Podcasts about ryan so

Ryan Flessner, What If I Don't Understand Their Thinking? ROUNDING UP: SEASON 3 | EPISODE 15 “What do I do if I don't understand my student's strategy?” This is a question teachers grapple with constantly, particularly when conferring with students during class. How educators respond in moments like these can have a profound impact on students' learning and their mathematical identities. In this episode, we talk with Ryan Flessner from Butler University about what educators can say or do when faced with this situation. BIOGRAPHY Ryan Flessner is a professor of teacher education in the College of Education at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. He holds a PhD in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis in teacher education from the University of Wisconsin–Madison; a master of arts in curriculum and teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University; and a bachelor of science in elementary education from Butler University. Prior to his time at the university level, he taught grades 3–7 in Indianapolis; New York City; and Madison, Wisconsin. RESOURCES Nearpod Pear Deck GeoGebra  Magma Math TRANSCRIPT Mike Wallus: “What do I do if I don't understand my student's strategy?” This is a question teachers grapple with constantly, particularly when conferring with students during class. How we respond in moments like these can have a profound impact on our students' learning and their mathematical identities. Today we'll talk with Ryan Flessner from Butler University about what educators can say or do when faced with this very common situation.  Welcome to the podcast, Ryan. Really excited to talk to you today. Ryan Flessner: Thanks, Mike. I'm flattered to be here. Thank you so much for the invitation. Mike: So, this experience of working with a student and not being able to make sense of their solution feels like something that almost every teacher has had. And I'll speak for myself and say that when it happens to me, I feel a lot of anxiety. And I just want to start by asking, what would you say to educators who are feeling apprehensive or unsure about what to do when they encounter a situation like this? Ryan: Yeah, so I think that everybody has that experience. I think the problem that we have is that teachers often feel the need to have all of the answers and to know everything and to be the expert in the room. But as an educator, I learned really quickly that I didn't have all the answers. And to pretend like I did put a lot of pressure on me and made me feel a lot of stress and would leave me answering children by saying, “Let me get back to you on that.” And then I would scurry and try and find all the answers so I could come back with a knowledgeable idea. And it was just so much more work than to just simply say, “I don't know. Let's investigate that together.” Or to ask kids, “That's something interesting that I'm seeing you do. I've never seen a student do that before. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?” And just having that ability to free myself from having to have all the answers and using that Reggio-inspired practice—for those who know early childhood education—to follow the child, to listen to what he or she or they say to us and try to see. I can usually keep up with a 7- or an 8-year-old as they're explaining math to me. I just may never have seen them notate something the way they did. So, trying to ask that question about, “Show me what you know. Teach me something new.” The idea that a teacher could be a learner at the same time I think is novel to kids, and I think they respond really well to that idea. Mike: So, before we dig in a little bit more deeply about how teachers respond to student strategies if they don't understand, I just want to linger and think about the assumptions that many educators, myself included, might bring to this situation. Assumptions about their role, assumptions about what it would mean for a student if they don't know the answer right away. How do you think about some of the assumptions that are causing some of that anxiety for us? Ryan: Yeah. When the new generation of standards came out, especially in the field of math, teachers were all of a sudden asked to teach in a way that they themselves didn't learn. And so, if you have that idea that you have to have all the answers and you have to know everything, that puts you in a really vulnerable spot because how are we supposed to just magically teach things we've never learned ourselves? And so, trying to figure out ways that we can back up and try and make sense of the work that we're doing with kids, for me that was really helpful in understanding what I wanted from my students. I wanted them to make sense of the learning. So, if I hadn't made sense of it yet, how in the world could I teach them to make sense of it? And so we have to have that humility to say, “I don't know how to do this. I need to continue my learning trajectory and to keep going and trying to do a little bit better than the day that I did before.” I think that teachers are uniquely self-critical and they're always trying to do better, but I don't know if we necessarily are taught how to learn once we become teachers. Like, “We've already learned everything we have to do. Now we just have to learn how to teach it to other people.” But I don't think we have learned everything that we have to learn. There's a lot of stuff in the math world that I don't think we actually learned. We just memorized steps and kind of regurgitated them to get our A+ on a test or whatever we did.  So, I think having the ability to stop and say, “I don't know how to do this, and so I'm going to keep working at it, and when I start to learn it, I'm going to be able to ask myself questions that I should be asking my students.” And just being really thoughtful about, “Why is the child saying the thing that she is?,” “Why is she doing it the way that she's doing it?,” “Why is she writing it the way that she's writing it?” And if I can't figure it out, the expert on that piece of paper is the child [herself], so why wouldn't I go and say, “Talk to me about this.”? I don't have to have all the answers right off the cuff. Mike: In some ways, what you were describing just there is a real nice segue because I've heard you say that our minds and our students' minds often work faster than we can write, or even in some cases faster than we can speak. I'm wondering if you can unpack that. Why do you think this matters, particularly in the situation that we're talking about? Ryan: Yeah, I think a lot of us, especially in math, have been conditioned to get an answer. And nobody's really asked us “Why?” in the past. And so, we've done all of the thinking, we give the answer, and then we think the job is done. But with a lot of the new standards, we have to explain why we think that way. And so, all those ideas that just flurried through our head, we have to now articulate those either in writing on paper or in speech, trying to figure out how we can communicate the mathematics behind the answer.  And so, a lot of times I'll be in a classroom, and I'll ask a student for an answer, and I'll say, “How'd you get that?” And the first inclination that a lot of kids have is, “Oh, I must be wrong if a teacher is asking me why.” So, they think they're wrong. And so I say, “No, no, no. It's not that you're wrong. I'm just curious. You came to that answer, you stopped and you looked up at the ceiling for a while and then you came to me and you said the answer is 68. How did you do that?” A child will say something like, “Well, I just thought about it in my head.” And I say, “Well, what did you think about in your head?” “Well, my brain just told me the answer was 68.”  And we have to actually talk to kids. And we have to teach them how to talk to us—that we're not quizzing them or saying that they're wrong or they didn't do something well enough—that we just want them to communicate with us how they're going about finding these things, what the strategies are. Because if they can communicate with us in writing, if they can communicate on paper, if they can use gestures to explain what they're thinking about, all of those tell us strengths that they bring to the table. And if I can figure out the strengths that you have, then I can leverage those strengths as I address needs that arise in my classroom. And so, I really want to create this bank of information about individual students that will help me be the best teacher that I can be for them. And if I can't ask those questions and they can't answer those questions for me, how am I going to individualize my instruction in meaningful ways for kids? Mike: We've been talking a little bit about the teacher experience in this moment, and we've been talking about some of the things that a person might say.  One of the things that I'm thinking about before we dig in a little bit deeper is, just, what is my role? How do you think about the role of a teacher in the moment when they encounter thinking from a student that they don't quite understand […] yet? Part of what I'm after is, how can a teacher think about what they're trying to accomplish in that moment for themselves as a learner and also for the learner in front of them? How would you answer that question? Ryan: When I think about an interaction with a kid in a moment like that, I try to figure out, as the teacher, my goal is to try and figure out what this child knows so that I can continue their journey in a forward trajectory. Instead of thinking about, “They need to go to page 34 because we're on page 33,” just thinking about, “What does this kid need next from me as the teacher?”  What I want them to get out of the situation is I want them to understand that they are powerful individuals, that they have something to offer the conversation and not just to prove it to the adult in the room. But if I can hear them talk about these ideas, sometimes the kids in the classroom can answer each other's questions. And so, if I can ask these things aloud and other kids are listening in, maybe because we're in close proximity or because we're in a small-group setting, if I can get the kids to verbalize those ideas sometimes one kid talking strikes an idea in another kid. Or another kid will say, “I didn't know how to answer Ryan when he asked me that question before, but now that I hear what it sounds like to answer that type of a question, now I get it, and I know how I would say it if it were my turn.”  So, we have to actually offer kids the opportunity to learn how to engage in those moments and how to share their expertise so others can benefit from their expertise and use that in a way that's helpful in the mathematical process. Mike: One of the most practical—and, I have to say, freeing—things that I've heard you recommend when a teacher encounters student work and they're still trying to make sense of it, is to just go ahead and name it. What are some of the things you imagine that a teacher might say that just straight out name the fact that they're still trying to understand a student's thinking? Tell me a little bit about that. Ryan: Well, I think the first thing is that we just have to normalize the question “Why?” or “Tell me how you know that.” If we normalize those things—a lot of times kids get asked that question when they're wrong, and so it's an [immediate] tip of the hat that “You're wrong, now go back and fix it. There's something wrong with you. You haven't tried hard enough.” Kids get these messages even if we don't intend for them to get them. So, if we can normalize the question “Tell me why you think that” or “Explain that to me”—if we can just get them to see that every time you give me an answer whether it's right or wrong, I'm just going to ask you to talk to me about it, that takes care of half of the problem.  But I think sometimes teachers get stuck because—and myself being one of them—we get stuck because we'll look at what a student is doing and they do something that we don't anticipate. Or we say, “I've shown you three different ways to get at this problem, different strategies you can use, and you're not using any of them.” And so, instead of getting frustrated that they're not listening to us, how do we use that moment to inquire into the things that we said obviously aren't useful, so what is useful to this kid? How is he attacking this on his paper?  So, I often like to say to a kid, “Huh, I noticed that you're doing something that isn't up on our anchor chart. Tell me about this. I haven't seen this before. How can you help me understand what you're doing?” And sometimes it's the exact same thinking as other strategies that kids are using. So, I can pair kids together and say, “Huh, you're both talking about it in the same way, but you're writing it differently on paper.” And so, I think about how I can get kids just to talk to me and tell me what's happening so that I can help give them a notation that might be more acceptable to other mathematicians or to just honor the fact that they have something novel and interesting to share with other kids. Other questions I talk about are, I will say, “I don't understand what's happening here, and that's not your fault, that's my fault. I just need you to keep explaining it to me until you say something that strikes a chord.” Or sometimes I'll bring another kid in, and I'll have the kids listen together, and I'll say, “I think this is interesting, but I don't understand what's going on. Can you say it to her? And then maybe she'll say it in a way that will make more sense to me.” Or I'll say, “Can you show me on your paper—you just said that—can you show me on your paper where that idea is?” Because a lot of times kids will think things in their head, but they don't translate it all onto the paper. And so, on the paper, it's missing a step that isn't obvious to the viewer of the paper. And so, we'll say, “Oh, I see how you do that. Maybe you could label your table so that we know exactly what you're talking about when you do this. Or maybe you could show us how you got to 56 by writing 8 times 7 in the margin or something.”  Just getting them to clarify and try to help us understand all of the amazing things that are in their head. I will often tell them too, “I love what you're saying. I don't see it on your paper, so I just want you to say it again. And I'm going to write it down on a piece of paper that makes sense to me so that I don't forget all of the cool things that you said.” And I'll just write it using more of a standard notation, whether that's a ratio table or a standard US algorithm or something. I'll write it to show the kid that thing that you're doing, there's a way that people write that down. And so, then we can compare our notations and try and figure out “What's the thing that you did?,” “How does that compare to the thing that I did?,” “Do I understand you clearly now?” to make sure that the kid has the right to say the thing she wants to say in the way that she wants to say it, and then I can still make sense of it in my own way. It's not a problem for me to write it differently as long as we're speaking the same language. Mike: I want to mark something really important, and I don't want it to get lost for folks. One of the things that jumped out is the moves that you were describing. You could potentially take up those moves if you really were unsure of how a student were thinking, if you had a general notion but you had some questions, or if you totally already understood what the student was doing. Those are questions that aren't just reserved for the point in time when you don't understand—they're actually good questions regardless of whether you fully understand it or don't understand it at all. Did I get that right? Ryan: Yes. I think that's exactly the point. One thing that I am careful of is, sometimes kids will ask me a question that I know the answer to, and there's this thing that we do as teachers where we're like, “I'm not sure. Why don't you help me figure that out?”—when the kid knows full well that you know the answer.  And so, trying not to patronize kids with those questions, but to really show that I'm asking you these questions, not because I'm patronizing you. I'm asking these questions because I am truly curious about what you're thinking inside and all of the ideas that surround the things that you've written on your paper, or the things that you've said to your partner, to truly honor that the more I know about you, the better teacher I can be for you. Mike: So, in addition to naming the situation, one of the things that jumped out for me—particularly as you were talking about the students—is, what do you think the impact is on a student's thinking? But also their mathematical identity, or even the set of classroom norms, when they experience this type of questioning or these [types] of questions? Ryan: So, I think I talked a little bit about normalizing the [questions] “Why?” or “How do you know that?” And so, just letting that become a classroom norm I think is a sea-changing moment for a lot of classrooms—that the conversation is just different if the kids know they have to justify their thinking whether they're right or wrong. Half the time, if they are incorrect, they'll be able to correct themselves as they're talking it through with you. So, kids can be freed up when they're allowed to use their expertise in ways that allow them to understand that the point of math is to truly make sense of it so that when you go out into the world, you understand the situation, and you have different tools to attack it.  So, what's the way that we can create an environment that allows them to truly see themselves as mathematical thinkers? And to let them know that “Your grades in other classes don't tell me much about you as a mathematician. I want to learn what really works for you, and I want to try and figure out where you struggle. And both of those things are important to me because we can use them in concert with each other. So, if I know the things you do well, I can use those to help me build a plan of instruction that will take you further in your understandings.”  I think that one of the things that is really important is for kids to understand that we don't do math because we want a good grade. I think a lot of people think that the point of math is to get a good grade or to pass a test or to get into the college that you want to get into, or because sixth grade teachers want you to know this. I really want kids to understand that math is a fantastic language to use out in the world, and there are ways that we can interpret things around us if we understand some pretty basic math. And so how do we get them to stop thinking that math is about right answers and next year and to get the job I want? Well, those things may be true, but that's not the real meaning of math. Math is a way that we can live life. And so, if we don't help them understand the connections between the things that they're doing on a worksheet or in a workbook page, if we don't connect those things to the real world, what's the meaning? What's the point for them? And how do we keep them engaged in wanting to know more mathematics?  So, really getting kids to think about who they are as people and how math can help them live the life that they want to live. Creating classroom environments that have routines in place that support kids in thinking in ways that will move them forward in their mathematical understanding. Trying to help them see that there's no such thing as “a math person” or “not a math person.” That everybody has to do math. You do math all the time. You just might not even know that you're doing math. So, I think all of those ideas are really important. And the more curious I can be about students, maybe the more curious they'll be about the math. Mike: You're making me think that this experience of making sense of someone else's reasoning has a lot of value for students. And I'm wondering how you've seen educators have students engage and make sense of their peer strategies. Ryan: Yeah. One of the things that I love to see teachers doing is using students' work as the conversation starter. I often, in my classroom, when I started doing this work, I would bring children up to the overhead projector or the document camera. And they would kind of do a show and tell and just say, “I did this and then I did this, and then I did this thing next.” And I would say, “That's really great, thank you.” And I'd bring up the next student. And it kind of became a show-and-tell-type situation. And I would look at the faces of the other kids in the room, and they would kind of just either be completely checked out or sitting there like raising their hand excitedly—“I want to share mine, I want to share mine.” And what I realized was, that there was really only one person who was engaged in that show-and-tell manner, and that was the person who was sharing their work. And so, I thought, “How can I change that?” So, I saw a lot of really amazing teachers across my career. And the thing that I saw that I appreciated the most is that when a piece of student work is shared, the person who really shouldn't talk is the person who created the work because they already know the work. What we need to do as a group is we need to investigate, “What happened here on this paper?” “Why do you think they made the moves that they made? And how could that help us understand math, our own math, in a different way?” And so, getting kids to look in at other kids' work, and not just saying, “Oh, Mike, how do you understand Ryan's work?” It's “Mike, can you get us started?” And then you say the first thing, and then I say, “OK, let's stop. Let's make sure that we've got this right.” And then we go to the kid whose work it is and say, “Are we on the right track? Are we understanding what you're …?” So, we're always checking with that expert. We're making sure they have the last word, because It's not my strategy. I didn't create it. Just because I'm the teacher doesn't mean you should come and ask me about this because this is Mike's strategy. So go and ask the person who created that.  So, trying to get them to understand that we all need to engage in each other's work. We all need to see the connections. We can learn from each other. And there's an expectation that everyone shares, right? So, it's not just the first kid who raises his hand. It's “All of you are going to get a chance to share.” And I think the really powerful thing is I've done this work even with in-service teachers. And so, when we look at samples of student work, what's fascinating is it just happens naturally because the kid's not in the room. We can't have that kid do a show and tell. We have to interpret their work. And so, trying to look at the kid's work and imagine, “What are the types of things we think this child is doing?,” “What do we think the strengths are on this paper?,” “What questions would you ask?,” “What would you do next?,” is such an interesting thing to do when the child isn't in the room. But when I'm with students, it's just fascinating to watch the kid whose work is on display just shine, even though they're not saying a word, because they just say, “Huh.” They get it. They understand what I did and why I did it.  I think that it's really important for us not just to have kids walk up to the board and do board work and just solve a problem using the steps that they've memorized or just go up and do a show and tell, [but] to really engage everyone in that process so that we're all learning. We're not just kind of checking out or waiting for our turn to talk. Mike: OK, you were talking about the ways that an educator can see how a student was thinking or the ways that an educator could place student work in front of other students and have them try to make sense of it. I wonder if there are any educational technology tools that you've seen that might help an educator who's trying to either understand their students' thinking or put it out for their students to understand one another's thinking. Ryan: Yeah, there's so many different pieces of technology and things out there. It's kind of overwhelming to try and figure out which one is which. So, I mean, I've seen people use things like Nearpod or Pear Deck—some of those kind of common technologies that you'll see when people do an educational technology class or a workshop at a conference or something. I've seen a lot of people lately using GeoGebra to create applets that they can use with their kids. One that I've started using a lot recently is Magma Math. Magma Math is great. I've used this with teachers and professional development situations to look at samples of student work because the thing that Magma has that I haven't seen in a lot of other technologies is there's a playback function. So, I can look at a static piece of finished work, but I can also rewind, and as the child works in this program, it records it. So, I can watch in real time what the child does. And so, if I can't understand the work because things are kind of sporadically all over the page, I can just rewatch the order that the child put something onto the page. And I think that's a really great feature.  There's just all these technologies that offer us opportunities to do things that I couldn't do at the beginning of my career or I didn't know how to do. And the technology facilitates that. And it's not just putting kids on an iPad so they can shoot lasers at the alien that's invading by saying, “8 times 5 is 40,” and the alien magically blows up. How does that teach us anything? But some of these technologies really allow us to dig deeply into a sample of work that students have finished or inquire into, “How did that happen and why did that happen?” And the technologies are just getting smarter and smarter, and they're listening to teachers saying, “It would be really helpful if we could do this or if we could do that.” And so, I think there are a lot of resources out there—sometimes too many, almost an embarrassment of riches. So, trying to figure out which ones are the ones that are actually worth our time, and how do we fund that in a school district or in a school so that teachers aren't paying for these pieces out of their pocket. Mike: You know what? I think that's a great place to stop. Ryan, thank you so much for joining us. It has been an absolute pleasure talking with you. Ryan: It's always great to talk to you, Mike. Thanks for all you do. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2025 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org  

Welcome to episode 218 of The Cloud Pod podcast - where the forecast is always cloudy! Today your hosts Justin, Ryan, and Matt discuss all things cloud - including migration services, AppFabric, state machines, and security updates, as well as the idea of shifting left versus (or in addition to) shifting down.  Titles we almost went with this week: The Cloud Pod Prefers to be Bought by Anyone but IBM What Does the F(in)O(ps)X say?  The Cloud Pod Leverage appFabric for your SaaS Security A big thanks to this week's sponsor: Foghorn Consulting, provides top-notch cloud and DevOps engineers to the world's most innovative companies. Initiatives stalled because you have trouble hiring?  Foghorn can be burning down your DevOps and Cloud backlogs as soon as next week.

