Podcast appearances and mentions of ryan all

As entrepreneurs, we have the ability to make a difference in the world and in those we serve by aligning our  In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Ryan Pineda, real estate investing expert and author of The Wealthy Way to talk about real estate, business, and faith. You'll Learn [01:34] Getting Started in Entrepreneurship [08:07] Faith and Business [17:16] Having Impact as a Business Owner [29:50] You are What You Consume [45:35] Don't Wait to do the Work Tweetables  ”There's no more efficient business model for positively changing the world than business.” “ When you start becoming process-driven more than results-driven, your life changes.” “ We should expect things to be hard and worth it.” “ You are what you consume in all areas of life.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: There's so much wisdom in there and if you can at least just be willing to extract wisdom wherever you can find it, then you're not an idiot And so at least start there, everybody listening, just look for wisdom, be a seeker of wisdom and look for the things that are better and higher.  [00:00:16] Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:34] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. [00:00:54] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:13] Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:17] So my guest today, I am honored to hang out with Ryan Pineda. Ryan, welcome to the show.  [00:01:22] Ryan: Hey, happy to be here. Good to see you.  [00:01:25] Jason: So Ryan, I'd love to kick things off by getting into your background of how you kind of got into this journey of entrepreneurship. But before we do that, your company's called Wealthy Investor, right? [00:01:36] Yep. And you've worked with a lot of real estate investors. My target audience listening to the show are usually the vehicle or the support mechanism for a lot of investors. I think the audience would be interested in hearing a little bit about how you got kind of started into entrepreneurism first of all, and then maybe how you got into real estate. [00:01:57] Ryan: Yeah, I'll give the quick story. You know, I never wanted to get into real estate or entrepreneurship. I was a baseball player growing up and that was all I wanted to do. I was grateful and thankful that I was able to actually do that. You know, I ended up getting drafted by the Oakland A's and got to play professional baseball for eight years. [00:02:15] But, I didn't get paid much in the minor leagues. I never made it to the bigs. I was making 1200 bucks a month. And so I had to make money elsewhere. And that's what led me in entrepreneurship. You know, I got my real estate license in 2010. Yep. And, you know, so I've been in the game for about 15 years now. [00:02:32] And, you know, I've seen a lot. You know, started as an agent and hated it. My mom was actually a property manager. I didn't tell you that. So, I watched her do that for a little bit while being an agent as well. So she was an agent herself, but you know, watching her, I had no desire to be an agent or do anything in real estate because when I got in in 2010, she had just lost everything. [00:02:53] You know, and she's like, you need to get like a safe job. You need to get something that has a salary and a pension. That was literally her advice. Well, and I was like, yeah, maybe, I don't know. Hopefully this baseball thing works out. But while I'm playing, I can't get that. So I'm going to have to do something. [00:03:11] So anyways, I become an agent. Hate it. Do it for a few years. Ended up getting into other weird things. I started flipping couches. I was a substitute teacher. I was just doing anything that could make a buck on the side. And then eventually that led to flipping houses in 2015. [00:03:27] And that was when I, for the first time, started to make some real money. And yeah, I mean, by my third year, I had made, you know, I became a millionaire after year three, flipping houses. And it was just like, wow, this is crazy. And since then I flipped, you know, I think almost 600, 700 homes. And. You know, I've bought rentals. [00:03:47] I own apartment buildings through our syndication. You know, we've coached people, like you said, with wealthy investor. We've coached thousands of students and held really big events. You know, I've started another subsidiary businesses for real estate investors. You know, we have a lead generation company called Lead Kitchen where we help them get leads for sellers. [00:04:05] We have, you know, I had a tax firm, you know, I've kind of done almost everything you can imagine in the real estate world, but  [00:04:10] Jason: Yeah, that's a lot. So I'm curious you said your mom was a property manager and she gave you the advice It was kind of like maybe steer clear of this stuff. [00:04:19] What does your mom think now about everything?  [00:04:22] Ryan: You know what? She's still always hyper cautious so, you know, I retired my parents in 2019 I bought him a house bought him all the cars and everything and my dad actually started working for me in 2018 as a project manager. So he would oversee a lot of our flips and even to this day, he still does it. [00:04:42] Not cause he has to, because he's just like, well, if you're going to, you know, pay for us, I might as well like earn it, you know, and he just wants to support and whatever. So, You know, my dad understands the game. My mom though, obviously she's seen the results, but she's still always hyper cautious. [00:04:57] And so, she doesn't think I need to get a job now, but she does think a lot of times the big risk I take, I shouldn't be taking.  [00:05:05] Jason: Yeah. Looking back, when do you see in hindsight that there were clues that you were maybe destined to be an entrepreneur? Maybe even doing baseball. [00:05:16] Ryan: Yeah. I look back in hindsight, even as a kid and I was always buying and selling and thinking about money. Like I started an eBay account when I was like 12 years old. I remember. You know, buying stuff and bidding on stuff and getting good deals on eBay. And then I remember I was selling Pokemon cards and Yu Gi Oh cards, you know, in middle school and stuff. [00:05:37] And it's just like, You know, the signs were always there. And then even I was always attracted to just making money myself. So like I was good at poker, you know, I won poker tournaments and I played online and I made money that way. And so in hindsight, it was always very clear. I was never going to have a job. [00:05:53] Really the only true job I ever had was playing baseball. And even then it's like, yeah, there's not really a way to be an entrepreneur. I mean, you kind of are you're in charge of your career and how well you want to do and like how well you want to train and. And so, yeah, even in that sense, baseball is kind of in that same vein. [00:06:12] Jason: Yeah. So I'm sure even to get as far as you got in baseball, there was a lot of drive involved and a lot of effort involved, even though there wasn't a lot of pay, it sounds like.  [00:06:25] Ryan: Yeah, I think yeah, for me, like, I had to learn how to like win, you know, at the end of the day, losing is not an option, right? [00:06:33] It's a zero sum game in sports. One person wins, one person loses, you know, for the pitcher to succeed, you must get out. And so, dude, I'm like, I'm going to just figure out how to win. I'm competitive. And so I think competitiveness has always fueled me. It's different in business now because I understand the games that we play. [00:06:52] It's like, you know, We both can have good podcasts. We both can win in business. You don't need to lose for me to win. But that doesn't mean I'm still not competitive.  [00:07:00] Jason: Sure. Yeah. I'm sure in the different industries that you have businesses that you focus on, you have competitors and you probably want to win. [00:07:09] Ryan: I don't want to lose.  [00:07:11] Jason: Right. I want to be the best. I think that's true of most entrepreneurs. There's this drive or, this bite to win. You know, I remember early on, I think some of my first clues as to that I might be an entrepreneur is I was into music. And I remember in college, I was going around door to door pre selling CDs so that I could fund doing an album. [00:07:31] And yet I still at the time was thinking I've got to get a degree to get some sort of job to rise the corporate ladder. And I had no clue that entrepreneurism was like a path at the time. So it's interesting and Entrepreneurism sort of found me In that I needed a way to not be doing a nine to five job to be able to take care of kids because I ended up as a single father right and divorced and like went through all this stuff. [00:07:57] And so I was like, all right, what can I do? And so I sometimes joke that my kids turned me into an entrepreneur. It was just what needed to be done, but there were always clues before, right? So you know, one of the things that you've talked about a lot, I've noticed on your social media, on podcasts is you're very faith forward. [00:08:15] Like you're very comfortable talking about your faith and like the things that kind of motivate you and drive you. And you're involved in some charitable sort of, you know, businesses or charitable entities or organizations as well. How does faith sort of play into all of this when it comes to business for you? [00:08:33] Ryan: Well, you know, I grew up in the church. So, you know, for those who don't know, I'm a Christian. And you know, I grew up in a baptist church and you know, faith was always a part of my life. And I felt like for the most part, I did things the way God wanted me to. You know, I didn't really rebel and go crazy in college, got married young. [00:08:51] You know, I've always tried to put God first and everything. And You know, I think in the last couple of years, God was just pushing me to get even more deep in faith and more bold and to really embrace the spiritual and supernatural side of faith because I was always a very theologically sound person. [00:09:11] And you know, I've read the Bible many times, and, you know, I spent a lot of time, like I said, in church and serving and other things, but you just realize in everything in life, especially with faith, that there's so little that you actually know, and you know, as I've grown in my faith, I've learned to hear from God better. [00:09:29] And tune out all the noise of everything else going out in life, right? I mean, there's so many distractions in life. There's your business, there's social media, there's your kids, your family, you know, the recession, the election, it's like distraction. I think that's Satan's biggest, yeah, that's Satan's biggest tool is to distract you from the truth. [00:09:49] And so the truth was God wanted me to get more bold and to really use my platform for him, not for me. And, you know, with that, I became convicted to just really go all in because I mean, one thing I guess people would notice about my career too, is like, there's no really lukewarmness, you know, when I go all in on something. [00:10:09] It's like, yo, if we're going to throw an event, it's going to be crazy. If we're going to start this, we're going on a blitz. And so I said, you know what, we need to start something for Christian entrepreneurs and Christian business people. And so, you know, I created Wealthy Kingdom last year and you know, we're a nonprofit and, you know, we have three goals. [00:10:27] Well, I shouldn't say three goals. The one goal, the mission is to bring the kingdom to the marketplace. And what I mean by that is so many entrepreneurs just think it's the church's job to, you know, go get people saved and to go disciple people. And it's like, yeah, you know, just invite them to church on Sunday. [00:10:44] It's like, no, our job, every Christian has this goal or mission. You know, Jesus tells us right before he left, he said that the mission here is you need to go make disciples of all nations. We all have that same mission. And it's like, it's not to make the most money. It's not to do the thing that you love. [00:11:05] Like, Jesus never said do the thing that you love. Like that's another big lie that, you know, people have been told.  [00:11:12] Jason: Jesus didn't even do what he loved necessarily. Like to a degree, he said, I don't even do my own will. Yeah. He does the will of him who sent me. Right. He's like, I'm not even doing my own will. [00:11:22] And so if that's a model, then maybe it's not about just selfishly doing our own will all the time.  [00:11:29] Ryan: Absolutely should not. Our will, as we grow should be more aligned with the father's will. And that's what sanctification is. So anyways, to, to long story short. God called us to go be disciples where we're at. [00:11:42] We don't like, we need to go make disciples of all nations right now. That's in our job, in our career, in our business, at an event, whatever. And so I took that to heart. So we started you know, looking at everything that we currently do. And we said, well, let's do it for the King. And so I said, all right, well, let's get a kingdom based community. [00:12:01] And so, you know, we started an online community because that's something we currently do in business. It's like, well, let's get one kingdom based. And so we have that it's completely free. Anyone can join it. Then I said, let's throw events. We throw a lot of events. Why are we not throwing kingdom events? [00:12:14] And so we started throwing big events for the kingdom. And in fact, in my secular events, I just started throwing worship services and pastors in the middle of the event without even telling anyone. Because I'm like, look, this might be the only time they ever hear the good news in their entire life. [00:12:31] And, you know, whatever they might like it, they might not like it, but I don't really care. They need to hear it. And so we started incorporating faith into our events. You know, and then the last thing was really just discipling the current believers because I'm all about the lost. I want to get the lost at the events. [00:12:50] With our content, with our community, but also too, what about the people who are already saved? Well, we need to disciple them and make them better. And so we started running Bible studies all across the country. And I think we're close to a hundred, actually across the world right now, that meet every single week in people's offices, in their homes. [00:13:07] And we all go through the same studies together in these Bible studies, across as a body. And it's really cool. So, yeah, we're trying to attack it from a lot of different angles.  [00:13:18] Jason: It's a lot to organize.  [00:13:20] Ryan: Oh, yeah. But here's the thing, right? It's weird because I just said, Hey, don't do your will. Do God's will. [00:13:26] Right. But on the same hand, God gave us all talents, abilities and different life experiences. And so, you know, he calls us to use those to do his will and it's like all right god gave me a lot of influence online. Why am I not making videos and content, you know helping people understand what that means? [00:13:47] God gave me the ability to throw massive events. We threw wealth con every quarter a thousand plus people every quarter for years. Why am I not throwing massive events for the kingdom? God gave me the ability to organize communities and groups and all these things. Why am I not organizing and using my administrative gifts to do that? And it's like it's all the same thing, and they're all the same gifts and they're all the same skill sets, but on one hand you're putting him first and on the other hand you're putting yourself first  [00:14:16] Jason: Yeah, I love the idea of you know positively impacting the world I think business a lot of people don't realize I think business really there's no more efficient business model for positively changing the world than business, right? [00:14:31] I don't think charities don't function as well like businesses. There's an exchange of value And if there's value like behind it and there's a mission and a purpose behind it Then even the team members the employees everybody Are more lit up and excited and so business is a very efficient business model and you know, one of my past mentors, Alex Charfen, and he would say something to the effect of like entrepreneurs are the people that have changed the world throughout history. [00:14:57] They're the people that kind of think differently. And you know, you mentioned the word disciple like several times and I love the scripture where it's like, how do you know who's a disciple, right? And it's by this shall men know, right? You're my disciple. If you have loved one towards another and I think you know this spreading this message of like sharing true principles Which I think is what makes scripture, right? [00:15:20] It's that there's true principles that can be applied to things that are useful and I think a really good business book will have maybe one key principle it teaches, but then you take a book like the bible and it's just full of lots of different instances of principles that these levers that you can apply to various situations in your life or in decision making. [00:15:39] And you know, that's always been sort of my purpose, I feel is to bring principles to people and to share principles of truth to others, because I feel like that's the easiest lever to impact people's mindset or change their lives is to bring some truth or light or some true principles that they can apply, especially if it's facilitating more love or more kindness. [00:16:01] And there's so many different things different principles that apply in business in order to figure things out like related hiring related to you know running an efficient business  [00:16:11] Ryan: How do you know like a non profit is a business right? I mean, it's a non profit.  [00:16:15] Jason: Yeah, it is. It is a business. Yeah. [00:16:17] Ryan: A church is a business technically based on its designation, Wealthy Kingdom is a business. [00:16:22] It's a nonprofit, right? I mean, in many cases, well, I shouldn't say this because every nonprofit's different, but like for me, I make literally nothing from it. You know, I do it out of a, you know, I just want to do it. Now we have employees, we have staff, we have marketing, we have event costs, we got to pay for all this stuff. [00:16:38] Right. And so we got to figure out, man, how do we use the resources we have in the best way possible? Well, it's the same thing we ask ourself every day in business. We have a limited amount of labor, a limited amount of capital, a limited amount of time. What do we do, you know, to make the most of it? So it's all the same. [00:16:57] And I think too, right, you don't even have to have a nonprofit for this to be the example, right? This is just simply the idea of stewardship. You know, God talks a lot about stewardship and it's like, well. I've given y'all different varying degrees of talent. I've put y'all in different places. Y'all are going to be judged accordingly based on how you used your talent. [00:17:16] And I think that, well, I know that 1, 000, and a lot of Christians don't realize this. A lot of Christians, so, for all the Christians on the show, this is going to hopefully convict you, okay? A lot of people think that when you get saved, that's the end of the journey. Yeah, when literally that is like they've arrived they're done. [00:17:39] You just started! Great! [00:17:41] Jason: Yeah.  [00:17:41] Ryan: Now guess what you your whole rest of your life now actually begins and so many people like, God tells us that hey, guess what? Once you're saved, you know, there's a new judgment now. Because before it was like, all right, what happens in eternity, right? You're going to be in heaven. [00:17:58] You're going to be in hell. That's like the salvation question, but then there's this next question about judgment and stewardship and what you did with what he gave you because Somebody like myself and you will be judged more harshly than other christians and people are like, what does that mean? [00:18:18] Well, it means that if he gave you more resource and he even says if you're a teacher and you cause other people to stumble, you are going to be judged significantly more harshly than others. And so I take that super serious because I'm like, all right, yeah, I'm saved. I'm not worried about that, but man, I better do everything in my power to be a great steward and to understand if I have influence and I'm teaching people, I know exactly what I'm saying. [00:18:44] Jason: Yeah, it's much like the Parable of the Talents, you know, the worst was like to try and bury it and hide it, hide the money. The person that did the best with the money that he trusted with the most money, like, made twice as much money, like, he increased it significantly, right?  [00:19:00] Ryan: And he was also given the person's talent that, who buried his talent. [00:19:04] Jason: Exactly. He's like, I'm going to take it away from you because you don't know how to use this or how to deal with it. And so I think there's a nice summation of business in that for us, like where much is given, much is required and yeah, I've got a little bit of an audience. [00:19:18] You've got a little bit of an audience as well, right? We've got these audiences and people are listening, people pay attention to what we're doing And you know, we have a ripple effect. And I have a ripple effect through my clients who have a ripple effect through all the families that they support, the investors, the team members that they have. And that's significant and to me, that's exciting. Like, that's what motivates me to do what I do. [00:19:43] That's inspiring. But yeah, I could see that some people would maybe it would convict them. Maybe they would feel maybe they feel a little ashamed if they thought about it, man, you know, the energy I'm putting out into the world and in the universe here, isn't the ripple that I really feel is the best ripple I could create. [00:19:59] Ryan: Well, the other part, too, is obviously we have ripples here on Earth, but, you know, there are ripples for eternity based on our decisions for the people we help and everything else, and, you know, the Bible talks about how, you know, you store up your treasures in heaven, and if you read, you know, a lot of Christians also don't know this, they think that Heaven is this place where everybody's equal and, you know, we're all in the same thing. [00:20:25] No, it's actually not like there's hierarchies in heaven there. Like it's clear when the disciples are talking to Jesus and they're like, man, dude, I want to sit on your right hand. He's like, you don't even know what you're asking for. And. you know, they're clearly trying to be in that inner circle after this too. [00:20:43] And, you know, you could read all about it. There's hierarchy with demons. There's hierarchy with angels. Hierarchy is going to be in heaven. It's already there. And it's like, you know, you got a lot of investors on this podcast who are like, Oh man, I got to invest for the future. I got to get my net worth here. [00:21:01] I got to get my cashflow here. I got to. And it's like, we're investing trying to build for the future of this life. And once you truly understand that this life is so short in the span of eternity, you start thinking very differently. And you're like, well, I would rather invest for eternity. And actually, we just read this book in our Wealthy Kingdom group. [00:21:21] It's called Driven by Eternity by John Bevere. It's a great, one of the most convicting books I've ever read. But, he goes, alright. He's like, I learned this in math. Anything divided by infinity is infinity. And it's like, eternity is infinity, right? But if you were to try and even just, finitely say it with our brains, let's just say the next 24 hours, we're going to dictate the next thousand years of your reward here on earth, right? [00:21:48] How you spent the next 24 hours would dictate what reward you got for the next thousand years. You'd be like, that's insane, right? That doesn't seem right. That, you know, this is going to be  [00:22:00] Jason: proportionately skewed. To this moment. Yeah, it's- [00:22:04] Ryan: that's not even close to infinity.  [00:22:07] Jason: Yeah.  [00:22:08] Ryan: We spend 100 years here on this earth thinking we have all this time. In the scheme of infinity, it's worse than way where it could be 24 hours to 10, 000 years to a million years, a billion years. It's still not infinity. And yeah, people just don't, they don't think about it because it's so hard to grasp. But it's like I wish and this is why god has you know kind of got me more vocal about it. [00:22:33] So we're talking about it now But it's like I want investors because I'm an investor right now, you know, like I'm always looking for the best investment I'm always looking for the best use of my time, but I want people to start thinking about man, Invest for eternity. That's way longer than this! Your retirement is way shorter than infinity and eternity. [00:22:54] Jason: Though, could Jesus be a house flipper in the eternities? Because he says in my father's house, there's many mansions, right? And he said, I'm going to prepare something for you guys. And so I think what you're talking about is maybe we should be paying a little less attention maybe to just our real estate assets and our investing here and maybe do some heavenly real estate investing. [00:23:17] Ryan: I'm being 1, 000, that's 1, 000 percent what I'm saying. And it's changed my mindset so much in the last year that I could care less about my net worth. I could care less about how many properties I own. I could care less about any of it. Because eternity is so much greater.  [00:23:36] Jason: So some people might be saying, Ryan, come on. [00:23:38] You're wealthy now. You run Wealthy Investor. You've got money. So it's easy for you to say that. What would you say to the naysayers?  [00:23:46] Ryan: I would say that I've had a certain level of contentness, no matter how much money I had. I made 1200 bucks my entire 20s a month. Okay. So like, I understand what it is to have nothing. [00:23:57] And you know, people always make an excuse, right? It's like, I got three kids and a wife, five, five and under, man, I got a special needs son. I spend a lot of time with my kids. And it's like, well, you know, that's cause you, everybody's default is that's cause you have money or this or that. [00:24:14] It's like, no, all these things were built with nothing. They were all built simultaneously. It wasn't that, oh, this came after that. It's like, no, they were all built in the same construct. So people just need to realize it's just an excuse. It's a cop out. Right. And the other part too, is it's just a fact of not trusting what the Bible says. [00:24:33] So if you're not Christian- [00:24:34] Jason: which essentially is just not trusting God,  [00:24:37] Ryan: Yeah, and if you're not Christian and you don't believe it, that's one thing. But if you are a Christian, you cannot say that you are a Christian and then claim that. It is a lie. And it's like, if you read Matthew 6:33, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, then everything else will be added to you. [00:24:54] And so this is where it comes into play of like, if I'm seeking those eternal rewards, everything else will be added to me. Now, does that mean I'm going to be a hundred millionaire billionaire own all these prop-? No, but I do know I'm going to be just fine here on earth. Like, I don't have to worry about that. [00:25:11] Like I'll be taken care of. It'll be added to me. So I just trust that promise.  [00:25:17] Jason: Yeah. I think I've always just trusted, even when money was tight, I've always trusted in my ability to figure things out and that God's going to take care of me. I just, I bought  [00:25:27] Ryan: money's been tight for me many times after I've been rich. [00:25:30] Jason: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:25:31] Ryan: Like so many times every business owner every you know, Elon Musk, dude I mean the richest man in the world, right? This guy struggles with money like, you know Yeah, dude, he had to buy Twitter for 50 billion dollars he didn't have 50 billion dollars just laying around It was like the last hour to figure out how to go buy that thing. You know, they tell the story of how he invested all of his, like, 300 million he got from PayPal into Tesla and SpaceX and they were going to both go bankrupt and not make it. [00:26:01] Yeah. So, you know, I guess it all just is, like, it comes back to this idea that people think that there's a certain amount of wealth that prevents you from, you know, ever having to work again. And that's not true. It's just not true. Like, it can all be taken from you instantly.  [00:26:16] Jason: So, here's a thought I have that I think might convict, as you say, you know, Christians or just other people that claim to believe in God. [00:26:24] Is one thing I've noticed is you know, especially among, I guess, poor christians or people that have money issues is that I've noticed this action of cursing reality while claiming to love god. It's like oh well this sucks and this and they're kind of they're negative about everything showing up in reality and my favorite name for God in a lot of instances is reality because he says I am what is I am the truth he's the ultimate and reality always wins God always ultimately wins and I don't think it's fair for a christian to claim, I'm like so like faithful to god yet I'm going to curse my reality and complain about reality and complain about how everything is and complain about my family and my spouse and my job and the world and everything else. And there's such a difference I think in people that are at odds with reality which reality will always win. Reality doesn't lie reality is what is and those that are actually in alignment with reality, and align their will to god. [00:27:29] What do you think of that?  [00:27:30] Ryan: Yeah, I mean look god has been here way before us and here's another thing. I tell people I'm just like, all right, look, you know Even if you're not a Christian, right? I think majority of people believe there is something after this life. People believe there is, you know, some supernatural thing. [00:27:47] Most people would believe in the afterlife and whatever. And then, you know, almost everyone agrees there was nothing and then there was something right. And we would call this the creation of the world. But you know, my belief is, you know, It's based on the Bible, and the Bible tells us that there was a supernatural world well before this physical world you know, God talks about there was angels, there was all these things happening well before he created the earth, and the earth is going to pass away, and then, you know, You know, it's going to be back to how it was. [00:28:16] And you know, it's like, and you know, there's going to be a new heaven, new earth, all these things, but my point with that is God was always, that's just the best he has always been. He will always will be. He will always like he's past, present, future. He's just all present. And you know, The other part I struggle with a lot of Christians is they just don't understand the power that they have. [00:28:44] You know, they walk in weakness. And in reality, it's like, Do you realize, an axe, Jesus said or not an axe, but in the Gospels, and then it happened, an axe. He said, look it's good that I'm leaving you, because you're going to get something far better than just me being here with you physically. You're going to get the Helper, and then an axe, they receive the Holy Spirit, literally God living within them, inside of them. [00:29:08] And it's like, you have literally the same God that has always been here, that created you, that created this world living inside of you, and you're worried? What would you ever be worried about? You know, just think like back to just metaphors, you know, would you ever be worried if like, you know financially if you had just like all this money just with you at all times? [00:29:31] No, you wouldn't be worried financially. Would you be worried for your physical safety if you had the most elite killers as bodyguards around you at all times? No, you wouldn't be worried about your safety. You know, like, we have something so much better than all of those things, and we're worried. [00:29:46] We think we can't do things. We don't trust.  [00:29:50] Jason: So this is a good question. Let's bring this back to entrepreneurism. How can people, maybe they don't believe in God, maybe they, they do, but how do they bring themselves, do you feel, and how do you do this? How do you bring yourself in alignment with this greater power for those that maybe can just believe that or towards the universe or the God that created it? [00:30:12] How do we start to get ourselves in alignment? So we know we're on the right path.  [00:30:15] Ryan: Well, this doesn't apply to just God. But this is just everything in life, right? You are what you consume. So if I consume junk food and crap, then, you know, I'm going to be fat and my energy will suck and all those things, right? [00:30:30] Or like for another example, right? If I consume the news all day, 24 seven, right? I'm probably going to be a very skeptical, not trusting person. I'm going to have biases, all these things. Yeah. If I consume entrepreneur content all day and I watch all these guys I'm probably just going to be thinking about making money 24 seven, right? [00:30:48] You are what you consume in all areas of life and you know, you are the average of the five people you hang around with all of these things are a form of just what you consume And so if you want to become more like jesus you have to consume and get around people that are like Jesus. And so, you know, what does that look like? [00:31:05] Well, it looks like reading your Bible every day. It looks like praying every day. It looks like hanging around, you know, other Christians who are walking the walk. It looks like going to church on Sundays. It looks like listening to sermons, listening to worship music. You know, you just have to immerse yourself in it and consume it. And that's how you're going to become more aligned. It's crazy because like, I'll tell you this, and this could sound extreme to people, but it's like, you start to realize the rest of the things in the world that are deception, right? It's like, I used to not think rap music and things were like bad. [00:31:38] You know, I used to listen to gangster rap all the time, man. I love Tupac and all these guys. And then you start to just like, you know, they call me little Ryan. You know, you look, you listen to the lyrics, you know, from a different point of view and you're like, Oh my gosh, this is not good. This is crazy that I listened to this when I was a kid, I should not have been listening to this. [00:31:59] Right. Because you start to get convicted if you watch porn, it's like you're going to start looking at your wife a different way because you're just you're consuming the wrong things. Yeah. Yeah, and even little things start to convict you too. It's like, for the first time ever, we didn't celebrate Halloween this year. [00:32:15] Because I just became convicted that you know, its origins are demonic. And it's like, you just watch all of this stuff with it. And it's like, yeah, definitely none of this glorifies God. If it doesn't glorify God, why would I do it? You know? And it's like it glorifies demons and, you know, all of these dark things, it's like, that doesn't seem proper. [00:32:39] Jason: Yeah, like, you know, it's kind of that balance of how to be in the world, but not of the world, right? Like Jesus was hanging out with publicans and sinners and he was around people, but he also wasn't like just doing everything that they were doing. And so, yeah, I think that's an interesting concept. [00:32:53] I like, though, what you said about. And that wasn't even where my head was going, when I asked the question, but I love that you said like look at the people that you're choosing to be around. There's a consumption there and There's this book called the Dark Side of the Light Chasers it's by Debbie Ford and it's interesting because she talks about in it that we each have this golden side and we also have this dark side to us and the golden side Is the side of ourselves that we see reflected in others that we of the people that we look up to. And there's different people that kind of trigger that in us. [00:33:25] Some people, for example, like look at Donald Trump, very polarizing figure. Some people look at him and are very triggered and their dark side is triggered. They see a narcissist, they see all these negative attributes and then there's some that look at him and they're like, Oh, he's an entrepreneur or he's strong or he's masculine or whatever. [00:33:42] Right? And they look at the golden side. And I think what we see in other people and the people we choose to be around, we want to choose to be around people that we perceive as having a light. Somebody that has something that we want and attributes that we want to become more like. And I think choosing to do that, especially in choosing mentors, is important. [00:34:01] Because you're going to ultimately become a little bit more like them. And that doesn't mean every mentor that I choose is, like, ahead of me in every key area of life. But if they're at least in the area a little bit ahead of me in success in the area I'm getting coaching from then I'm going to absorb that but I'm careful not to take on everything else and to be discerning and to use discernment. [00:34:23] I think it's important like you said to be around people that you perceive as being a high caliber or people that you believe are moving towards greater light.  [00:34:33] Ryan: I agree with all of it.  [00:34:36] Jason: Love that. All right. So Ryan, what if somebody is listening to this and we talked a lot about like kind of faith, God, religion, stuff like this, and somebody who's like, okay, maybe I'm willing to entertain the idea that God exists. [00:34:54] Maybe Jesus is somebody I should like figure out, what would you say is a good first step for those people?  [00:35:02] Ryan: Well, you know, obviously like the Bible is the truth, right? That's God's revelation to us. And so a lot of people are like, well, I don't even know where to start with the Bible. I would say step one buy a study Bible. [00:35:13] So I would just go on Amazon. I would just, I would get an IV study Bible. It's very simple. So that way it has you know, just notes on the side for you to help you understand what it's saying and different questions. And so, you know, I have a study Bible right here. So this is, you know, maybe you can find this one on Amazon. [00:35:31] This is called the Quest Study Bible. Now, this Bible is like 15 years old. So maybe this one, they don't make this one anymore. But actually, I know they do make a version of it. It's not called the Quest Study Bible anymore, but just look at the NIV Study Bible. And I would start in Matthew. [00:35:44] That is the very beginning of the New Testament. I would just start in Matthew and read it all the way through. So, unlike other books where you start at the very beginning. You're going to start about two thirds of the way through in Matthew and just trust me, it'll make sense. So that would be step one. [00:35:58] Step two, I would say, you know, obviously you want to get plugged into a local church. That, that's a lot harder for somebody who doesn't know anything. So here's what I would advise is join us at Wealthy Kingdom. So it's wealthykingdom.Com. Everything's free. You can be a part of the community and you can get plugged into a Bible study with other entrepreneurs in your area or virtually. So that's going to be your best place to really build connections because you're going to also be around other people who understand the actual life that you live right now. And they're open. We have lots of non believers in our Bible studies who are there to learn, man. [00:36:34] They're like, look, I'm here to learn. I don't know. I don't believe. I don't even know what you believe, but I'm here to learn. And so we, we love those types of people. So I would, those would be the two steps I do because I don't know everybody here listening is listening to different things. So I don't know what local church you should go to or anything. [00:36:52] So come join us virtually. And then you're probably going to meet people in Wealthy Kingdom that are in your area, especially the local Bible study. And they're going to know what local church for you to go to.  [00:37:02] Jason: Got it. You know, this is maybe a controversial hot take of, mine But I feel like a lot of people get so caught up in trying even among christians or non christians trying to prove whether the bible and everything in it is factual history or not It's like facts and data. [00:37:19] They're trying to prove it and I think both sides miss sight of the most important elements, which is are there true principles that are applicable? Can you apply these things to your life? Are they useful tools? And I think that's the real measure of a principle, whether it's true or not, is you try it out. [00:37:38] You test this, try this on in your life and see if the fruit is good. See if it gives you positive results. Does it give you positive results to believe these things? Or does it cause, you know, does it take you in the opposite direction? Do you feel like you're moving towards something higher? Or is it taking you backwards? [00:37:57] Ryan: Yeah, there's biblical truth to that. You know, there was a reason Jesus performed miracles, you know, like a lot of people, a lot of people are like, well, why? Right? He could have just said all the things he said, hey, you know, don't steal. You know, follow the Ten Commandments. Love your neighbor. [00:38:13] Everybody can agree with those things. But it's like, yo. I'm going to make this person the lord of my life, which he was asking them to do, to believe that he's the son of God, to believe and give their entire life to him. It's like, well, dude, you better show me something else if you want me to commit to that degree. [00:38:31] And you know, that's why he performed signs and wonders to show them that, hey, look, I am the one. And You know, it's true, right? Like, that's why he did it. And that's why all of the disciples you know, were killed for preaching it well after he was gone, because they saw it, they believed, and they knew that the reward, you know, was going to be great eternally, right? [00:38:52] Look, Jesus says it to Doubting Thomas too, when he returns, right? A lot of the disciples believe, they're like, Oh dude, like he's back. And then Thomas is like, I ain't believing until I see him. Until I see the holes in his body. And so Jesus comes back and he's like, Look, Thomas, feel the hole, right? [00:39:08] Shows him the hole in his hands. And he's like, blessed are those who believe without seeing.  [00:39:12] Their faith is stronger, but still, it's all good that you needed to see to believe. Like, it's all good. And so. There are going to be people who listen to this and they're like, I believe all this makes sense. [00:39:26] And then there are going to be those who say no, I need to see the fruit. I need to see why I should believe. And in fact, I still believe miracles happen today. I've seen them with my own hands. I've prayed for miracles that cannot be explained other than they were miraculous. And you know, with that, it's like both happen. [00:39:43] Jason: I think that I think if we're really created in the image of God,. Then I think that is a clue that we might be a lot more powerful than we realize and you know there's even evidence that the placebo effect is getting stronger as time goes on. So like as they do drug testing and stuff like this drugs have to pass a certain test that they're stronger than placebo. The challenge is drugs are having a harder and harder time showing that they're stronger than placebo because the placebo effect is actually getting stronger. And I think that humanity worked our consciousness is raising a bit. [00:40:19] I think that people are realizing that we are creators, that we are more powerful than we give ourselves credit. And, you know, Jesus says, if you have faith, like a grain of a mustard seed, you could like move a mountain or something. Right. And so I think that I think there is something to, you know, this idea that we can create this positive future or alter our reality or alter things real time, like people's physical health or blessing people or different things. I do think that miracles can occur and there's evidence of it happening all the time. And I think in religion, see, I grew up Mormon. And I'm a very ultra conservative. [00:41:00] I was a Mormon missionary for two years and then eventually left it. I didn't even try alcohol until I was over 30. And I'm the only one in my family that, that left. I'm the black sheep and I'm the oldest of five boys. So, sorry mom, sorry dad.  [00:41:14] Ryan: I'm not happy with you.  [00:41:15] Jason: They still love me, but I think one of the things that I, and I'm grateful for all that I learned, like we, we did, I did a lot of religious study growing up and I was the one that just kept digging until I took my way out of it, I guess. [00:41:26] Ryan: Mormon apologetics is a tough thing to defend.  [00:41:30] Jason: Yeah. So I think you know, there's a lot of people think that they need to sell some sort of gospel or good news of, Jesus or the christian church by convincing people their life is going to suddenly be magical or better and that's not always true, and I don't think that's the whole point is that you don't magically make everything about your external circumstances in your life better, but I think being more in alignment with god and being more connected allows you this greater strength to weather what's happening. [00:42:02] I mean if you look at what happened to Peter or any of the apostles, like they suffered horrible deaths. I don't know that their life magically became more amazing because they followed Jesus, but they had that conviction and they knew truth. And I think in a lot of instances, becoming Christian or believing in Jesus or following his principles may make your life in some instances, more challenging, you know, maybe there's more fiery darts thrown at you by the adversary, for example, but I do believe that there's some sort of there's some sort of power and confidence that comes with knowing that your personal life and will is in alignment with God wants for you. [00:42:45] Like you're following that calling and that knowing within, and there's a strength that comes from that, that nobody else can shake. It doesn't matter like what your parents are saying to you. It doesn't matter what your spouse maybe is concerned about. It doesn't matter if you know, you're doing what is right, then you're willing to just let the consequences follow. [00:43:03] And that's different than just looking for this better life or a mansion here on earth instead of a mansion in heaven.  [00:43:10] Ryan: Yeah, and you know, Jesus said hey you got to pick up your cross and follow me. It's like picking up your cross literally means dying to your old self and giving your all to Jesus And you know somebody's like oh, but like I got to say bye and to my dad and I gotta bury and he's no. [00:43:27] No, this has nothing to do with your current family. This is about you and me You know, whether or not you're going to follow. And you know, I've met many Mormon, ex Mormons, Jews, Muslims, people who have given their life to Jesus. And you know, it's tough because there's so many family dynamics that go on to it. [00:43:46] And it's like, it ain't easy. And I feel for those people, cause that, that's very hard. But I also am a believer that, you know, through your faith and through, you know, those who make that commitment, they have the chance to impact their families. So much more and they can be sanctified through them. [00:44:02] Jason: Yeah, I mean I had a meeting with the mastermind this morning and we were talking about distractions And we were all these they're all men and we're all sharing like what's distracting us and what's holding us you know back from the things we should be doing and you know and I was thinking about you know, just how can I be a better father? [00:44:21] How can I be a better partner, a better spouse? How can it be a better business leader? And at the stage I'm at now, it's just more discipline. It's less distractions. And it's all like cutting out all of the fat and the little things that are so easily taking us. And that's kind of what you led us into here in the beginning. [00:44:39] You know, what do you, what would you say to those that are just, they're trying to run their business, they're dealing with a lot of distractions, which is common for entrepreneurs. We see shiny objects everywhere. How do they get focused and how they start, how did they start listening to that inner voice that connects them with the divine so they can start making the right moves? [00:45:00] Ryan: Well, I think it's very simple, right? You just make God the focus. You just have to trust that if you make him the focus. Everything else will fall into place. And then it goes back to Matthew 6, 33, seek first the kingdom and his righteousness and everything else will be added to you. And that's faith. [00:45:18] That's faith in a nutshell, because you'll be like, well, don't understand the fires that I have, Ryan. You don't understand the drama and the problems. My kids are doing this, my relationship with my wife sucks. Like I got to focus over there in order to fix. You know, well, before I can go worry about God. [00:45:35] I mean, that's like the biggest thing I hear all the time too. It's like, well, I. Once I get my life right, then I'll start going to church. I'm like, no, you can't get your life right. That's why Jesus paid the price, because you can't. It's the same funny thing I hear when people are like-  [00:45:49] Jason: it's like saying once I get abs, I'll stop eating candy bars. [00:45:53] Ryan: Yeah, well, I was going to use a health example too where I hear this actually from people because I was in sports for so long Hey, I'm going to get in shape first, then I'm going to go get a trainer and start you know, because I'm not ready to go train with them like, that's too hard. I got to like get in shape first and I'm like, dude. [00:46:09] No, that's why you need a trainer like no, And yeah, it's the same thing with faith. It's like if you follow god and you seek his ways I mean just like you've been saying from a practical standpoint. If you follow what the Bible says, your relationship with your wife will get better. Like, you're just going to be a better leader, you're going to serve her, you're going to be different. [00:46:27] Your relationship with your kids will get better. The relationship with your employees will get better. The way you act in business will be better. You know? And it doesn't mean that it's going to be easy. I didn't say it was going to be easy. I just said, it's going to get better. And you know, I've had, yeah. And I had, I've had so many difficult situations in business, you know, lost millions, investors pissed, customers pissed, lawsuits. [00:46:53] I've dealt with everything you could imagine in business. And guess what? Every time I've been able to get through it and it's because of my faith and I didn't know how I would get through it. I didn't know what the outcome would be. I didn't know how I would solve it. But I can tell you I slept pretty good throughout all of it because I just knew God would take care of it some way somehow. [00:47:16] Jason: You knew it would be figured out and you felt like you had somebody on your side that's pretty powerful.  [00:47:21] Ryan: I mean, God promises to be on my side.  [00:47:23] Jason: Yeah.  [00:47:24] Ryan: You know, Romans 8, 28 says that, you know, he works all things for my good, for those who believe.  [00:47:30] Jason: Even the tough stuff.  [00:47:32] Ryan: All things, not some things.  [00:47:34] Jason: Whom God loves, he chastens. Despise not the chastening of the Lord, right? So may not necessarily be easy, but yeah, it'll be worth it.  [00:47:41] Ryan: Don't expect anything to be easy.  [00:47:43] Jason: Right. I think we go into it, we should expect things to be hard and worth it. And I think when we're, it's kind of like the old stoic adage, you know, hard choices, easy life. [00:47:53] Easy choices, hard life. We all know people that they're focused on ease. They're focused on trying to have comfort They're focused on how do I how do I avoid doing stuff? I just want to relax. I just want my weekend I just want time and I think as i've grown into adulthood and you know focus more on stepping more into my masculinity. [00:48:13] I've realized that you know, nobody's coming to save us, except maybe Jesus, right? Nobody's coming to do it for us. There's a level of work that's expected and we need to get beyond always seeking comfort because comfort is a deceptive and alluring sort of drug and we need to be willing to put in the work put in the effort and focus and put in that discipline and then life gets a lot easier overall Like life gets a lot better overall when we're disciplined. Disciplined people don't cheat on their spouses. [00:48:47] Disciplined people like, you know, take care of their kids and spend time with them on the weekend. Disciplined people you know, focus and take care of their health so they have less health issues. They're putting their own oxygen mask on first, so to speak, so they can take care of others, right? [00:49:02] And that's it. That's discipline. And I think that's important. Well, Ryan we're about out of time. I really appreciate you coming on the show. This has been I think inspiring conversation. It's got my brain sort of running in a bunch of different directions thinking about, you know, how can I be better and how can I evolve as a human? [00:49:19] What would you like to say in your final words to those listening to this podcast and maybe how they can get in touch with you or your various businesses.  [00:49:30] Ryan: Yeah, I think you know, as far as getting in touch with me, that's easy. You can just go on social media, search Ryan Pineda, wherever. [00:49:37] So that part's easy. I would say the final thing to leave him with, I mean, we've talked a lot about faith and eternity and everything else. And that's usually the final thing I leave on podcasts because I don't depending on where the conversation goes, right? You know, I'll always draw it back to faith. [00:49:51] So I would just say that, man, I mean, like, look there's a common theme for what we're saying. It's like, life's going to be hard one way or the other, you know, you're going to go through tough times. You are going to have uncertainty. You're not going to know if things are going to work out or not the way that you're hoping. [00:50:08] You know, One thing I know for sure is, and this will apply for both ways, not just faith, but also business and faith. When you start becoming process driven more than results driven, your life changes. Because you're never going to be up and down with the result. You're always just trusting the process. [00:50:28] And so, you know, baseball, we had to learn this every day. It's like, I don't know who's pitching tomorrow. I don't know. Like, I just got to trust my routine, my process, and then I'm doing the right things every day. And if I follow that, I know I'm going to get the best result that I possibly can get. In the long run, and I think you were referencing that when it comes to, Hey, you know what? [00:50:46] Even if you don't believe these biblical principles are going to change your life, that's a form of trusting the process. And if you do, you know, you'll end up getting better results just overall, whether you believe or not, and you just follow that process. And then, you know, I would say even to take it a step further, it's like, man, if you trust that he is the creator of this world and he has promised to take care of you then that's a process to choose to have faith and trust that's the case, to trust that his plan is better than your plan. And it's not easy because we all want control. We all want certainty. That's, you know, that's our human nature. [00:51:21] That's why we're trying to get financially free. That's why we're trying to you know, get enough cash flow and I teach on these things like I get it. But there's a better plan. And you know, if you just trust the process every day of following him, he will make your path straight, you know? And so I've seen that in my own life. [00:51:42] I'll tell you this. I never thought I'd be a podcaster, an events guy, a social media guy. I never thought that was going to be the thing, but. I felt like God was calling me down that path, and here we are. And I don't know where he's going to call me the next 10 years. I don't have a 10 year plan. I don't have any of that, and I don't care. [00:51:59] All I'm trying to do is whatever God's calling me to do at this moment, and I want to be flexible to his will, and be very careful not to just insert my will. And that's it, right?  [00:52:10] Jason: Yeah, appreciate it. You know, appreciate you coming on the show. I think, I agree. I think you know, even if you, For some reason don't want to be christian you don't you don't you're opposed for some reason. [00:52:23] Some people are just like opposed to the bible, just look at the bible through the lens of what are the principles that have made this book one of the greatest books of all time? Why has it stood out? Why has it stood the test of time? Why do so many people look to it for wisdom and for insight? There's so much wisdom in there and if you can at least just be willing to extract wisdom wherever you can find it, then you're not an idiot And so at least start there, everybody listening, just look for wisdom, be a seeker of wisdom and look for the things that are better and higher. [00:52:53] And that's going to eventually lead you to better and higher things and help you to weather the storm. And you can tell Ryan has, you know, he has this confidence that comes from knowing it's not all reliant on him. He trusts that there's something greater than him that's going to give him a source of power or ideas or decision making or guide his paths and to not have that for those of you listening must be terrifying. It must feel a little bit scary to just not have nothing else above you to reach up to. And so there is a god. There's somebody reach up to, go ahead and test it out. [00:53:29] My way of aligning towards God is to sit, read things that I feel like lead me closer to something better and higher. That could be scripture, whatever, or to meditate on something, but then to think, how can I align my will with that? What is that voice inside? What is that calling telling me to do and take those actions and do it. [00:53:47] If you don't take those actions, listen to it, that voice will get quieter. But if you start to listen to that voice and take those actions, it's going to get more and more clear to the point where you have that confidence to go out and make decisions. So I think that's a good ending note here. [00:54:01] So Ryan this is a very different podcast episode than we've ever done here on the DoorGrow show. So there we go. I like it. The most impactful one though. I appreciate you inspiring us to get into faith and chat about that. All right. And And that'll be it for today's show until next time everybody to our mutual growth If you are struggling within your property management business to figure out how to figure out what you need to do next in your business operationally or how to add doors, reach out to us. We'd love to support you. Check us out at doorgrow. com and that's it. Bye everyone. [00:54:33] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:54:59] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

Gerard, Kevin and Ryan All that and much more all that and more on this episode.

There are a lot of winter and “Christmas” beers that come out around the holidays, but do they all really count as Christmas beers?  We take three completely different styles of “Christmas” beers and put them to the test to see if they are Christmas enough!  Plus Drew pulls out a relic beer from the back of his beer fridge named “Santa's Butt” and we debate what are the best and worst Christmas songs of all time.  I don't know if there'll be snow, but have a couple beers!Featured Beers:Seasick Crocodile.  Praire Artisan Ales, Krebs, OK. Sour.  6.3% ABV.Celebration Fresh Hop IPA. Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Chico, CA. 6.8% ABV.Happy Holidiculous.  Saloon Door Brewing, Webster, TX. Russian Imperial (Pastry) Stout.  11.8% ABV.Santa's Butt. Ridgeway Brewing, South Stoke, Oxfordshire England.  Winter Porter. 6% ABV. Christmas Songs!DMX sings Rudolph:  https://youtu.be/AXca4WcCzloFavorites:All I want for Christmas by Mariah Carey (Ryan)NONE WHATSOEVER (ADAM)Holly Jolly Christmas by Burl Ives (Drew)Least Favorites:All the Chipmunks songs (Ryan)All of them (Adam)So this is Christmas by John Lennon (Drew)Other Songs Received by our Beering Ain't Easy Poll:Feliz NavidadWhat Christmas Means to Me by Stevie WonderJingle Bell RockGreen Christmas by the Barenaked LadiesDominick the Christmas DonkeyLast Christmas by WhamBaby it's cold (rapey) outside by Dean MartinRun Rudolph RunChristmas in HollisBack Door Santa by Bon JoviMillie Pulled a Pistol on Santa by De La SoulSanta BabyWhere are you Christmas by Faith HillChristmas Tree Farm by Taylor Swift Other Shout-Outs:Eureka Heights Advent Calendar (and Nuke the Whales Imperial Milk Stout)2021 Beer Meme Competition -  hosted by @hopculturemag and @halftimebevAnchor Brewing:  Merry Christmas and a Happy New YearSpindletap Brewery:  Candy GreenMaine Beer Company:  Dinner HTOWN Brewery Challenge Tracker - See how we're doing on our challenge to visit all breweries within 50 miles of Houston! Direct Link to Christmas Shirt/Sweater Designed by Beering Ain't Easy!https://www.teepublic.com/long-sleeve-t-shirt/26095000-christmas-beerNEW WEBSITE and MERCH PAGE!  Check out all the great podcasts that are a part of Cross the Streams media!https://www.crossthestreamsmedia.com/show/beering-aint-easy/ Follow @beeringainteasy on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube, email us at beeringainteasy@gmail.com, or follow our beer quest on Untappd, usernames BeeringAintEasyAdam and BeeringAintEasyDrew.

Today Jon takes a look at how to improve your category pages on your website. He'll explore what you should know about headers, footers, navigation, bread crumbs, and more! For help optimizing your category pages: https://thegood.com/ TRANSCRIPT: Ryan: Hello Jon, and welcome to the podcast. Ryan: I was digging through one of our shared clients analytics, and this is a rather large international brand that most of our listeners would probably recognize if we mentioned their name. And outside the home page, the largest volume of traffic to their site is condensed into just a couple category pages. Now that's not unusual for a lot of major brands because of Google's algorithm, on the organic side, favoring category pages over product pages. But it also means that there's a huge opportunity for a brand capturing a lot of this traffic to really make that traffic work better on category pages specifically. Ryan: So through this, I'd really love to hear some of your suggestions and best practices on improving those category pages. And maybe even at least some tests people can be testing as they're looking at their category pages to make some improvements. Kind of like our CRI name we coined. What do you think of that category pages and the importance of them? And should we continue down this path? Jon: I love it. Let's gain some knowledge on this. Ryan: Fantastic. So most of the listeners probably haven't had the amazing opportunity I have of hearing you talk about landing pages as much, and just seeing some of your tear downs. And so as with most of these, let's start at the top and kind of work our way down, and even some of your general best practices, probably, in header navigation can be applied to other places of the site. Especially if you keep it consistent. But do we need to think about mobile and desktop separately in this scenario? Or just pick one and go with it? What's your usual recommendation? Jon: I would recommend that we start with desktop and keep it to that for today. The reason being is that even with e-com, I think we're seeing the vast majority of traffic is now on mobile, but still a very, very large majority of conversions are happening on desktop. Now that varies from site to site, of course, but I do believe in what we see here at the good on a daily basis is conversion kings is still on desktop. And so it always makes sense to start there. The other reason is that if you fix your desktop experience and you have a responsive site, that should, for the most part, filter down to your mobile website. And so there's no longer just a desktop and a mobile version of a site. It should be responsive or adaptive for the most part. And so with that in mind, I would highly recommend starting with desktop. And then of course you could look at mobile later, but I think for the point of today's show, we could just stick with desktop. Ryan: Yeah. And if you do maybe have a mobile site and a desktop site, you may need to contact us because we may have some abilities to fix that [inaudible 00:03:12], because that's probably a struggle for your business. There's maybe some lower hanging fruit for you, before you get into Jon's conversation about it. Jon: The number of sites I still see, it's dwindling. But there is still a number of sites out there that they have mobile on a separate domain. And that's always... It's like M dot, the domain dot com. That's when I know there's a bunch of opportunity there to increase sales and conversions. Ryan: God, John knows he's going to make that company a lot of money when they listen to them. Ryan: Okay. So let's start right at the header, very top as you're scrolling down this page as soon as you come onto it, a lot of companies do things that are not great in the header. What are some of the things that they're putting in there maybe that aren't needed or that distract from the actual conversion that they're attempting to get these people to take on the site? Jon: Well, I think the first thing is that it always blows my mind when I see a header, and these brands invested so much to get people to their site, right? Whether it be content marketing or paid ads or SEO, whatever it is. And then they immediately show them social icons, and show them ways to bounce off the site. Right? Social is great for getting people to your site, but once they're there, keep them on your site. Don't send them back out to those channels. And so really be looking in the header to keep people on a site, as opposed to sending them back off through something like social links or icons, things of that sort. That's the biggest one I see. Ryan: Okay. So as far as distractions, social is the biggest issue there. What are the things that maybe companies are missing out on in that header that they should be thinking about putting into them? Jon: Well, I think that the biggest thing people miss out on is just communicating very simply what the brand is, what the value proposition is. Jon: Now, most people don't think about including that in the header. And I'm not suggesting putting your entire company story there, your entire value prop. But what I am saying is you can communicate these things through perhaps your navigation and the language that's being used there through the utility navigation, through what's the lines of texts that goes right next to your logo, right? Jon: So a lot of people will just put a logo up and expect that because they're on your website, they know exactly what you do. Well, think about it through the eyes of a new to file customer. That customer just got to your site by clicking on a link that a friend posted on social. They have a little bit of context, but it would be great to get that reinforced and the first place, especially in Western cultures, folks are going to look is the top left corner of your site. That's generally where people put their logo, but then they miss the opportunity there of including additional context. Could be just one sentence or one line, does not have to be very huge and it can be blended in with the logo, even. Ryan: Dang it. I am taking notes. I think I need to go to some of my brands and add some, maybe, lines of contexts. Jon: Well, if you want a good example just go to thegood.com and look what we do in the top left hand corner right next to our logo. Ryan: No, that's brilliant. And I think as a business owner myself, and working with brands constantly, I'm in the business too often that I don't step out of it often enough and think about the perspective of a brand new user. I clicked on a link, maybe not even necessarily thinking before I clicked, and boom. Logo. I'm supposed to know what you do right before that, but probably I don't. Jon: Well Ryan, this applies to you based on what I'm hearing right now, but it also applies to almost every e-com brand and e-com manager. Is that it's, and I've probably said this a hundred times on this show already, but it's very difficult to read the label from inside the jar. Right? You are so close to this, you probably helped to wire frame out the site, design it, define the navigation, lay out all the content. And so you're so close to that, that you know what each link does, you know what the site is, you know your value prop. So it doesn't occur to you that other people might not get that, might not understand it. And it could use a little assistance there. Ryan: Yeah. And you've helped me a lot on navigation so I'm going to jump into that in a second. But before that, site search is a often misguided location on the site. Do you recommend that as high up as you can, as obviously as you can in the header? Or do you recommend other places on the page for that? Jon: I am not opposed to having search be front and center. Having search front and center is great for people who are second time visitors or repeat visitors to your site. They know exactly what they're looking for. Think about things like a car parts dealership, right? Or car parts retailer. People may come and know exactly what model number for that very specific part that they need. They're definitely going to know what car model that they want to put that on, so they might just search by that car model. So anyway you can give people a shortcut down the funnel, and skip steps of the funnel so that they can just get to exactly what they need as quickly as possible, is better. And I can tell you that search is going to convert twice as much, if not more, than just a regular visitor. So encouraging people to use search can really help boost conversions and sales. Ryan: Wow. That is an impressive stat. So just on average from what you see when somebody uses at least a decent search, because there's different levels of search quality- Jon: Of course. Ryan: ... On a site, but an average search you see approximately 50% increased conversion rate on the traffic that uses search versus doesn't? Jon: Right. And an easy win for listening to this is just look at your top five, maybe 10, search terms that people are using and search those yourself and see what the results are. They're likely lackluster. You can easily fix that, just go through your product detail pages that are relevant and add some additional meta information to those pages to have them pop up in search results. Things like common misspellings or the plural of an item. I can't believe how many times people don't think to add an asset at the end of an item because people may search for it that way. And also just make sure that the search results page... The results themselves matter, but also that search results page that shows those results needs to be optimized as well. A lot of people just forget about it and just show no context at all. They just show the title of the page and link to it. Why not have the description there? You