think that's a great way to live your life too. I just try to think, you know what, I'm going to be dead one day. I don't want any regrets. I don't know if there's something else after this, if there is or isn't. All I need to know is if there isn't, I'll be so happy with the way I live this life and maximize it to the fullest because I'm not guaranteeing anything else. Speaker 2: And I get to speak at your funeral, right? Speaker 1: That's right. Make sure you have everyone do a pyramid at the end. Speaker 3: I want to be on top though. Speaker 2: You want to be on top? Speaker 3: I'll crawl right up. Speaker 2: Well, this has been great, Janelle. I really appreciate it. We can sit here and just look at the time and like, this is a really good episode and we can sit here and talk forever, but we'll have to do that in a few weeks in Austin. I'm sure we'll be... And I'm going to up my pickleball game. And even Norm, we might get him just standing. He can just stand in one place. Speaker 3: I'll be the ref. Speaker 2: Are there refs? We'll put a chair down for him. Anything that comes near him, he can just like... Speaker 3: Yep. I'll be the what is it the line boy or whatever it is. Speaker 1: I'm telling you pickleball was made for people like you like this is this is gonna be your jam you don't even have to move. All right. Speaker 3: I can do that. Okay, since we're at the end of the podcast, we'd like to ask our guests, do they know any misfits? Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, I know so many. In fact, I was just thinking who would be really fun on your episode since you do marketing stuff. Do you guys know Joseph Wilkins? He's the funny sales video guy. He used to work for the Harmons Brothers and you know, I love video as you know, making great pieces and so he started his own agency and they're phenomenal. So like they're the Harmons Brothers that you can afford. Joseph, he's got this beautiful accent from the UK. He's a pleasure to talk to just because I love that accent, but he's really great. If you could get him on and I can make an intro, but I think he'd be really valuable for the listeners. He just knows how to sell by being funny. I think we all know humor sells. It instantly disarms people, invites them into your world. I think he'd be a fun one for you. He's found a way to sell a lot of stuff with funny videos. Speaker 2: We'll take you up on that. Speaker 3: Yeah, looking forward to it. Speaker 2: Awesome. Speaker 3: Okay. And I guess the last thing, how do people get a hold of you? Speaker 1: Well, goodness, I'm pretty easy to find JanellePage.com. That's my website. On Instagram, people are always like, what can I follow you on Instagram? I'm like, it's JanellePage11. That's J-A-N-E-L-L-E-P-A-G-E and 11 was all the sports I played. That's my number. I don't give out any advice. I'm just doing handstands and going on trips. They're always, I think, a little bit disappointed. They're like, go follow me. They'll hear me speak at a thing and they're like, oh man, I'm going to go follow her. Then they're like, hey, cool handstand. I'm like, yeah, thanks. Unknown Speaker: Business wisdom. Speaker 1: I'm like, oh yeah, no. Instagram is like my chat book. I print it at the end of the year for my journal for posterity. Speaker 2: I have a quick question before we wrap up. What would you say if someone, if we announced a CMS trip to Japan, would you advise people to go over to Japan? Speaker 1: 100%. Japan was phenomenal. I mean, I've never been. Tokyo, I've never seen a city that, like, we went up the tower, the sky tower. You can see, it used to be the highest tower in the world, but now someone just built one that's a little bit higher. All you see is, like, city for miles and miles. I've never seen such a massive city. Like, you know, 50 plus stories high of just high rises. It's phenomenal. But I think the best kept secret in Japan is Kobe. I went to all the places like Kyoto, we went to Okinawa, we went to Osaka, Tokyo. I'm trying to think of every place we went. We were there for like two weeks. And I was like, Kobe is like this little port town. And I mean, I probably shouldn't say this. It's going to ruin the little, you know, no one hardly goes there. But the beef, you know, Kobe beef, you've all heard of it, K-O-B-E, Kobe beef. That place is pretty cool. So make sure you get down there on a bullet train if you go to Tokyo because it was probably one of my favorite. I saw a wild boar there. Got chased by a wild boar and it's three babies. Unknown Speaker: I was thinking that thing. Speaker 1: I was getting really close. We were hiking. We weren't probably supposed to be there. And this boar comes out and has three little babies. And I was like, oh, those things are slow, big old pig. So I was getting closer, kept walking towards it. And then all of a sudden, the thing starts charging us. And I thought, if it charged me, I'll just jump up on this little landing. Dude, those things can jump. They are fast. Speaker 2: Oh, jeez. Speaker 1: They can't. So I got killed by a wild boar. Speaker 3: Well, that's the Japanese jumping boar. It's specific to the Kobe area. Speaker 2: And that's how they do their CrossFit over there. Jump above a boar. Speaker 1: I was like, dude, I still got it because I scaled the wall pretty darn fast. Speaker 2: Awesome. Speaker 3: All right, Janelle. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Speaker 1: Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to see you all in a few weeks. It's going to be a blast. Speaker 2: It's going to be fun. It's going to be fun. Thanks, Janelle. Appreciate it. Speaker 3: All right. That's awesome. Janelle's awesome. Speaker 2: No, Janelle's always a blast to talk to. Always a lot of fun. Always full of information. And if you just listen to this podcast and you didn't gather something from it, you weren't listening. You were doing something else. Go back and hit rewind. And there's a lot of golden nuggets in there from Janelle. And a lot of really, really good, good advice. And be sure to follow her, but also be sure to follow us. You know, if you've seen watching this on YouTube, hit that hit that subscribe button so you don't miss a single one. Or if you're listening to this on your favorite platform, Spotify or Apple podcast or Podbeam or whatever it might be, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a single one. Every Tuesday we have a brand new Podcasts come out and you never know what we're going to talk about. We could be talking about travel, which was amazing. We had a lot of travel hacks in one of the podcasts that we just recently did. You can probably check the link down below and see that. Or we're talking about branding like this, or we're talking about who knows what. Get somebody funny on. Always different. We always try to get a marketing twist and get you thinking outside the box and thinking differently. So hopefully you've enjoyed this. You can follow us also. Check out the latest information. Learn more about Norm and I at Marketing Misfits. Is it .com or .co? Yeah, I know you got it all in your mind, man. I just can't get it in my head. It's .co. Speaker 3: .co. Yeah, you'll get there. By the way, probably one of the most important things I learned today is don't approach wild boar. Speaker 2: Exactly. You can eat it. It's delicious. But don't approach a wild boar. That's right. Hey everybody, I hope you have a good rest of your week and be sure to check out the other episodes of The Marketing Misfits if you're listening to this on an airplane or you're driving across the country or you're just sitting at your house chilling. Be sure to go back and check out some of the other episodes. There's a lot of really good episodes. Other than that, Norm, I guess we'll see everybody next week, right? Speaker 3: Yep, we'll see you next week and I'll see you in a couple weeks. Speaker 2: That's right. Take care everybody. Speaker 3: See ya. Speaker 2: Ciao.