What are the stories and motivations behind our local bike shops and those who run them? In this first of a series of conversations we'll be having on this topic, Katya Morzhueva joins Randall to share how she went from growing up in Siberia, to traveling the world (including an eventful stint in China), to founding Cool Cat Cycles and leading group rides in her chosen home of Katy, Texas. Katya's is a story of curiousity, compassion, resiliency, and service to others, and is exemplary of transformative energy that the best shops bring to their local communities. Visit Katya and Cool Cat Cycles at 22010 Westheimer Pkwy in Katy, TX. Episode Sponsor: Dynamic Cyclist (code THEGRAVELRIDE for 15% off) Web: www.coolcatcycles.com Instagram: @coolcatcycles Facebook: @coolcatcycles Support the Podcast Join The Ridership  Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos:     [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week on the broadcast, I'm going to hand the microphone over to my co-host Randall Jacobs. Who's got Katia Morris waver from cool cat cycles in Katy, Texas on the show to talk about the community she's building around the shop and leading group rides in her hometown. Before we jump in, I need to thank this week. Sponsor, dynamic cyclist. As you know, I've been working with a dynamic cyclist stretching routines for a couple of months now working on increasing my mobility and support of strengthening my lower back. Dynamic cyclist has hundreds of cycling, specific stretching routines for you to work through, including some very specific injury prevention routines. I myself am working on the low back injury prevention routine right now. The team at dynamic cyclists has a free trial for all their programs. So head on over to dynamic cyclists.com and check out what they have to offer. Additionally for podcast listeners using the code, the gravel ride. You'll get 15% off all programs. They have both a monthly membership model as well as an inexpensive annual model to cover all your stretching. And strength training needs again, that's dynamic cyclists.com and the coupon code, the gravel ride. Would that business behind us? Let's hand the microphone off to my co-host Randall Jacobs. [00:01:52] Randall: What are the stories behind our local bike shops and those who run them. In the first of a series of conversations we'll be having on this topic, Katia Morzhueva joins me to share how she went from growing up in Siberia, to traveling the world, including an eventful stint in China that we'll get into in a moment, to founding Cool Cat Cycles and leading group rides in your chosen home of Katy, Texas. Katia is a story of curiosity, compassion, resiliency, and service to others, and is exemplary of the transformative energy that the best shops bring to their local communities. We dive right in here. So I hope you enjoyed the conversation. And now we bring to you Katia Morzhueva. [00:02:28] Randall: Do you have like a meditation practice [00:02:30] katya: uh, you know, we can talk about this a little bit more if we start talking about my injury in China. Cuz when you are alone with a broken back, nobody to talk to because you don't speak the language. All you can do is meditate. You know, I, in a, in a irony, like black humor sort of way, a good way to lose weight and become a Buddhist is break a back in a foreign country. [00:03:00] Randall: I'm fortunate in that I had a somewhat parallel experience of breaking my neck in China, I was a bike touring through Hine Island in the South China Sea, but I had zero dislocation. I just ripped a process off a C3 through C five and I was in a neck brace, for a few days and then I saw a specialist and they're like, yeah, you're probably more likely to injure yourself due to muscle atrophy than, to aggravate the injury. And so I was back on my bike in two weeks, which is a very different thing. [00:03:29] katya: Yes, [00:03:29] Randall: so I had version of that Yeah. I'm seeing you shared this picture of your spine with a bunch of rods and pins holding what looks like some of your upper lumbar, [00:03:42] katya: Five vertebrae. Yeah, it's T 12 to T nine. [00:03:47] Randall: Yeah [00:03:48] katya: right. Um, yeah, so I have two plates and 10 screws they're holding five vertu bread together, but it's only one that shattered. So one, actually, the piece fell off and they went in to connect T 12 to 10 and to nine, but then, um, a T 11 to 10. But then the, he was not happy with the result of the surgery, my surgeon. he came back and he said, you want to be active in the future, we want to go back in, redo the surgery, but we will have to connect more vertebrae. And he gave me like half a day to think about it I just went ahead with it. So they went in again, um, you know, 12 hour surgery again, and now I'm like a myoni woman, [00:04:45] Randall: Uh, well, let's, so let's, let's take a step back and kind of talk about how we ended up having this conversation. So um, I think Craig and I had put out word in the ridership looking for, um, you know, recommendations from the community on a guest. And one of the members, uh, had reached out and be like, you have to talk to Kaia. She does, uh, a, you know, an outstanding job building community, uh, in your community out there in, uh, uh, what part of Texas is this? Remind me. [00:05:15] katya: Um, we are west of Houston. We're about 20 miles west of Houston and Katy. [00:05:21] Randall: Yeah. And I had seen, uh, some of the rides that you organize. You have a beautiful shop that you've started, um, you are of Russian descent. Spent some time in, uh, living in China. Uh, really just a fascinating story and a lot of kind of values and ethos, alignments around community and so on. So, where do we start? Where do we want to kick off? [00:05:44] katya: Whew. Um, well, I think we're wanna start in 2016 when we moved back to Houston from China, [00:05:57] Randall: Uhhuh [00:05:57] katya: because that was, um, that was a pivotal moment when decided to get into a business ownership and open a local bike shop, [00:06:08] Randall: this is you and, [00:06:10] katya: And it's me and my husband. Um, we traveled a lot with oil and gas. We both were in oil and gas. Uh, and when we moved back here, um, the community where we are has a lot of potential and there was no bike shop to work with that potential. Um, and I, you know, I would be riding my bike everywhere. Uh, we ended up, Even though we have a child who ended up having only one car, which is very unusual. Um, and as I was commuting everywhere by bike, uh, or I would be working and taking the car and Robert would be riding around everywhere and my son could ride to school. we found out that there's nowhere for us to go is bike commuters, just to get basic service, to get a rack and piners that would fit my bike. Um, and there was a little, you know, there are a couple of places that I thought wouldn't it be nice to have a bike shop right here? Cause I would bike pasted it all the time on my commune and yeah, just come to thousand 17, we opened a shop [00:07:15] Randall: That's, uh, so you, so have you always been avid cyclists, you and your husband? [00:07:21] katya: Uh, no. Uh, but I was, I was always. Not a human powered commuter. my first car, um, I got my first car, I was 30 years old. Uh, and before, before that I lived in about six countries as a resident with oil and gas. I was born in Russia. Um, you know, for my first 20 years of life, I spent as, as a pedestrian walking, using public transportation. Um, even though family had, we had one car, I never used it. Um, and then, you know, Australia, Dubai, New Zealand, uh, traveling all over Europe, never felt like I needed a car. And then we moved to Houston and the reality hits you here and it's just so shocking because I think Houston is epitome or Texas of car dependency in, in America. And it was such a shock to my system and I think largely, Um, that formed me as, as almost an American. I'm an American who doesn't have a car. [00:08:30] Randall: Yeah. It's, uh, all too common for the cities here to have been built. Uh, especially the further west you go around automobiles is the primary way of getting around you. Some places you can't even cross the street cuz it's lanes and there's a fence in the middle. a lot of cities were built, at a time when the automobile was already present versus older European Asian cities where, it's much more walking or horse path oriented. Uh, so, so yeah, it is, uh, something that fortunately cities are, a lot of cities are starting to. backfill, uh, human-centered, uh, transportation infrastructure, uh, and bike lanes and things like this. But, uh, my understanding is that Houston is tough for infrastructure and also for weather. [00:09:13] katya: hmm. Well, you know, in my firm belief, uh, I was born in Siberia, so Siberia is not too far from Polar Circle. Um, in, my opinion, you can ride all year around here. actually if you look, um, at professional cyclists in the US, quite a few of them come from Texas. Um, so Emily Newsom, um, she was raised in Tour de France this year. She's from Fort Worth, that's Dallas. Um, a bunch of people like Beon, MCCA, McCan, they are from, uh, hill country, like Austin area. So, um, I think. The heat of Texas is underestimated. I realized that when we actually moved here, cuz we came from Dubai in summer and we arrived in in August and the second day we went to Zoo and, and everybody was telling us that we were crazy to go to the Zoo Park in August. We're the only people there with a two year old and tow. But we came from the desert and this felt amazing. It actually cools off from a hundred degrees to 98 at night. , is relative. Uh, one thing that you learn when you travel and when you leave is anat in many countries. It all depends on your frame framework. [00:10:37] Randall: And so, uh, you mentioned some of the countries you've been an expat in this. Was this all working with [00:10:43] katya: With oil and gas, yes. In the same company. My husband and I, we met in Neighbors Drilling International. It was the biggest land drilling contractor in the world. I was their first Russian employee working for them in a Russian, in the territory of Russia. But I'm a linguist. I'm not AUM engineer. I have masters and linguistics. [00:11:01] Randall: Oh, interesting. So how many languages do you have? [00:11:04] katya: Uh, I studied a bunch of dead ones. [00:11:07] Randall: Okay [00:11:08] katya: like you have to, uh, ladin an old Greek old Russian old English. Um, I speak English and Russian. Russian is my native. Um, . I speak French a little bit if I, I studied it in college, but it's been such a long time since I actually spoke French. But I think I will pick up pretty fast. I said at Mandarin in China. [00:11:29] Randall: Uhhuh. [00:11:30] katya: Um, I found Mandarin and writing to be extremely interesting. and I would recommend everybody to go and look it up. find that it's like plain Lego where you have a couple of bricks, well, a lot of bricks, and you can build anything you want if you know how to combine those bricks together. It's so interesting. Um, great intellectual challenge. I could not speak Mandarin because I could not understand the tones. Even though I play piano and I have musical ear, I should be able to, I could not, I was never understood. I would go to the market in Dion and try to say that I, I want to buy this, or this is my name and nobody would understand what I'm saying. I know I'm saying it correctly if I was to write it in, transcribe it in in Pinine, [00:12:19] Randall: Yep. [00:12:20] katya: but nobody could understand what I'm saying. [00:12:22] Randall: Well, and there's a certain, um, certainly coming from an English background, there were a lot of sound. Oh, there were a few sounds that we don't have in English. . So getting those mastered was critical cuz the subtlety is, is a critical piece. And then you have the tones and then you have the way that the tones relative to each other. So um, you know, it's really easy to call out a non-native, native speaker because even if they get the tones right, generally they, we, um, you know, the, they won't have the musicality of a native speaker. Um, it was something I had to pay a lot of attention to, [00:12:54] katya: How did you, I know you, you speak Mandarin, right? Or Cantonese. [00:12:59] Randall: uh, I speak Mandarin, uh, fairly fluently and then enough Cantonese to, you know, convince uh, somebody that I speak Cantonese before I switch to Mandarin. [00:13:09] katya: Okay. How long did it take you to capture the tones? [00:13:13] Randall: Uh, I, Hmm. Um, I would say it was like my second trip. So I was, I taught there for a semester as an undergrad, and then I went and studied for a semester at a university, uh, junction University in Guang Jo, for one semester, and really paid attention to tones and got a, a, a firm foundation in grammar and so on at that time. Uh, and so, you know, that made me very aware and I would constantly ask if I got the tones right or check the tones. I had a I act actually let my little pocket dictionary over there, uh, that I would have with me at all times. And so I was, I had to be very intentional about it, but once I got the hang of it, I, it, it was very natural. So for the most part, you know, uh, my tones are pretty good. Like I can order, I can order food over the phone and then show up and they're looking for a Chinese person, [00:14:08] katya: Oh that's amazing Yes Congratulations Uh um my my dissertation and my specialty in college uh was to teach Russian as a foreign language to grad students and freshmen who come to college in Russia to get their degree in Russia but they would come from foreign countries um I have so much appreciation for anybody who can at adult age capture a foreign language you know acquire it to an extent that they can actually freely communicate [00:14:43] Randall: And yet so many people, uh, especially here in the us, uh, do that. There's, know, they don't get credit. It's more like, you know, why, why do you have an accent? Is kind of the response that is often, you know, that people often get and uh, I, having gone through that journey myself, I definitely have a lot of respect. And from what I hear, Russian is especially difficult to learn because of the number of tenses and things of this [00:15:12] katya: Yes Russian is pretty hard Um but I would recommend if you ever wanted to to just immerse yourself and um you'll get it It's hard to learn it on your own for sure uh I assume mentoring would be the same if you just try to use dual lingo [00:15:31] Randall: The uh, the, the grammar of Mandarin is really easy and that helps a lot. So I found it easier than Spanish. [00:15:38] katya: Oh yes But just being able to converse [00:15:40] Randall: Yeah. Yeah. Um, so, okay, so you had a background in linguistics and teaching, uh, Russian to foreigners. Um and then you went into the oil and gas industry, traveled around the world husband ended up in, outside of Houston, Texas, and you have this idea to start a bike shop. So let's what what, is that journey like? Like what was your analysis? Uh, like what has, what has it been like actually running a small business and dealing with the, the ups and downs and the, the risks and the vendors and all this other, [00:16:12] katya: Yes Um well we definitely had no idea what we were getting ourselves into I just had this dream so need to back off back off a little bit and explain Um so you know coming first I arrived in Houston in 2010 and I saw this as an extremely car-centric community society city with no real urban planning Um and then you know then I would go to China Then I returned in 2016 and we moved to a completely different area and suddenly I realized that there are a lot of bikeways here Uh the bikeways were built by um well some are shared use pathways so they're like extended sidewalks uh you can say And some are actual bikeways that follow the bayou So as you know Houston floods this area floods everybody remembers Harvey We have a diversion channel system to remove the water um into the Gulf And uh this neighborhood is crisscross but a lot of bayou e and it's Bayou uh has easements So they actually own the land around the bayou So imagine that this channels uh that Water grass a lot of land and the local management of this channels will afford drainage district are run by wonderful people who understand the value of investing back in the community So they have realized with the help of some bike advocates cuz none of the board members actually ride bikes or not much but they have realized that there's a huge value in investing into bikeways along these channels So all of this community has about 30 miles of bike trails just through our little you know there's about 7,000 homes here So it's not huge and the amount of bikeways per square mile is pretty impressive Uh every kid can bike to elementary school here so with middle and high school it's a little bit more longer to commute But every kid can get to school by bike walk or on a scooter When we came here it's pretty impressive And there's about five elementary schools here but when we came in 2016 I was shocked how empty those paths are Just made me really sad I would be the only person riding around you know to local grocery store or very few other people There maybe were other people I could never see many Um there were a bunch of kids who would go to school but also even now you know we have the streets that are full of carpool parents people who said for 30 minutes and they only have to cross from one street to the other that would do have infrastructure to support their kids bike into school So it just made me really sad And then I thought you know believe there was a bike shop and they they could do some advocacy They could maybe you know help the community to realize the potential that they have to see that this investment is done for them to improve their life quality um and to you know reduce carbon monoxide pollution It's that simple Right Um and We had the resources to do it So you know we started to look around and we thought well let's try So right We opened the shop we get all the wholesalers on board And then um and then it became very interesting because um one thing I did not realize you know speaking of being woman in the in the industry think I had a blind spot for any um like uh misconception about what women can do Uh because you know coming from Russia Russian women deal with uh slightly different issues In the World War ii huge population of Russian men was um just disappeared as victims of war and Russian women had to carry the economy essentially on their shoulders We had female sks we had women factory directors we had female drivers like women could always do everything Uh my mother is a doctor Super typical Um you know there was never an issue that oh well she's a woman and she will have a harder time going to school or whatever my grandmothers have college education Um it was never even a question Um you know working in oil and gas as well I have never felt um that I'm less then Amen And then here ran in a local bike shop in Texas opened my eyes towards some of the biases that are out there And I remember just not even recognizing that and I would just think oh well that was strange interaction which has just happened But I wouldn't have somebody from here And it typically would be a man some of my friends And she would come and say oh you know they talk to you like that because you're a woman So first of all they think you don't know anything Uh they probably make an assumption that you are $8 an hour who just comes here to say hi Bye [00:21:17] Randall: Mm-hmm. [00:21:18] katya: And we're a very small shop So initially when we opened it was May and my tech uh Michael who is African American and an Eastern European woman and we are running a bike shop in a suburb of Houston [00:21:35] Randall: Text [00:21:36] katya: So you can only imagine Uh but know despite all that I think we brought um so much interesting um so many interesting characteristics like from our our personalities and backgrounds that it it works out [00:21:55] Randall: So what has been the, uh, the learning curve as you've been both preneur and in terms of, you know, maybe specifics to the industry or the machine? [00:22:03] katya: Oh gosh Well I'm trying to be positive and all I'm seeing is a Potential for um and I think you know honestly COVID has opened a lot of people's eyes to what's possible when uh you don't have to commute long hours in traffic to work and you can work from home and what's possible um for a local Environments to be built more human centered Uh so many cities in Europe uh have um revamped their urban planning and even here in the US I see potential with electric bikes Um I really hope that understanding of climate change and the human impact in on climate will help as well So in terms of bike commute I see a lot of potential with sports and bi bi cycling is a sport It's a little bit different story This is where I see gravel is playing a huge role [00:23:08] Randall: Mm-hmm [00:23:08] katya: um and adventure by bike Um and that I think is [00:23:14] Randall: with you there. [00:23:15] katya: right and I think that's something that not just I learned as you know as we went into the business I think everybody figured that out in the industry that this is kind of where we're heading uh for um in terms of know just running a small business uh in this part of of um the us mean it's what it is You learn the skills You you you know you help you try to stay positive uh you try to work with community Um yeah it's it's been quite a journey [00:23:52] Randall: So talk about, um, some of the, like what do you carry, what type of shop, and then how have you gotten the word out and how do you engage with the community where you are? [00:24:01] katya: Ryan So we started the idea was to have a community centered shop to help people quote unquote to get out on bikes our initial focus was mostly bike commute so we were the kind of shop that always carried bunch of cruisers step throughs uh single speeds racks fenders commuter backs veneers Cute helmets um you know a bunch of gear for commuters And then we have evolved a lot uh with gravel uh with all I was a roadie even before I opened the shop Um I actually started psych I was in track and field in school and then my knees just started to get really bad when I was In like late twenties I couldn't run as much Um so I you know I had miles and I would ride with him in the trailer and like try to fight the roadies on the local loop with my cruiser bike and a kid and a trainer then I thought well maybe it's time for me to get an actual road bike So I started you know I love the fitness aspect of Cyclone for sure but roads here are pretty unsafe Uh where we are in in our little pocket in It's tolerable You can actually I don't mind doing solo 20 30 mile ride out here with uh a good portion of it being in traffic you can only do it on certain times of the day only uncertain roads The rest of the roads are just so crazy fast and dangerous Uh but we have a gravel levy two miles from the shop you can go there 24 hours Uh it's always empty You will see a bunch of deer very few people You're totally safe And uh we started to train out there uh and then we introduced a bunch of people to the levee and now we have rides out there But my true gravel rides are about an hour from here in the car we drive out in the country And that's when you have your hundreds and hundreds of miles of gravel [00:26:05] Randall: Got it. Very, very cool. [00:26:07] katya: So yeah it it has moved a little bit and then bike packing you know that kind of jumped on board Natural progression I do feel like if you have a gravel bike and then tell it to my customers who come to get a bike and say well think you only wanna do 20 miles of this little gravel path over here but look at this this is what you could do And we have this big photographs of backpacking trips on the walls so people can see and hopefully get inspired and you know and go to one of our cuz we do this beginner backpacking trips I have one coming up this weekend by the way [00:26:39] Randall: Oh, no kidding. [00:26:40] katya: Yeah Mm [00:26:41] Randall: That's great. And it is part, um, so I'm fully on board with you. I've been, I mean, gravel bikes have existed in, in other forms. For a long time people were riding road bikes with 23 roads, long before there was something called a gravel bike. And people have been bike packing since before it was called bike [00:26:59] katya: Mm-hmm [00:27:00] Randall: but the fact that there's this focus on making versatile machines that can, you know, really tackle a variety of road surfaces and have mounting points for different gear and so on, just makes it so well, why not get a machine that can do a lot more? And then it just begs the question, and why don't you get out there and have some of these experiences? And there's a, a lot of people who do good work. So, so having, having a group activity, like what you're putting on, I would imagine just radically reduces the barrier to entry for a lot of people. [00:27:31] katya: Hmm You know I remember uh when I got my first road bike and in general and in it's gonna be a little bit philosophical but me cycling became an entry into society here when we moved from Dubai That was in 2010 when we first arrived in Texas in Houston and I didn't know anybody Um it is people are super friendly here and it's very international and you do start making friends very quickly And you know I had a kid um so you know making friends with other parents was relatively easy but I didn't I wasn't here long enough to start going to school or to get a job I was still uh getting my green card then And I met so many people through recycling My best friends here in Houston were all mad through recycling group but I remember that when I got my bike I was still really shy I didn't know anyone and I ride alone I would ride every single day by myself or have a kid and tow or have you know a babysitter looking or my husband looking o after him And I would go and do loops by myself in the same time just as a way to stay fit And I did that for about a year before I was brave enough to join in a group And I remember I was Intimidated uh when you're a beginner and and you and you don't you don't know if you're gonna be safe out there and you don't know if you're gonna act right and you gonna you know say right things especially you know my language is improving hopefully but you know it's so far from where it could be and just being so anxious about it And then all the friends that I made through cycling were so friendly so helpful I think that experience allows me to be that helpful and friendly face in the shop when I have somebody who comes in and these are my favorite customers my favorite person in the shop is someone who wants to get into biking Maybe they want to get their first bike or maybe they want to start biking for groceries or to work uh because I know what they experience And as someone who taught in college I know how to break down activities into steps so I can just really kind of micromanage their entry Uh I do beginner road rides where anybody's welcome on bike We will talk about what hand to use how to ride together in a group how not to bump into each other how to act with traffic What is the safest road to ride I just love helping people in that way because you never know where are they gonna end up Maybe they're gonna be like me and open a bike shop years later [00:30:27] Randall: It's, I, I can't tell you how many examples, uh, including my own, uh, of people who have used the bicycle. As you know, I, I've said many times on this podcast a vehicle for connection. And so like, you know, I, the, the, the thing that I recall, like the first thing I recall being able to do on my own pretty much at any time for extended periods and really enjoy my own company, was riding a bicycle. the rolling meditation part of it. The going out and exploring a place from a different vantage point. Like if wherever you live, you're going to experience it very differently on a bicycle, especially a bicycle that you can take off and explore the back trails and parks and the roads that you don't take, cuz it's not the direct line between any A and b. and then the community element of it. You know, rolling up next to somebody, striking up a conversation, going to your first group ride, you know, showing up in jorts in a, in an old helmet and a bike that's falling apart and whatever. And then slowly like learning the ropes and going through that, that rite of passage. Uh, and then I also resonate very much with, um, the opportunity for folks like ourselves who've kind of gone through a lot of that journey to just make it easier for others, you know, reduce the, the friction, make it so that there's educational materials, make it so that there are rides that are accessible. Make it so that there's content like this conversations where people can hear like, oh, I'm, I'm. Uh, unique in my slight awkwardness in getting into this. Um, you know, even the, the people that seem all put together and the cool kids on the bikes were, uh, well, I'll speak for myself. I was definitely, definitely a socially awkward awkward in general when I first started riding. And, um, very much the bike has been kind of a, a, a means of, uh, I mean career, uh, relationships all around the world, uh, opportunities and so on. And even if you don't take this extreme path or taking, you know, starting a bike shop, um, just the friendships that, you get cultivated or like the, the healthy habits that get developed, the reduced stress and how that impacts one's entire life. [00:32:43] katya: Well and you know with going back to how we may appear all put together on our rides um I when I first meet people who are interested in something like a gravel rod like say they're roadies and they're hear about gravel rods but they're not sure if they have the