already should be, on your product detail pages, having some meta-description that Google can pick up, why not display that there if it's already part of the page? Ryan: No, that's great. And I think making sure that a search that happens on the site has a listing of products, generally, make sure that you can look at that in an incognito window when you scrape the URL and paste it. That way you can use it, from a traffic generation perspective, you can drive traffic from a paid search ad. But also, if you're having enough people search that on your site, you should probably make that a category page so that Google can start indexing that as well, because you're probably not alone on your site in people searching for that product. Or group of products. Jon: Exactly. Yeah. And an easy way to find out what people are searching for, just go into your Google analytics. Most platforms, I mean they all have a little bit different perhaps, but most eCommerce platforms, the search results page is just something that ends in a question mark S equals. So if you figure out what that URL pattern is, and then you can just run a filter for that question mark S equals or whatever, and then you can understand how many times people are hitting each of those search terms. Jon: So it's pretty simple to figure out with about five minutes of work and I can promise you it will increase your conversions immediately. Ryan: Awesome. Okay, one area you've helped me a lot in sites and understanding how to improve the experience for the users is navigation. And a lot of companies tend to do this wrong. They seem to think that more is better. What do you often suggest to companies when it comes to navigation? Jon: Keep it to five items or less, first of all. Anything over that and people just assume that it's going to be a lot of work and they're not at your website to do work, right? So they just like, "I don't want to weed through all these options," and it becomes more taxing than it needs to be. What I would recommend here is you keep it to five items, but also have the navigation copy, be in the context of your customer, not of yourself. What I mean by that is so many brands try to promote themselves in the navigation. They have things like about us. Nobody's coming to your website to learn about us. Now they may want to learn more about you, but not in the main navigation. They typically will scroll down to the footer and look for that, or that information that's on your about us page should be throughout your site in places that people are actually looking for it in context. Jon: So a lot of people will do things like put home as the first navigation item. Really, we all know, we've been trained over years, that if you clicked the logo in the top left hand corner, it's going to take you to the homepage. So you can eliminate home out of your navigation. That's a real easy one. Also, highly recommend if you're an e-com site and you have only a handful of categories, that you just list the high level categories in your navigation and leave it at that. That will do two things. It clearly tells people what you sell, how you can help them. And in addition to that, it gives them a quick and easy way to get to the place they want to go to. So that again, they're skipping steps that are in that funnel by having to kind of continue to drill down and find it. Jon: So there's a lot that can be done in navigation. It needs to be clear. It needs to be concise. You need to keep it to five items. And you need to try to keep yourself out of the navigation whenever possible. Ryan: Got it. Now on many category pages I will see, in addition to the top navigation, a left hand navigation or kind of a filtering system on the left hand side of the category page. Do you have an opinion on if that is good, bad, helpful, indifferent? Jon: I think it depends on the amount of product that you're trying to sell. So let's talk about that. We were actually, just before we got on the recording here, we were talking about a shoe manufacturing brand that had a left hand navigation that was filtering, that contain, I think, 40 to 50 different check boxes, right? That you could filter by. Right? And the problem with that, I mean, they had every single shoe size as a filtering option. It wasn't a dropdown, it was just a whole bunch of check boxes. So imagine being a consumer and trying to filter, but you have to look through all of these items just to find the ones that are relevant to you. It's really not that helpful. In the end it actually, I would argue, makes it more complicated. Jon: Filtering in that way can be helpful. I think it needs to be a high level filter. What are the main differentiating points? And then once they get down to the product level within that category, then you could start doing some other points, like size, availability, in stock, out of stock, et cetera. So helpful, but it depends. And the thing it depends on is how many products are you selling? If you have a handful of products, then you don't need it. People will scroll and look at your six or eight categories. If you have 50 categories, so many that you really just can't list them all on a page. Then of course you need some filtering for categories. Ryan: Got it. Okay. Makes sense. I've seen some that are great on that left hand side and the other ones that I get lost and I just leave. Ryan: So on each category page, generally speaking, best practices are to have a piece of content for the search engines, usually three or four sentences talking about that category. It's great for SEO. A lot of platforms default to having a place for that content at the very top. Have you seen that impact conversion rates being at the top, the bottom, the side, or is it kind of like it hasn't mattered too much to what you've seen? Jon: Well, I think that ideally I would put it below. If you need it for SEO purposes, that is. Right? Because most of the time that SEO type of content is not going to be helpful to the consumer. You're trying to write for Google, you're not writing for a consumer. So in that sense, I would get it out of the consumer's way. But I do think that some content above the products on a category page could be helpful in letting people know A, where they are. So any type of wayfinding you can do there, that type of stuff can be really helpful. I do think that if you're running a promotion on one category, that could be a great place to do it. If you have a little bit, or just maybe even some branding stuff where you have an image that relates to that category, showing it in use, something of that sort, can be really, really helpful. Jon: Say you sell tents and you are showing a family and you're on the category page for four people tents, right? And so you show a family camping and are sitting around a campfire with the big tent in the background. Right? Something like that can be helpful. You're setting the context and the tone. Ryan: Now also at the top, a lot of times you're going to see bread crumbs. And I've heard some good things from you about breadcrumbs and some bad things about breadcrumbs. So how do you decide whether or not breadcrumbs are helpful? Or are they always a terrible idea? Jon: I'm not really a fan of breadcrumbs. I think at this point that what has happened, it's a hold over from SEO practices of yesterday. It's not something that I see quite often anymore that is actually helpful for a consumer. And typically you're just giving them information either that they're already aware of, or that they don't really need. And if they want to go back up a level to the homepage, for instance, because you're only on a category so you're probably one level deep, maybe two. At that point they're probably just going to click the logo and go home or look at your main navigation. So overall, likely not that helpful. It's just another piece of content you're asking your visitor to wade through before they get to the content that they really are at your page for. Ryan: Okay, good. And so, just a general question going deeper, do you like them more on product pages that can get you back to a category page? Or is it just kind of across the board breadcrumbs are not a great idea? Jon: I think that it's helpful to have a navigational item that takes people up one level. Now, when you say breadcrumb I think that it starts out with homepage, next page down category page then, then your product detail page, right? So now you're four or five items long. Most people put the entire page title in those. It's not just so and so category. Look, the breadcrumb typically is dynamically built and the way that the platforms do it is that they will use the entire page title. And so they put that into the breadcrumb. Now your breadcrumb ends up being like 300, 400 characters long. It's massive. It's stretched across the entire page. It's distraction. It's not really helpful either at that point. And all of the eye tracking that we've done at the good over all these years, people never look at the breadcrumb. It becomes blindness because they see it and they stop, maybe for a split second, but they're definitely not reading the entire breadcrumb. And that's why I say it becomes a distraction and it gets in the way. Because you're making people stop and think before you're giving them the content you want. Ryan: Got it, okay. So sitting on a category page, you see a list of all the products. More and more often on a lot of these SAS platforms, I'm seeing the ability to add to cart from the category page or even just a kind of a quick view, popup JavaScript. Have you seen some direction on whether either one of those or both of those as good or bad? Jon: I personally am not a fan of those. Unless you have a product that's like a refill or something like that, where you have a limited number of products and you have a product that somebody is coming to the site and is quickly looking for that product and knows they're going to want to buy it without having to see any additional details. Jon: Here's the thing, on category pages people are still looking and browsing and trying to find the product or service that is going to solve their pain or their need. And the challenge here is that you're putting a really high intent to purchase call to action by saying add to cart, likely when they're not at the stage where they're ready add to cart. And if you just give them one image and a title, and maybe it shows the stars and the price, and then says add to cart, I would think most products, that's not enough to get somebody to purchase. So you're blowing an opportunity to send them to a page that you can convince them and show them all the wonderful benefits of your product and how great everyone else says it is in the reviews, and show it in use, and all these other things. So you're shortchanging yourself by just having the small little thing that comes up, gives minimal details and then asks people to add it to the cart. Likely not a good idea. Ryan: Probably [inaudible 00:21:29] in the quick view as well, just from, if nothing else, an analytics perspective. Where it's going to be much more complex to track that process or that funnel like category page, product page, purchase. Whereas if I go quick view, it's got to be an actions in Google analytics, if it's a JavaScript overlay, you don't get to do as much optimization on the JavaScript overlay popup necessarily. Jon: Yeah. Ryan: That's what I would say. Jon: You end up recreating that funnel in Google analytics and it's a lot of extra work. And I just think all of the negatives outweigh any of the positives. Then people say, "Well, I added this to make it easy for people to add to cart." Well, if they're not ready to add it to cart then it's not easier. Ryan: Moving down, anything else that I kind of skipped in that middle page where we jumped into the footer? You've seen products, is there a good way to put products? How many across? How many deep? How many products on a product page makes sense? What's your default response to that? Jon: I think on the category page, there's so many times where people will do a couple of things. They'll list hundreds and hundreds of products here. I think that's obviously the best use case for filtering, and I would do that filtering at the top of the page. Jon: Great example of this is we helped, a handful of years ago, to optimize Easton Baseball's website. Now, if you don't know what Easton Baseball is, they're the number one supplier of little league aluminum bats. In little league college, about 99% of swings are done with an Easton bat. They don't do anything in the major league baseball because they don't do anything with wood and aluminum's outlawed. So what does that mean? Well, the vast majority of people coming to the site are parents looking to buy their son or daughter a baseball bat. Or a softball bat. And if you went to their category page, all you saw was a wall of grid of bats. And if you can imagine what a little picture of a bat looks like online, they all look the same. Jon: They're all these sticks that are different colors, maybe. Right? But you can't communicate out of that picture. What the benefit is between the different bats, right? And they have wildly different prices. I mean, you can get a hundred dollar Easton bat and you could go all the way up to, I think, a five or $600 Easton bat. And so if you think about it, you're a parent, you get really confused. And right away, you're just upset, right? You're like, "Man, I don't know what bat to get. I'm going to be here all day clicking through all of these." And you just get frustrated really quickly. You probably just log off and go to your sports sporting goods store and just ask the guy which bat you should buy. Who's just working the counter. Not a great experience. Jon: And so once we dug in a little bit, what we found was that there are four or five different leagues, little league being one of them, that have certifications for different bats. And if your bat that you start swinging with does not have that logo of certification on it, then the umpire is supposed to not let you swing with that bat. And so the big problem is that all these parents were buying the bats based on price or the color they thought their kid would like best or whatever that is, and would end up getting to the game and the bat wouldn't be able to be used. And that's a huge let down, not only for the parent who just invested all this time trying to figure this out and got through that frustrating experience, but then the child who is up at the plate to swing, and they're being told that they have to use someone else's bat. Jon: It was creating a really poor brand experience. And what we found was that there were a couple of things parents knew about their children. What league they were playing in, and then they knew what style of hitter that the person was. So were they swinging for the fences or are they somebody who's just trying to get on base or something in between, perhaps. And then they generally knew what size of child they needed. So right? The bat is going to be different weights based on the size of the person swinging it. So they would say, "Okay, well I have a 12 year old. He can probably swing a heavier bat than my six year old," for instance. Right? So generally you have an idea of what weight you need based on the child who's swinging the bat. Jon: So what we did was we added some filtering and we made it three quick questions. With easy dropdowns. What league is your child playing? What type of hitter are they? And then do you know what weight bat you should be using? And usually what we found, we came to that third one because coaches would often tell the parent, "Buy this weight of bat for your son or daughter." So they already had that knowledge that they could bring. So what was really great there was we turned a wall of bats into something that now became three to four options. You answered those questions and it gives you a couple of options and a range of price points. And then you could decide, for your budget, what would work best and what was the bonus of stepping up a level? Jon: And it took all the frustration out of it. And their sales went up online 200, I think, 240 something percent Euro per year. Just by taking the pain point out of their category page. Ryan: So you're saying CRO has a return on an investment? Ryan: Little shameless plug for Jon's skill set there. Jon: We wouldn't have been doing it for 11 years if there's not a return here, I can tell you that. But at the same point, I think that it's all about just increasing that consumer ease of use. And if you just have a laundry list of products on a category page, that's not very useful. Especially if they all look the same or there's very minimal difference, or if they're all wildly different products. That also was a problem. And so it's like, "Where do you start as a consumer?" You think about walking into Walmart. If you didn't know what you wanted, when you walked into Walmart, you're going to be really overwhelmed because they sell everything. Jon: Yeah, it's a very similar type of experience to that feeling that somebody would have, and you want to make it as easy to use and help them to... Let them know they're in the right place, and help them make that decision as quick as you can. Ryan: Got it. And so I would advise people, a lot of times what I've heard you say, is take your category page to Starbucks. Buy somebody coffee and have them try to do something on it, to try to see some of that, because I'm guessing the Easton people didn't even conceptually think about that. Like, "No, we have all these bats. We know which one you want. Just get this one." Rather than, "Oh, you're not a parent trying to buy a bat." Jon: That's exactly it, is that they were too close to the product. They were inside the jar, and they didn't understand the pain points that the parents were having because the parents don't know as much about the product as the staff did at Easton. Ryan: Got it. Okay. So in conclusion, we've got all the way down to the bottom of the page. We've seen all the products. What are some of the things and quick best practices to be looking at in the footer of the category page? And what are some of the things you see that people do wrong down there? Jon: Well, the first thing in the footer that most people will do is they just dump all their links, extra links, down there. And it's just a grid of link after link, after link, no order to them. Maybe they put a header above them, but generally not that helpful. Jon: The first thing you should do in your footer is you should repeat your main navigation down there. And it should be the first thing on the left hand side of your footer. That way people don't have to scroll all the way back up to continue the shopping experience. If people scrolled all the way down to your footer, they are interested in your company and in your products and they want to continue shopping. So give them an easy way to do that. Ryan: And then do I add in all the navigation links you made me take out? At the top. Jon: I think there's a place here for a secondary navigation, and there's generally room for it. So that's a good thing you could add here. I think that another thing that you could add in here is your email sign up. That's always a great place. If people are still interested, but they're not ready to buy, they reached your footer, that's a good time to say, "Hey, you know what? Sign up for email and we can stay in touch." Ryan: You mean if they ignored my popup giving them 20% off their first order if they signed up with an email? Jon: Yeah. If you have those popups around by now, we're going to have some big issues because you obviously have not been listening to the questions you ask me. Yeah. Ryan: Yeah. Do not have popups. Everybody listening to this, do not have popups for email. Please put it in the footer. Jon: And maybe we'll do a whole episode on popups. And then I- Ryan: It'd be very short. Ryan: Simple answer, don't have it. Jon: Yeah. You can get me really riled up if you just keep asking me about them. Jon: Yeah. And I think the thing that should also be on the site in the footer there is your contact information. And that should be in the bottom right hand corner. And I'm always surprised by the number of sites that don't have contact information in their bottom right hand corner. But here's the thing, it increases trust if people see that you have a way to get ahold of you, but more importantly just put a physical address there. Let them know that you're not running the site out of your parents' basement. I mean, even if you are, just list your parents' address on there. It doesn't matter, right? Nobody's going to show up to this address. What they do want to know is that you're a viable business that's not just drop shipping and with no care. That you are actually reachable by either phone or support email. Ideally the physical address is really just a reassurance tool. We see that trust increases dramatically if you list one. So I would highly recommend that. Jon: So having your contact information in the bottom right hand corner is just standard practice. That's where people are going to go if they want to get ahold of you. Somebody comes to your site, they're immediately going to scroll to the bottom right hand corner if they want to reach out to you. Ryan: Yeah, I can actually vouch for this. Recently I actually didn't purchase from a site because they didn't have an address. That just, it made me concerned like, "Oh, you're just drop shipping, you're living on the internet, you're a fly by night organization." Just surprised me after I got done. I was like, "They just didn't have an address and that's all that caused me to not buy from them? That was weird." Jon: Yeah. It's surprising, right? I mean, the return on investment in this is pretty darn high because all you have to do is go to mailboxes et cetera, or a UPS store or any of those places, right? And just get a box from them for, what is it? Five bucks a month? And nobody knows that that's the address, right? People aren't Google Mapping this address. They're literally just saying, "Is it there? If it is, okay, I feel better." Ryan: Yeah. And I mean my wife and I, we have five businesses and live where we registered a lot of the businesses. And I have them on the internet, you can find my home address and nobody comes to us. Thankfully. Because I want to keep it that way, keep my privacy. Jon: Well now we're all going to show up. Ryan: Yeah. Ryan: But I think it does. I think it's a very simple thing that I've never really thought about, even until last week when I just didn't buy from a company. And I spent all day online looking at sites. And just the simple act of putting an address in a footer would have gotten that company a sale. Jon: Exactly. Ryan: Okay. Anything we've ignored or haven't touched on on a category page that you think we should be aware of? Jon: Yeah. Don't have popups. Ryan: Just email sign in at the bottom. They're not going to get a discount, it doesn't matter. Jon: Yeah, I think we've done a pretty good job of working our way through the entire page. So I feel pretty comfortable that we've answered the majority of concerns that I would have on a category pitch today. Ryan: And understand too, you'll never be done optimizing your site. You can't. Jon: There's always something. It's interesting you mentioned those tear downs that you see me do quite often at conferences and the like, and I'm never at a loss to find content for those tear downs. You can continually optimize the site and always be iterating on the site for a better experience. It's just a fact of life, but it's something that gives you a big return on that investment. It's well worth it. Ryan: Yeah, it's kind of like that Gordon Gekko thoughts. Like, "How much is enough?" More, well what's a good conversion rate? Better. There's no answer. Jon: One that is always improving. Ryan: Yes. That's your perfect conversion rate. Ryan: All right, Jon, thank you for the time and enlightening me as well as the people that are listening into us. Jon: Yeah. Thanks. It was a great conversation. Hopefully everybody's learned a lot today. Ryan: Thank you.

James:  Hi, audience and listeners. This is James Kandasamy from Achieve Wealth Through Value-add Real Estate Investing Podcast. Today I have Ryan Gibson from Spartan Investment Group. It's an investment group that focuses a lot on Self-storage. They have almost 4,000 units. They have a lot of units in DFW area and a few other States. I think Ryan's going to talk about in a short while, and they recently started to [00:32unclear] in a mobile home parks, which we'll touch upon in a short while. Hey Ryan, welcome to the show. Ryan: Thanks, James, for having me. It's fun to get on your show. It's great. James: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So why not you tell about yourself and your company, things that I've missed out? Ryan: Yeah, so we are based in Golden, Colorado, and we buy existing and develop self-storage properties. And we do all of our properties and projects through syndication. So we raised capital from private investors and we go out and buy storages that we can buy and get existing cashflow on. And then we can eventually either expand them or just improve operations to make additional income. We also build self-storage from the ground up and we do a little bit of RV park investing as well, but storage is the primary focus. So, you know, previously, we were land developers and built condos and flipped houses and focused on storage mostly just because of the recession resistancy, you know, during downtimes. And when we were first looking at the industry, that really is what you know, attracted us to jump into the business. Was the, you know, kind of how it performed during the last two recessions. James: Got it, got it. Yeah. I mean, I did a lot of research of different asset classes. I wrote it in my book as well. Like how many asset class, six asset class for the past 15 years and just on my own, this is not from Marcus and Millichap or this is not from CoStar.  I looked at all the asset class and was looking at all the past 15 years report, which that's a report called Integra Realty Resources. That's the report that all the commissioner pays us a report to, that's the organization. And I was looking at self-storage and multifamily and all that. I was surprised to see that self-storage did do well the past 15 years, even during the downturn. I know at the beginning, you know, 15 years back, they didn't really allocate a specific asset class for it, but they did talk about it. And in general, I didn't see any downturn, even though every other asset class goes up and down. So that's very interesting. And why do you think is that? Ryan: Because it relies on life events and life events never stop happening. No, I'm serious. You get divorced, typically, stuff goes in storage. You renovate your house, stuff goes into storage. In times of good times, stuff goes into storage and times and the bad time, stuff goes into storage. When you get downsized, when you move, when your job relocates, when there's a disruption in the market that triggers self-storage events. And added onto that, businesses use it because not everybody can park their work truck in their HOA driveway, if they're in a covenant restricted community and not everybody can have all their utilities and supplies in their house. And so, you know, simpliest way to say it, you know, for an extra 50 bucks a month, imagine having a whole other room in your house. And that's really been a big driver for demand and self-storage.  We like it because unlike other asset classes, when a customer comes in, we have a lien against all of their stuff. So if they don't pay, we can auction that off for a profit. So, you know, the revenue loss is much lower for you know, the potential when a tenant doesn't pay. With COVID and everything, there was still a rental rate, great increases. We still had high occupancy. We still can host auctions and have people move out if they don't pay. We held back on that in a couple of properties and a couple of markets, but for the most part, you know, we didn't have the government restrictions that a lot of other asset classes had on that kind of stuff. James: Got it. Well, I mean, I'm sure the audience is thinking why not James jump on self-storage. So but let me tell you why I didn't, you can always debate this. So one thing I didn't jump on self-storage at that time. I mean, of course, for me, focus is very important. I mean, every asset class has so many nuances in it. I mean, it's not easy, even though self-storage is like four walls and there's nothing in it, but there's a difficulty in finding the deal and difficulty in executing the business plan and turn around and, you know, disposition and all that. So, I mean, but I didn't do it because at that time there was not much of nonrecourse loan available, I think, unless you go really low on the leverage. So how is that right now? Ryan: You can get a non-recourse right now on ground-up construction James: On ground-up construction. Okay. Got it. What about on the... Ryan: Oh, and of course you know, that would be rare in our industry. Of course, on buying existing self-storage properties, non-recourse is widely available. James: Got it. Okay. So now it's available right now, at what leverage level? Ryan: It just depends. I think we just tied up a deal that around 70 to 75% non-recourse institutional loan. So, you know, it just depends on the lender. Depends on the deal. Depends on the play. James: Oh yeah. I had a friend who was like 85 years old. He's a broker, but he's a very healthy guy. And he said he started multifamily and moved on to storage and he owns a lot of storage unit and I was calling him and he said, maybe at that time, he said, yeah, it's hard to find non-recourse loans. The other challenge in storage is, you know, I mean, anybody can build a new self-storage development in front of your storage unit. It's very easy to build Ryan: Maybe. Yeah. So, you could say that as a general statement, that wouldn't apply everywhere. So there's a lot of moratoriums on storage. There is a lot of restrictions. Some communities don't have zoning for it. Some cities quite frankly, would not allow you to use it at all. So, you know, it just depends on where you are. Some jurisdictions it's, Oh yeah, come build it. No problem at all. So you just need, you know, it just depends on the market. You know, we have markets where there's no zoning and we could build whatever we wanted and there are markets where it's taken us 40 years to get a permit. So it really just depends. And then there are some markets where you get your permit and then they slap a moratorium on there and you can't build your storage anymore. That's happened out here in Washington and a few places.  So you really got to pay attention. And, you know, and I think really if someone was like, what's the one thing that I could take away from talking to a storage operator? It's the market study. It really comes down to: do you have the demand and is there the supply of people and demand essentially in the market to fill up your property or execute your business plan? It's huge. You know, someone might say, is storage a good play? I don't know, make up a city, Austin, Texas and I will say, well, generally, no, it's not, it's actually a terrible market, no offense, but it might be good on one side of the town and catastrophic on the other side. It's a three-mile business so it's like whatever's happening around in that immediate micro-market is really what it comes down to. So some markets are generally better, some markets are generally worse, but at the end of the day, it's right in that five, 10 minute drive time of the property. In the market study, that makes the difference. James: So, all your details that you're telling me right now, that's why I say there are so much of nuances in any asset class that outsiders may not know. I mean, it's easy to say, you know, it's easy to build but there's so much of a market research knowledge that, you know, only the operators who are specialized in it knows about it. So, and I do have a lot of respect for every asset class operators. There are definitely people who are really good at that. So let's walk through a deal in self-storage.  So not in terms of deal underwriting, but let's look at the demographic of that storage. Let's say you found land in a city. Walk us through the steps you would take to say whether this is a good site for a self-storage facility? Ryan: So a couple of things. The first thing I would look at is what's the population. So I would drop in on the facility, we have data and maps that will show us the drive times. And then based on those drive times, we'd get the population within the drive times of the property. And then we would look at saturation levels. James: And what are the drive times? Minutes? Ryan: Yeah, four minutes. I think we use eight minutes and 15 minutes. Think of it this way. If you're in an urban core, you're not going to drive 15 minutes across town, you're going to drive eight minutes so that there's relevancy to where you are in the market. But what we look at is, you know, we'll look at what are the comparable rent comps to what our subject facility is charged. So, you know, we might be getting $15 a square foot on the average but it's important to know kind of what type of facilities those are: three-story glass, Class A facilities, are they first-generation roll-up metal buildings, you know, big difference. Is it non-climate controlled is it climate controlled and in that market, is it a hot market, like a warm climate that likes self-storage to be climate controlled? Or is it a market that prefers drive-up or, you know, climate control would be overkill and people would be unwilling to pay the extra money for that.  So we look at price per square foot, you know, probably just like multifamily. And then, for Spartan, we look at the ability to add onto that property, you know, can we expand it and what is the existing dirt that's there? What is it? Is it flat gravel? Are there stormwater requirements, setbacks, easements restrictions, how usable is that land, and how much would it take to get the land pad ready? Cause we're developers. I mean, we take properties and develop them into bigger... James: What about zoning? Ryan: Zoning is important. That's kind of a little bit further down on the checklist. The top thing is demand. Cause you know, you could have, Oh, this is a zone for self-storage. And of course, everybody knew that. And then everybody built, a bunch of storage is there and there's no demand. James: But is it easy to change as zoning from, let's say in multifamily to self-storage?  Ryan: Ah, that's a loaded question.  James: Maybe not multifamily. I know residential has a lot of high priority in terms of city development. Let's say, commercial office building, commercial land to self-storage. Ryan: I mean, it depends. I know you don't like the word, it depends, but it depends. So like if you are looking in a market where, you know, we entitled the self-storage project in a city that had no zoning for storage. So everything was a conditional use permit. Everything was a public hearing. The public had come in, the city had to make a recommendation to a hearing examiner. Huge process. We've taken a residential land and rezoned it into commercial so we could build self-storage. We had to go in front of the board of county commissioners. We had to go in front of, you know, there had to be room for public comment. There was opposition, but we were successful and got the land entitled, but every jurisdiction is just a little bit different. We've bought properties that are zoned for storage and we've gotten the entitlements and they can take anywhere from two to six months to get it,  it's a building permit, you know, depending on how fast you're pushing and assuming no closures in the city and things like that. It just runs the gamut. You know, as I said, I have colleagues in the industry that have bought property, they got the entitlements. So yeah, you can build storage here. And then the city puts a moratorium on storage and now they can't build anything. So they bought this land, they got the entitlements, they've spent all this money, now they can't even build it.  James: How do you prevent that kind of thing from happening? Ryan: You don't. James: Because you've already bought the land.  Ryan: I mean, you could negotiate the contract to close upon building permits, but then you've got to find a willing seller and you know, of course, that's always a negotiation.  James: It's too messy, I guess. Ryan: But yeah, when you develop, I mean, it can be riskier and there's a potential for a bigger return but you also introduce a lot more risks. So yeah. I mean, is it easy to do? It can be, and it can be very difficult to the point of being impossible so it really just depends.  James: So when you guys raised the money from your investors, have you already done that, let's say for a [13:57unclear]  project. Have you already done that part or are you are still looking at that entitlement? Ryan: Yeah, we've really learned our lessons through the year. So you know, we bought a storage property and when the rezone of the land from, you know, so you have kind of a couple of different phases of development when you're doing like the paperwork to get it ready to go vertical. So the last thing you get is their building permit. So your building permit is pretty straight down the fairway; that is meeting building codes, getting your building permit, not a lot of risk in that - a risk, but there's not a lot of risks. But the phase just before that might be your entitlement so that you can actually do what you want to do, or might even be some type of site plan development where the city has to approve your site plan but you don't necessarily have your drawings done for the buildings they've just approved. Okay. Building here, building here, building here, this is your height. This is your step back. This is how much square footage you're going to deliver and a site plan approval. And then you have the zoning that might be before that. And it might already be zoned that that might be your first step. You know, do I meet the zoning if I don't, I might have to rezone that could take years. So, you know, we just kind of look at the projects and negotiate with the seller to buy the property. You know, when it hit a point where we're comfortable with closing on the land, and then we negotiate the purchase and sales agreement as such, and then we do the raise in accordance with how we feel our comfort level to be. Because we don't want to raise the money until we know we can do what we want to do. And you know, we've really refined our processes for that over the years to know that, Hey, we can close. And we've gotten better at negotiating. Like how can you expect me to buy this land and I don't even know I can do what I want do with it? If it's a hot market, you know, make a decision; you either want it, or you don't. If it's a property that's been sitting on the market for a year, you can come up with some pretty creative ways to keep the property tied up while you go through that process. James: So how many percents of these 4,000 units were developed versus how many were bought from....? Ryan: 25% James: 25% newly developed. Okay. Are you guys more trending towards development rather than buying? Ryan: That's a great question. I would probably say we're buying more than we are developing right now for no reason other than our development pipeline is full enough. Development is expensive and development requires a lot of cash and you don't want too many of them going on at one time. So we have two very large, about $22 million right now with development. Actually, no, we probably have about $30 million in development right now and that's about our comfort level. That's our spend for 2020 for development and we really don't want to get much past that. We also only develop in the states that we live in so Washington and Colorado. Adding onto a property is not a big deal, but we don't like to do ground-up development where we go through the whole process if we live out of state, because inevitably if you want to get things done, you gotta be down at the county, down at the city hall, down at the office, all the time. You're going down there all the time. Oh, you want this? Okay. No problem. James: Otherwise, it's going to just take forever to get a project done. Ryan: And who wants to fly an hour and a half somewhere to drop off a piece of paper and then fly back? I mean, it's just not efficient. So we just like to be in town.  I can't tell you how many times I've gone down there to, you know, shake the trees and get progress. James: Yeah. I've done a small land development beside my apartment. We were converting it. We were combining the adjacent plot of land into the apartment. And that itself was a lot of work already. But the city was supportive and it went through well by just the amount of paperwork, the amount of bureaucratic process that you have to go through. So, absolutely. What about a demographic? I mean, we talked about demographics. How do you say that this particular submarket is a good demographic for a good self-storage business? Ryan: We like at least 1% growth. We like to see trending growth. We like to see 50,000 income. We like to see saturation levels like a seven square foot per utilization for storage. James: How do you get that data? Seven square feet per utilization? Ryan: We have Radius Plus and we use a couple of different programs. Radius and there's one other program that James: So Radius is a software for self-storage investors? Ryan: Yes. James: Okay. For them to see the demand, I guess. Ryan: If you gave me an address, within 20 minutes, I could tell you what's the drive time around it. I could tell you the demographics. I could tell you the demand. I could tell you all the permits in the pipeline. So that's another thing. This is great. I can tell you everybody who's building, everybody who's applied, who's canceled, who is coming. And then of course we do our boots on the ground research where we go knock on doors and go to the city and ask them like, Oh, Hey, you know, is anybody else? Oh yeah, John, you know, he was over here last week. You know, that doesn't show up on record but the intent. And then you go talk to John and you say, Hey, you're really going to do this because we're thinking about doing it too. And we've got into situations like that and you know, either we've given up or they give up or whatever, and we just move on to a different market if the market can't supply all that additional. James: So does the self-storage purchase involves stringent requirements or stringent terms like what multi-families like day one, hard money, you know, very tight on inspection, do due diligence process? Ryan: It's extremely competitive. And it might be as competitive or more competitive as multifamily. Because when people think of storage, they're like, Oh, I've never really heard of that. I don't know what that is. And then they do multifamily and they're like multifamily is really hard. You know, there's always people doing it and Oh my God, there's so much competition. Maybe I'll go try storage because it'll be less competitive. And then they go over to storage and they're like, Oh, there's a lot of people that do this. But what the difference is there are so many multifamily properties in the United States. Self-storage, you can't even hold a candle to the wind. I mean there are 50,000 facilities total in the entire United States. So yeah, when you're talking about competition, if you're looking at a property that's a million dollars or less, no problem. You can go bid on it as a mom and pop.  When you go a million to maybe 6 million that you can reposition or that, you know, show some signs of a mom and pop operations, you're competing against the best of them. You know, the all-cash, close in 30 days, 60 days, whatever it might be. But generally what we do is we do about 10% earnest money deposit...sorry, not 10%. On a $6 million facility, we might put up anywhere from 25 to 50K. And that doesn't go hard until due diligence is completed and signed off on. James: Oh, okay. So that's not bad. It's not like day one hard money, like what's happening in multifamily, right? Ryan: No. And if we were in that space, we wouldn't play that game. So yeah, whether you think it or not, you're competing with yourself at that point. You're worried about losing that money. I mean, we have a 100% contract-to-close ratio, so everything that we've put under contract we've purchased. I mean, we had a bank pull out three days before closing, we went and raised a private loan. We did our own deal. So we've done everything to really help get the deal closed and we've got that reputation to close. And I think that people value our relationship a lot more than they do necessarily how much earnest money we put up. And we've had a broker bring us a lot of deals and just keeps bringing us deals because we make it real simple on them. You know, it's a very simple process with us. We get everything on the table. We are very transparent and as you know, in multifamily that'll go a long way. Any business, right? James: Yeah. That's true. That's true. Yeah. I mean, brokers, love people who are easy to deal with. Because you know, this is just multimillion-dollar deals and you do not want to have a tough person to work with when you're going to such a big transaction. So at a very high level, what are the value add that you usually do in self-storage? Ryan: Cameras for security, rental rate increases. James: So what, you put a camera and you get higher rental rate or it's just...? Ryan: People walk in and they want to feel secure. So our target customer is a 70-year-old woman, that's who rents our properties. So when they walk to your property, is it dark, are there cameras, is it secure? Does it feel like the fence is going to fall over? So we take the properties, we'll put in a new fence, we'll put in new cameras, we'll paint all the doors, we'll replace doors, we'll rehab the office, we'll put in notary services, we'll put in ice and vending machines.  James: Why do you need a notary service in a self-storage facility?  Ryan: Convenience. So we like to be a shop of convenience. So if somebody has got an Etsy, Amazon, they have a home-based business and they can come to our storage facility, they can drop their FedEx/UPS deliveries off at one of our properties. They can get their items notarized. They can ship, they can store. We even have a car wash at one of our properties. So, we try to be a place of convenience for people. Not that we were going to make any money on it. It's just a place where people can go and know that I rent my Uhaul truck to move my goods somewhere. At your property, I can notarize my documents, I can store my belongings, I can do a lot of different things to transact and do my business obligations. And so what we try to be kind of a helpful facility. Not all of our facility does that because not every facility even has an office. But the ones that do, you know, we sell retail. We start, you know, people pay cash, we get rid of cash payments and we go to as many automated payments as possible. We enforce the lease. You know, a lot of these facilities we take over, tenants might not even be on adequate leases. So without being on an adequate lease, you don't have an adequate lien against their belongings. You can't do an auction.  James: Have you guys done auctions? Ryan: All the time. James:  It's like Storage Wars on TV, right?  Ryan: Yeah. Yeah.  James: That really happens? Ryan: Yeah. The semantics are true or the actual process is true, but the way that it's carried out is not true. So nobody goes in person, you know, there are some old school places that still kind of do that, but we do them online. So you can go to selfstorageauctions.net, you can register. And then in your neighborhood, there could be a storage auction and you get alerted like, Oh, Hey, this unit is going up for auction. You can kind of log into your account and see, Oh, what's in there. James: All right. I can see all our audience and listeners are doing that right now. I didn't even know that. What was the website? Ryan: I think it's selfstorageauctions.net. And so as a company, what we do is we say, you know, that the storage auctions is revenue producing or whatever. They're not really revenue-producing. They're basically just to get you to get out and get a new customer in. Like we clear out the, you know, and it's the threat of losing your stuff, right? If you don't pay, you lose your stuff. James: So it's like an eviction process, I guess.  Ryan: Right.  James: Except the government can put the moratorium like what they did in multifamily right now. Ryan: The government hasn't touched us. So usually within 30 to 60 days, if you're not...so let's say, your rent is due today. If you haven't been paid in five days, you get a late fee and your unit gets locked automatically. So the gate code that lets you into our properties, the revenue management system will automatically turn the gate off.  James: Really? [26:40crosstalk]  Ryan: We over-lock your unit. You can't even get into your unit.  James: You don't pay your rent and after five days, it locks by itself? Ryan: Just like that. And then we'll over-lock you. So we'll put a red lock on your unit as well. Some of our properties will have the smart locks where it'll lock behind the door so you can't get in, you can't get into your stuff. So if you don't pay after five days, you're automatically locked out. So we liked that. We don't have to really manage that too hard. I mean, there's, you know, we have property managers are onsite staff that deals with that, but the gate code, that's automatic. And then once you pay it, we'll let you back in. But if you don't pay, you're locked out. So now you don't have access to your stuff and after 30 days we do our notices, our legal notices and then, we can take pictures of your property, do our publications and then it goes on this website and then people can buy your stuff.  And then you know, any earned income from that auction goes directly to us first, to recoup the costs of whatever the tenant owed us and then any costs of legal fees associated with it. And then anything that's left over after all of our money has been recouped, goes to the tenant, you know, cause they gotta be compensated for their stuff. So, we get paid first and then, but most importantly, we get our unit back and in multifamily or residential, they might trash the place. They're gonna do whatever they do. In storage, I mean, you can try to trash the place, but I mean, it's a box. And you know, we just sweep it out. They moved their stuff out and they're gone. And then, you know, for us, we just get our unit back and we let our customers know when they book, you know, Hey, sign up for our online auctions. You know, so they can bid on stuff and they can also know that, Hey, we do online auctions.  So a lot of places we take over, I mean, the delinquencies are a mess when we take over and that's a way to increase value. So we took over property last year, for example. And I just heard from our management that, you know, auctions were like, I mean, there were people that were 180 days delinquent and the manager just wasn't collecting on the units, they just weren't enforcing the rules. So we'll come in and we'll just follow the rules. You know, your lease says this, if you don't pay with this, you go to auction, you know, and then we make money on late fees. And some facilities that we take over don't charge late fees. I mean, if you don't pay on time, you should get charged a late fee. So there's a lot of different things we can do. You know, and plus we'll repaint, we'll redo the doors. Some doors of the old cabinet doors, you know, to open up the lock, the storage locker, we'll put the roll-up doors on them. We'll improve the lighting, we'll redo the asphalt, whatever it might be, we just get it nicer so that the customer feels safe and secure and they feel like they're getting good value for their money.  James: Got it. Got it. Got it. All right. Why don't you tell our audience how to get hold of you and your company?  Ryan: Yeah, sure. So my email is Ryan@spartan-investors.com. Our website is spartan-investors.com.  James: Awesome. Thanks for coming in and adding tons of value to our listeners and audience. Thank you.  Ryan: Yeah, you're welcome. It was nice meeting you, by the way.    