skills or if they can tackle this you know climb and the ground under you shifting all the time and you're sleeping And I always say look uh when I broke my back I was still I was told I'll never get a bike again And I was told that if I can I should not And with all this screws that I have in there I'm still out there you know and I'm 42 year old mother and I'm riding bikes and I'm doing this you know crazy adventures My next trace is 280 miles [00:33:37] Randall: All in one [00:33:39] katya: Oh in one go Yeah It's it's an ultra bike fucking thing Shout out to bikes or Death it East Texas Showdown [00:33:47] Randall: All right. When is this? [00:33:49] katya: I uh I'm a month from now so I've been geeking out on tires and setups but I've done that before though it's not my first show so [00:33:58] Randall: of course. Well, well bravo on that. You definitely, I've never done a ride that long. Longest I've ever done was, uh, a 300 k ride when I was, uh, training in Europe for a couple of weeks. And, uh, that was the hardest day I've ever put in the saddle. So [00:34:14] katya: 300 K That would be about 200 miles [00:34:17] Randall: yeah, a hundred. And I think it ended up being like 188 or 189 miles. Um, 180 6 I think is, is 200, 300 K [00:34:26] katya: or off road [00:34:27] Randall: road. [00:34:28] katya: Yeah [00:34:29] Randall: Yeah. So very different animal right Road is easier. Even with the mountain passes road is definitely easier to cut. And I was in a, I was in a Peloton with a bunch of other fast riders and we were like, you know, so I was, I got carried through certain sections. I mean, had to do the climbs, but on the, on the flats we were doing 25 and I was probably putting out 150 watts and just kind of cruising. [00:34:50] katya: We'll be doing 12 [00:34:52] Randall: Yeah. [00:34:53] katya: miles an hour It's off road or 70% offroad [00:34:58] Randall: That's awesome. Very, very cool. [00:35:01] katya: So if I can do it anyone can [00:35:04] Randall: Well, and so I also, I didn't appreciate, this at all. When, um, you know, when, when I first reached out, I only knew about a little bit about your background, um, and, uh, that you had this shop that was very community focused, but, you know, you spent, so you broke your back cycling in China. That's not the, the full extent of your, your China story. So especially as someone who spent so much time there myself, I want to hear more about how'd you end up there? Uh, you were working at, with, for an orphanage there as well. [00:35:37] katya: Uh yeah So with China it was the the time when my husband was still fully involved in oil and gas and um he was Offered an opportunity to manage a huge huge project in Dion that's just across from South Korea On on the Sea Uh there's several massive shipyards so whatever we receive over here a lot of that stuff when it comes from China it comes from Dion or that area generically It's about two hour flight north from Beijing And um yeah we all decided to go So um I was going to school here but I you know I said you know that's such an awesome opportunity to discover that part of Asia I haven't been there before and it's very close to Russia as well So uh we moved and um yes I ended up um I was cycling there ended up hurting myself really bad about a month in South Korea Um my injury quite extensive so I had to be Placed uh in a jet and taken over to Samsung Medical Center in in Seoul for spinal surgeries Um it was easier from Dian It was easier to go to se than to Beijing for the style of surgery that I had because it was faster and I had collapsed lung so I couldn't be on the plane for a long time as well So they needed to move me somewhere where it's close and uh good quality of healthcare [00:37:11] Randall: Mm-hmm [00:37:11] katya: And yeah Seoul was the closest place where they took me And when I returned from so I spent about a month my son and my husband were in China I was in Korea uh in the hospital for about a month Uh then I moved back when I was allowed to walk Um and when I arrived in Darlin I thought well I can't ride my bike uh and I can't I I can't really go anywhere far Um what am I going to do And there was a community Now Dion is not very well known among Westerners most of expats who go to that part of China are Chinese or Cor uh Japanese or Korean So I was surrounded by um awesome awesome families from Japan and Korea We made a lot of friends especially if we could speak Yeah if they knew a little bit of English that would help Um but yeah there were not very many expats at all So I tried to like find myself in that community And there was a little group of women who were going to a local orphanage uh just to help out Um cuz the orphanage was understaffed It's a public orphanage I don't know the number the name Just kind of know where it's located I could not ever read exactly what it said and then I so I would come and I would just help help the nurses help Daise to take care of little kids then I heard that they this orphanage was selected to participate in an program where older kids so age seven and up uh would possibly go to the US and would be possibly adopted in the US at that old I think the limit is 15 years old So between wanna say between seven and two 15 that age group I suggested you know as a linguist I said oh they have to be speaking English a little bit Um because it's gonna be such a trauma for a child even you know we might think with a white person complex that we're doing this amazing thing by removing this child into a Western society but it's a huge trauma cuz they're going from a familiar environment you know people who take care of them they're friends uh and they're dropped in you know this com like on the moon and they don't they can't even express that they're hungry or that they need to go to the bathroom or you know any discomfort that they have And insisted it took about a month to get a permission I think the orphanage was very concerned about teaching something that's not correct I don't know maybe some know it's very political right Um so I had to be I had to be persuasive but also I had to be you know very precise and say look this is what I'm going to do These are the books I'm going to use It's gonna be so simple It's gonna be just conversational language so that the kids don't suffer as much as they would with the separation anxiety from their environment And eventually they allowed me to come I had a group of about maybe 10 kids and it would change some would join and some would leave And eventually um about half of them were adopted in the US and it was uh it the program became so good I mean I would be there several times a week regularly with lessons plans Uh I had typically one of the teachers stay with me The the orphanage uh supervisors stay with me so they get to learn as well And it became so good And the demand was so good for this type of lessons that I trained other uh English speaking women in uh our little community so they could come and do this And there were some women who had teaching backgrounds so they got it really quickly and they could come and work with kids There was documentary made I mean I had a TV crew to come and film I think it was made for the prospective parents to see that you know this orphanage has this program so you will be able to communicate with kids I've never seen the end product but to me that was a sign that something that I'm doing is helpful I was not paid It was just totally volunteering but I really enjoyed it Really enjoyed it and it's something that I know how to do So [00:42:02] Randall: that's. , really wonderful. Truly, truly wonderful. And something that, you know, when I, when you had shared that with me again, uh, was very resonant. One I've, I taught in, in, I taught English was teaching uh, high school students and I got to create my own curricula. I actually had 40 classes and they would rotate every two weeks. So I get an each class every two weeks. And so I would create curricula around, um, you know, there one where we did, uh, song lyrics. So we you know, singing Beatles tracks and things like that Um, and then others were, you know, just a, the creative element of being able to create, uh, um, a curriculum for an audience that was really stoked just to interact. Um and this was back in 2004, so China was a very different place. Um, the changes have been so, . And then also I, I also recall, uh, so I lived in Guang Jo for a period and a lot of the adoptions go through, uh, Shanda in, Guang Jo in, um, it's the, uh, the US consulate there. Mm I think it's Beijing and Guang Jo is where most of them go And so you'll, I remember going to that part of town and seeing, you know, mostly Caucasian American families there adopting these mostly, uh, uh, female Chinese [00:43:26] katya: Mm-hmm [00:43:27] Randall: And it didn't occur to me at the time, um, just how, I mean, just how traumatic, even at that age that is, kids have already gone through the trauma of like not having their mother, [00:43:42] katya: mm [00:43:43] Randall: which. You know, it's something I, I didn't appreciate, uh, until doing a whole lot of, uh, therapy and me meditation and various other things, just how critical that early is. to imagine what you're describing of, you know, someone who's a teenager and mm is, is very much, uh, uh, in many ways formed. Mm-hmm constantly changing, but there's a lot of deeply ingrained patterns. There's language, there's familiarity. Then you go to a place where maybe there's no one who looks like you [00:44:15] katya: Mm [00:44:16] Randall: and maybe it's not welcoming. [00:44:18] katya: mm [00:44:18] Randall: Yeah who, who want to love you but don't know how to speak. Not just language with words, but your language with behaviors and Um, were the, I'm curious, were the kids, um, in general, were they excited about the prospect of go being adopted outside of China or, [00:44:37] katya: They were but they were also very scared [00:44:41] Randall: Yeah [00:44:42] katya: I think And it's it's going it's very sad what I'll say right now But I still remember when we were talking we had lessons when some fa some kids were already selected they knew they were moving one kid is trying to explain push like he shows this poof poof that people shoot that something that he maybe has seen in the movies mass media the guns in America And that's one thing he shows to me and he is trying to explain I'm scared that there are a lot of guns and and maybe I will be killed People shoot in America a lot So I then have to explain and of course their language you know they've been taking classes maybe for six months prior their language is quite limited But I'm trying to explain will not be shot in the America There are a lot of very good people and kind people and they will love you and they will take care of you And look I lived in America I never seen a gun in America never Nowhere on the street there was a person with a gun You will not see the gun But that that's one thing they told me immediately [00:45:56] Randall: Mm-hmm. . It [00:45:58] katya: It's sad This is these are the stereotypes that [00:46:01] Randall: well, and those stereotypes go very heavily in both directions. I remember when I was first going to China, um, Uh, family members being, uh, certain family members being deeply concerned. You know, it's a communist country. And, um, there's all these, you it comes from, comes from ignorance ultimately. Um, but you know, the, it's people often fear what they don't understand. Um, my experience there was profoundly different and, you know, it's been in, in my very limited way in my circles. Like, I consider it a real opportunity to have been, uh, immersed in that culture. It's, it's my second culture and be able to dispel a lot of those myths actually. Um, yes, there's the Chinese Communist Party and yes, it has, uh, you know, a fairly authoritarian bent, but, um, here's a mirror on our culture and in many ways, like you, Communism in China doesn't mean what you think it means [00:47:00] katya: mm [00:47:00] Randall: it's largely capitalist in some ways, more capitalist ways that have their own problems. Um, and more fundamentally at the end of the day, like people are people. That's the thing that I have learned, um, and that I think learning a another language and immersing in other culture teaches more than anything is that we all have, you know, we all have, um, hopes and fears. We all have, you know, basic needs that are largely common, like, you know, and shelter and food and companionship and esteem and things like this. Um, and while culture can result in various seemingly disparate manifestations at our core, there's a hell of a lot more in common. In fact, I, I find that at the end of the day, if I can identify someone, something in someone else, positive or negative, um, That I have it in myself as well. [00:47:58] katya: Hmm mm-hmm Yes You know through all the travels that I've done I've figured out we've really need so little uh to well I maybe I speak for myself but I think most people and I've seen it in other expats um if you have a job you have self-fulfilment fulfillment and you have friends and you have um you know close people that you love and take care of and and that's pretty much all you need And it doesn't matter where you are you can be uh you know in uh beautiful So in China we lived in Shula so you know Shilla [00:48:41] Randall: Yeah. The [00:48:42] katya: right So in Dion Shangrila Hotel had apartment complex next to it and it was just so luxurious right And then in Australia we lived in a tiny little farmhouse uh in the middle of nowhere And I all my life I lived in small apartments in Save or in Moscow Uh and it doesn't matter where you are if you have family good health hopefully um know basic needs are met Uh you're good so simple [00:49:16] Randall: Now this actually brings up, uh, what I think might be an interesting topic, which is, I mean, you're of Russian descent. you lived in Russia, you spent most of life in Russia. Um, there's a conflict between, well, there's a perceived conflict between Russia and the West at the moment. There's a lot of. I think concern in, in American society, uh, and in European society about But, uh, maybe we can, well, I think already this conversation should dispel some myths from, uh, of Yeah. Amongst people who've never heard, uh, you know, truly heard the voice of a, of a native, uh, Russian in terms of just how much love and kindness and so on, uh, you bring to the table. But, uh, What [00:50:00] katya: Uh yeah know my biggest takeaway from this whole conflict right now is protect media and freedom of speech But but for the media especially I have respect for those big resources uh like Washington Post or like New York Times or like b C you know these big channels because once they get controlled by someone uh it's so easy Even in modern society with all the access to information that we have is so easy for them to block it Whoever is in control of the narrative controls the mind controls the politics the Russian society is uh really divided right now And um sorry to say it but I think it's heavily brainwashed And the reason it's brainwashed is precisely because uh all the media were banned the free speech So to speak uh media were banned uh right now The Russian the Russian platform that I personally follow they have been uh broadcasting from Europe since 24th of February When the war started they were banned immediately so they had to move out and start broadcasts from Europe The only way to listen to them in Russia towards them would be through vpn but just very recently they were called pretty much a terrorist organization and anybody who shares a screenshot uh an audio recording a screen grab from a video from the program anybody who shares on their social platform private Like Facebook's band Instagram's band So it would be Telegram Okay Telegram is still allowed If you share you are looking at potential arrest in jail time uh because you are supporting terrorism This is how far it's gone since 24th of February last year Um and you know if somebody told me a year ago that you cannot control the whole of Russian population you cannot switch all of the internet Well now my answer is yes you can If you make people if you if people are so afraid to share um the you know their conversations become very personal They maybe will talk face to face and they will say you know what saw that Russia just has bombed this houses and 10 children died and these were not military um you know groups It was just a house You can say that in conversation but you cannot broadcast it on any any social platform And that's how you just slowly slowly you're closing closing it up And people who are brave enough to speak out they either end up in jail or they get out [00:53:14] Randall: Mm-hmm. [00:53:15] katya: and yeah [00:53:16] Randall: Well, and just for anyone who is, uh, listening and is somewhat sat self-satisfied, thinking that it can't happen here, these same forces are at play in, um, you know, quote unquote democratic societies. [00:53:31] katya: Mm-hmm it can happen anywhere [00:53:34] Randall: can happen anywhere. There's definitely, uh, you know, consolidation of media. There's definitely. you know, certain, you know, there have been times when having certain opinions could, can get you shouted down, can get you essentially canceled in a way. you know, I remember when the, the Iraq war was being debated [00:53:54] katya: Mm [00:53:55] Randall: you know, the buildup towards that. And if you had a dissenting opinion, uh, you were, you know, anti-American. Um well, you know, it's, uh, in, in retrospect it seems like a number of people on both sides of the political spectrum, uh, look at that conflict as not, uh, having born the fruits that were promised [00:54:16] katya: Mm-hmm yes [00:54:17] Randall: Um, and you know, the point that I would make is, You know, we all have our beliefs, we all have our, uh, predispositions. Um, but you know, another form of this that seems quite pervasive here is the bubbles. You know I only you know, I, I only read certain types of media and the other media is bad. And then the people on the other side have the same sort of perspective. And so getting, having a diverse diet, including of opinions you don't like, including of opinions you don't agree with from parties that you, um, don't, uh, necessarily resonate with, but treating them like people who are doing their best and who may look at you in the same way and have some merits in that perspective, uh, I think is tremendously valuable and is also essential in not having a society progress in the direction towards extreme polarity, I factionalism and so on. [00:55:11] katya: Mm [00:55:13] Randall: Oh [00:55:14] katya: You know I think one of the best thing each of us can do to combat our own biases step out of our own echo chambers the more even if you have very polarized opinions around yourself the Opinions you surround yourself with the better your selection is the you know the more the wider the picture you see And even you know being a extremely liberal super left leaning person in Texas um you know I'm surrounded by people who don't feel the same that I do But for you know for many reasons I want to know where they're coming from because there's no way for me to br to build the bridge towards that side If I ignore that side is there you have to see the other bank to be able to reach out to it So I know there is a lot of you know there's so much polarization whereas some people say oh I proudly don't I'm not going to include in my circle This type of person who thinks that way like for me would be a gun owner I would say oh well but hey you want to have as many opinions around yourself and you know to get a full picture And uh you know my message to my son who's 13 and who's super interested in ev in all politics right now um in being of Russian descent as well loves so socialism communism he loves the iconography of it he would wear Russian C C C P U society t-shirt before the now he's not But uh you know my message to him and everybody in his age group is Hey critical thinking is what you want And to develop critical thinking you wanna have a lot of sources of of information know how to process information know how to you know digest it find the key moments and don't just trust the loudest wa voice in the room And in Russia going back to that in Russia right now um all the loudest voices have extremely conservative They're very polarizing It is hard but that gives me even more appreciation for anybody who stands out And there are still people who are out there protesting Uh there are a lot of women who protest cons The wives of those you know guys imagine that Imagine you're an IT specialist or you're a banker You have nothing against Ukraine never had you have relatives over there Uh you are very peaceful never had a gun in your hand You maybe have two kids at home and a dog and then somebody shows up To your office cuz they do it They can script now through offices uh they come to your boss and they bring him the name of the list of names and they're saying we know that such and such works Here you will be responsible for distributing the conscription notes And the boss comes into the room They don't even know what's going on You're just okay guys you were all conscripted because as soon as you receive the paper you acknowledge that you know you've been called and you can't really back out So you can hide and not open the door if they come to your house People literally have been hiding Russian men have been running from their homes There is a guy who build a camp in the woods like in Taiga Forest so that the people don't find him He's got no address Nobody knows where he is because once they see your face and once you receive it in your hand they got you And yeah imagine this Bankers go to war and a month later the wife gets a note that he's dead This is what happens to Russian soldiers and these poor women know now they have kids they have a dead husband in the war they it wasn't his defined uh there is a story of uh of an it or yeah someone from administrative you know side of life who was hired a lawyer to fight his conscription because by law he was not supposed to be conscripted He was killed while the lawyer was protesting his conscription he was killed at the war zone Um not I not trying to you know Russia look like a victim is an aggressor and I'm terribly ashamed what my country does And when people come to the shop and they ask me oh where's your accent from It is so difficult to answer this question like it's always been cuz I don't wanna be stereotyped as someone who's Russian or someone someone at all Like I don't want you to know like I live to so many places who knows what has formed me as as a woman right now but right now especially it's really hard And I always give a disclaimer and I say yes I'm from Russia I support Ukraine I feel like I have to say because I don't want Anybody to think because there are so many who do support the war unfortunately it's hard Um it's very difficult [01:00:23] Randall: Well, and, and again, like to, before we bring it full circle, like, you know, I, I, I sus, I wonder if there are, you know, if, if there are any Vietnam veterans who might be listening who might with some of that experience. I mean, we are immune to this in, uh, in the us And furthermore, you know, in my own travels, um, you know, I've been to places where I've been asked to account for the choices of the government, of the country I come from particularly, um, back in the, you know, 2004, 2005, 2006. Um, and, um, it, you know, as much as, uh, there's an American. Belief in, you know, a certain set of values and like this idea that we, uh, are promulgating these values in the world. Well, oftentimes the things that are, are that the population here is not paying attention to are going counter, uh, to the narrative that's being put out. But, um, we've, we've gone gonna, I think you and I will end up having another conversation [01:01:25] katya: Yes. Yes. [01:01:27] Randall: sort of thing, but to, to bring it full circle, you know, talking about like connecting with people [01:01:34] katya: Mm. [01:01:34] Randall: who have different perspectives and backgrounds and so on. Um, I don't think it's at all trite to say that like, this is an experience that you can have on a bicycle. Like on a bicycle. You go show up for a group ride and you know, you can find rides where everyone, you know, is a skinny, shaved shave legged white guy and Lyra going, going hammering on the road ride. But there's a lot of diversity to be had as well if you find your group and there's nothing quite like the shared ordeal of a long bike ride, um, to break down barriers and help realize the humanity of another person. [01:02:10] katya: Oh, for sure. And, you know, speaking of diversity in Cycline, um, I, I really do feel, and it's, you know, it's not just, you know, thinking someone's tune or what's the phrase that. Adventures. Cycline in general does that, and by that I mean gravel events. So I'm not specifically not saying racing, but gravel events, bike packing events. I feel like my contribution, um, to build in or to help in reach out is because I'm a female and I'm not from here. And, you know, English is my foreign language and I'm just trying to have a good time on the bike. So for me, I'm coming from this, you know, vantage point where I really don't care you look like, how old you are, what your bike is like. I just want us to go out there and have a great time and I want you to have a very good experience. Um, and you know, the fact that Cy. Still perceived as, you know, middle-aged men or younger men, super fed, um, out in old matching kid, you know, beautiful bike. think it's very, uh, retro. I think it's dying out. Um, the people that I see, uh, are becoming a lot more how would just different, you know, come with what you have. And I'm so happy that, uh, at least on the gravel side of things, is really welcoming. There's so many women's clinics, they're, you know, there are these pros who do great videos and they write it in these amazing places where in Jordans and flip flops. Um, I think that is actually super encouraging too. Like everybody, and it's funny, I do some advocacy here where I go out and meet some decision makers, um, for local infrastructure investments. Like when there is some, I just want to a, a meeting about an extension of a highway, you know, stuff like that. I make sure if I can, I make sure to come on my bike in a skirt and like flip flops or not to look at all as a cyclist. Um, just to, to say, look, we look the same. We are the same, we speak the same language. Like there's nothing that really separates me from you. I think there's nothing worse than going to places like that full decked out and Lyra and, and screaming pretty much, I am so different from you. Um, know, at the end of the day we wanna find more commonalities than, you know, something that separates us. And, uh, biking for sure can be both. Uh, and I think that's why I gravitate to commuting by bike. Fuck adventure though I love road cycling for sport. It's amazing. increases my F tp hopefully. [01:05:10] Randall: Yeah, [01:05:11] katya: I follow my metrics. I do my intervals [01:05:15] Randall: well, Katy, um, it's been really, really lovely connecting with you, hearing your story. I'm sure that, uh, you know, some of the members of the community will, will appreciate it as well. Uh, if folks want to find your shop, find information about, uh, the work that you're doing, how, how would they go about doing so [01:05:33] katya: Um, well, thank you very much. It was very nice. Uh, I, I should have mentioned that I got to know your podcast through my 20 hour drive to Colorado, and I listened to 15, 15 episodes in a row, just binged on my drive, so I'm extremely honored. , don't even know how honored I am to be here. Two years ago when I was driving to Timbo, it was Timbo gravel race I would've never, ever imagined. Um, but to find us, um, cool Cat Cycles website, cool Cat Cycles is just one cat and she cycles with c ccc. Easy to remember. Cool cat cycles. Um, dot com and then Facebook page. All my events are on Facebook. We are also ambassadors and right with gps, so you might be able to find cool cat cycles. Uh, there is at least one word there, backpacking route. Um, and then Instagram. Cool cat cycles as well. I answer all the messages quickly. Uh, I love sharing my roots. All my roots are right with gps. My personal roots are public. I'll be very happy to send a bike back in route, the gravel route. I'm out in the country, uh, about 50 minutes from here, twice a week, riding gravel, and I know those roads like my 10 fingers. [01:06:59] Randall: Well, um, for anyone listening who happens to be in the area around katy, Texas [01:07:05] katya: Cat cycles. [01:07:06] Randall: Cycles strongly encourage you to pay them a visit and join one of their rides. And I also just wanna say that it's been an honor and a privilege chatting with you as well. It's one of the joys of this role, and it's something I don't take lightly. So thank you for coming on. [01:07:20] katya: Thank you so much Randall. [01:07:21] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Big thank you to Randall and Katia for that interesting conversation. And big, thanks to our friends at dynamic cyclist. Remember, use the coupon code, the gravel ride to get 15% off any dynamic cyclist program. If you're interested in connecting with me or Randall or Katia for that matter, I encourage you to join the ridership. That's www.theridership.com. That's a free global cycling community where you can connect with other riders around the world. To trade information about roots and rides, parts and equipment. Anything that's in your gravel vocabulary. If you're able to support the show, please visit buy me a coffee.com/the gravel wide. Or ratings and reviews are hugely appreciated. Until next time. Here's to finding some dirt under your wheels. .

On Part One of this two-part series, you were introduced to Matt and Brian from the ACCEL Gaming Division. We discussed their background as it pertains to blockchain and gaming, involvement with ACCEL as well as P2E Gaming and their use of and integration of NFTs.On today's episode of the Podcast, Scott, Eric and Ryan welcome back Matt from the ACCEL Gaming Division to discuss how P2E Gaming, NFTs, and two exclusive projects that the ACCEL Gaming Division are working on!-----------------------------------------Episode Transcript:[Scott] On today's episode of the ACCEL Podcast, we dive deeper into the world of blockchain games and their use in the NFT World. As always, my name is Scott and I am Eric and I'm Ryan. You're listening to the ACCEL Podcast defining a decentralized view future, One listen at a time.[Scott] Thanks for tuning into part two of our series on blockchain gaming. We wanted to do something a little different this time with regards to putting the podcast together, and what we came up with was to survey the community or rather solicit questions on topics of P2E Gaming, Play-to-Earn Gaming and their use and integration with NFTs. [Ryan] So Matt, I wanted to welcome you back onto the ACCEL Podcast. How are we doing? [Matt]Good, pretty good. Thanks for having me. [Ryan] Always our pleasure. But right out the gate I feel like we've got to set the record straight as one of the leads of the ACCEL gaming division. What kind of games do you like to play? [Matt] Honestly, I like hard games. I've always been a big fan of platformers. My favorite game when I was young was Sonic. Still to this day I also love RPGs. I played most of the Final Fantasy series and a lot of the current very modern RPGs. I'm currently playing Eldon Ring. I think it's an absolute masterpiece and I'm honestly up for anything that seems some sort of a challenge or a good build up on an RPG element. [Eric] So Matt, I wanted to go back to the basics from our earlier episode in relation to what P2E or Play-to-Earn games are on. Maybe you could give us some examples of the P2E Games, what blockchains they exist on, and maybe some games that currently aren't in the space that you think could come to the blockchain. [Matt] I think the Play-to-Earn model, even though not formally it has existed for the longest time. And just calling out to our previous example. In the previous episode, RuneScape was a game that people actually started trading items for your money very long ago. And then that model was also formally implemented in Diablo Three and casually seen in World Warcraft, where it was a bit more informal. So the P2E aspect of trading time for some reward. Usually money has existed for the longest time. You can call on online casinos, online card and poker platforms, et cetera. At least those would be most of the games that would be outside of the space. And if we were to go inside the space, you have a lot of gains that have existed for a while. You have mostly yield farming gains, kind of like Axie Infinity, Crypto Cars, Bomb Crypto. A lot of these have very good options as well, and I think it's gotten pretty popular these days, so those are great examples. [Eric] So my question, can you be more type specific. In your opinion, what are the best blockchains or the best platforms that relate to the P2E Games, which makes it the easiest to navigate. [Matt] I would say anything that's currently built upon the most mainstream platforms, like you have Ripple, you have Ethereum, you have Bitcoin, which not a lot of games are tied to. Most of them are tied to Ethereum and Ripple. So I would look into something with that. You also have BNB and other big options, and it generally is going to be tied to whatever the devs think is the most stable platform to build upon. [Eric] All right, so now that you touched upon with the devs, in a devs opinion, let's say, or in your own opinion, if you're acting as a Dev, what would be the most profitable? [Matt] I would say just not to give out names because I would get burned for that. But whichever has the most potential for growth, because as the game grows, as the community grows, as the base grows, so does everything else tied to it, the tokens, the rewards, and everything gets better. So whatever is going to have the biggest room to grow is going to be the thing that's going to give the most returns. [Scott] So I guess it kind of follow up question of that is, I completely understand that. I think we see this craze with there being talk about Solana and Matic being big for gaming, but the big thing is for it to be scalable. Can you kind of give us a little bit of an explanation how these P2E Games are kind of profitable for the developers, even going back to the online poker and stuff like that, how do you actually make money off of it? And how is it that you're not throwing money at making these games that just don't have any returns on them? [Matt] Yeah, it usually comes down to how you model the economy of the game itself. For example, the real money trading market and Diablo Three actually had a transaction Commission for every buy and every sale. So that is also true with a lot of the current crypto games. There is a transaction fee that is being used in every single transaction by yourself. Kind of like being repetitive here, but that's usually how devs can still hold a pool of the big amount of those resources to make sure that they don't run out, to make sure that they can scale over time to make sure that tokens don't get overcapped and to its own. It's similar to how every company operates when you're first starting out in a company, you're always going to have some sort of shareholding because you're invested in the project and they can't really pay you a full salary. So they pay you in equity that gets you involved. And that makes you be sure that if the company does well and it scales, then so is going to be your share. [Scott] That makes sense. So it's all about kind of making sure at the early stages you're bringing in the right people and then making sure you have the right backing. I guess that kind of ties into what my next question would kind of be. And it's a commonly asked question that we see a lot over in the ACCEL community is how does P2E Games work in attracting people that aren't currently interested in the crypto space? Are you seeing kind of trends that are starting, that are really kind of pushing for that game, by experience, by outside investors that maybe might be involved in investing, but not in crypto or even individuals that might not invest at all? [Matt] I would like to break that into different viewpoints for different kinds of profiles. First, as an investor, why would this be like an important thing to you? Because as an investor, like crypto projects actually have a very good standpoint in the fact that they can actually have a bigger growth than most of traditional investments. So it's a very attractive market to get into. Also, as the game skills, as the community scales, you can also bring a lot of other things to the table where we touched a bit on the last episode about things like fractal ownership. So you don't even have to bring money all the time. You don't have to bring funding on the time. Maybe you own your musician, you want to stay a part of your music. Ownerships are all right. So you can get people that get that NFT can get royalties, and there are so many other valuable things that you can actually just convert into this game or market. And then from the player's side, obviously most of the people you have people that have been in crypto for a while, and you have people that have games for a while. For those who have games for a while, like me, it's really cool because now I can actually sit for hours in front of a screen, play, be good at a game and actually get something out of it, rather than my mom telling me to go to bed. So that's from one side and then you have the other side, which is the people that are in crypto who usually are more into the investment side, they actually have a fun way of interacting with their tokens, a fun way of watching those stakes and rewards and investments grow in a way that you're more of an active participant into everything. And it's a bit fun rather than just sitting there and watching candles on a chart. Not that's a bad thing, but there's more to life than that. [Ryan] So Matt, I wanted to backtrack for a moment and specifically discuss the earn in Play-to-Earn games. Could you discuss how and what exactly players earn in these games and how NFTs come into play? [Matt] Absolutely. Well, the earned part of any interaction that involves real money is done through tokens. 99% of the time is done through tokens. When you go to the horse tracking bed. Like you get this little slips of paper that you can later and cash in if you win. When you go to the casino, you get chips that you can cash in if you win. And sort of every single game has that mechanic built in where you win tokens inside the game and then you convert your tokens to get outside of the game. And this draws a very strong parallel with how everything in the physical world currently works. So the model is not really that different. And where do NFTs come into play here? A lot of these can usually be done or used as collection based items of a Rarity based items. And you can hold these NFTs that would be implemented into the game. And as the NFT or the usage of the character or the item or anything that it is gets more popular and more popular and it increases in value because the community perceives it to be rare or to be more valuable than others. That's a really good way for people to get involved is like, if you have the sense that an NFT is going to become popular, you can get it minted early and then when people use it, when it becomes popular, and what increases value and someone wants to rent it off of you or someone wants to permanently buy it off of you, it'll most likely have increased in value from when you brought it in. [Eric] So Matt, touching on NFTs and regarding NFTs because we know how huge they are now in the crypto space, how they function within the P2E Garning model. Could you talk a little bit about that? And ACCEL's recent acquisition of the Soldiers of the Metaverse NFT collection and how the SOTM NFTs will be tied into ACCEL and What I'm starting to hear their Mortal Kombat style P2E Game that is currently in their development, which I know you have a tremendous impact on. [Matt] Oh yeah, it's been such a fun time to work on the model for the Satin acquisition. And I think you have the basics, which not all of the NFT's are currently implemented in the game. We have a decent line up of characters, but not all of them as of yet. So the NFT in itself will increase in value as the game increases in popularity. Because who doesn't want to own a very rare Batman comic? If you're into comics, it's sort of the same community perception that makes you geo cards, rare, magic cards rare, like comic books are very rare or old collectibles, et cetera. Those things are very important because they tie back to someone's ability to own the NFT, believe in the project, but not necessarily play the game. There's people that don't like fighting style games. There's people that maybe they didn't like how complicated certain inputs might be, or they might not be their favorite time type of game. So that allows and gives people the flexibility to have something sticked into the game, not necessarily have to play it because you don't like the mechanics of the game itself, and then you can still participate somewhat into how everything's going to go up into the game. [Eric] So, Matt, if it's possible to could you just elaborate a little bit on the beta access in relation to the NFTs? [Matt] Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's something that has come up recently. The game is currently in beta access. We're working with a limited pool of people that are currently testing the game and helping out with ironing the bugs and making sure that we find anything that might be exploitable, et cetera. Because when you're going to stake tokens into a game, you want to make sure that everything is stable and fair as possible. The beta access, I think, has been going on, not for too long. It's still going to be out there for a bit. So if someone wants to get involved, I think it would be a good idea to look up the project. And obviously as the game goes on and it moves to like a pretty lease sort of endpoint, all the other questions are going to be answered over time. Right now, I can tell you I've actually played it and it's really fun. And the mechanics, at least the fighting game mechanics are really solid, not great with inputs, but that didn't stop me from actually just getting a combo or two in. [Ryan] Matt, that's good stuff. That's good stuff. But what if I'm not interested in playing this game? So is there an incentive to purchase and hold one of the Soldiers NFTs if I'm not interested in playing this game? Yeah, there would be, because for the same reason that I own a big ass Batman hand painting, because it's more related to how people perceive the value of the community around the game itself, rather than you just playing the game. There's a whole bunch of people that have a million posters or a lot of things, and I'm not good at drawing, but it's not going to stop me from going out and investing in something that I believe is very well drawn and stuff like that, because as I said before, it allows me to participate in something and being a part in something without actually having to play it. If I own a soldier and the game becomes popular, that's also going to benefit me because my soldiers both the Mint price if it were to be reissued or new soldiers were to be issued, and the acquisition price for my own NFT as well is going to go up. So even if I don't play, there are still ways for me to benefit off of the project. [Scott] So I guess, Matt, my next question would kind of be for you. We brought in a developer recently that was added to the team that kind of specializes in staking pool build out. And one of the things he does is NFT building out for staking pools. And it's kind of a new concept that's really starting to catch on. And with passive income being a huge part of ACCEL, can you kind of elaborate a little bit on how these NFT Staking pools work and what you kind of see them doing in the future? [Matt] Yes, I think I am not an expert in the topic, but honestly, it's one of the trends that I've seen come up a lot recently. And the idea of an Ft staking, if I'm not mistaken, would be among the lines of something similar to rent, kind of like you can put your entity out there and people can use it. And obviously, for every win that the character has, you get a bit of a share. And that is also true for other games where you actually are the owner of something, but you still get royalties if someone else rents it out for usage. And a common topic that comes to mind for that is, again, just the RMT market and Diablo Three, where not only you could purchase weapons, you could actually just borrow them for a day, but you have a lot of these very good options to own something and not having to sell it for someone else to be able to use it. And at the same time, given that you didn't have to sell it, you also were able to accrue, one might say rent or profit off of it, kind of like in the horse track how the jockey isn't really the one that owns the horse. So the guy that owns the horse still gets profits if the horse wins and the jockey get profits if the horse wins. So it's sort of like this mixed ownership model that allows people, as we said before, people that might not have zero interest in playing the game. They can stake an NFT that is actually currently tied into the game for people that do want to play the game but may not have an NFT ready at the moment for them to be able to play, to stick to win, and then they both profit a lot from that interaction. [Scott] Okay, Matt, so I guess they got a little bit of a follow up question for you, because I think the big thing that we kind of see with what we were just talking about, people want to be able to profit off of NFTs, and I think something we really want to see is the ability to bring our own art or ideas to life. Is this something that you kind of see how some of the games have to is the ability for people to bring their own ideas, their art into fruition? [Matt] That's kind of a hard question, and I want to divide it into two parts. I would say both yes and no. And the reason for that is that it can be done. But that doesn't mean every project is going to implement it. Why? Because you can build the Game around the NFTs, or you can build the NFTs around the game, which is kind of like the example with Axie and like the current games that you have out there, because the NFTs are specifically designed to work in a pattern in a way that the game itself implements, rather than the Game having to adapt to any new NFTs because there are not a lot of interoperability projects. And interoperability. What it means is basically a way for the same item to work in different ways in different games. There is, I think, the Loot project, and it's really, really cool because every single game can infer the stats of the items themselves. Like they just give you the NFT, so you can basically implement it in any way that you'd like. But that also requires a lot of manpower. It also requires you to be able to implement something that bridges that interaction with a random NFT. And that is not only rendering or models or physics or whatever it is, it's something that is really hard to plan when basically the NFT world is endless. So, yes, I believe there might be a project in the future. I can see projects coming up that sort of implement that, but I also see it's going to be very hard to do. So I think we might still be as a community as a whole. Like the NFT community still might be a bit far off from getting that done. It's definitely a huge stream to have, and it's definitely something that I would look forward to. But at the current time, with the current capabilities, I think we're still a bit far away from that. [Eric] So, Matt, it seems like a lot of these P2E Games require some sort of initial investment at first to play. But do you know of any games that don't have any buy in but still use the P2E Model? [Matt] Yeah, I can think of a few, honestly. There are, if I'm not mistaken, at least one or two games that have that implemented. But to be more specific, I want to talk about an upcoming game. It's called PHLIP. You're going to see it soon in the announcements, if not already. And this sort of ties back to the previous question, which is something that I like a lot. And PHLIP is one of the first games that sort of implemented this kind of freestyle mode into the NFTs because it's just a card game, but it's really fun, and I suggest you check it out. [Eric] So, Matt, you've intrigued me a little bit here about PHLIP, but you kind of gave us some info, but you really didn't let us know what it's about. Could you just give us a little more so our listeners can really get a greater grasp of what PHLIP is about? [Matt] So basically, yeah, this game has a similar model to Cards Against Humanity, but implements a lot of more of the freestyle way where you can come up with your own phrases. There's going to be cards that you could mint as NFTs, and they're also going to follow that model that we've mentioned about before. The general idea of the game, if you haven't played Cards Against Humanity, is to just come up with the funniest possible phrase to an image. An image is going to be thrown out, and then you just throw your cards. Whoever gets the funniest answer is going to win. And then cards are going to have different rewards. And basically, like, if you get voted by the judge, you're also going to get some rewards. And that's a really fun way of getting involved playing a game. If you're currently not involved in the crypto space that you like to have fun and all these fun games, that is a really good gate into whatever it is because you can be funny. And if you're funny, you have currently found a way to make that funny profit for you without having to go to stand up comedy and Saturdays. [Ryan] So, Matt, how do you feel about the Soldiers of the Metaverse project or even the PHLIP project? Are you guys, ACCEL or does ACCEL have any special plans to keep it fresh and relevant for new players coming in? [Matt] Yeah, that's a great question, and I think it would be important or interesting for people to know about that, because you might think that people that come in and made first come, first served, and they're the only ones that are going to get good rewards with time. And that's not true. The idea is that we want to bring in as many people as possible. We want to bring in people not only right now, we want to bring in more and more people as the project evolves and grows and implement new mechanics, implement ladder, implement tournaments, implement different sorts of things that will make the game evolve over time, like the soldiers of the metaphors that you're seeing right now that you're going to see at launch will not be the solution of the matters that you see two to three years from now. We want to make sure that this project goes on for a long while, and that requires a very delicate balance of a lot of things, but also a lot of work from our part to keep it fresh and making sure there's always, like, different things. So the community is always excited about the next thing that's going to come, and that's the same for Flip. I think while being a simpler game, there's still a lot of different things that can be done for that. So that's something that we're also looking into. [Eric] So, Matt, is there anything else you can tell our listeners about how we kind of plan to tie the ACCEL gaming ecosystem together as a whole. [Matt] Yeah, actually I have a very good nugget for everyone out there listening and that is that we are working every game in such a way that it is either directly or indirectly tied to one another. So if you're a part of one, you're always going to have preferred access to the next one. You can get probably early access to some of the newer games. You can get preferred staking when converting to one game to another. There's a million surprises coming off and I would strongly suggest that if you are not an existing holder you can come in now. There's a lot of cool things coming in, especially with NFT minting. So that's going to allow you to be part of a very select group of people that get to test a lot of these things early. [Eric] Once again, I want to thank all our listeners for tuning in again today to the ACCEL podcast. Please feel free to join us on Telegram or check the show notes for our link tree. [Ryan] And Matt, thank you for your time and for being a part of the ACCEL podcast, especially this two part mega episode. As Eric said previously, check out the show notes for all of our links and our link tree and even a full transcript of this episode. You want to go back and read some of the things that were said as always sit back, and ACCEL!-----------------------------------------The Information presented in this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, and without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information provided from or through this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor.You understand that you are using any and all information from this podcast at your own risk.

Worried about Ai? Your emotions are your job security, and working with technology will be key to future success in voice over. In this bonus Voice & Ai episode, Anne chats with Ryan Hicks and Adam Fritz of Pozotron - an audiobook proofing service. Listen as they dive deep into the future of audiobook production, and discuss how the connections between human emotion & AI is a voice actor's greatest ally… More at https://voboss.com/voice-and-ai-pozotron-with-ryan-hicks-and-adam-fritz  Transcript >> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. Anne: Welcome, everyone, to the VO BOSS podcast, the AI and Voice series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and today I'm excited and honored to bring you very special guests Adam Fritz and Ryan Hicks of Pozotron, a powerful AI software that helps audiobook professionals make their audio productions more accurate, efficient, and profitable. Adam is the COO of Pozotron and leads the operations and business development arms of the company. And Ryan has a 10-year history in the audiobook industry, having spent eight of those years as a proofer and editor with Deyan before coming over to Pozotron. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me today. It's a pleasure. Both: Thanks for having us. Anne: So if you don't mind, I'd like to start off with serving the need for having a wonderful piece of software like Pozotron. So I'd like to ask, Ryan, since your background as an editor and proofer at Deyan probably gave you lots of reasons to want to have things that would make your job easier. So tell us a little bit about what you did on a day-to-day basis and what type of tools you use to do your job, and then what your pain points were. Ryan: Oh man. So proofing and editing at Deyan. So we, wow. How do I even turn that into something small? Anne: Well, so there were a lot of were a lot of pain points. I would imagine -- Ryan: I mean the whole thing, the whole thing is a pain point. So we would get professionally recorded material and try to make it more professional quickly, in the door, out the door. So we had a series of steps that we would go through to kind of standardize the process of editing and proofing at the absolute highest level. And we had some fantastically intricate manuals about spacing and noise floors and RMS and mastering techniques and what you had to use for all of these things. And then add that to the fact that we're just listening for everything that possibly could be going wrong. Misreads, noises, thunks in the background, wrong character voices, anything that you would have to give a note back to the narrator, that was my job for eight years was finding all of those notes and giving them back. Anne: Wow, so let's just say then for an average size audiobook, how long would it take back and forth between you and the author before you were able to resolve all of these issues? Ryan: So we were super compartmentalized at Deyan. I never talked to an author. I never talked to a rights holder. There was a production manager and a head of post that would take those projects and give them to us. And we gave those projects back to the head of post. Anne: Got it. So how long would you say, do you have an idea of how long it might take? Is there so many days of revisions back and forth or was it weeks before you would finally get the edited version that you needed? And that was correct? Ryan: So it happened a couple of different ways. If narrators were coming in house to the studios at Deyan, they would record during a six-hour session. And at the end of that session, they would send three hours of audio to the editors. And we basically had that day to try and get it done. Anne: Wow. Ryan: So three sessions from a narrator would be about a whole book. And so during that period, we would be editing, and then someone would be proofing after us. And then hopefully within a week, that would be back to that narrator to do the pickups and then finish it up. So we would have anywhere between a 14 and 21-day turnaround. Anne: Got it. Ryan: And we just kept trying to tighten that down further and further and further and make it as efficient as possible. Anne: And I think that there, this is my own experience. I am not an audiobook narrator, however I narrate corporate and long form narration. And so for me, my editing, I can only get it so efficient. There is an amount of time in terms of listening to it to make sure there's no errors as well as the time it then takes to edit those and then go back into the studio and rerecord and then come back and check it again. And so there's a certain amount of time, and I wish I could get it faster, but I just can't. And so I know it must be completely frustrating in terms of having, you know, hours of book material to be able to prove and edit. And I'm just talking, like, maybe my maximum would be, you know, an hour module at a time, and I would do maybe eight or ten modules, but still the process to me, I never got it to a point where I was as quick as I wanted it or needed it to be. And so fast forward to the future, how did you find Pozotron or how did they find you? Ryan: Jamie, my boss, and correct me if you know this part of the story, Adam, it was Jamie that found Jake, right, at a conference? Adam: I believe so, yes. Anne: And Jamie is Deb's right-hand man. And Jamie came to me and said, "oh my gosh, you have to look at this. You have to see what this company is doing." And when he showed me, I'm like, this is ridiculous. We don't need this. I've been doing this for seven years. I don't need some computer program checking my work. I'm fine at what I do. And we set it through dozens of tests. And this is early in Pozotron when they were still kind of working the kinks out. And I never beat Pozotron. I would check my work as soon as I did my foolproof, and I would run it through the software, and there was always things that I missed. Anne: Wow. Ryan: And so I finally, you know, as much as I shook my fist at it, suddenly I had a backup, right? I had a backup, and as soon as I was done, all we had to do was upload the files. And 20 minutes later, I would get a chance to scan through. And there it is, there's those three things that I missed. Anne: Wow. Ryan: There's those five things that I missed. And so we would add that onto my proofing report, and suddenly pickups that were coming back from the publisher, not just from me, but through all of our proofers were coming back in the single digits. And it was, it was awesome. That transition was great. Anne: That's incredible. So you were kind of a, you're a believer now. Ryan: Yeah. Having that safety net when you're -- Anne: Yeah. Ryan: -- when you're tired -- Anne: Absolutely. Ryan: -- when you've been working for eight hours already having that backup was fantastic. Anne: Awesome. Okay. So Adam, let's talk a little bit about Pozotron and how did the company come about? Adam: Like any good software company, you know, the, the core software is designed to solve a pain point. Anne: Yeah. Adam: So it's actually almost reversed. A lot of software companies see, okay, here's problem X, how do we create a solution to solve that problem? But in this case, it was almost backwards. Jake Poznanski, our CEO and founder, really wanted to get into AI. He'd exited a gaming, a mobile gaming company and was looking at AI and machine learning, and really liked some research going on about forced alignment. That's basically matching text and audio files together, and basically came up with the idea of the technology and then went about trying to apply that technology to a problem to solve. So he almost went around it backwards, um, came across the whole concept of audio -- he was a big listener of audiobooks and just how -- manual isn't the right word, but how time-consuming it was to prove an audiobook. Anne: Yeah. Adam: I mean, when I describe it to people who are not at all involved in the industry, you basically sit down with a PDF and headphones -- Anne: Yeah. Adam: -- and have to listen and read at the same time, which is tremendously difficult. So basically he designed it as not a way to replace a proofer, but designed this really fantastic and unique tool as a way to add that kind of extra set of eyes. So really the whole goal of Pozotron on the proofing side, that is our core technology, is to get the ratio of time spent proofing to the actual time of the audio or as close to one-to-one as possible. Anne: Yeah, right. Adam: So it should take an hour of time to proof and report on the pickups for an hour of audio. Anne: Makes sense. Adam: Without Pozotron, I think that's certainly a much higher, probably a two to one or three to one at least ratio. The goal with Pozotron is still -- Anne: Oh, absolutely. Adam: It's going to take you an hour to listen to an hour of audio, but instead of doing that, and then spending 20 minutes or half an hour putting together a pickup packet by copying things -- Anne: Yeah. Adam: -- out into an Excel spreadsheet -- Anne: Sure. Adam: -- you click two buttons, and that pickup packets ready to go, and you just email that to your narrator, and they start recording right away. So that's really the goal is to get that ratio as close to one-to-one as possible. Anne: Yeah. And I'll tell you, that's very interesting because, for as many years as I've been in the industry doing long form narration editing, I have never been able to get quicker than one to three, and I am a stickler. You know what I'm like, no, I can do it. I can, I can get better than that. And I just can't, and it's, it's frustrating. And it's time-consuming, and it's also, it's very tedious. It's one of the, I would much rather be in the booth doing the creative, doing, you know, what I like to think I do best, you know, the artistry of it all to be in the booth and do that. And many people will outsource their work to an editor, but I always like to have the first check for myself. And it's not that I wouldn't outsource it, but that still, even if I outsourced it to an editor, it would take the editor just as much time as me or probably a little less, if that's all they do. But there was always that time element. And I could never get things back as quick as I really needed them or my client wanted them to be. And also if I had like a quick pickup to do, and I had an editor and I had outsourced it to an editor, they usually put their own filters on it that they don't necessarily tell me, or they might be using a different software. And so therefore, if I needed a really quick pickup, it was one of the things where if I outsource to an editor, it became a little awkward if I couldn't get that editor like right away, you know? And a lot of times the client would be like, well, look, it's just one sentence. Why is it taking you two days to get me that sentence back? And it just might be because I'm trying to tie in the editor's time as well. So that just added to it all. So I can absolutely see the pain point of needing something, or it would be wonderful to have something that could get it down to a one-to-one ratio. So tell me a little bit about how your software does that or how it works, kind of on a step-back scale. Adam: Yeah. So basically the end goal is if you've never seen how Pozotron works, you press play, you upload your manuscript, you upload your audio, our forced alignment algorithm basically pairs the two and gives you essentially what -- to simplify it, it's kind of like a spellcheck for recorded audio. It gives you an output of what we call annotations, which are things Pozotron thinks are a missed word. So a word that you, in the manuscript, you didn't say it during the narration, an added word, which happens a lot. I have two young kids and I read them a lot of stories. And it's amazing how often I just add words for no reason -- Anne: Yeah. Adam: -- mispronounced words, as well as extra long pauses. So really the goal is what it does is it gives you an output saying, hey, you just put an hour of audio in. Here's the 32 things that Pozotron thinks are incorrect. What you need to do then is as you're going through, we recommend that people continue doing their full listen. So listen to every second recorded. Um, but what it does is allows people to decide, hey, Pozotron thinks that I mispronounced the word microphone because I'm looking at the word microphone on my computer right now. And you need to listen to that and say, yes, that's a mispronunciation or no, it's not. If you click pick up, it automatically goes onto your pickup report and eliminates all that manual time of creating those reports. But at its core, we have a forced alignment algorithm based on tens of thousands of hours of audio data that basically take the spoken word, compare that to the text word. And then using a probability matrix, says, we believe that this was correctly pronounced or incorrectly pronounced, as close to a 100% accuracy as you could ever get. Anne: Got it. How does it handle like words like names and how does it, how does it handle accents and different languages too? Adam: So I'll answer the last part first 'cause that's the easiest. Anne: Okay. Adam: Uh, we currently support English, Spanish, Swedish, and then French and German are in beta right now. Anne: Okay, okay. Great. Adam: So we do support them, but they're just not at the level of accuracy of the English or Spanish, primarily just because we don't have that volume of data -- Anne: Okay. Adam: -- to continue training our algorithm on. In terms of names, really, as long as it is a phonetically pronounced name, Pozotron will be able to handle it. In the name of like, what's a good example of -- a word that is spelled one way and pronounced something completely separate. Um, Pozotron will occasionally have trouble with that because what -- the way Pozotron works is, if it is phonetically correct, it will mark it as correct. But if it is, um -- Ryan, do you have a good example of a word, of a word like that? I can't think of one off the top of my head right now. Ryan: I mean, we keep using lagxoor as our sci-fi name. Anne: Lagxoor. Adam: So that would be spelled L-A-G-X-O-O-R, but pronounced L-A-G-Z-O-O-R. Pozotron will mark lag sewer as an incorrect pronunciation of L-A-G-X-O-O-R because phonetically it's incorrect. So that's why Pozotron a lot of the tools we have, our pronunciation analysis tool, our character voice guide is great to help narrators, authors, production managers, anyone involved do their preparation