Jon explores the nuances of CRO and explains why it can be so difficult to take a DIY approach with it. He also offers a few tips for those just starting out to improve your CRO without spending a whole lot. [The Mom Test book]: (https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/dp/1492180742/ref=sr11) For more CRO help visit The Good: https://thegood.com/ TRANSCRIPT: Ryan: Hello, Jon. Jon: Hey, Ryan. How are you today? Ryan: I am doing well. Excited to get educated today by you, on some areas that I have very little knowledge. It's exciting, the world of CRO. When you see the results on my side... I get to see the results of what you do, but I don't conceptually understand it well. So today, I really wanted to dive into the weeds with you about conversion rate optimization, and help our listeners get a better understanding of just what you're going to need to do to help execute some CRO. And then, as we live in this DIY world... I can't tell you how many Pinterest things I see, or YouTube things I see, that I try to execute, and it just, God, doesn't quite turn out the way I want to. Especially when I'm cooking, all the recipes I find on Pinterest, just man, the pictures look so great and then my finished product is not great. Ryan: I own a few businesses. Logical Position does a lot of advising on best practices in improving conversion rates, but I wouldn't call what I do on my own sites or what we do at LP to kind of advise clients as conversion rate optimization. So from your perspective, as an expert in CRO, isn't it easy to just watch a YouTube video or find a Pinterest article on CRO and just do something and watch the conversion rate on your site increase? Jon: Well, I think that, just like anything else, right... Like you mentioned Pinterest or YouTube videos, how many times did you watch these videos and it had not turn out like you had wanted, right? Ryan: Yeah, most of the time. Jon: Yeah. I think, it's probably not too dissimilar. Now, look, there's a lot that somebody can do on their own to help improve their conversion rates. Is that technically and truly full conversion rate optimization? No, of course not. But there's a lot that people can do out there, and should be doing, and should be thinking about. I think that... Look, is it easy to do everything yourself? No. Could you focus on one or two areas and do very well? Yeah, maybe. Jon: But I think the biggest challenge I have, is we see this all the time at The Good. People come to us and they say, "Hey, I have one staff member I hired who's a conversion optimization specialist, but it's just not moving the needle in the way that I would like. We're not seeing the return on that salary spend or that contractor spend." The problem is that, and we've proven this out over 11 years now, you really need to have a team with a whole bunch of specialists, and it's impossible for one person to be expert in all of the areas that you need for conversion optimization. Ryan: What I'm kind of understanding is there is a conceptual difference between CRO, or conversion rate optimization, and, maybe what I would call CRI, conversion rate improvement. They're not necessarily the same thing. I can [inaudible 00:03:21] can change a button and improve our conversion rate, but that's not actually conversion rate optimization. Jon: I think we just came up with a new term and I love it, CRI versus CRO. That's awesome. Thank you, Ryan. Okay. Yes. Now, here's how you can do improvements, go out and get these tool sets that all talk about doing an optimization or improving your conversion rate. There's tools out there that can help improve your conversion rate, but they're not going to get to the level that a customized program with a team of experts can do for you. So you think about all those tools like Privy, or there's Hotjar, or Crazy Egg, or... I could go on and on, right? There's tons of these tools out there that each provide a little nugget of conversion rate improvement, but they're not truly doing full optimization, right? Jon: If you're really going to optimize anything, it needs to be a scientific process of optimization. It's not just a make these changes and you're done. It needs to be the ongoing iterative improvements where you're making incremental gains, month over month, that compound and grow. That's where the big numbers are going to happen and the massive results are. I mean, you look at this and maybe this might feel daunting to the entrepreneur who's doing a $100,000 on their site right now. But Amazon has a team, a massive team. Last I heard, it was well over a hundred, doing nothing but optimizing the Amazon experience. Ryan: Holy smokes. Jon: So you think about that, and you're like, "Man, I'm at a huge disadvantage here." But the reality is, they're looking at every little data point. That team has a wide range of people doing different items, you have data scientists to analyze all the data coming back. You have test developers to build out all the tests. You have conversion strategists who can help you to better understand what should be tested. You have experts in user testing, those people who speak to your consumers and understand how to get information out of their heads about what they're thinking. Jon: So you have all of these other types of roles that exist that can combine, be like the Avengers, right? But individually, if you just have the Hulk out there or... I'm not a huge comic book guy. Maybe I'm mixing up my worlds here. But, I would say individually, they're not going to be as great as they would be all together. Ryan: Interesting. So almost in putting it in terms I can quickly relate to would be PPC optimization. You can know conceptually that I really do need to be putting negative keywords into my account to eliminate some waste, but there's a lot more to that, and there's a lot more specialist in the die that I operate in so often. But also, as I'm looking at all the accounts we work in, the way we operate is very different on somebody that sells $50,000 CNC machines versus a five-dollar mug on their website. Jon: Exactly. We talked about this a little bit at one of our recent episodes, where I was interviewing you and I admitted to how I had a button checked in our ads account and it cost me $2,000 that I didn't need to spend. Ryan: That was a fun one. Jon: Right. But here's the thing, I thought I was doing the right thing by letting Google manage that. And it just kept bidding me up, bidding me up, bidding me up until I spent all this money. Where an expert who's in it every day would know, "Hey, on the surface level, I get why you would want Google to own that and optimize that for you. But the reality here, is there's a much better path ahead if you have experience here." I think that's where it really comes in, is having that experience and it means that you can rely on the tool, right, and you could just have a whole bunch of tools. The challenge is going to be, that you're not going to see the gains that you would if you work with somebody who does nothing but optimization and has a team centered around that. Jon: Think of it this way. I spent 2,000 extra dollars I didn't need to spend because I misused the tool, right? I could have spent that $2,000 with an expert who maybe could have generated me an extra $5,000. That would have been a massive return on my investment, by making the investment there, as opposed to clicking a button that I was trying to take the cheap way out, right? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I guess, in the e-commerce space, we have some very major players like Amazon, a hundred people or more on their conversion rate optimization team. Shopify has a million businesses utilizing their platform. And I assume, again that's an assumption so nobody quote me, but I assume they have an internal CRO team to a degree, because the more conversions they get, the more people use Shopify and the more money they make on the payment processing. Ryan: So with all of these major platforms having so much influence, do you ever think it's possible that we fast forward five years and all of us just are so trained in Amazon and clicking this to get this, or Shopify clicking this to get this, that it's almost standard like across e-com. Like checkout, I expect this, I do this, and there's very little optimization beyond that. Jon: I hope that we get to that point, I don't think we will. Now, here's why I hope, because... I've mentioned this book a hundred times, that's called Don't Make Me Think, right? The whole premise is that we have conventions as internet users that we've become akin to that we know and we like, and it makes the internet easier to use if everybody follows those conventions, so I don't have to think about it, right? Anytime you change that convention, you're making the user of your site think. And that delays them converting. It makes them frustrated. They bounce. They leave. They desert, whatever you want to call it. Jon: I hope we get to the point where there's a standard here, but I can promise you we never will. Now, here's why, they can standardize things like checkout, right? Shopify has done a wonderful job with this and this is where their optimization team internally would come in, where they are optimizing the checkout experience. However, if you go to a Shopify site and they have a custom theme and it's branded, you wouldn't even know it's on Shopify until you got to that checkout and then you know it's a Shopify checkout, right? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: And here's the thing... So there is so much to optimize beyond that. We're never in on the internet. And I hope we get to the point where things are standardized, but I never hope we get to the point where the internet just becomes this big gray area of everything being the same. Ryan: Yeah. Jon: Then it's not going to be cool. We're taking the branding out of the internet, which is part of what makes it really fun, is to go to a brand's website and get a feel for that brand, have an understanding of what their value proposition is. I hope we don't get to something where every website is just black text on white screen, with blue links, and the navs all look exactly the same, et cetera. I do think it's important that some things are standardized and some usability aspects of websites are standardized. I think that's important and we're making strides to that, but there's always going to be that brand pool. And it's going to be a push against that standard experience that makes people think a little bit. Jon: I really don't know how the experience, if you will, is going to be that much better over time. But I do think, if you're a small shop and you're using a BigCommerce or a Shopify, yes, use their default checkouts because they're pretty good. But you're going to get to a point where you're noticing some checkout cart abandonment, and you want to improve those metrics. And at that point, you're going to want to start to optimize those a little bit. That's when you move up to something like Shopify Plus, where you're paying a little more every month, but you get the ability to customize your checkout. And then you can start adding in some additional tools, you can start looking at moving some fields around, asking for less information if you're not using it or don't need it. Jon: And then on BigCommerce, one of the big things about BigCommerce is the customization that you can do with the platform. So their checkout, out of the box, if you're a BigCommerce subscriber, you can alter that, which is great. It gives you a rope to kind of hurt yourself with a little bit there. But in time, it can... If you're a smaller brand, you want to start using some of these tools, you have that capability. Ryan: For some of those bigger companies on BigCommerce, you can use something like a Bolt that is really focused on one thing only, and that's streamlining that process. Jon: I'm glad you brought up Bolt, because that's a great example of how they can take something that we just spent five minutes discussing as a standardized experience, and they've made it better. That's a great example, where there's always going to be room for improvement. How bolt has even done that, is they focused on reducing risk, right? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: So you're able to ask less information of the consumer, than you would on the standard Shopify checkout. That means you're going to convert higher, but you don't have to eat the risk of the fraudulent transactions as part of that, right? So you have options. And I think that there's always going to be room for improvement, I really do. Ryan: Well, I think it's also at this exact juncture to remind people, as I constantly had to be reminded, that conversion rate optimization is not checkout optimization. There is every step before, and I think this was a couple episodes ago, and a couple of steps after the fact of checkout, that conversion rate optimization plays. Jon: Yeah. [Crosstalk 00:13:39]... Ryan: So, often we as e-com companies and business owners focus, "Oh, I got to get people to check out, and then it's done." [inaudible 00:13:45] is over. But there's that huge process. Jon: Right. Yeah. We've talked about this a few times where... What happens when somebody gets to your site? What's their intention when they're there? All the way through what happens after they check out, how do you optimize post purchase checkout? And I think there's so much that can be done there. Again, very likely that it will never end in opportunities for optimization here. Ryan: Not every company is in a position to be able to start the full CRO agency or hire enough people to fully optimize their entire funnel of conversion, before and after giving the business money. Are there certain areas of CRO, outside of maybe just getting a Privy or a Hotjar or any of those other tools, that they can be doing something that would get them going towards official CRO? Like you've got to be able to grow the brand into a size to be able to afford a CRO agency or employees. So outside of just the tools, what... Is there AB test they can be doing? I mean, what does that look like for the e-commerce business owner doing a hundred thousand a year? Jon: Well, I think that most likely, you're not going to want to even dive as deep as doing something like AB testing, because you don't have enough traffic to prove those out, it's not going to be a good return on your time or funds investment. Jon: Now, what I would recommend here is two-fold. One, start tracking some data. This is not complicated, but it will help you later just to have more timeline of data. Go into Google Analytics, turn on things like enhanced e-commerce, set up some additional dashboards. Just Google e-commerce analytics dashboards, you'll find a bunch of great ways to set that up so you start tracking some good data, okay? There's a easy checklist to follow there. Jon: Now, other thing is start tracking user engagement. How do I mean that? Well, go sign up for Hotjar, it's $9, right, per month. Just sign up, go, and what you can do is you can start understanding how people are engaging with the content of your site. And I promise you, if you just spend one hour a week reviewing that data, you will learn where challenges are on your site, with things that you think you can do yourself that will improve conversion rates. Jon: Are you going to see massive gains? No, but I think if you're in the situation where you have more time than you have money, as you're growing your business and you're starting out, spending that hour to better understand your consumers yourself will help you find a better product-market fit, it will help you to improve your website overall. And as you continue to grow, you're already building that culture within yourself and your company with your team, as it grows, of understanding how consumers use your website and what data you should be looking at. Jon: If you just go out and you start talking to consumers, take a laptop, go to your local mall, or, I don't care, bar, doesn't really matter. Wherever your consumers hang out, right? Go to the coffee shop. Sit at the Starbucks and just say, "Hey, can I buy you a coffee, if you give me five minutes of your time, while they make your coffee. You're just going to be standing there anyways. I'll buy you a coffee. While they make it, I want you to use my website. I'm going to ask you to complete a task, and I'm just going to watch you do that. I just want you to tell me what you're thinking as you go through those steps." You will be amazed at what you learn. And all it takes is five, 10 minutes of someone's time and the cost of a coffee. So anybody of any size can do this. Jon: Now, you don't have to just be there all day, either. Do this for a couple hours. Get under 10 participants, and I promise you, you will walk away with a laundry list of improvements that you can make to your website. So if you don't- Ryan: It's almost like gorilla marketing in its purest form. Like, "You've never heard of my business before, I'm going to buy you a coffee and you're going to see it." Jon: Yeah. You're not trying to sell them anything, right? You're just trying to understand how they're using your website so that you can take that data and improve. The idea here is that you're getting an understanding of somebody who is a new to file customer, somebody who's never been to your website before. You're walking away with an understanding of what their first impressions of your site and the experience on your site. So the navigation, the funnel, how they find the right products, what they think of the content, right? All of those things are what you're looking for. You're not necessarily saying, "Hey, I want to introduce you to my business, so you buy something," because then they're not going to really have a great understanding. Jon: Now, there's an amazing book out there. It's called The Mom Test. You can get it on Amazon. It's 20 bucks or something. It's amazing. The Mom Test, we'll have our producer put it in the show notes. The Mom Test, it's got a pink cover, it looks like it's a not really helpful book, but I will promise you that it is amazing. The whole thing about this book, is that it gives you an outline of how to ask the right questions about your product and your website to get customer feedback, so that you're not asking them leading questions, that they're only going to give you positive feedback. Jon: So why is it called The Mom Test? Because this should be questions that you can ask your mom where you're going to get good feedback, not where you're going to get the mom feedback of, "Oh, honey, that website is awesome. Yeah, of course it's beautiful, you built it. This is the most usable website I've ever had." No. You want somebody, even your mom, to give you the best feedback about how to improve your product and what they actually think. That's where it gets important. So asking the right question is really the key here, but that's something that 150 page book can teach you, and you're not going to be expert right away. But again, going back to where we started this conversation, that is just one small item that you need to learn and master out of the whole range of conversion optimization. That's why it gets really hard to do CRO versus CRI. Ryan: We have to trademark that. Nobody think. I want to go back, really quick though, to a point you made about traffic being too low for CRO, because I know you have this conversation constantly. And then I get to talk to some of these people because their traffic's too low for CRO. But it crosses the minds of most business owners, as they're starting up, "Hey, I'm getting traffic to my site. And it's converting at," I'm going to make it up "1%. If I just made that go from 1% to 2%, I would double my revenue and I didn't even have to work on increasing traffic, which may be is a struggle for me or I've got really big competitors." Ryan: All that is true, but sometimes that time and energy should probably be spent more on getting, maybe, more appropriate traffic or figuring out what traffic is coming and is not converting. But how do you have that conversation on the front end? Because I usually get it from you, at least, after you've already had some kind of conversation around, you just need more traffic. What insights would you give to people in that scenario? Jon: Well, I think, there's a couple of things you have to really consider before you're going to deep dive into optimization. The first is, have you found product-market fit, right? So is anybody, A, interested in your product and, B, are they going to buy it because it's solving a pain they actually have? It's one thing to get people to your site, but if the product isn't really hitting with the market, then you are going to waste your money. You can optimize and have the best funnel and the best site ever, but if it's really just not something people want or need, then you've wasted your money, right? So that's the first thing. Jon: Now, a great way to determine that and the way that I usually determine it, because it's really quick and it's something most people know if they're running or managing an e-com site, is number of unique monthly users to your site. Because here's the thing, if you've generated enough traffic, that means people are interested. And if you're able to drive traffic with ads, where you're spending at a sustainable level, that means people have a pain point and they're actually willing to click on an ad to solve that pain. That kind of proves it out, right? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: Now, what's that level? I generally want to see about 50,000 unique users per month before you're going to start doing true optimization. That's actually a pretty low number. It might feel like a mountain for some people, but if you've gotten to 50,000 per month... I mean, think about that, that's 12,500 per week, it's really not that many, right? Jon: The idea here is that you are able to drive enough people to your site, that you can start making scientifically-backed decisions. That's really where you're going to find those gains because you're no longer relying on what you think is best, or those 10 people you interviewed at Starbucks. Now, you're starting to get in mass enough data that you can prove stuff out to where it's statistically relevant. Ryan: That's a great insight, I think, on just a number, but also, I think, on market fit. I talked to so many startup businesses throughout the course of my day, weeks, months, but so many entrepreneurs come up with a really cool product that they just love, but unfortunately they have no idea who their market is or who they really think is going to buy. They have an idea like, "Oh, I really thought this company was going to buy it." But if you've created a product that hasn't existed before, nobody's searching for it. Or they're maybe searching for a problem, but getting a shopping ad to show appropriately, that image may not solve or cause them to take that click. So it becomes a much deeper conversation of, what are you going to do to get this into market? Not necessarily start by optimizing your site. It's, you've got to really find that fit, whether you go to social, whether you go to Google for that, whether you go to retail for that. Jon: Yep. That's exactly it. Conversion optimization is usually step two, right? So first step is... I would say step zero, is find product-market fit, right? Then step one is drive traffic. Then step two is, once you've proven those out, you want to start getting a higher ROAS or return on ad spend. At that point, that's when conversion optimization can help get you to that next level. And I say this all the time, Ryan, when... Jon: We have dozens of clients that share both Logical Position and The Good as partners and vendors. What we find, and I say this all the time, is when you have a company like LP that can really drive qualified traffic and you have a company like The Good that can help you convert that traffic at a high level, it is like adding fuel to a fire because it just accelerates things. And it really starts to show that you can start making a living off of your website, or take it to that next level that you never thought was possible. Jon: That's really where the gains can come in is, at that level, after you found product-market fit, you're driving some traffic, now you really want to take it to the next level. And then it becomes this great circle of, "Hey, you got your conversion rate up. Now, you have more money to spend on driving more traffic. And then you take that funds from the sales you're getting there, you reinvest it in additional optimization." You just keep going in that circle and it continues to compound that growth over time. Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It makes entrepreneurs, startups, even existing business owners nervous when you start talking about paying for traffic, but the value there, even if you're doing that to get to the point where you can use CRO, is you get the insight into the intent of that visitor. If you're just focusing on organic traffic, that's great by the way. We've already mentioned in this podcast before, there is no such thing as free traffic. You're going to pay for all of it in time, money, energy. But when you're using Google Analytics, you don't get the insight of what did they actually search when they came to my site, when they came through an organic link, or they came direct to my site. I don't know how they got... I don't know why they got my link, or they knew my website. Ryan: But if they're using paid search, you get all this really cool data of saying, "Hey, they searched specifically for this, clicked on my ad, went exactly to this page where I sent them, and they either took the action I wanted or didn't." So I can get a lot more of those insights. And you can even get... If you are paying for it, because obviously Google is a for-profit organization, if you do pay for clicks on Google Ads, you can use Google search console to connect Google Analytics and Google Ads, and you will actually get the search queries on your organic traffic, and see how that is operating and what that search intent is, and where you're ranking. That'll actually give you real average ranking for an organic query. Phenomenal data. But again, you have to pay for it by utilizing the Google Ads platform. Ryan: So some business owners out there that are listening, you do have to take the leap and actually pay for some traffic to get some of these insights that let you figure out where your market fit may be or may not be. And it becomes exciting, but also challenging. And so I will put an asterisk by that, that Google does have a great product for starting up and getting your business going. A lot of their smart campaigns, smart shopping can be very powerful to get a business up and running on Google shopping, unfortunately, you don't get that search query data. That becomes problematic when you're really trying to figure out your intent or what you're actually showing for on Google that is becoming so valuable and why your business is growing. So just be aware of that, that you may actually have to do some more manual work in there, but, man, there's a lot of opportunity. Jon: I didn't even know about that one. So now, I don't have to get the... What is that message that shows up in Google Analytics now? It always says something about like not found or... Ryan: Not provided. Jon: Thank you. Yeah. Ryan: That came about 10 years ago. It was great for Google because you're forcing people to pay for it, I get it. That data does exist though, you just have to pay. Jon: Yep. Well, that's good to know. Ryan, this has been a great conversation. Are there any other questions that I can answer for you on how to do CRO DIY? Ryan: No, I've just got to go get some things on my website so I can get to the level that I can pay you to take my CRO to the next level. Jon: Well, I know you and I know you've already found product-market fit on all of these, so drive that traffic, which you're expert at, and then I can come back and help you convert, and we can go from there. Ryan: Yeah. Thanks for enlightening me and helping me figure out some of these details of CRO that I didn't know, so that I'm not just doing CRI all the time. Jon: Go trademark that right away. Ryan: Thanks, Jon. Jon: Thanks, Ryan.