before the project even starts. So our proofing tool's designed to catch pickups after they happen. Our prep tools are designed to stop pickups from before you've even started recording. Anne: Can you train it for a specific name somehow or phonetically spell it so that it can then, I guess, mimic or figure out if that's correct or not? Adam: So there's a couple of things. One, yes, every time we retrain our algorithm, it gets more and more accurate. But what you can do is we have a -- let's say that Lagxoor, for example, say it's a main character, and Pozotron for the 200 times it's mentioned in the book -- Anne: Right. Adam: -- Pozotron thinks, "we think this is incorrect." Anne: Right. Adam: We have a filter out button that basically is like the ignore all in Microsoft word when you're doing spell check. "This is not a mistake. Pozotron, I know you think this is a mistake because it's phonetically wrong." You click filter out, and it will ignore every other mention of that word. Anne: Got it. Interesting now, okay. Here's a question just because I do a lot of work in medical, and a lot of times in medical, like, I don't know the word enough, so that each time it occurs in the instance of my script, that I can pronounce it exactly the same, unless I go, and I mark up my script, and I phonetically spell it each and every time, I might forget like that 10th time to emphasize the middle syllable, rather than the other syllable. Will it catch those? Or is that something that we have to just, you know, we're on the lookout for that? Adam: So again, two answers there. So the first one is we have a tool called scan occurrences, which we should probably rename it, something a little, a little better than that, but scan occurrence is what it allows to do. So let's say for example, "doliosolaphic," um, which I, I mispronounced, I butchered that, but I named that because it came up in a demo I did the other day. You can choose that one word and click scan, and it will play every single mention of that word in the audio, back to back to back to back to back. Anne: Nice! Adam: You can listen to that straight through for consistency. It's great for character names as well. Anne: Oh, that's fantastic! That'd make my life easy, a live. Adam: I have an example of a customer the other day, who was doing a book, and the word shaman, S-H-A-M-A-N, which could be pronounced "Shaw man" or "shay man". Anne: Right. Adam: He pronounced shaman nine times as "Shaw man" and one time -- Anne: Right. Adam: -- for "shay man." So he used that feature to catch that, and then you can select individual ones and either mark those individual examples of that, mark those as a pickup in your audio, or you can just export a DAW file to put a marker -- Anne: Sure. Adam: -- in every mention of that word in your, in your DAW file or your DAW session to help your editor. Anne: Got it. So then at the core of all of this is AI, right? Adam: Yes. Correct. Anne: That is, it's learning. So when we upload our manuscripts and we upload our audio, is that going into help the model become more intelligent, or do you have a model that exists already and you're feeding it other data? Adam: We started by bootstrapping with publicly available data, whether it's Librivox or any of those other things. Anne: Sure. Adam: But when someone uploads audio, it's very spelled out in our terms of service, and we're going to be redoing our website right around Halloween. We'll be launching a new, just explaining exactly what we're using data for. But essentially what we do is we take random snippets of audio, audio and text paired together. And we feed those into our algorithm to train it. And this is not training it to replicate the human voice. This is training it to better recognize the human voice and the exact thing that is spoken based on the text. Anne: Got it. Adam: So it's basically just, it's almost like every bit of audio is like another drop in the swimming pool. None of it is -- you can't identify a single drop of water in a swimming pool. It all gets aggregated. Yeah. That's what we do. We basically make it so it's completely non-identifiable from an individual voice or anything like that perspective or personal identified information. But what it does is it just continues as we feed more and more data in and retrain, it just makes it more and more effective because we have more examples, more different accents, more different dialects to improve the accuracy of our algorithm. Anne: Got it. So now, do you have any plans to ever like create voices at all in your software in order to like maybe help with pickups? Or is that something that you're not really looking at? Adam: So I'm going to start with what exactly what it says in our terms of service, which is we can never do that -- Anne: Okay. Adam: -- without the express written consent of the person who uploaded the audio. Anne: Got it. Adam: So currently it is not in our plans, even from, from a business perspective. Even if we wanted to, there are companies out there that have a four or five-year headstart on us. Anne: Sure. Adam: So it would be kind of a dumb, it would be a dumb business decision. Um, I could see a future where maybe there would be a feature where you could say, say, you said, Anne instead of V, you could have a, you know, basically copy and -- Anne: Paste. Adam: -- copy and paste that word. But from a, from an AI perspective, we have, we'd have to be pretty careful on how we manage that and negotiate that with our customers -- Anne: Sure. Adam: -- because we would never do it in the way that is looking to replace that customer in full. We'd just be using that -- or that narrator in full -- we'd just be using anything that we ever did, which is quite a ways out, based on the current product roadmap. Um, it would be an assist to that narrator and not be to replace that narrator. Anne: Got it. So, in terms of, let's say AI, AI in general, people fear it because I think for the most part, a lot of that fear is based on, they don't necessarily know exactly how it works or -- and they're probably very fearful that it's going to take their job away, which is not a surprise that people in the voiceover industry are afraid that AI is going to take their job away. And so what is your outlook on that? What do you, what do you say to that in terms of your software? And I know that you're not creating voices at this moment, but you are using AI technology. Adam: Yeah. So AI by itself is not Skynet from Terminator. It's not something to be feared. It's kind of like AI does what it is designed to do. So if it is designed to replace a narrator, that's what it'll do. In our case, if it is designed to be an assist to a narrator, that's what it'll do. So AI by itself is not something to fear. Reality is the companies that are creating AI voices are getting better and better. I've listened to a couple of samples lately, and some of them are really good, but the human narrator will always have that lead in terms of the humanness of the voice that -- Anne: Sure. Adam: -- no matter how much -- it's like that Tom Hanks movie, "The Polar Express" a while ago where it almost got to the -- the animation was so accurate, it got weird. It was -- Anne: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Adam: I think it's called the -- Anne: Uncanny valley, right? Adam: Uncanny valley, that's it. Anne: Yeah. Adam: It's the same thing with AI narrators is -- Anne: Sure. Adam: -- I don't think no matter -- it'll never get all the way there, but the advantages the AI narrators have over humans is they're faster, they're more accurate, and they're cheaper. So people -- we basically say, look, Pozotron is a tool. Anne: Oh wait! Say that again, please. That I, you know, how many people are going to love to hear you say that? That humans are cheap -- you know, in reality, I think they are. Adam: Yeah. So I think that's the advantage. The advantage is not that the AI narrators are better than humans, human narrators, because that's not. Anne: Exactly. Adam: But they're faster -- Anne: yeah. Adam: They're faster, they're more accurate, and they're cheaper. They're most of the time more accurate, I should say. Anne: Yeah. Adam: So using a tool like Pozotron, humans will always have that lead -- Anne: Yes. Adam: -- in the humanness of their voice -- Anne: Exactly. Adam: -- but using tools like Pozotron or many other things out there, or even just a better workflow, will help humans catch up to those AI narrators in terms of speed, accuracy and efficiency. So we kind of pitch our tool as it's almost a way for narrators to stay ahead -- Anne: Sure. Adam: -- of the AI voices that aren't going anywhere. So that's really what we're trying to do is, you know, use the same tools to help narrators rather than take over some of this stuff out there. But I will say one thing, I think, no matter how good these AI voices get, there will always be a place for human voices. Anne: Yeah. Adam: I think and a lot of these companies are saying, look, we're just narrating the backlist or, you know, it'll be great for a history textbook. Something that's a thriller or a romance that requires that human emotion -- Anne: Sure. Adam: -- to really make it a piece of art that audiobooks are rather than just something to listen to. One of -- our CEO said the other day, "look, if I wanted to listen to a cheaper, crappier audiobook, I'd say, 'Alexa, read me my book.'" Anne: Interesting. Yeah. And you expect it, and I think when you hit that uncanny valley where it becomes too human, you're right. It kind of, there's a point where you believe, you think it's human, then all of a sudden, maybe you'll hear that note that kind of doesn't sound right. And it'll be like, "ooh, did I just get duped? Is that a person? I thought that was a person." And then I think there's a whole trust factor when that hits. And so I agree that I think when you need that human element, I think we'll always need that. And I think in that respect, that is quicker than AI in terms of, you know, some of the companies that I've been talking to and what I've seen right now, out in AI, while these voices are great or they can sound pretty human, I think they're only human in one instance. So if you ever had to go back and redirect, right? Adam: Yeah. Anne: You know, that emotion that they just emoted, it's the same, no matter if you put it at the front of the script or the, in the middle of the script of the end of the script. And I think if you have a human that you can redirect and have a slightly different nuance of sad, I think that's where humans are quicker and can actually -- I don't know if you can say it can be cheaper because I think these AI voices, they're on computers. They basically are generated by engines. And so somewhere in the ethers, you know, there's a computer out there creating that job or creating that audio for the job, and there's money, you know. Adam: For sure. Anne: There's -- that costs money. And so I feel like the human will always be there. What type of audiobooks -- both, I'd like to get both of your opinions -- what type of audiobooks do you think an AI voice is appropriate for? Or is it not? Adam: Appropriate is a -- appropriate is a different word. Anne: Yeah. Adam: I think instead of using appropriate, I would say acceptable maybe. Anne: Okay. Adam: Anything that's not going to require huge conveyance of emotion or feeling. So that's where I think, you know, educational materials, textbooks, things like that, where you're just absorbing information, I think it is less problematic than if you're reading a book, and there's a scene where a family member dies, and it's really important that that narrator captures that sadness and all those emotions and the subtleness -- subtlety of emotions. Whereas, you know, an AI narrator probably -- or even if the AI narrator can do that, my understanding is currently there's a lot of manual work in the backend essentially saying on this syllable, AI narrator be sad, on this one, pick it up a little bit. Anne: Sure, sure. Adam: So my understanding is currently there is some manual stuff that needs to happen for it to work -- Anne: Yeah. Adam: -- entirely properly. Anne: Yeah. And I think that it starts to take as much time if you need to dial that emotion to a certain way or dial the speed or whatever, you're, you're changing in that AI, I think you're going to spend more time post-processing to get it to sound more human. And then it ends up taking possibly longer than a human, you know, utilizing something like Pozotron to help, right, proof and get their job done faster. Interesting. So what do you think then is the future of AI for, let's start with what would be the future of AI and how it's being used at Pozotron? And then also, how do you feel AI will ultimately be in five years or ten years? Will it take over the voiceover industry? Or what do you, what are your thoughts? Adam: I'd like Ryan to talk to his -- Ryan's got a really, I mean, we all share it, but Ryan's got an interesting vision on kind of the future of audiobook production with human, with human narrators. I'd like you to go into that, Ryan. Ryan: So as far as the future of AI in Pozotron, I don't even think of it in terms of AI, as I'm working through my day, as I'm doing my testing. That doesn't enter into much of my thought process. Having spent thousands of hours looking for misreads and doing reporting, those two things were the absolute worst part of my job. They are the hardest to do consistently. It's the easiest to make mistakes. And the fact that there's a tool, whether it's AI or not, that makes that part easier, that's my push. That's my function. The fact that AI is there helping make that part better for the proofing process, for the scanning of scripts, for all of that, it's that way to make things easier for people, and the, the AI part of it, the mechanics behind it, don't concern me all that much as a technician. And on the creative side, I would love to see AI be that tool that makes the performance go to that next level. You know that you have an AI behind you telling you when you make your mistakes. So you don't have to worry about it. Anne: Yeah. Ryan: As a narrator, okay, you have these seven pages to do and "oh, am I going to make any mistakes? How long is it going to take, you know, my engineer to get that back to me, who do I have to turn it into next? How do I note it?" All of those things are going to be in your head, but if you have a complete set of tools that look for those things, you can be absolutely peaceful and zenned out, knowing that you have this extra set of eyes and ears and knowledge behind you. And so the future to me as a performer, being able to come to their tools, their microphone and their computer, and do an entire production on their own and have it not just a one-to-one ratio with editing or proofing or -- but a one-to-one production of the whole thing, how they want it, how they love it, how it's supposed to sound. So that's what I see in a few years is a set of tools that allows you, Anne, to go up to your station and make an audiobook. Anne: I love that. Ryan: That's what I see. Anne: Yeah. Ryan: That's what I'm excited for. Anne: Yeah, it gives you the time and the peace of mind to go and be an artist -- Ryan: Yep. Anne: -- which is what you are meant to do, and not necessarily worry about how long it's going to take to edit. I love that outlook. That's wonderful. Thank you for that. Absolutely. Adam: From the AI side of that, it's really just taking either algorithms we built or algorithms we are building to basically make all of the work around audiobooks easier. So an example right now is in our next step of this character voice tool that we're using, we're building an algorithm that will score, yeah, every single mention of a character's name based on two attributes. One of them is that character. So let's take, for example, Sherlock Holmes links to a verb denoting speech also modified by an adverb. So it'll take every single mention of that character's name and the book, and give you an output of the top 20 examples of that character speaking, where there is a description about how that character spoke. So when you're putting together your character voice prep -- Anne: Wow. Adam: -- and deciding as a narrator, hey, this is the voice I'm going to use -- Anne: Yeah. Adam: -- you can use our tool scan to through the top 20 mentions saying Sherlock spoke aggressively, Sherlock spoke in a high tone, Sherlock spoke, exclaimed sadly, or something like that. Where you can basically use this tool to easily figure out all the cues from the book and then plan out your character's voice. Anne: Wow, that's great. Adam: And then the other side of it, so really instead of having to do what they're currently doing -- Anne: Yeah. Adam: -- which is reading the book with a highlighter and taking note of everything they're doing, you can parse an entire book and take all those cues in a fraction of that time while still getting the same high quality work. And then the next step of that, that we've already built into our pronunciation guide, is once you've done your work, you've created your pronunciation list. You've created your character voice guide. You can currently export that into a marked up PDF where every word in your pronunciation guide is automatically highlighted in your script with a call-out box saying this is the phonetic pronunciation -- Anne: Wow. Adam: -- or this is your note saying how, how that voice should sound. And then in the future, it's going to be a teleprompter where instead of just seeing a call-out box, you click play, and you listen to yourself speaking in that character's voice. You pause your recording, listen to yourself, and then click record again and start going. So removing all of those -- Anne: Oh, that's wonderful. Adam: -- switching between apps. Anne: Yup. Adam: And, you know, some people have their character list on their iPhone in a note -- Anne: Yup, yup. Adam: -- or something like that, everything is centralized and that takes -- gets us closer to that one-to-one recording time to finished hour of audio time. Anne: Right, so you can get right to the point in your wav file that you need to be. Because when I go back in and have to do pickups, I have to hunt for where was that? You know, where was that part in my, in my single wav file there that I said this particular thing that I have to do the pickup. So that's, that's phenomenal. I, I think what a wonderful tool. How can BOSSes out there get in touch with you, find out more about your software, maybe -- is that a subscription based model? Adam: Um, so first, uh, they can check us out at www.pozotron.com. That's P-O-Z-O-T-R-O-N.com. Um, or email us at hello@pozotron.com. Uh, we have a number of pricing plans from pay as you go, which has absolutely no subscription. You pay $10 per hour of audio you upload, all charged down to the minute, but it's easier to say $10 per hour than 16.667 cents per minute, but all the way up to, you know, we have some, some of the biggest publishers are putting six, 700 hours of audio a month, and you're getting, and you're paying a much reduced per hour rate based on whatever volume you're doing. So we have very flexible plans from literally you put in 10 minutes of audio a month up to thousands of hours of audio a month. Um, we're very flexible and our subscriptions are only ever month to month. So if you have a big, either increase in volume, you can jump up to a bigger plan. If you have a lull over the Christmas season or holiday season, um, you can go down, 'cause we never want people to be paying for something they're not using because we're a believer in, you know, we'd rather lower our revenues from a customer for a month to make a happier customer because that customer is going to stay with us over the longterm. Anne: Fantastic. And I'm going to push for anybody that does long-form narration, really. I can absolutely see this as being a tool that can really help us, so fantastic. You guys, thank you so very much for joining me today. It has been amazing, and BOSSes out there, make sure to check out Pozotron. I think it's going to really help you do your job better, and thanks again for sharing your time with us today. And I am going to give a great, big shout-out to our sponsor ipDTL that allows us to connect and network like BOSSes. Find out more at ipdtl.com. Thanks again, Ryan and Adam. It's been a pleasure. Ryan: Thank you. Adam: Thank you very much. This was, this was really fun. Anne: Awesome. Alright, BOSSes. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye. Adam: Bye! Ryan: Bye! >> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.

Summary On this special episode of COMMERCE NOW, Steve Kremer, Director of Sales in the Payments division at Diebold Nixdorf, and Sarah Grotta, Director of Debit and Alternative Products Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group, sat down with PaymentsJournal to discuss the most popular payment method, both in the United States and globally: Debit.  Listen in for a  discussion of why modernizing debit payments is crucial in both the banking and retail sectors. Related Content:  https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/en-us/banking/insights/blog/get-your-message-out https://www.dieboldnixdorf.com/-/media/diebold/files/banking/insights/qa-faq/mindshare-payments-innovation.pdf Related Links: https://www.paymentsjournal.com/the-time-to-revitalize-debit-rails-is-now/ LinkedIn Profiles - Steve Kremer Sarah Grotta Transcription:  Speaker 1: On this special episode of COMMERCE NOW, DN Steve Creamer, Director of Sales in the Payments Division joins the PaymentsJournal's, Ryan Mac, for a discussion on why modernizing debit payments is crucial in both the banking and retail sectors. Speaker 2: Welcome to the PaymentsJournal Podcast. In here is your host, Ryan Mac Ryan: Welcome to the PaymentsJournal Podcast, I'm your host Ryan Mac. Now, debit is the most popular form of payment in the US and globally and it is influenced by the growing popularity of digital payments and preferences of millennials. Now, it is projected that debit transactions will continue to grow and remain the highest transaction type of consumer payment. Now, modernizing these payment systems will become table stakes. And solutions that have reusable technology that can support multiple channels are key when implemented in phases, especially when starting with one that has the high rewards and low risks, AKA debit. To unpack this further, I'm joined by Steve Creamer, who is the Director of Sales for the Payments Division at Diebold Nixdorf and Sarah Grotta who is the Director of the Debit and Alternative Products Advisory Service at Mercator Advisor Group. So, there's certainly a lot of information to unpack on today's episode. Ryan: So, without any further delays, let's start the show. So, Steve and Sarah, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on today's episode. And I'm really excited to talk about our subject to hear today that's really focusing around debit because of all of the interesting news and statistics that we've started to see come out of just the debit side of the paintings' ecosystem here. Now, to get our conversation started here today, we've got this fantastic chart provided to us by Mercator Advisor Group that's taking a look at MasterCard and Visa Debit and prepaid volumes versus credit and charge card volumes in the United States. So, Steven, if you could, maybe you could kind of unpack this chart for our audience here today and maybe pull out some of the kind of the key highlights or what you find interesting of what this data is representing. Steve: Thanks, Ryan. In seeing this data, I really had to pause for a moment and let this information sink in. It certainly is very interesting that in United States, the dollar amount spent with debit cards increased by 14% in 2020, and also that debit card transactions continued to outpace credit cards two to one, the terms of number of transactions. We may all have our own personal bias on preference between debit and credit and some of us may have a preference for using credit over debit for certain types of transactions, but we need to be careful not to our own views, to administer relevance of the data on the continued strong debit usage. Steve: Did the impact of the pandemic and stimulus money have some impact on increase of debit usage in 2020? I think it did, but I also think that the pandemic also accelerated the consumer migration to digital payment channels and debit is still the most popular form of retail payment, and it's not going away at any time soon. Once you really look at the information that Sarah summarized so well, it really makes a lot of sense, especially when including the influence of younger generations that are growing in importance and how debit is leveraged on a global basis. Close to 83% of younger consumers use a debit card and not credit and that's understandable at their age. Many may have not had the ability to obtain credit, and they also seen or heard so many negative stories about how credit card debt that they formulate a consumer behavior outside of credit usage. Steve: Given the high percentage use of debit now, and with the ever-growing payment e-commerce options, we can really see why debit usage continues to grow. An important note is that the continued popular debit is by no means unique to United States. For instance, in India, I think there are 900 million debit cards versus only 55 million credit cards. And in Europe it varies by country, but debit continues to make a very, very strong showing. From a consumer convenience standpoint, we can see the advantages of using debit over other payment rails. And then finally for the retailer, there are real economic advantages of debit based processing solutions as debit interchange fees are typically much lower than for credit cards. I think at this point, it probably be good to turn over to Sarah and allow her to provide some additional insights into her report. Sarah: Yeah. Thanks so much for that. And really, I liked your overview, particularly the comparison with other countries. Certainly, I think the US is somewhat unique in its history, its legacy of being very credit card-focused that isn't necessarily the case around the world. And certainly, things like the economics play into that. The fact that particularly in the US, we really, really love those credit card rewards. So, it was kind of interesting, I agree, I think this was really pushed by the pandemic when we saw the debit card volumes for the first time tip over in above the credit card numbers. And let me clarify, looking at this chart, that we are looking at debit card purchases. We did make some calculations to extract some of the debit push payments, right? So, that would be MasterCard send or Visa Direct. Sarah: So, we're really looking at something closer to an apples-apples comparison of just debit card purchases from MasterCard and Visa in comparison to what's happening on the credit card side. So, I think as we look forward and as we start to see purchasing habits maybe coming back to something that looked a little bit more like pre-pandemic patterns, so more things like purchases for eating out purchases, for travel in particular, I think that we'll start to see the credit card numbers start to come back up again. But I do think for many of the reasons that you pointed out Steve, I think that we will still continue to see very, very strong debit card growth for the foreseeable future. Ryan: Steven and Sarah, thank you so much for that. Now, to kind of just recap a lot of what was said there, obviously historically, in the US we have seen debit cards outpace credit in terms of transaction volumes. But also, then as we were kind of pointing out, in 2020, we did see that percentage gap changed dramatically with debit card volume seeing that 14% growth over 2019 numbers. Now, Steven, as you pointed out, I think that there's a fair amount of that double digit growth was related and due to the pandemic. And as Sarah kind of stated there at the end that she foresees this growth in debit being a continuing trend. But beyond the pandemic, are there other reasons that you could kind of sight or maybe glean to, of why it is that debit may remain a preferred payment method of choice for consumers? Steve: Yeah. Ryan, I think that's a great question. And in that, I think it's always important to keep the customer experience in the forefront. And the thing about debit is that it's a 24/7 always-on experience. Consumers expect to seamlessly get cash out of, if they're using an ATM or if they're making a purchase, they expect it to be approved right away. And that's true if it's in-person or if it's a debit being used online. As noted in Sarah's report, 40% of debit transactions, I think in US were made in a card-not-present mode. So, consumers want to make sure their cards and data are safe and that they can quickly pay for what they want. But what we're hearing from our customers, both banks and retailers, but primarily the banks, are that the debit networks are being challenged with new payment types and they're spending a lot of time and money on the overall upkeep and maintenance of their debit networks. Steve: As you know, the debit system has been around since the early 1970s and many of the systems that are used to process these cards have really not changed since, or if they have, it's been for band aid updates for their old technology. Legacy debit payment platforms were designed to quickly and securely approve and process of payment or withdrawal, which has always been authenticated with a card. The future payments is not so straightforward. The method of authentication may be different based on the channel, for example, tokens, biometrics, things like that. And the funding could combine payment methods including 'buy now pay later', or other variations. Modernizing this payment infrastructure, and not necessarily just the debit side, is really the key for banks to remain relevant. Steve: Diebold Nixdorf has been a global leader in the processing of debit-based solutions for the last 40 years. And now we're leveraging this experience with our Vynamics payment solution. Vynamics payments is a modern system that it's built using cloud-native technology and microservices architecture that allows banks and processors to not only improve their debit channel, but quickly and efficiently handle other newer payment types and innovations like request to pay and buy now pay later. Which is where we see things moving, will help kind of perpetuate the predominance of debit going forward. Just time out. I'll turn it back over to Sarah for her insights on that same question. Sarah: Yeah. I think that the whole idea of core and payment modernization is really very interesting. And sort of tying that back to debit, it is kind of interesting even though to your point, debit has been around for a really long time. There are still things that we can do as an industry to improve that user-experience, that kind of dovetails into the ideas and concepts around modernizing the infrastructure. So, I talk to issuers about things like making sure that they can digitally issue debit cards as an example, so that they could really make that seamless transition for immediate account acquisition or provide a really great experience should a debit card ever get lost or stolen, or for whatever reason needs to be replaced. So, I think that's a very interesting part of the payment ecosystem right now, is sort of the intersection of things like debit cards and more modern infrastructure. Ryan: Yeah. So, I think that it's really interesting. And one of the keywords that I kind of hear a lot is that the modernization side of things here, and obviously as we continue to look as Sarah pointed out to kind of add enhancements to kind of really improve that consumer experience here. And then Steven, at the end of your commentary, you had broadened up a little bit about your organization, Diebold Nixdorf here, and how it's kind of going through a little bit of modernization here and what it's doing to help their consumers. So, I want to dive into that a little bit more because I think it's certainly fine to talk about it at a high level, but I really kind of want to get into some specifics. And with your insight into the industry, maybe you can give us a few more examples of what you're seeing that your customers are doing to revitalize kind of their debit rails, so to speak. Steve: Yeah, that's a great point, Ryan. Thank you for asking. Really when, when Diebold Nixdorf set out to develop our next generation payments platform, we try to approach payments with a fresh perspective. We ask where would it make the biggest impact and provide the greatest opportunities for our clients? And as you ask, as an example, we recently began a multi-year, multi-phase implementation with a top 10 US bank. This bank is using Vynamic payments to deliver substantial TCO benefits to their organization. They are currently using our terminal software as well as our device handling in the Vynamic's platform for approximately 16,000 ATM's. And the bank has also started to deliver on their roadmap to provide switching and cloud processing as the next phase in their migration to Vynamic payments. Steve: And by doing this, they're taking a modular multi-phase approach and we have successfully maximized their greatest opportunity, which in their case started with the debit rails. And now, we have laid a foundation to scale for the future. In the age of technology, limitations on handling the current demand of transactions and the expense for trying to keep it up-to-date has oftentimes made the debit network the best place to start. And at Diebold Nixdorf, our cloud-native microservices architecture has enabled new functionality, such as handling the card-not-present transactions and digital wallet-based transactions. Steve: We also add the ability to reuse certain components or services such as authorization, routing, and authentication, that provides a single platform that can easily transition to credit or real-time payments or other payment rails. It's truly a build once but use often design that will reduce over-operational costs and pre-speeder market for alternative payment methods. And I'll turn over to Sarah for her perspective on that. Sarah: Yeah, actually, I think I've got another question for you given those comments, if you don't mind. I hear a lot of financial institutions in particular, talking about the need to modernize their technology infrastructure so that they can be more responsive, particularly at the user-experience layer, thinking about things like breaking down silos to better manage data and better manage data for fraud. But when financial institutions are thinking about modernizing their infrastructure, do you see that payments is often an instigator for a lot of these modernization demands or the idea that financial institution wants to move forward with a modernization project? Steve: Sarah, I think it does. And I know I threw on this term 'build once, use often' is kind of a code word for modernization, and it does sound simple enough to build once and use often. However, really the benefits are very, very powerful and widespread. As we talked about with mobile and contact-less payments, continuing to grow and support for QR codes, digital currencies, request to pay and peer to peer payment applications are added, many larger banks are opting to build separate in-house silos to process these new payment types. And given the large number of dedicated channels that are required to process this vast array of payments, it quickly becomes a very complex undertaking that generates significant cost to support. Steve: Meanwhile, smaller banks are tackling the same challenge by outsourcing services to vendors. While this may work in a short term, it too, can become very expensive and really stifles differentiation and creates barriers to innovation with this 'build once, use often' as the goal to consolidate these single use channels by deploying a payments platform, it is built with the microservice architecture and API connectivity. These platforms really do enable banks to realize the desired end state of building once, but using across multiple payment rails. And to be a bit more specific, if a bank's priority is to start with the modernization of their debit platform, which is part of our topic today, and by the way, often is a logical place to start given that 1st Generation debit payment platforms are quite cumbersome and channel specific. Steve: And really these older debit platforms are edging closer to critical [Inaudible], and effectively the end of life. There are many ways that 'build once, use often' methodology yields significant benefits to the deploying institution. And some examples of that is to add credit to the same system that's used for debit, the settlement and clearing services can really be reused. Another example is in the fraud area where fraud mitigation and some of the limiting safeguards can be implemented once and then used often across multiple channels. Steve: So, with Vynamic payments, we're able to later on the promise of 'build once, use often'. And Diebold Nixdorf is really kind of moving digital payments processing to a new era, introducing an open APIs integrating with best of breed FinTech solutions across banking and retail, and really delivering seamless customer-centric journeys on a state of the art platform. So, quite simply, it is a great time to speak with Diebold Nixdorf about the future of retail payments. Ryan: Excellent Steven, I think that was absolutely fantastic. And I think we'll end it there on that note. Oh, so, Steven, Sarah, thank you so much for taking the time today for speaking to us about the debit rail here and also the very interesting consumer changes that we've seen in the industry of the debit versus credit. And I hope to have you both back on the podcast real soon. Steve: Pleasure. Sarah: Thanks Ryan.

Larger companies get most of the press and excitement with their 6 and 7 figure marketing budgets, but the majority of clients we work with are smaller. And smaller companies have to do things a little differently than the big guys. What impact does a small budget have on driving traffic? How should small budget brands compete online? https://www.logicalposition.com/ TRANSCRIPT: Jon: Hey Ryan. So we get companies contacting us all the time, that don't have large, six or seven figure marketing budgets, and many times, those large clients get most of the press and excitement, but the majority of companies that end up investing in marketing are going to be smaller, and smaller companies have to do things a little bit differently. I want to ask you today, what impact does a small budget have on driving traffic and how do those small budget brands compete online? They obviously want to compete, they have to compete in order to grow, and I want to know what's the magic, how do they make that happen? I'm excited to talk to you about this today, and I guess I'll start pretty broad, in e-commerce, is there such a thing as too small of a budget? Ryan: Across the board as a broad general rule, no, but if you're really going to do something with your budget, then yes. I mean, you have to have enough budget to start moving things around and collecting data. And I think that initial starting budget, if you're a smaller business, is going to be important to determine how quick you can grow, how aggressive you can be, where are you going to find that opportunity to take the next step in the digital marketing evolution of your business? And I challenged a lot of business owners in this space, as I'm talking to smaller ones all the time. Like for example, yes, you can start with $100 a month budget, it's your money, and you can market it however you want, invest it however you want. But if you're e-commerce, you're e-commerce so that you can sell everywhere and have your online store open all the time, even when you're sleeping. And so if that's the case, $100 is not going to get you very far in marketing across the internet. And so if you're going to do something that small, you really need to be hyper, hyper, hyper-focused, which does limit your potential and opportunities to find little pockets where you can really dominate or win. And so I would generally say less than $1,000, there may be better places for your money than trying to drive traffic with it online. Jon: Interesting. I was going to ask, and maybe you've just answered, but I'd love your take on this too, if I only have $1,000 a month to spend, is it worth doing it or am I just throwing my money away, when we're talking about driving traffic through traditional paid media sense? Ryan: That's a difficult one because most business owners that are coming up with this $1,000 and you're smaller, that's a meaningful number to them probably, but they probably don't have the expertise to really make that $1,000 do as much as it can. And so you probably have to bring an expert in, and that costs money as well, because most people in the digital marketing world are not working for free. And so you have to figure in an expert generally, and I'll probably come back to that point, but for most businesses, I would say that you have to look at it through a lens of time and money. Jon: Okay. Ryan: Anybody can learn how to do digital marketing. You have to be able to study, you have to be able to go in and make some mistakes and learn it, but anybody can figure it out. It's definitely not the most complex thing you could be learning. But if you have more time, then you should be doing some of that work yourself and learning it and getting it to it like, "Can I get some basic things done?" If you have more money, than you need to hire people and your budget should probably be a little bit higher to be able to invest and push traffic. Jon: So we should be saying, when we say budget for today's conversation, should I be thinking about it as budget including the expert or budget just in what you would spend to drive traffic in these channels? Ryan: I think businesses should be looking at it together, but I think most business owners are thinking about, "Okay, I can spend $1,000 to drive traffic. Let's go put that on Google and make it work." I do believe though, the Googles in particular and I'll focus on Google for right now, but Google in particular has done some pretty cool things helping small e-commerce businesses get going. If you've got a feed and you're on a smaller platform, like if you're on Shopify, it's very, very simple to get up and running on Shopify and get your products going to Google. And then there's what Google is calling smart shopping campaigns that allow a business really to say, "Google, here's how much I'm willing to spend per day, and here's the goal I need to get out of it." It does not take an expert to get that up and running. And in fact, I tell companies, do not pay an agency to manage smart shopping campaigns because there's nothing to do. It can be a small piece of an overall structure, in fact, we at Logical Position do use smart campaigns in a small piece of a campaign occasionally, but we have to do a lot more work in the reporting and strategy on that type of client, to be able to justify charging management fees on smart campaigns. Jon: Okay. That makes sense. Ryan: Small budgets use more automation, I think, is the name of the game. Use things that are set up to make sure you don't just waste a bunch of money, and I think that's where a lot of small businesses, what keeps them from starting often is that fear of, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to go waste money trying to drive traffic because I don't know how to do it right." Doing some research, I think, can help keep that option to a minimum, that is just going to go out there and be a big waste. Jon: Let's say a company hasn't driven traffic on Google. How do they decide what that starting budget should be? Ryan: This generally comes down to, what's the business doing as a whole? If you're doing $100,000 a month on your website and you haven't been spending money, you probably have a larger amount you could start with then if I'm only doing $1,000 a month in sales. It's a threshold there of starting to look at it, but I generally say, in e-commerce, at least $1,000 to start with on Google. And then start thinking about it through a lens of, "I know I'm not going to be starting out at the gate if I'm doing it myself in a perfect world scenario." So there's going to be some learnings. I look at it through the lens of what's my light money on fire threshold, to let me get things going, and I've done this with new platforms on some of my brands. Nobody knew what they were doing yet, across the entire platform. Pinterest is being one of them. A couple years ago, it was just wide open. Nobody knew what it was going to do. I think they're getting some more structure in place and it's driving better traffic, but I went onto it saying, "Look, I don't know what it's going to do." My light money threshold at that point was, I think about 2,500 bucks, so I talked to Pinterest like, "Look, we can go a thousand a day for two and a half days if you want, or we can go $100 a day for about a month. I'm okay with either, whichever one you think is going to work better for me." And that was my light money on fire threshold, that I wasn't going to be mad, I was just like, "Yeah, that did suck, but I got some learnings." Pinterest didn't work for us at that point in time on that business, we'll continue to be revisiting it. But all that to come back around to it can't be a budget that if it doesn't work, it's going to tank your business, because there's a lot of unknowns if you haven't been on Google before, to how is your website going to convert, what traffic is going to work best for you. Because you'll take the same product with the same price for the same search query, going to two different sites and it's going to convert and there's going to be a different return on ad spend. And so with all of that unknown, anybody that tells you they know exactly what you're going to get by putting $1,000 out there, they're lying to you because there's no data to tell you one way or another. There's no way to know. Jon: Okay. So don't bet the farm. Ryan: Don't bet the farm, but it should probably make you a little uncomfortable. Jon: Okay. Ryan: When I'm looking at business decisions and I want to grow, and you know me, I tend to be on the aggressive side of things, I want what I'm risking to make me a little uncomfortable. I don't want it to be an easy decision or an easy thing to be like, "Okay." Could I have wasted $100 to test Pinterest? Yeah, but that was not an uncomfortable thing. 2,500 from me was a little bit uncomfortable. Partners and I talked through it and we're like, "Okay, if it returns nothing, that's not going to be great. But again, we're not going to lose the business because of a mistake if it doesn't work." So a little bit of uncomfort, I think, is good. Jon: Okay. So then let's say I have a thousand bucks, where do I start, Facebook, Google, something else? Ryan: I think generally it's going to come down to those two for most businesses to start off with. I think other platforms generally are younger and they are less proven and therefore generally higher up in the funnel. Like if you're going to jump right on TikTok or Snapchat for marketing and you haven't done Google or Facebook, I think it's going to be difficult to know if that platform is actually working for you, if you haven't gone to more advanced ones yet. And so when I talk to a business owner or a marketing team that's looking at deciding between both of those two to start, the easy way of looking at it as if there is existing market for your product, I generally say go to Google because you're going to capture people towards the bottom of the funnel as they're looking for your product. If you're creating a brand new category, there's not a lot of people searching for it on Google and so you're going to have to figure out how to create that and find the right audiences on Facebook and convince people to start trying you to build that search volume. So for example, last week I talked to a guy, his company makes edible bubbles and I'm like, "I have never heard of this before.'. Jon: Isn't that bubblegum? Ryan: Yeah. This is for kids going out and playing and blowing bubbles, he makes edible bubbles. And I had no idea my kids would want that until he sent me some samples and they're actually pretty cool. Jon: That's awesome. Ryan: But they actually make them for bars. Someday when we get to go back to a bar, they make these bubbles you can blow on top of a drink, and a lot of times they infuse them with smoke for presentations. Jon: That's cool. That's a great idea. Ryan: So really cool stuff, but there's not a target market yet that they know to search for that. So I, before last week, never would have even considered searching for the term edible bubble or edible bubble for a drink or bar drink presentation bubbles, that's just not even there. And so for that type of business, you've got to go on Facebook, you've got to target bartenders, you've got to target moms with kids, with the kid bubble one. And there's some really cool targeting on Facebook, and if you've got a good visual and some good offers, I think Facebook can work really well. For other businesses, Facebook generally will hit top of funnel like that, and so the return, again, generalizations, is going to be a little bit lower than if you had run some bottom funnel, Google stuff to figure out where people are searching for your product and what are your advantages and all of that. Jon: So we're talking the difference between perhaps intent versus awareness? Ryan: Yes. Like if there's already people searching with intent for your products or services, I would go capture them first. It's going to be a little more expensive per click, possibly, there's generally going to be more competition, but it's an existing demand that you're tapping into. You've just got to figure out how you're going to compete there. If you're creating a brand new product that nobody's ever searched before, you probably can't even spend your money on Google on search terms, you're going to be on broad match keywords on Google wasting money. Jon: Right. No, that definitely makes sense, then Announcer: You're listening to Drive and Convert, the podcast focused on e-commerce growth. Your hosts are Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion rate optimization agency that works with e-commerce brands to help convert more of their visitors into buyers. Ryan Garrow, of Logical Position, the digital marketing agency offering pay-per-click management, search engine optimization and website design services, to brands of all sizes. If you find this podcast helpful, please help us out by leaving a review on Apple podcasts and sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you. Jon: What other things tactics do the smaller budgets need to be aware of? What else would you consider? Ryan: Some of the tactics I talked about when looking at smaller budgets on advertising and driving traffic, don't even have to do with the tactics to drive the traffic. A lot of small businesses, even over the last year with COVID and a lot of brick and mortar moving into online, a lot of them haven't thought about what is my advantage online? If you are selling the exact same product at the exact same price, and you have no discernible advantage over a competitor, what are you doing? Try to figure out, before you go spend money, why somebody is going to buy from you. And you can't really tell me that your advantage online is going to be because you have really smart salespeople inside, or you have a lot of knowledge in your industry, because that's not going to come across in Google shopping. Nobody cares how much you know, they don't know how much people know when they're just going to a website and transacting. And so you've got to figure out what that advantage looks like first. Why should somebody buy from you versus a competitor, if they've never met either one of you and all they're doing is seeing your website because the internet is the great equalizer and small companies can't compete with big companies, if they're better at certain things. Better at converting, if all of your competitors are stuck on really ancient Yahoo stores that are 20 years old, and you're going to come in there with a Shopify or a big commerce site, that's really easy to convert on. That can be a significant advantage, even if everything else is the same. Jon: It's funny, you say that, a friend and I were just talking about that and we were laughing, saying a great business model would be to just go to find a index of all the remaining Yahoo stores making over a million dollars a year and just replicate that on a better platform, with better usability and you would print money. Ryan: Why are we doing a podcast? Let's go get a list and start making business. But it's true. I think we still have 50 clients on Yahoo and some of them are, I think, are on the RTML, that really old coding platform, that if you're not 50, you've never even heard of that. And I only heard about it because we have clients on it. Jon: Yeah. Look, I mean, I think a lot of these stores take the approach of, if it's not broke, don't fix it. And they're still printing money, so why change it? I think they're going to ride that till the end. So somebody will come along and end them by doing something better, but you got to find it first. Talking about that is one of the things that the platform could be, one thing that these smaller companies are doing wrong. But thinking about smaller budgets, if they're sending traffic to their site, what do most of these smaller budgets do wrong? What mistakes are they making with their small budgets? Ryan: I think a lot of them, if they do have some advantages and they do have a reason to market, a lot of them make the mistake of not being aggressive enough. I think I've mentioned this probably multiple times, but a lot of small business owners really watch their P and L and all line items going in and out of the business, which is good. But when they come to Google ads, it can quickly become a very large line item and they want to focus on, hey, I need to increase profits, so we need to start cutting this budget and controlling Google, because if I control something in the middle of my P and L, the bottom gets bigger. And unfortunately, something like a Google ads or Facebook ad, is generally driving top line number that does translate into bottom line number, but if you eliminate what's driving that top line, it can really have an opposite effect of what you're intending. And so it's really a paradigm shift. If you're looking at your budget like a line item, you start looking at it as you're investing in getting new customers and then what are you going to do with it? Don't see Google ads or Facebook ads as a cost necessarily, unless you're purposely losing money and you have to control that piece, but that's a whole different story and most small businesses are not doing that, so I won't dive into that necessarily now. But then trying to figure out, okay, once you've got a customer, what are you going to do with them? Because Google and Facebook, they're a marketing channel and you're going to have to give some or all of that initial order margin to the platform to get the customer. And that allows you to compete and capture more market share, but if that margin is going to the platform, it's not going to you, the business owner or marketing teams future budgets. So you've got to do lifetime value, figure out what you're going to be doing to bring them back. So many times small businesses are thinking about, I've got to get customers, I've got to get customers, so I've got a market. Okay, good, you do have to do that, but you can't keep trying to do that without focusing on the customers you do have. What happened to the customers from last month, what are you doing with them? If you're not emailing them, if you don't have a loyalty program, you're essentially wasting all of this effort that you're doing to successfully bring new customers into the brand. And so that's where I see most struggles, because then they'll just be like, "Oh, Google was terrible. It took all my profit and then I had nothing." Jon: Well, we've talked about this several times on the show, of understanding that it's okay on that first sale to break even, and your customer acquisition costs might be high on that first sale, but you have to have a longer term game plan in place. Is it a subscription type product that you're going to use, if you have a consumable, is it something where you're able to continue to market to them afterwards, but you're doing it in a way that is going to continue to drive down the customer acquisition, but up the lifetime value over time? That definitely makes a lot of sense. So, okay, we've heard a lot of disadvantages to being small here today, but there's still a fact that most brands are going to be in that small budget. What are the advantages, what's the positive side, the glass half full here, what's the advantages to being smaller advertisers? Ryan: Yep. There's no secret that having more money can have more advantages in advertising, I mean, that's just basic marketing 101. But what I've seen through a lot of small businesses and having my own that compete against much larger brands, is you inherently have more flexibility. In fact, we were just laughing before we got on and started recording, about politics in larger companies, having all these things that you have to wade through to get things approved, or to do things, where you can't move quickly into new markets, because there's all these layers of approval. Small businesses, hopefully don't have that problem. And it's like, if you see an opportunity, you can just go do it and there's not a lot of people that have to sign off on. It's like, no, I'm going to go capitalize on that change in the market or that area that hasn't been attacked by larger brands. And so that can be a huge advantage, but I still think a lot of small businesses don't think of it that way and look at it, hey, I can afford to make mistakes and learn from them very, very quickly and pivot and adjust. And I can test new products on my site, I can test things on my site as a small business that I don't have to go to a web dev team. I can make quick little changes on my Shopify site to say, "Hey, let's see if this works or not. Let's run it for a week and if it doesn't work, flip it back." So much opportunity to test and so few small businesses actually taking advantage of that. I mean, I can't say the number of times that we've tested small things, even on Joyful Dirt, as we're moving very quickly and say, "Hey, let's test this or test this." That many of them work. I mean, we've got a really smart team that can come up with really cool ideas to test. For example, this month we did a black history month label, so we just, "Hey, let's just do a small run of a few hundred labels and see what happens." And larger brands can't in mid January, decide to do a label run for a specific event and try to get it to work. We're like, "Yeah, let's just see if it works. And so based on the success, we're going to do this multiple times throughout the year for different events and just have custom labels. Jon: That's a great idea. Ryan: Because we can. Jon: I believe this is called the innovator's dilemma. So when you're at a large corporation, you as an individual can come to the table and say, "I want to do custom labels for this month, starting in two weeks." But you have so much red tape to get through that you can actually affect the change that you want to affect. So that's a definite competitive advantage for a small brand, I can completely understand how that would work in their advantage. So that's great. Is there any other advantages that we should be thinking about? Ryan: I think being smaller also forces you to pay attention to details, that larger brands don't have to. We have a lot of large clients that focus on such macro level numbers, 35,000 foot layer of saying, "Hey, what's our data? How much should we spend? What is this?" And there's not the deep dive on, "Okay, how can I squeeze this little bit more out of this product?" It exists on a few large brands, but generally it doesn't matter to them on the small little minutia. And I think smaller brands, really have an opportunity because there is less data to sift through, they can quickly see where markets may be changing or evolving, that larger brands aren't going to catch till later. So you have to be willing to be aggressive and move quick when you see them, but you might see, even on Amazon, this is a massive thing with one of our clients where there's a couple really big players in vital wheat gluten, for example, on Amazon and the volume of sales on baking products on Amazon, is astronomical, I had zero clue until we started working with this company. Jon: Yeah, would not have suggested or thought that. Ryan: No, I'm like, "Vital wheat gluten," that's a very specific product for a very specific niche of people. Jon: Baking in general on Amazon, you would think there's no way. Ryan: It blew me away. But because the volume is so high, everybody selling FBA can only send in, because vital wheat gluten comes in, it's heavy and it comes in five pound bags or two pound bags, so it takes up enough shelf volume that you can't get 50,000 units in there at a time. And because you're usually co-packing, you're getting pallets delivered, and once it's down, you can't all of a sudden like, I'm just going to send 10 units today to take care of the sales. It's massive in and out of stocks all over the place. And so smaller advertisers could leverage that by saying, "All right, if I have my own fulfillment house, I can always keep a seller central product in stock on Amazon. Even if my FBA stock goes out," and you can play a lot of games and figure out what part of the country is or is not working. But that type of flexibility as a small brand, can pay huge dividends just by being aware of some of the struggles of your larger competitors. If your larger competitor has a disgusting amount of aging inventory, they've got problems probably floating the next purchase. Whereas you may not have that problem as a small advertiser, and you can even use drop shipping through one of the partners that could help you. So I think small companies have some significant advantages and I enjoy that part because it is more exciting to grow a smaller brand to take on a larger one. I do it myself, I add to this one. Jon: You'd love to take down the big guy. Ryan: IT do. Jon: Who doesn't? I mean, if you're in business, you're a competitor, just the way it is. Ryan: Oh yeah. And I love competing. And so it's fun as smaller business, but it does take a mentality that you are going to scrap and do everything you can to make it work. And when you come in with that mentality, I think it's very difficult to fail on Google ads or Facebook ads, because you're not accepting that it's not going to work. You see the data, you know people are spending money in your industry and they may not all be making money, but there's consistent effort there. And you just have to get to the point where you can wade through it and make it work because it will. Jon: Well on that note, any parting thoughts on this? I feel like I'm sufficiently equipped if I were a small brand advertising. You're giving me some renewed hope, that's for sure, that my $1,000 per day or per month, excuse me, would actually go someplace. Ryan: Yeah. The only thing I will say is that I do believe quality help will go a long way. You can be a small advertiser as a business owner and spend $1,000 if you learn and you're quick enough at adjusting and pivoting and looking at data, you're going to learn how to do it, but it might take you six, seven, eight months to get the point where you could have started at that point with an expert. And so it's at least worth interviewing a couple of agencies to see what it is they could do to help you if you bring experts on to manage that $1,000 spend. Yes, you're going to have to pay an agency extra cost, but can they get you moving towards your target at a quicker rate? I think often they can, but even if you're going to do it yourself, at least talk to somebody else that really knows what they're doing to see what the advantages could be. Jon: Well, and it could be huge too, if you get a higher return on that ad spend, that margin difference, they pay for themselves. It's like working with a great CPA, they're going to get you a bigger refund than if you did it yourself. So that covers their fees and hopefully more. Ryan: For sure. Jon: All right Ryan, well, thank you for your expertise on this. I know you guys work with thousands. Every time I talk to you, it's another thousand. So I'll just say thousands and thousands of clients at Logical Position, and a lot of those are smaller ones and you guys have learned a lot from that. So thank you for sharing all of the expertise you've learned. Ryan: Oh yeah. Thank you, Jon. I appreciate the time. Announcer: Thanks for listening to Drive and Convert, with Jon McDonald and Ryan Garrow. To keep up to date with new episodes, you can subscribe at driveandconvert.com.