Jon dives into why Conversion Rate Optimization doesn’t stop after the purchase and the different points after-purchase that you need to optimize in order to drive higher revenues. Link: The Essential Guide to Ecommerce Sales Promotions (https://thegood.com/insights/essential-ecommerce-promotion-guide/) (In this article, #51-78 are focused on promotions you can run that aren't discounts) Outline: First, Jon cover’s different points after purchase that CRO can have an impact: In cart, right after purchase -Thank you page Email post-purchase sequence: -Confirmation email -Shipping confirmation -Customer service -Please leave a review – just click here -Add to general marketing email list sends He also explains the metrics a brand should be looking at to track progress of post-purchase optimization: -Return purchase -CLTV -Conversion (overall, should go up with repeat customers!) Jon is a firm believer that companies shouldn’t use discounting in post-purchase communications. However, there may be offers you can make that are not discounts. You do not want to become a discount brand. Finally, Jon explains that a successful method for getting referrals post-purchase outside of a set loyalty program is just to ask! Very few do! Transcript: Ryan: Jon, today, I really want to move our focus to an area that I think many companies and individuals would not normally think of conversion rate optimization and the impact it can have. I'm talking about post-purchase. Most people generally would assume that once a purchase happens on the website, CRO has done its job, time to move to the next person on the site and get them to convert. But, because I know you, I'm aware that CRO doesn't stop at the purchase. There's a lot more to be done. Can you explain to people, that maybe aren't aware of post-purchase conversion rate optimization, what they need to be thinking about, what they need to be doing, and why it even exists after they've already taken the sale, done what you wanted them to do originally? Jon: Right, and I think that's an important point there, Ryan, which is that most people think that conversion optimization stops as soon as you get someone to purchase. I think that's really shortsighted and it's a big problem because so much of the consumer experience and getting people to purchase a second time, is all about what happens when they purchase that first time. So, if you get them to convert, your job's not done. At that point... you got to think of this like a marathon. You just ran a marathon. Most people who are seasoned marathon runners, they get through that finish line. They have a process they still go through to cool down, protect their body, recover a little bit. It's the same thing here. After you've- Ryan: ... And I just go drink beer. Jon: ... Right, exactly, and that's why you don't run marathons. Ryan: That's why I don't. Jon: Learned that lesson the hard way, huh? Ryan: Uh-huh (affirmative), I did. Jon: Yeah, so exactly, this is it, where we can't just stop and drink a beer. You've got to go through a follow-up process here that can really, really have a massive impact on your overall metrics of your site and success and revenue, and even your conversion rate, because most people don't think about that. But overall, your conversion rate should go up with repeat customers. Ryan: True. Jon: There's a handful of things you should be thinking about that I think we should talk about today. There's a bunch of different points after purchase that can have an impact with conversion rate optimization, and if you optimize these points, you will see higher revenues. Ryan: Okay, so somebody's purchased on my site or client's site. Action's done. Does post-purchase conversion rate start after the product arrives, or where's the first point that we can be making an impact to improve conversion rates in the future? Jon: In the cart. It starts right then. As soon as somebody completes the order, gives you their payment, what happens? Ryan: Hmm. Jon: Most of the time, people aren't really considering the first step, which is a thank you page. What is the content that you're putting on there? Now, there are ways to, even on that thank you page, influence so many extra metrics. You can influence your average order value on that thank you page. There's some great tools out there right now. One of my favorites is a company called CartHook. CartHook has a tool, where you put it onto your thank you page, and it actually shows you complimentary products to what you bought and says, "Do you want to add it to the order?" You're doing an upsell after the purchase. You already got them to commit, and maybe they're thinking, "I bought those shoes, maybe I'll add a pair of socks. Why not?" Ryan: Now is that in addition to maybe also having upsell in the shopping cart, or do you usually recommend just get them to commit to something and then try to upsell them later? Jon: Right. I think that's a big mistake people make is to do the upsells in the cart. I don't think that's serving the consumers' needs, because serving the consumers' needs is helping them complete that checkout as quickly and easily as possible. You want to get that conversion. That's most important, obviously. So, after you've completed that sale, then, go back and do the upsells. Now, that doesn't mean you're not doing upsells throughout the funnel and throughout the product detail page or categories, things of that sort, right, complimentary products. But I don't think you should be doing it in the cart. That's when you just closed the transaction, at that point. Jon: A lot of people like to think of it like retail, where you're at a grocery store and they have all the candy bars and magazines, and you're just standing there in line. It's not like that because online, you shouldn't be waiting around at the checkout. Those items are there at the grocery store line because you're waiting for the person in front of you. You're likely bored, and they're capturing your attention. It's a captive market. Well, when you're in the cart and you're checking out online, you just have one goal, and that's to get it done. So, anything you put in the way there is actually going to become a distraction and annoying for the consumer. Not something where, "You're entertaining me with the latest gossip about celebrities for five minutes while I'm waiting for the family in front of me that's scanning 300 items at the grocery store." Ryan: Oh, you follow me at the grocery store, huh Jon?" Jon: Exactly. I got one kid. I can't imagine having a whole family like yourself. I think the first step is definitely in-cart, on that thank you page. Pay attention to the messaging. You can run a lot of A/B tests on the messaging alone and see what resonates. But also, adding a tool like CartHook, where you're figuring out all of these additional metrics and how to increase things like customer lifetime value, average order value. All of that kind of even goes back into your ROAS, your return on ad spend. If you start thinking about it this way, the higher your average order value, the higher your return on ad spend. Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Now, in addition to something like a CartHook offering up some complimentary products, is there any kind of messaging or kind of like, "Hey, I really want to make them feel good about what they just did. They spent money with me..." because most companies are like, "Hey, thanks. We'll be emailing you a confirmation," and that's pretty much the thank you page. Do you recommend adding more to that, or is it just kind of just get the products in front of them, get them in and out type thing? Jon: Well, we've actually run some tests, where brands who already participate in like 1% For Good or some of these other donation or charity causes, at that point, and reemphasizing that on the thank you page. Like, "Thank you for your purchase. Did you know part of your purchase is going to these great causes?" Ryan: Oh. Jon: Right? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: So, what's happening there is you're actually just making somebody feel even better. You're reassuring them about their purchase. I think that's really important there, is the reassurance. I don't know about you, but sometime... like, I bought a new car six months ago now, maybe. There's nothing like the joy of driving the new car home. But then you're sitting at home and you're like, "I'm a little guilty. I feel guilty. I bought a new car today." You know what I mean? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: It's that thing where it's like, "I just dropped a lot of money on this." Yeah, it's awesome, but at the same time, I could have got a used car that had a hundred thousand miles on it and would have got me from A to B. It's the same thing when you buy online. You need to reassure people that... they probably didn't need what they bought from you. Maybe they had some need around it. But if you did a great job with your marketing sales and every everything else but your customer experience, you helped them see the benefit of a product that maybe had a little more cost to it than what they were planning to spend, but there's some value there for them. Sometimes that's just the emotional value. But, at the same time, reassurance is really key on that thank you page. Ryan: Got it. Okay, so we've got the thank you page dialed, we've got some upsells potential there, we've told them that they're amazing and they bought from an awesome company. Now, how do I go about encouraging future business from this customer of mine? Jon: Well, I think the first thing that really needs to be paid attention here is that what happens in email post-purchase. Now, most people don't think about this when they're optimizing a site. They usually just leave it to whatever the defaults are. So, if they're using Shopify, it will automatically send out some emails, depending on what email provider, using like a Klaviyo or something like that. It will have some of these built-ins with some best practices. But this is a ripe opportunity for optimization that most people are not thinking about. Jon: I always say there's five emails that should be sent out after a purchase. It's a huge opportunity if you're missing any of these five. Now, the easiest one, and the first, is always confirmation email. The order went through, all is well, it's received, we'll be shipping it on this date or soon. Just confirming everything's gone well, it's gone through. Just send them an email, and that email should go out immediately. There's no reason to hold on to it, even if you don't have a shipping date yet. It doesn't need to have tracking information in this email. It's just, "Hey, you know what, we have your money, your order, here's your receipt," right? Ryan: Okay. Jon: That's a good opportunity, at that point... I've seen this done very well, and I don't know what the tool is, but I should definitely look into that. I've seen this done so well, where they even do the upsell in that email. This happened to me last week. I bought some lights for my yard, solar lights, and to light up what's been real... we live in Portland. It's super dark here this time of year for long hours of the day. So, I'm driving home and it's dark in my driveway. Well, what I did, I went and I got some solar lights. Yeah, probably not the best for how dark it is here, but we'll move on from that. Jon: In the cart, it said, "Hey, you bought a certain number of these, did you want to add more?" That was a great in-cart experience and I decided not to do it. But then, I got the email right away. In that email, it said, "Hey, if you change your mind, you have four hours from when this email is sent to add a few more before we're going to start packing up your order, and you'll have to just place another order." And it said, "Click here to add four more, eight more or twelve more." It even had a discount on them. I thought that was really interesting. I wanted to see it, what would happen, just from a research standpoint, so I added four more to my order. It was great. It just took me right back to a page on the site that said, "Thanks, Jon. Here's your order number. We added four more to it. Your new total is X." Ryan: And you got a discount on it, on adding the four more. Jon: Well, it was because they didn't add any more for shipping those extra four, right? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: So, it wasn't a percentage off. It was saying, "Hey, we'll add these, but we won't charge you more to ship them." Ryan: Got it. Jon: Now, you could do a whole bunch of different items around discounting. We should definitely talk about discounting today, a little bit there. But I think the point here was, is that they had a captive audience. I'm going to look at my receipt email. Most people do. Ryan: Yep. Jon: It should be a highly opened email. So, it's a great captive audience and a great opportunity to do an upsell that nobody really thinks about. Ryan: No, yeah, and I can easily see how... you didn't take the complimentary products, but maybe you suggest something maybe even more different in the email, but offer a discount. Like, "Hey, add this in and we'll give you 10% off, and just include it in the order and it'll go out at the same time," or something. Jon: Right. And you think about it, it's a free cost of sale at that point for the retailers. So, there's really no additional cost in sending that email. You're already going to send the receipt. Email is super cheap as is anyways. But you don't have to advertise to them. You're not remarketing. You're not doing any of that that could add the extra cost. Jon: Okay. So, we have confirmation email. The second email is shipping confirmation. Once the order has shipped, let the consumer know immediately. "Your order has shipped. It's on its way. Here's the tracking number, and it should be there within this date range or on this specific day." Now, even if the tracking number is not available in UPS or FedEx or whatever at this point, because those can take 12 hours or 24 hours to show up in there, you can always just say, "Hey, this link won't show any results for X amount of time." But you should give them that right away because they're going to reference that, perhaps, throughout the order process or while they're waiting for the order. But I think it's a great opportunity just to confirm things have been shipped, all is still well, it's going to be there. Jon: It's a great opportunity, at that point, to also offer any resources. So, you can say, "Hey, you bought these solar lights. Let me include a video..." and this is exactly what they did for me. They included a video that showed me how to put them together, in that shipping confirmation. Ryan: Hmm. Jon: So now, I had something to kind of tease me a little bit until the products arrived. I thought it was super interesting because, not only was I just getting that shipping information, which normally I would just look at, but archive and save in case it didn't arrive, but I actually went through and reengaged with the brand by watching an installation video, which is a great opportunity. Now, when I get the product, immediately I can open the box and start using it. Right? Ryan: Oh, yeah. Jon: That's a much better experience. So, we've got confirmation email, shipping confirmation email, and the third email I always recommend is a customer service email. What do I mean by that? Well, this is just a check-in email. This should be a couple of days after the product was supposed to arrive. What should happen here is it should say something like, "Did you receive the product? Was everything okay? If not, just reply to this email and let us know." Pretty simple, right? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: It's a just let them know you're there, that they have a channel if there's an issue. And what you're going to do here, is you're going to prevent a negative online review. Because if they have a problem, they're not going to go online and vent. They're going to say, "Oh, you know what, I got that email from them. I'll reply to that email and try to figure this out." And then, you have an opportunity to turn a bad situation into a good one very quickly. You're preemptively handling that situation by just letting them know you're there. And if there's no problems at all, it's still awesome just to know that that brand is available for you and that they're there. Jon: I often recommend, have this email either go out the day the product should arrive, and you can say something like, "Your product should be arriving today. Let us know if you have any problems," and things of that sort. It's also another opportunity to send some more resources. If you want to link to more stuff up on your site, or there's... we worked with a company that sells tents. They did a really good job with this. It's like how to set up your tent, right? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: Because a lot of people struggle with that. They've gotten a lot easier over the years, but it's still something that required a little bit of knowledge. So, we've got confirmation emails, shipping confirmation, customer service, and then the fourth email I always recommend is please leave a review. This is a review request. Now, this should definitely go out a couple of days, maybe even a week, after they've gotten the product. The idea here is just make it so simple for them. There's a couple of tools that make this super easy. Shopper Approved. It does this extremely well. It's a reviews platform, where they just send out an email that asks for the review, and then it has five stars in the review, and it says, "Click the star that you want to rate." Ryan: Yeah, I've actually done that before and didn't even know I was giving a review. Jon: Right. It's one click. Ryan: It's phenomenally simple. Me, as an online marketer, I'm in it all day every day. Then I got a review email from one of the companies I bought from, and it was Shopper Approved. Blew me away. Like, "Wow. I actually just accidentally gave a five star review." I was going to give it anyway, but it was like, "Wow, that was ridiculously simple." Jon: Yeah, and that's exactly what it's about here, is just make it quick, make it easy, but ask for the review. Most people, at this point, don't ask for a review. They're asking for a review on their website, which I can promise you, nobody is going back to a website, from finding that product detail page for the product they purchased, and giving it a review. It's a huge red flag and perhaps we should do another episode, Ryan, on product reviews, because it's a huge red flag for consumer trust. Jon: If you see, on a product detail page, that you can leave a review, that tells me that there are so many unverified reviews on there. I don't trust what's being said anymore because the manufacturer or retailer could just be sending their entire family to that page. I want to know that they're actually verified reviews from people that have purchased and that's the only reviews that are in that mix. The best way to do that is just ask for it via email after the purchase. It's going to be a verified review. That also, and you probably know more about this though, Ryan, but that also allows you, if they're all verified, to have the star ratings show up on your product detail page listings in Google search results. Ryan: Yeah, exactly. You need to have a review aggregator that's approved by Google that's looked at their system and said, "Yes, you're actually getting legitimate reviews." I know there's some plugins on a lot of eCom platforms that allow people to just leave reviews on the site, like you said, and it doesn't build trust. Those can't be sent to Google. So, if your website is, "Hey, I got a place to get reviews. I've got 500 wonderful reviews on my website. How come Google is not allowing me to send them?" It's because you haven't used one of the 30, I believe, companies that are approved to send those reviews to ours, and Google trusts that they're legitimate. Jon: Now, you're not gaming the system, so that's helpful. Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: So, five emails. Confirmation email after purchase, shipping confirmation, customer service, leave a review, and then the fifth is just add them to your general email marketing sends. So, whatever that next email marketing send is, just add them. Now, here's the thing. If you're going to send an email every day, or even every week, the cadence can't be the same as somebody who clearly signed up for your marketing emails on your site. Now, I'm suggesting sending them marketing emails, but maybe it's once a month. It's just some way to stay in front of them, and these emails should be more helpful. They shouldn't be, "Here's the big promotion we're running right now." It should be something like, "Hey, Valentine's Day is coming up. Have you thought about ordering by X date to ensure that you'll have it in time?" Ryan: And so on this, real quick though, you would, in theory, keep them out of your marketing emails until they get to this point. You don't want to automatically, you purchased, you're in my marketing email, and you're going to get a marketing email in the middle of this cadence of emails. Like, you don't want, "Oh, shipping confirmation." "Oh..." two hours later you got the marketing email. Jon: That's exactly right. I think that's extremely important that even if they signed up... okay, this isn't a tactic I recommend. You know I rail on this all the time. But even if you had a pop-up, and you offered a discount to sign up for the marketing emails on your site before they made a purchase, you need to hold those emails a reasonable amount of time, maybe a day or two, to see if they made a purchase right away. There's so many of these tools, like Klaviyo, that make that pretty easy to do, where you can just add an exception real quick to hold them until the next email blast or something. But I would wait for them to at least complete that purchase. If they complete the purchase, then don't send a marketing email until they've gotten the other four emails. Ryan: All right, so we've got an email cadence. We've got in-cart right after the purchase. Some of the things you can do on the thank you page. We touched on this a little bit, in the process of going through there, but in addition to CartHook and maybe the email platform you're using, are there any other CRO tools people can be utilizing or looking at when they're trying to improve post-purchase conversion rates? Jon: Well, I think that it's not as data-focused on tracking every click and movement at that point. So, it's less about the toolsets here. It's more about that customer experience. Email is going to be your biggest toolset here. Yes, there's a lot of stuff you can do to run tests and see how much people are engaging with that thank you page, and there's tools like CartHook and several competitors to them, but I don't think that being as data heavy at this part of the process is going to be very beneficial. Ryan: Got it. And a lot of that is going to be measured by lifetime value of your customers. Are they increasing or not? So, if your lifetime value was $500 and then you implemented a bunch of these things Jon's talked about, did it move to $700 or $800 over a course of the time period that you're outlining? Jon: Right. And there's really three kind of goals that you should have from doing this, and three metrics that you should be tracking by optimizing post-purchase. The first is that customer lifetime value, of course. We want to see that go up over time. What influences that? A return purchase. Did you give them such a good customer experience that they came back and purchased again? Another thing is number of reviews. That's a great one because people are only going to leave a review if they're satisfied or if they're deeply unsatisfied, right? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: That kind of mushy middle there, nobody really leaves a review, typically. That's why you very rarely will see like a three star review. You're going to see a five or a one, or a four, sometimes people don't like to give five unless... they reserve that for the one time a year. Maybe it's between four and one, but you see very few in between, typically. Then the third metric, besides those, that you should be thinking about is just your conversion. Your conversion rate overall should go up because of those repeat customers, in the sense that if you get more people to come back and purchase again, you should see your conversion rates go up because it's going to be an easier purchase, you're going to have more sales. So, it kind of feeds itself in this cycle. Ryan: Got it. So it's post-purchase conversion rates not something I've normally thought about, or even associate with typical CRO and what you're doing with customer testing and heat mapping and all these wonderful things you do onsite. Now, is generally post-purchase CRO a part of an overall CRO strategy or do you kind of separate them into like, get the purchase CRO and then post-purchase CRO? Jon: That's a great question. Now, my initial thought on that is that it is something that is built into what we do at The Good, and it should be part of a full conversion optimization. But it is a graduate level step. What I mean by that is if you haven't gotten into college and completed those courses of just getting the conversion, then there's no reason to focus on post-purchase yet. So, you really want to have a good customer experience up to that point, and then you can start working on post-purchase optimization. But it is an overall part of the CRO picture, and it really should be. Ryan: Now, one easy way to increase your conversion rate is to throw a bunch of discounts out, obviously. If people save money, of course they're going to buy more, generally. But how do you, or do you, recommend any discounting post-purchase? I kind of mentioned like, "Oh maybe I would throw a 10% discount out for complimentary products in an email." But that may be a bad idea. I don't know. Jon: Well, I'm not a proponent of doing discounts on a site at all. I really believe discounting is not optimization. I call it margin drain, because that's really what it is. Now, can you get more sales through discounting? People love a discount. It does work, but I'm not a proponent of it. I don't think you should be testing discounts, testing promotions in that way. There's a lot of other ways to be doing promotions that aren't just a straight up discount. And the reason is, and I say this all the time, once you bring a new-to-file customer in through a discount, your brand is forever a discount brand in the eyes of that consumer. And it's just not going to change. That means, every time you do a purchase in the future, you're going to have to offer a discount. It's just what's going to be expected. They're never going to want to pay retail price because that's not what the expectation is. Jon: But there are ways around this that are still intriguing offers that aren't discounts. We actually have an article up on our site. We'll have our producer put it in the show notes. But there's an article that we have up on The Good that's something like 90 or 100 different types of offers that you can do that aren't discounts. Ryan: Oh wow. Jon: There's just an unlimited number up there, it seems like. Now, things like buy one, get one, bundling. I mentioned, just earlier, how the company got me by saying, "Hey, we'll add four more to your order without charging you more for shipping." So, you can do things like shipping promotions. Free shipping should be something that you're considering. If not, look at a better fulfillment partner, perhaps, but there's a lot of options out there. That you're allowing people to upgrade their shipping speed. Ryan: Yeah so, one final point, I think, in the post-purchase thing. Something you and I do a lot of between our organizations is referrals. I'm always referring business over to Jon and Jon's very good at referring business to us. But in the eCommerce space, very rarely do I get asked to refer somebody else. I just bought this product. I'm really excited about it. I mean, more than likely, I'm going to be willing to refer, but very rarely do I get asked about it. And a lot of times it's... there may be a loyalty program system out there that does some of this, but what do you suggest companies do to increase some of that potential for referral? Jon: Just ask. I think, as you mentioned, so few do, and there's... most eCommerce managers are spending all this effort and money in affiliate programs, where they're getting people to recommend their product in exchange for an affiliate fee. But they ignore the power that people who actually buy can have. And I think that's a mistake. They really should be thinking a lot about how can we just get somebody who purchased, and is happy with that purchase, to be a referral source? One of the things you can do is, in that email chain that I mentioned of those five emails, instead of asking for a review, you could ask for a referral at that point, right? Ryan: Yeah. Jon: You could mix it up and do a 25% you're asking for referrals, 75% you're asking for a review, however that mix is that you'd like. There's a lot of options there. But the reality is, is all you have to do is ask, and it should cost you nothing at that point. You could offer them a gift in exchange for making a referral, something of that sort, or have a loyalty program that you're doing. There's some great tools out there. I'm a huge fan of one called Smile, smile.io. Smile.io, however you want to pronounce it. But there's a handful of these out there that do a really good job with the loyalty programs. And one of those is asking for referrals and doing it at the right step in the process. Just so few people do it that it blows my mind. Ryan: Is there a right or a wrong way to ask for that referral? Is there a way that it can make people mad, or there's a way that you've seen that's been very successful in that email chain of asking for one? Jon: The first thing I would do is offer them something of value to share. So, instead of the overt, "Just click here to publish to your Facebook a, "I just bought this product, you should too," or something that is super cheesy and very pushy. That's the mistake I see, typically. And most people aren't going to do that. But if you make it something that is really useful, like, "Hey, I just bought this tent from this company, and here's a video on how to set up a tent, or a trick on how to set up a tent, perhaps, that would make your life easier if you camp too." So you say, "Okay, well, share that out," perhaps with this referral code, something of that sort. And you can offer people a discount. Jon: Now, a lot of times... I do this a lot. If I really like something and I'm recommending it to somebody, I'll say, "You know what, I know I get a discount on that. Why don't I just make the introduction and then I know you'll get a discount." So it's, "Offer 10% off to your friends," or whatever that might be. Or, "Use this code and your friends get free shipping," or, "They get a free gift if you refer them." It doesn't, again, have to be a percentage off. But I think there's a lot of options there and a lot of offers that could be mixed in. It just requires a little bit of thought and creativity instead of doing the lazy thing that every eCom site's doing, and either not asking or just saying, "Hey, use this code and give it to your friends for a percentage off." Ryan: Got it. So, just kind of make it a little more fun or exciting, or not just the basic "give me a code." Jon: Right, exactly. Ryan: Well, that's awesome. Okay. So, we've got a lot of potential for increasing conversion rates from thank you pages to emails to referrals to countless different things. Thank you, Jon, for downloading all of that education on us. I think there's just a ton in there that I'm actually going to start implementing on some of my brands. Anything else you want to leave us with? Jon: No, I think that the first thing to think about is getting that conversion. After that, there's so much more opportunity to go that most people don't pay attention to. I think it's really important that they take that extra step. I appreciate you bringing this topic to the table and us discussing it today. Hopefully it's a value for folks. Ryan: Oh yeah, I'm sure it is. Thank you, Jon.

In today’s episode Mollie and Katie talk about how our reading has been slow, but good, what author we’d like to go on a tropical besties vacay with, and how Jeremiah Land from Peace Like a River is full of boundless wisdom. We also ponder the question: do you have to love your job? Very existential of us.   Books Mentioned: Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr Liane Moriarty (author of such books as Big Little Lies and The Husband’s Secret) Sweet Bitter by Stephanie Danler Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson Peace Like a River by Leif Enger   Follow us all over the internet! Website:https://www.nothankswerebooked.com/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/nothankswerebooked Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nothxwerebooked/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/NoThxWereBooked

If you’re in a negative cash flow situation what’s the best way to get out of it and become positive cash flowed. Ryan: All right. I’ve got a question from [Tez 00:00:03]. They’re currently stuck with negative cash flow investment properties in Sydney. What would be the best way to get out of this situation? […] The post How To Get Out of a Negative Cash Flow Situation appeared first on On Property.

What do you think about investing in property in the US? Is it better than investing in Australia and how should you think about it? Ryan: All right, Lucas has another question. He’s saying “Have you guys bought property internationally?” Ben: No, I haven’t. Ryan: Yeah, neither have I. What I want to say about […] The post What Do You Think About Investing In The US? appeared first on On Property.

When looking to buy your next investment is it better to buy close to the CBD or is it better to buy a new development that is cheaper further out? Ryan: All right. So Joshua’s asking, “As a first time buyer in Newcastle, would it be better to fork out more for a property in […] The post Is It Better To Buy in the CBD or in a New Development in Newcastle? appeared first on On Property.

感谢热心听友“小睡猫JoJo”帮忙听写本篇文稿!Ryan: A deceased stuffed giraffe has been drawing people’s attention at a Zoo in Wuxi, East China’s Jiangsu province, during the past “Golden Week” holiday. The zoo’s goal was to notify visitors of the dangers of feeding their animals. Is this clever or creepy? Guys, what do you think? What’s going on?Bob: I want to tell you the story of the giraffe. It was a lovely lovely living giraffe a few years ago, about five years ago, and his name was Collin. I don’t know if you know it’s real name was Collin, but I am goanna call it giraffe Collin.(Niu Honglin: you named the giraffe) Collin wasn’t very well(Ryan: were you attached) I really like Collin, I really did. Maybe because it was really handy to have a giraffe, because you can reach high things. (Ryan: oh, yeah, make sense)yeah, Well, anyway, one day Collin was just minding his own businessatthe zoo and then somebody, a visitor, I should say, came along and throw a plastic bag into the enclosure and Collin ate the plastic bag and poor Collin died, gone, giraffe, X…. Ryan: Is that the end of Collin’s story?Bob: No, Strangely enough, Because they decided that, I don’t know when they decided, they just decided, I know, we can still use Collin, we can just stuff him and put it at the zoo as a warning to visitors to say don’t do this, just don’t throw plastic bags, or don’t feed animals with wrong things and whatever, because otherwise you end up stuffed. You know which is what happened to Collin. Obviously, I am not saying people are gonna end up stuffed.Ryan: That was magical story. (Bob: Thank you.)I real feel for Collin Bob: I hope I made it live.Niu Honglin: And on top of that, they even put Collin into this parade, saying, and just put it all around, and travelling him, I don’t know if is him or her within the zoo laps and laps, saying, see, this is what you do, you want all our animals to end up like this, if you don’t, stop feeding them.Bob: But the problem is they keep on feeding them. This is not the end of it. There was a turkey called Frank, ok (Ryan: Oh, that’s a great name for turkey). Well, anyway, so he died because it was overfed by visitors. There were two ostriches, I don’t know their name, Linda, I don’t know, birdy, whatever, because of eating plastic bags given by visitors. There were three deer who died respectively because of (Niu Honglin: oh my god) I don’t know, help me out with theese names, for goodness sake. Anyway, so basically (Ryan: Jerry, Jim, Jonson), oh, fine, whatever, so anyway, there are all these animals, all over the place, being given things by visitors. What is the problem here? Ryan: You know, obviously, this is nothing new. Animals are dying right and left basically; because people are feeding them. And I can understand why, you know, in my mind; here is what I am thinking. And, I am thinking, Sometimes my dog would come to the table. And my dog would always eat before the family did, soo that it will beg less. That was the strategy,never happened, Ok, so the dog had eaten its dinner. Now we’rere at the table having our dinner as a family. But the dog would always come up, and you know, flash those puppy dog eyes. (Bob: This is where you got it from, you do the same) you know when those puppy dog eyes are flashed at you, you just, you’re like“oh god, I know, you just ate, this is bad, but it feels so right”.Niu Honglin: See, You’ve paint a pretty picture, a lovely home, a lovely dog, family dinner, but I have to say, this is very serious. A survey conducted in Guangdong province suggested that 97, 97 percent participants believe animals can eat what human eat, that is not the fact, animals cannot eat whatever human eat; and 76 percent participants confess feeding animals is for entertainment, so they are just doing it because they think it’s fun; and 18 percent participants think animals cannot get enough food. This is not all right.Ryan: I want to go with that, that animals don’t get enough food, because these people, I do feel, when it comes to animals, they don’t know the stuff. Obviously your statistics pointed to that. ( Niu Honglin: Yes.) So the zoos not doing a good job, at least giving them that information, because this animals come up…Bob: No, I don’t think you can blame the zoos for this, because, I don’t know, but when I was a school kid. (Ryan: tell that to Jerry, Jamey and Jonson. Ok?) They are not around anymore. But, you know, When I was going up at school, I was pretty certain that we had lessons, where they say, look, this is a lion, don’t put your hand in the lion’s mouth, don’t, you know, try to feed itfish & chips or something like this, just don’t do it. And then maybe we were taken to the zoo by family or school, and again, we were shown, just don’t do it. So I think people need to know what wild animals are and what to eat before they even get to the zoo.Ryan: All right, fair enough, we can agree to disagree on this one. But, I will say that, in the US not too long ago, there was a famous gorilla that was shot and killed because a child fell into its enclosure, and the child was, they shot the gorilla to save the child. Well, basically it is the negligence of the mother that the child ended up in there. And I think it was the zoo’s fault, but I think people would be really outraged, in the US, if they paraded Harambe which was with the name of the gorilla, around, and saying, “Hey, guys, you know, this is the zoo, look at Harambe, he paid the ultimate price basically because you didn’t know, not to stick your hand into the lion’s mouth, or not to have your kid wonder around this enclosure.Niu Honglin: Yeah, I agree. So for this story, I do believe that feeding animals are not correct, are not right, you should not do this, but I don’t like the idea of having this poorly tragically died giraffe, make it stuffed giraffe, and just parade it everywhere. (Bob: …We are supposed be talking about Collin, aren’t we) yeah, Collin is just the sad animal; this is a creepy creepy story. I wish Collin rest in peace. And also I do believe that the zoo is not there to blame, but, the zoo can actually do more, instead of putting Collin all around everywhere, maybe they can put signs each and every cages, saying we do not want you to feed them, your food is not proper for them, it could kill them. And also the massive media like what we are doing right now, is to our dear listeners stop feeding animals when you are in a zoo, it’s not good for them. Bob: And I think the message, which, if you put Collin right there at the gate. The message is, hey, (Ryan: living Collin or dead Collin?)dead Collin at the gate, I mean the problem with this, is that, basically saying, Look, it doesn’t really matter, because actually Collin is still with us, he is still help us, he is still working here at the zoo, he is fine, you know, he can still entertain us all. I just think it sort of sends out the wrong message when you take this poor little animal and stick him right at the gate.