There are seven different types of people that you're going to find coming to your site. And if you can understand who these people are in each one of their buckets, you're going to be able to help each one of them convert because they're all going to look at your site a little bit differently. So how do we understand who they are? And what do we need want to know how do we convert these people? Jon's got the answers! TRANSCRIPT: Announcer: You're listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast about helping online brands to build a better e-commerce growth engine, with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow. Ryan: Well, Jon, welcome to the Drive and Convert podcast. You've done a lot of writing, to say the least. You've got some phenomenal content out there on the internet and as somebody that reads most of your content and speaks to you often, it's always good to read. So if you're listening to this, go find Jon and all of his content on his website. I highly recommend it. You will come away as a smarter human. But one of the fascinating concepts that at least for me seems fairly unique to your brain and at least the content you're putting out is the idea of there are seven different types of people that you're going to find coming to your site. And if you can understand who these people are in each one of their buckets, you're going to be able to help each one of them convert because they're all going to look at your site a little bit differently or want to do slightly different things. But I guess step one is just, how do we understand who they are? And then we want to know how do we convert these people? We've got them to the site. We know who they are, now how do we convert them? So I'm excited to hear about this because I can never get enough insight into how to make my businesses and my clients' businesses work better. But can you kick us off just by telling us who are the seven personas that you're seeing on the internet coming to websites? Jon: Well, thank you, first of all, for the kind of compliments on the content. I'm blushing over here if you can't see that. Yes, there are seven and a lot of people think, seven that's a lot. But the reality here is there might be some overlap in these as well, right? And these are all different types of people that you really need to address on your site. And so many people don't do that, that it really led me to write this content. So the first set of folks coming to your site are what I call lookers, right? These are people who are just looking. They're browsers, if you will, right? They're not after any one thing in particular, they're having fun just looking around. They want to see what you offer that maybe will catch your attention. Honestly, they may even have been just searching around Google for different types of products and ended up at your site, not necessarily by mistake, but they ended up there and now they're just looking at what you have to offer. Really you just need to understand that not everybody who approaches your site's going to buy. Most e-comm sites know that, right? Because their conversion rate's not a hundred percent or else we wouldn't exist. But the reality here is that you still need to address this audience. A second one to be thinking about is bargain hunters. These are people who are only at your site because you're having a sale or some type of offer. Ryan: Hopefully, it's not a discount. Jon: Exactly. That would be my point of view. But that's what they're looking for there. They're trained, as we have said, several times, they're trained to look for that sale. And so there are people, and there is a segment of folks who will only buy if something's at a perceived bargain, right? And they really want to see if they can find the bargain. Sometimes it's the thrill of finding the bargain that really gets to them. The third you really want to think about it as the buyers. Now, it seems pretty obvious, but some people are really on a mission. They know exactly what they want and they're there to get it. So they searched for the model number, they found your site, and they are ready to buy. And so you really want to facilitate that. A fourth is researchers. Some folks are just researching. They have a general idea of what they're after, but they want to compare those options and the prices. So, a lot of people will go to Amazon for this, but now, a lot of people are doing that on brand sites as well. They go to Amazon and they find the product they want but then they end up on your brand site after they've done that research. They find the model number on Amazon, they Google it to find more details about the brand behind the product. Amazon isn't always the best at having product details, right? So a lot of times you'll end up on a brand site trying to do that and that's what these folks are. Ryan: Now, what would be the big differentiator on the researchers and the lookers? Because a lot of similarities between the two, but what would be the key differentiators in your mind? Jon: The key differentiator is the researcher knows what they want. They know what they're looking for. The lookers are ... It's kind of like wandering around a mall versus going right into the Apple store. You're at the mall but you beeline it for one shop because you know that you need something from that shop. Where you might just go to the mall to hang out, right? If that's even a thing, post-COVID one day, we'll see. Ryan: Someday we'll get back to a mall, maybe. Jon: New customers is another one. People don't really think about that often. And this is really where some visitors are just going to be new customers. They enjoyed their last visit. Maybe they were a looker on their last visit and now they're there to find out more and potentially become a new customer. Perhaps these are people who you should really be thinking about post-purchase, like they just purchased. What happens at that point, right? So these could be people who are buying from you the first time. And it's an audience you really need to be thinking about because you need to make them feel welcomed and appreciated. One that a lot of people don't think about is dissatisfied customers. Everybody has them. I don't care if your net promoter scores is perfect or you don't hear about these complaints. Everybody has a dissatisfied customer or more. And that's okay. These people are there for a number of reasons and it might not always be that bad. Maybe they're just dissatisfied because it didn't fit the way they thought it would, but they still like the product, they're there to return or exchange. For some reason, a previous purchase didn't suit them and now they want customer service. And the goal here is to make it easy for them to get that and perhaps even do self-service where possible. And the last one, seven of seven, we blew right through these, but we'll dive into each in a second, but this is loyal customers. So some of these are your best customers. They come back, they love shopping with you. They love your product and then they're going to be repeat customers. So, that's the seven. To run them real quick, it's lookers, bargain hunters, buyers, researchers, new customers, dissatisfied customers, and loyal customers. Ryan: Got it. So we know what personas people are in, generally. And then are there ways outside of the types of traffic that you help decide who this one is on the site to do that, or is it, I just want to make sure the site works for all of them? Jon: You really want to make sure the site works for all of them. And I think that there's many ways to group people into these different types. As I said earlier, they could be multiple types. But I heard you say the word persona, and I think I really want to make clear that it's easy to get dragged into things like personas, or where people are in the sales funnel, or warm, hot, and cold leads and visitors, or any of those things that can really just take you down the rabbit hole if you will, right? And I see this all the time where we ask people, who's your ideal customer, and they give us an avatar of somebody that has flowcharts, and photos of Charlie, the avid runner, and his demographics, and preferences, and what soda he drinks, or what bottled water he prefers, and all of that stuff doesn't really matter. It's never really put to good use, especially when it comes to optimizing a website, because that guy, Charlie, the runner, he was generated in the mind of the brand. He's not an actual consumer, right? So what you really want to do here is just keep it simple. Really you just want to focus on better serving each of these. And by doing that, you're likely to increase your conversions for each of these. Additionally, if you go any deeper than that, you're unlikely to get started because you'll end up in this, as I said earlier, rabbit hole of trying to figure out who Charlie is. Well, Charlie, isn't going to be all seven of these, right? So don't worry about Charlie and don't worry about going so deep. Ryan: Because you might have your ... If you've done the persona thing as a brand, you could have your same persona being all of these types. And so at the same time, keep this very top level when you're looking at your site and trying to guide traffic and just do what Jon says at the end of the day. Jon: If the world only worked that way. I'll have you call my wife after this and tell her that too. Ryan: Yeah, you do the same for me when we're talking about driving traffic. Okay. But we've got to tell people how do we take these groups of traffic and these people and get them to take the action we want them to take on the site. Because I'm guessing to a degree, not all of them are the same conversion either. Jon: Very accurate. That's true. Ryan: So we've got to think about that as well. Like a disgruntled customer is probably different than a looker at the end of the day, as far as action. So guide our listeners and viewers around what that looks like and how you're seeing converting those people. Jon: Well, let's break them down one by one, shall we? So start with lookers, really is what I would recommend here. And I think the thing to be thinking about here is with lookers is you're going to catch your attention and get them to stop that just shopping and not browsing long enough to consider some type of offer or something that gets their attention, right? So if you know your customers well enough, which most brands listening to this will, they'll know what will entice their customers. And I'm not just talking about an offer or a special or deal or anything of that sense, I'm also saying what's that one feature that makes you unique and makes you stand out? What's the benefit of the product that's really going to hit home for these people? They're at your site because they had a pain or a problem they're trying to solve. And they think your products can help them solve that problem. So you really want to make sure that you're putting that right upfront to get these people's attention early. But know also, it could take a few sales to get these people in there, right? So don't be discouraged when you see the bounce rate up there because people are just looking and leaving. That's what they do. That's why I call them lookers. Ryan: I hate when people talk to me about bounce rate. Take your bounce rate to the bank. Have them tell you what that's worth. Jon: Yeah, it doesn't help, right? Ryan: No. Jon: And it's a metric so many people chase, I think, thinking, oh, I can get my bounce rate down. Okay, this one goes in with time on-site with me as well. So many people track time on-site and I think it's a false metric because if you think about it, I'm there to get my tasks done. I'm there because I want to buy this product, or even if I'm just looking around, I generally have an idea of what I'm doing at your site. I might just still be browsing, but I have an idea of why I'm there. The problem with this is if I'm there for 10 minutes, you've made my life really complicated. I'm there because I need something, I'm looking around, and then the problem is I can't find that or I got sucked into something and I'm there for 10 minutes. As opposed to, I would much rather have customers who are at my site for three minutes and buy, right? And then I have their information. I can continue to market to them at another opportunity. But if somebody is spending 10, 20 minutes on your site, we probably have some type of usability problem. Ryan: Well, and also I laughed when you started talking about catching their attention because I know you're going to tell people it is not a pop-up telling them to join your email list for 10% off your first order, especially if you're a looker. Jon: Yep. I agree with that. Ryan: That is not going to be a quality email. Jon: Not at all. But you do want to encourage them to get on your mailing list but not through a discount, not through a pop-up, really encourage them in other ways so that you can then follow up with them later. Maybe that's something like an upcoming new release that they might be interested in, right? You should be thinking about it in that way. Once you've kind of got their attention, then how are you going to continue to keep that attention and continue to market to them? This is where I hear you say all the time, you're happy to pay for ads and break-even knowing you're building your customer roster. And I think that this is a good opportunity to be thinking about that without actually converting for a sale, right? This is what we would call a micro-conversion, where they're doing something that's not actually an exchange of money. Ryan: Now I would venture a guess and you can probably correct me if I'm wrong, but lookers probably make up the largest portion of traffic to most e-comm sites. Jon: Yes. There's a reason that I put them first on the list. It's because it's going to be the vast majority. Ryan: So it's a vast majority. You've worked with some pretty large brands with the ability to test measure lots of different things. Top of mind, obviously on the fly because we didn't talk about this beforehand, but what's a good implementation of this catch your attention that you've seen implemented that caused the brand to continue to be able to grow and push these lookers further down the funnel? Jon: Yeah. So this is where things like we were just looking at a company that sells a bunch of different pants. The price point was like $128 for a pair of pants. And I was like, man, that's, that's kind of expensive. I'm just looking at these pants. I don't really need a pair of pants right now. But the reality is what caught my attention was that they are five times stronger than jeans and I can do a lot of different activities in them. And that caught my attention because now I'm thinking, "Wow, they're going to last a lot longer than jeans and I probably spent $100 on a pair of jeans." So what's 28 more dollars to have them last five times as long as jeans, right? So just something like that, the benefit is really going to hit that. And I'm the target audience for that site I was looking at. So, these lookers, they're likely, the vast majority of them should be your target audience. If you're working with Ryan in Logical Position, then you're driving qualified traffic. And so assuming you're driving qualified traffic and these lookers end up there, they're going to be within your demographic of who is your ideal customer, so then really it's all about connecting with them on the benefit. Ryan: Got it. Okay. I think that's a great thing. It's easy to execute for most brands, I think. Jon: Yeah, for sure. So we can also talk about for each of these how I would recommend converting these. And I think for the lookers, I would want to really just make sure the e-commerce site is easy to navigate and search because really that's what they're here to do, is just walk around the store, right? So make it easy. Don't put barriers in their way, help them get where they want to go, and give them a really excellent reason to give them that email address that we talked about or other contact information, and so you can build a relationship with a nurturing campaign. That site I was just talking about, they had a bi-weekly $150 gift card that they would give to somebody who signed up. So you're entered to win a $150 gift card every other week, which is great because of $128 pair of jeans, I might get those for free. So if I'm seriously interested and I want to continue to stay in touch with this brand, I might've given them my email address there, right? And then another way really here is cart abandonment because a lot of lookers will add stuff to cart as a way of holding it to compare and look at when they're done browsing your store. It's kind of like if you go shopping and you might pick up a couple of different pairs of clothing or something off the rack when you're walking around the store because, "Oh, I like this. I might like it. Let me see what else they have too." And then you end up with three or four things, right? It's the same thing browsers are doing on your website. They're throwing it in their cart and then they want to just take a look at that and evaluate after. So having some type of cart abandonment there can be a great way to captivate their interest. Ryan: Awesome. Jon: So next would be bargain hunters. With bargain hunters, it's really not about discounting, right? That's not conversion optimization. I think you know my stance on discounting. People who listened to this show will know I'm fervent about not discounting, right? But instead, really look to offers like free shipping, or gift with purchase, BOGO. We did a whole episode on this. People really want to know the alternatives, they exist. And really here, you just want to be thinking about things like current offers on your website. Don't make your customer's desert at the checkout and then go elsewhere to find that bargain or that special code. If they have to go to any of those sites, they're not coming back. And so we really don't want to drive them there. And you might also highlight, last chance or clearance items instead of making shoppers really go find those on your site. It could be really good on every category to have a little tout or badge or flag on each product that says something about how it's last chance, or low inventory, or something that's on clearance. Ryan: Now, do you advocate for having a clearance or an outlet navigation button on brand sites for this type of thing? Jon: Generally not. Where I want to see that as within the category because, yes, having a clearance item ... A lot of brands will put that in the main navigation. The problem is you're wasting a really critical main navigation slot. You only want five to six navigation items to begin with. And if you're taking clearance as one of those or something of that sort, a sale, I see a lot of people have sale in main navigation, what's going to happen is people are going to go there first and they're not going to get a total view of your products. Usually, the products that are in that clearance are in clearance for a reason. They weren't really popular. So why do you want the first impression of what your product should be, for a person coming into your site to see, is only the products that other people normally wouldn't buy and they're on clearance, right? So instead, mix clearance in with your other products. That way you're not promoting only your worst sellers if you will. Ryan: A couple interesting points that deviate a little bit from what we're talking about, but it's applicable in that I can afford most things on the sites I go to, but I am cheap by default so I always go to the clearance button first. Because I'm like if I can find what I'm looking for on clearance first, I'm going to get it. Even though if I didn't see clearance, I would have gone to the product and probably bought a higher price one by default because that's just how I operate on a site. But also, when you are throwing discounted products on your site, and there's a clearance section that they are in, if your Google shopping is not set up properly, all of those products would have been going into the clearance section and you can be stuck in the clearance section of the site and you're going to be staying in there most of the time. And because products are discounted price, generally get to show more often in Google shopping because they're lower price point or there's a discounted price, you will, unfortunately, be sending a lot of discounted traffic to your site when that maybe is not the focus of your brand. So some brands I advocate for having an outlet site that's completely separate. Jon: That's a great point. Ryan: Kind of like Gap Outlet, their stores, they sell all their old stuff and they'll have a separate site, and then having the people going to gap.com on that. Jon: That's a great point. And that probably makes Kanye very happy as well. Next up is buyers. Buyers should be buying from you in a way that's hassle-free, right? These people want to buy. They're there to buy. They have a job. That's one job that they're there to do and that's to buy, so let them buy. Clear these obstacles, make it easy and simple to buy, really be thinking here about the bottlenecks in the path to purchase that people must take, right? What are the hurdles you're asking them to jump over? Let's get rid of those. A really great way to look at this is to do user testing, get people who fit your ideal customer profiles, and have them run through your site while you record it and talk about the challenges they're having. Again, the whole goal here is to get outside the jar, read the label from outside the jar. And it's really hard to do that when you're too close to it. So really be focusing on just eliminating every single possible barrier, too many fields on checkout, making people create an account before they buy, all of those things that would be extra steps or what we're looking to eliminate with these. Ryan: And be clear on your shipping rates. That's the one that makes me so mad lately, is people not telling me what I'm going to pay for shipping, so it'll increase your cart abandonment too. Jon: Yeah, Exactly. I mean, these people are ready to buy until they saw you were going to charge them 20 bucks to ship, right? And so, there you go. Perfect case study. Announcer: You're listening to Drive and Convert, a podcast focused on e-commerce growth. Your hosts are Jon MacDonald, founder of The Good, a conversion rate optimization agency that works with e-commerce brands to help convert more of their visitors into buyers, and Ryan Garrow of Logical Position, a digital marketing agency offering pay-per-click management, search engine optimization, and website design services to brands of all sizes. If you find this podcast helpful, please help us out by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you. Jon: All right. Should we move on to researchers? Ryan: Yes. Jon: Really, researchers, my point of view on these is these folks need to just make sure that they feel like they've considered their options and they're making the right decision. And your job, your only job is to help them do that. So what does this look like? Well, provide all the info you can think of, dimensions, instructions, details, data, data, data. That's what these people want, right? They're comparing. They came to your site because as I mentioned earlier, they were on Amazon, the Amazon didn't have the details, so they're relying on your site to have them. And you want to help them just make an informed decision. This could be everything from product reviews from other consumers to video. Researchers love video because they can see the products in motion and in use. Somebody even just holding the product and walking them through it. Specialized Bicycles does an amazing job of this. They actually have employees of Specialized, not models or anything else. It's employees hold the bike and then walk a consumer through it on video. And it's really, really well done. It does not have to be ... They shoot it in a studio, but it doesn't feel like it's a super well-polished and professional video on purpose, right? It's not some high production quality. You're aiming for your local news versus the national morning show, right, in level of quality here. Ryan: Got it. Jon: So the other thing is, really help these people understand things like sizing and photography. Video, I mentioned. So those are the things you just really want to help people dive into are all these different decision points. All right, new customers. These folks, they really want to feel like they've made a wise decision or that you want them to feel like they can make a wise decision, understand your warranties, helping people stand behind their products. You want to make sure that you're glad that they are your customer and make them know that. So this is where you think about retail source. Like your wife's retail store, right? She's there to answer questions. She can help out with returns. She'll generally just express gratitude when these people are shopping, right? It's hard to do that online, but this is where it becomes really, really important that you're doing things like building relationships with nurturing campaigns. And that can start with, as I mentioned earlier, a post-purchase campaign. What happens after this new customer becomes a new customer, right? They're no longer a visitor, they're now a customer. What do you need to do there? Loyalty campaigns, a huge way to engage these folks, right? You get them in and say, "Thank you so much for your first purchase. Here is points for your next purchase," or, "Two more purchases and your fourth one is free." Something of that sort, right? Where you're helping these loyal people become loyal customers. That's really what this is all about. Ryan: And these people just purchased, so maybe they haven't even gotten the product yet or maybe they just got it. Jon: Exactly. Ryan: Even just user videos on how to use the product you're getting can be valuable. I do that with Joyful Dirt. Jon: That's a great point, right? So what can you send as that follow-up email flow while the people are waiting for their package to make sure they know that you have their back, right? So if I bought Joyful Dirt, what do I need to prep for? Is there a season I should be doing this in? How much water do I need to apply? All these other types of things that I probably don't really think about, but are really key to somebody getting the most out of the product and buying again, right? If I follow your instructions for Joyful Dirt, I am more likely to have a good experience and then buy again, then if I just use the product without reading the instructions, which is more likely for me than not so. Ryan: What I appreciate on it too, on that first email after I purchase, usually the next day, it builds the anticipation because often I forget what I bought yesterday and I get surprised by Amazon in two days, who are the site I purchased it on. And so you're like, "Oh, yeah, I do have that coming in a day." I'm excited to get it now because I was excited yesterday when I bought it, and I forgot today, and then tomorrow when it arrives, I get excited. So it's a good way to continue that kind of that high from my purchase that I just paid. Jon: How is there not a phrase like the Amazon phenomenon or something, where everybody forgets what they ordered at Amazon at midnight the night before and then it shows up two days later and you're like, "Oh, yeah, I was looking for that. That was great. I'm a genius." Ryan: I know. I was like, well, I knew I wanted one of these and like, oh, I did want one and then I bought it. It was great. In college, it would have been, "Man, what did I do at 2:00 AM?" and talk about, "Oh, I had a bean burrito." Now, it's just transaction fatigue or something. And I'm just [crosstalk 00:25:48]. Jon: That was much lower key than I thought you were going there, Ryan. 2:00 AM in college. But this happened to me recently where I was working out with a trainer and we do an outdoor workout in my garage now. And it was really funny because he didn't bring his TRX bands. If you know about these TRX straps, they're a way to do workouts. And the reality is that I went on and I just ordered a pair from Amazon. I was like, "Well if you ever forget them again, I'll have some here." And totally forgot about it. And then the next workout came by and the Amazon guy literally showed up two days later while we were working out. So it had been like two days to the hour and the guy shows up and I'm like, "Oh, I wonder what that is." And you could read the outside of the box. It said TRX. And my trainer is like, "Did you get something from TRX?" I was like, "Oh, yeah. Last time you were here. Yeah, remember?" Yeah, so that's was pretty funny. I was like, Amazon wins again. Ryan: Yep. Jon: All right. Dissatisfied customers. We have two left. So let's talk about the dissatisfied customers. Everybody has them, right? And they exist. And that's okay. These folks often can just be made satisfied by helping them understand that you're trying to fix their challenge and improve the experience for everyone else. Often, it's like if I come across a problem on our website, okay, let's just say, I just bought a bed. I'm not going to name names, but I bought a bed online and it has a whole bunch of technology in it. Love it. But, I'm a tall gentleman, right? And I bought a king, and it comes, and I was like, "This is a lot smaller than a king." It turns out, I measured it, it's two inches less than a king. And I was like, that's really weird. It's not a queen. So what's going on here? And so I contacted the brand and said, "Hey, this bed is two inches smaller than a king." And they said, "Oh, yeah. Because of some of the technology, blah, blah, blah, we have to make it a little bit smaller." And I was like, "That would have been nice to have known up on your site. You need to tell people that it says king, but it's actually two inches smaller. Because you're advertising all these NBA players use this bed and things like that, and I'm thinking great, right? But then it's two inches smaller." And the founder actually emailed me and said, "Hey, I got this feedback. I heard this. Well, we're going to add this to the website and make sure people know." And I was like, okay, well, I still have the bed, now I'm satisfied. And I was like, at least other people won't have that problem, right>. So I felt vindicated in some way. And so I think I made this point to say that complaining customers are an excellent source of feedback. And that's how you need to look at these, right? It's not about just having dissatisfied customers, it's about understanding what their problems are and fixing them. They tell you what the problems with your website and your consumer experience are, and so you could fix those problems. So really just want to be quick to listen to things like bad reviews, understand the complaint before responding, and understand that you can turn dissatisfied customers into loyal ones. It is possible. Ryan: I think too often brands hear or get bad feedback or just dissatisfied customers, and it's just for them, it's almost scary confronting it, or they're really excited and passionate about their brand, and somebody doesn't like it, they're like, "They just don't know what they're doing." I've done this myself with brands, and I'm like, "They just don't know what they're doing." And then I'm like, okay, it happened again. I'm like, okay, fine, we need to adjust the product. And my baby may be ugly, so let's fix it and not make it so ugly to some of these people. You can't be scared of dissatisfied customers, or you're going to lose your brand. At the end of the day, it's going to be just terrible. Jon: That's a good point. Yeah. All right. Last one, loyal customers. So, look, the 80/20 rule says that 20% of your customers will be responsible for 80% of your business. So the way I like to look at this and it's hilarious, I was just saying this to somebody else, but loyal customers are your bread and the rest are your butter, right? So really want to be thinking about what are you doing for these loyal people? So look at loyalty programs. I like to use airlines as examples because they are so good at gamifying, right? I'm platinum on Delta. I mean, I haven't flown them in nine months and I just got another letter from them yesterday with baggage tags for platinum level. And they said, "Hey, we're going to keep you a platinum level for another year. Don't worry about it. All the miles you've accumulated will count towards next year. So you don't have to start over. We understand." And they're gamifying it and in a way that's, okay, now, next year, when I start flying again or whenever that is, I'm going to go right back to Delta because I'm still platinum there. If they had removed, I'd just figure out, I'd be like, hey, well maybe Alaska or whoever else flies more on the West Coast where I'm all the time going, I would probably switch. But now I'll stick with Delta, right? They've done a great job with that through what's no doubt a challenging time for them. So really want to be thinking about a way to keep customers coming back and how you can take care of your most loyal customers. As I say, gamifying works very, very well. Every customer is special, but you really want to treat these folks with even more kid gloves, if you will. And then find ways to reward and recognize these people, you can give them special amenities. Baggage tags aren't really going to be much for me. I don't really care about that, but I'll take the free upgrades and the free alcohol and everything else that comes with being platinum with Delta. And then really just treat them like a VIP and they'll continue to be loyal. That's really my key point here. Ryan: And this is really probably the one area that I advocate for companies looking at competitors and taking note because a lot of times when you look at competitors and they have this widget on their side, or they do this thing in their ads, they probably have no idea what they're doing. At the end of the day, they're testing something. But when it comes to loyalty and what they're doing with their customers to try to keep them loyal, often, this is where a lot of research goes and especially in the airlines. If I was running an airline, I would go to all of the other airlines' loyalty program, find a list somehow and say, "Look, if you are platinum with Delta, I will automatically make you platinum or whatever my highest thing is with Alaska, give me a shot." And just automatically, because you're losing nothing. I'm not getting Jon's business right now. Jon: Right. It's funny you say that because Alaska does just that. They'll do a status match, where if you're platinum on Delta, they will status match you and give you that for a year on Alaska. Sadly, you can only do it once in your lifetime. And I did it right before the pandemic, so that's not a good situation for me. But yeah, at any rate [crosstalk] travel. Ryan: Join your competitor's loyalty program. I highly recommend everybody do that because it's going to give you some ideas of what they're seeing in the data or how they're gamifying it. Just jog your brainstorming ideas. Jon: Yeah. Status matches is a great idea, right? That's wonderful. Yeah. Where do you think you want to go from here? Ryan: Well, we're about out of time. So, I guess, I've got a lot to chew on too because I'm sure we're going to come out with some other ideas on this after digesting most of your data. But there's a lot of things you can do on a site to target a lot of people. And so what would your suggestion be to somebody that's just taken this fire hose to the face for their site and they're like, oh, my gosh, seven different groups of people? Where do you start and how do you start taking some actions so you're not a paralysis-analysis scenario? Jon: Yeah, great point. I would say here, start by asking questions about each of these groups and taking a good look at your site from their perspectives, right? So do each of these customer types get their needs met or are you just leaving some out in the cold? And how do you identify and engage the most loyal customers, or how do you flag and recognize new customers? And are you providing enough information to researchers? So really there's a key question in each of these if you go down and just ask yourself, am I meeting the needs of these people? And you'll come up with tons and tons of optimizations that you can do to your site on your own pretty easily. Ryan: Got it. And I would probably just broad stroke saying if you move up through the list in reverse order, you're taking care of some of the easiest or most important things. Like keeping your loyal customers loyal to you, you can't lose lifetime value customers, otherwise, your top-funnel marketing is just wasted. So keep those and move up. If you have to make a choice on where you're taking actions, I'm guessing that's where I would start. Jon: There you go. Awesome. Well, thank you, Ryan. I really enjoyed the conversation today. Ryan: Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for bringing your brain and letting me pick it and add some value to our listeners. I appreciate that. Jon: All right. Well, have a great afternoon. Ryan: You too. Thanks, Jon. Announcer: Thanks for listening to Drive and Convert with Jon MacDonald and Ryan Garrow. To keep up to date with new episodes, you can subscribe at driveandconvert.com.

Psychology plays an important part in business no matter what business you’re in or how you’re getting sales. The best tactics to convince us to spend money are the ones we’re not aware of. Retail stores have been using music, scents, and merchandising to get us to spend more money for decades if not centuries. Those tactics online now have a name and its Dark Patterns. Jon explain just what Dark Patterns are and why your brand should avoid using them. Read more about Dark Patterns: https://thegood.com/insights/dark-pattern-ecommerce-ux-design/ Transcription: Ryan: Jon, psychology plays an important part in business, no matter what business you're in and how you're getting the sales. Now, the best tactics to convince us to spend money are the ones we're not really aware of. And retail has been doing this probably for hundreds of years, even though I haven't been involved in it, using music's sense merchandising of how they put products on the shelves to get us to spend more money. And all of that research and data is out there for the taking, but I would venture a guess that most of the public is unaware of actually what's happening in those retail environments to commit us to spend money. When it comes to e-Commerce though, and the way our economy is moving to transacting online, I'm finding a lot of these "psychology tactics" are much more in your face, or at least I'm more aware of them. And maybe it's because I'm spending too much time in front of my computer talking to e-Commerce business owners and looking at e-Commerce sites. But I see it all the time, and a lot of times it just bugs me and you have a term for it called dark patterns. And that's a new term to me, but probably not to you because you work in the CRO world, but you recently mentioned it on LinkedIn. And I wanted to learn more about it because it fascinates me, the intricacies of psychology because studying sales my whole life and now having a retail store with my wife, it's just always there. And I think most of them I see online are garbage, some plugins on Shopify sites that maybe should never have been put on in the first place, but I want to learn about dark patterns. And I learned from one of the best in the world, who should be you. Jon: Awesome. Ryan: It sounds evil, but I just want to know more. How do we use our powers for good? Jon: I'm looking forward to it. Ryan: Jon, why don't you just take a moment and give me a high level of what do you mean when you say dark patterns when it comes to e-Commerce and e-Commerce sites? Jon: So when I talk about dark patterns, what I'm talking about is similar to, if you think about hacking and in a way that there's white hat and black hat, right. And black hat hacking is when you're doing something intentionally for a negative outcome, it might be a benefit to somebody like it's going to be benefits to the hacker, but you're hurting somebody in that process or you're creating a problem in that process. Where a white hat hacker is really just trying to help. They're trying to do things for positive. Maybe they're looking for bugs, but they're going to report them to the software maker before they do anything to exploit it. So you think about that. Exploitation is really what comes in here to my head when I think about this more than anything else. So, what we're talking about here today is really when an e-Commerce store makes something difficult because they want to influence the outcome that they're trying to do. So whether that's something through psychology, you talked about in a retail environment, the type of music they play in the background that calms people down, or how they price, where they make things $2 and 99 cents instead of $3, right? You start thinking about all these psychology tricks that come at play well in e-Commerce there's all those psychology tricks. Plus there are ways to actually increase barriers intentionally on a website so that the consumer can't take the action that they're trying to take, instead, you've made it more difficult. Some examples of this really easy one, an email pop-up pops up when you come to the site to sign up for email lists and there's no way to close it. So the only way you can get back to what you were trying to do is to give them your email address, or I like to call this negative intent shaming. So where the button in that pop-up says something like, no, I don't like discounts or I don't like saving money, right? There's all these types of dark patterns. And it can go even more, really sinister and you make it just impossible to unsubscribe without calling, right? So for years, and it may still be this way, but Skype was an amazing case study of this, where they would claim massive retention rates, but their user rate was super low and usage. And the only reason they had retention rates that were so impressive is because the only way to actually cancel and delete your Skype account was to call a phone number in the U.S. So, if you're an international user where Skype was way more prevalent than in the States, you had to call international, talk to somebody in English only, and say, I need to cancel my Skype account. Please delete it from your servers. Why won't you just do that when a click of a button? So this is a good example of a dark pattern where the brand really valued retention, so they made it near impossible, right up, maybe to that legal limit. And one of the things you saw on LinkedIn was I had posted to an article it had run in what's called The Hustle, which is a great entrepreneur email. If you're no signed up for a free email, it comes out every morning, just around entrepreneurship and the tech industry and whatnot. And they were saying that there's new legislation coming in that is all about making these dark patterns illegal. And that most things need to be self-service, and it shouldn't be a challenge. So that's really where I was going with this was not only is this just bad to do and lead to a horrible brand image in the longterm, but it's also going to become illegal fairly soon. And I hope it's sooner than later, I have my doubts that would happen anytime in the near future, but I hope it's sooner than later. Ryan: So could you also bundle in to that broad, I guess I would probably try to broaden dark patterns a little bit and say it also includes what people think is helping from a psychological perspective, but it's actually just stupid. Well, one of my, I guess, favorite, least favorite was the one that I noticed the most is there's a plug-in on a lot of sites that says, Oh, little Jimmy just bought the pink t-shirt and Oh, look over here, Susie just bought this vase. And Oh, people are buying all over on the site and I can go to some sites and I've seen maybe the analytics behind the scenes and maybe some of my audit. And I know for a fact, there's no way that five people just bought something in the 30 seconds I was on their site. Jon: That's exactly it. Fake social proof is a great example of this, right? So it's having a random number of view, people are viewing this product right now, having X number of people who just bought this product from wherever in the world. And consumers always distrust that now, because it's been abused. Right. But it's a dark pattern because what are they trying to do? They're trying to influence your psychology around social proof and having fear of missing out. And you want what everyone else wants and, Oh, well, if so-and-so just bought that product, then it's probably legit and I should buy it too. And we see this more and more, a really good example is well, and we're getting through a lot of good examples. I could go on for days for examples, but another great example is a fake countdown timer, right? They're introducing scarcity, but it's false scarcity. What I mean by that is sign up within the next five minutes and we'll give you something or okay, we've talked about this in other shows, we did a discounting episode, not too long ago. And you were talking about how your wife just leaves products in the cart, abandons the cart, waits 24 hours and knows there's the discount email coming. You know that that clock is no good. Okay. Reminds me of the old TV commercials call within the next five minutes and you get this free bonus. They have no idea when that commercial is going to run, down to the minute, they don't know. And if you think about it, especially when you see these on news stations, right? News stations have somewhat of a cadence for ad timing, but it's never down to the second, to down to the minute. So there's no way you could start a clock and say in five minutes, right? I guarantee you, if you called them in a week, they'd give you that same price. And it's the exact same thing happening here where there's a whole bunch of these dark patterns that are playing on people's psychology or making it really complicated for them to actually take an action they want to do in order to benefit the brand. Ryan: So what we're not talking about though, is actually having your inventory show on the siting. I actually only have three of these left because Amazon, I see doing that. And based on some of my experience in Amazon, on my brands, I feel the trust that at this point they might change, but that's not what I'm talking about as far as scarcity. Jon: No. Ryan: Okay. It's the manipulation of faking scarcity or faking a countdown timer. Jon: Yes, exactly. Now, if you're just always going to say that there's only three of these left, in order to have scarcity when none exists, then that's a dark pattern. But if you're actually trying to help the consumer, get the product they want and know that, Hey, if you don't buy it, now you're going to have to wait for the next batch to come in. And that could be six weeks or whatever. Right. Then I would put that under the white hat, right. You're really trying to help people and you're giving them more information to make a decision. And that's why this is such an interesting topic. How do you prove what's dark and what's not? Right. If you look at a brand, you mentioned, well, I've had experiences with Amazon. I trust that based on my experiences there. But if you just saw that on some random new e-Comm site that you've never been to before, how do you trust that for sure. How do you know for sure that, that's the reality? Ryan: I personally would have trouble with that. Just knowing as much as I do about e-Comm. Jon: Yeah. You've been burned before, right. There was a great Twitter thread, a few weeks back. It was what is one thing about industry that you work in that the general public doesn't know? And this falls under for e-Commerce that I saw somebody posted, well, I run an e-Commerce brand. And we tell people our products are selling out, when they're not. I was like, okay, well, there you go. That's a dark pattern, right? Ryan: Yeah. Happens often. Ryan: Obviously we don't like them. And I would believe they're hurting brands to a degree, but I bet you probably have some data about how does some of these products that you've seen actually do opposite of what this business owner probably intended for it to do, this countdown timer or, Hey, everybody's buying this all over the world. You need to buy now. Jon: Right. Ryan: Do you see it actually hurting the conversion rate? Jon: Well, I will tell you this, first of all, does it work for the initial conversion? Sometimes, perhaps, right? It might, probably not as well as people think, because if you have to get to that level to get people to buy, you probably have other systemic issues that you need to solve. A product issue, a pricing issue, a brand trust issue, right? There's a lot of other things that you should work on solving instead of trying to take the shortcut. So let's say you get that original purchase, right. Then the person comes back to buy again and they notice that, okay, well now I've got another countdown timer, or maybe it happens where like your wife, you wait that timer out every time. And you know, it's not happy now you trust that brand a little less, right? So I would say that on the first purchase, it might work, but for the longer term customer lifetime value growth, and maybe a brand perception angle, no, it's not going to work. I argue that it's going to hurt you more in the longterm. Ryan: Yeah, I guess an argument could be made based on that. But if you only get one sale ever you're selling mattresses, you don't care if they ever come back. Jon: Boom. That's a great example, right? A mattress store, you go to any mattress store. They're always having the best sale ever, always. And you walk into a mattress store, I guarantee you, you're not going to pay the price that's listed there. You can talk them down because they're going to give you a price that is just a random price. And you're going to be able to go in and just say, okay, well, last week it was this other price or, Hey, well, what if I give you a $100 less? And they're probably be like, okay. Yeah, that's true. If the goal is to get that first sale and that's it at all costs, and you're never going to sell to them again. And you just don't care about your brand over the longer term of, with that customer or even your reputation perhaps. Then I would argue sure. Have at it. Still, not ethical or moral in my point of view. But if you don't want to grow a sustainable brand and revenue, then have at it. Ryan: Yeah. And I would argue though, that even if that is unethical, not great, your business won't be around anyway, because people are going to see through it more and more, I think. And then the marketing costs of getting traffic to your site, necessitates at this point, a lifetime value on a customer. Jon: Right. Ryan: If you're not playing the lifetime value game in e-Commerce, I don't think you're going to be hearing from me and Jon in a couple of years. Because you won't be in commerce at the end of the day. You've got to have that. No matter if you're a retailer or if you're a brand that's selling through retailers and on your own site, you have to have a plan for selling to that customer multiple times in the future. Jon: Right, right. Ryan: Building trust, obviously we focus on that on both of our ends of marketing constantly and dark patterns can interrupt that even if it's short-term creates commercial rate increase, but are there some areas in this that you say are valuable on both of those counts? Like increases conversion rates and while some people might think this is maybe in that space, it actually does good as far as building the lifetime value as well. Jon: Well, I would say that if your intent is to put up a barrier for the consumer, that there's no positive, they can come of that in my point of view, right? People are at your site because they're there to complete a task, right. They think that your product or service can help them complete that task. And now if you are trying to actively prevent them from completing the task, they want to complete only because you want them to complete the tasks you want them to do. There's no positive that's going to come out of that. Right. For instance, you're in a checkout and the default check is yes, subscribe email list, right. How many times do people just leave that checked, right. Or you use confusing language check here to not receive our emails lists each week. Ryan: I love that example of yours. Like, wait, what do I... Is it checked? Jon: Exactly. Yeah. All of that stuff is where I end up getting really, really frustrated. And when I see that stuff often, quite honestly, I choose not to work with that brand. I just say we're not a good fit because our mission to remove all of these bad online experiences is not going to be further long by working with them because they don't really want to help the consumer. Right. Maybe it's a mistake if there's one of them or maybe they got some bad advice at some point, if it's just one thing that's happening, or they using an app that makes it too easy to do that. Like one of those purchase apps you were talking about that come up out of the corner and telling you that somebody purchased recently, but they didn't. But I would say, at that point there's really not anything I can do to change the ethics of that company. And that's, I think what this really comes down to. And there's too many brands out there that want to help consumers and do the right thing that they don't... We don't need to work with the brands who are only just trying to use psychology to trick people into purchasing. Ryan: Yeah. I think both of us have been as long enough. We know there's a lot of people in our industry that loves selling some snake oil and there are a lot of them giving bad advice and I come across constantly. So that's why my mission's probably not as holistic or maybe pretty as yours. I'll say mine is like, I just want to put all my competitors out of business that are selling snake oil and then sell [crosstalk 00:17:04] behind me. Jon: Exactly. Ryan: Save e-Comm brands from stupid advice. Jon: Hey, that's a good moral lesson in that though. Right? Just making it happen. Right. And I think the reality is, is you guys have won it Logical Position, and you've gotten as big as you have because of the way you treat people and handle these accounts. Right. You would never be serving 6,000 clients if you tried all these tricks because there would be a handful of people out there who would be okay with it. But the vast majority of brands are good. And I wholeheartedly believe that, but unfortunately, what do they say? That one bad Apple spoils the whole bunch. Is that the phrase? Ryan: Yeah. At least it does on my phone. Jon: Yeah. I've been apple picking once when I was a kid maybe, but I can't claim to have much farm experience. Ryan: So, just as in most things in business, as long as you filter through some type of lens that says, is this something I would be comfortable with my mom getting or being presented with like, Hey, if I'm lying that somebody is checking out and there's an app for that. Why on earth would it make sense for me to put it on there? If I know that, Hey, this might convince my mom to buy something she doesn't need and be a good human at the end of the day. If you do that as a business owner with an e-Comm site, you're not going to be putting these things on there to do this. And hopefully we're going to help you put your competitors out of business who are trying to do those things. Jon: Well, I think that's a great lens to put this through the mom test, right. Be thinking about this. If you are doing something that you wouldn't want done to your mom. Then don't do it. Right. And I think that, that's a really good way to look at this. If it would trick your mom into doing something that she really didn't want to do, then just get rid of it. Would you want your mom automatically opting into this privacy statement or would you want your mom to automatically get these emails? And you know she'd be frustrated if she just wants to purchase a product. And all of a sudden was getting marketing emails every day. Or if she got tricked into doing an upsell on a product, because it was default added to the cart, the highest, most expensive shipping option was chosen when there were way cheaper options. There's a lot of things like that that happen all the time. And the problem is, it's really something that would frustrate most people. But I think I see it more than probably the casual online shopper, but I also have [inaudible 00:19:40] and obligation to resolve those problems when I see them as much as possible. Ryan: Yeah. And if you do convert optimization, right, you don't need them. Jon: Right. Ryan: And that's the crazy thing. You don't need gimmicks, if you've got a solid business, good products, and you've worked with Jon, or if you're not quite to Jon's level, you're doing just good things at the end of the day. And I think the example of shipping is a phenomenal one that I didn't even think about until you said it that as a business owner, you're like, Hey, shipping, we make margin on this shipping or not this shipping. And we have free shipping here or not, but you can just check this one because it just makes sense maybe from a business perspective where is, we need more margin here because we're giving it up here. But at the end of the day, if you just do what is right, that you would want done to you, you've got that potential for customer lifetime value. Jon: Right. Ryan: And that's where your profit can come from. Jon: Yeah. I really like your approach of, if you've wouldn't do it to your mom, don't do it on your set. I think that's great. I wholeheartedly believe in that. And I think all of these things would fall under that. Right. Would you really want to do face fake scarcity and make your mom believe there's only one item left when there's not? Ryan: I'll tell you your mom, she's an idiot that she doesn't want to save money. I know my mom wants to save money, believe me. I'm not going to call her an idiot for not- Jon: Exactly. She doesn't want your emails. That's why she's clicking no. But... Ryan: Yep. Jon: Yeah. Well, I think this has been great conversation though. Ryan: Yeah. Me too. So is there anything anybody needs to know that we haven't touched on when it comes to dark patterns or things you can or might do to your site even by accident that you just want to be aware of? Jon: Yeah. I would think the first thing you should do when you add any app from the Shopify app store or any of those is give it a good look. Don't just use it because you see a competitor using it. Don't just assume they have positive intent here, go install it and then really dig in. Do some user testing on it, get understanding from consumers. Is it really being helpful for them or is it causing a another barrier in their road to conversion? And if it is ask yourself, am I putting up that barrier because it's better for me, or am I putting up that barrier unnecessarily? And it's actually making it hard for them to complete the purchase, which is what you ultimately want. And I have yet to hear an example that fits into both of those. Again, it's either black or white, it's either white hat or black hat, and there's really nothing in between that I can find. And if somebody listening to this has a great example of that. Please let me know. I would love to have some good examples of that. Ryan: Put it on LinkedIn, share it with Jon, so we can all see. Jon: Yeah. Tag Ryan and I. Ryan: Well, thanks Jon. I appreciate you giving me an education and anybody else's listening for that because it's very helpful. Jon: Awesome. Thanks Ryan. Appreciate the conversation. Ryan: Thank you.

It seems most brands are using email popups on their website. Today Jon dismantles this practice with passion, explaining why they're bad for everyone, and offering better alternatives. TRANSCRIPT: Ryan: Jon, we've spoke together quite a few times around the country, and then recently just around the internet, since we can't leave our houses. And almost every time we talk, you ruffle quite a few feathers when you're answering questions about email pop-ups. It seems that most retailers and brands out there on their websites, they are absolutely in love with their email pop-up campaign, they think it can do no wrong. And I personally don't like them because they're just annoying and I close them immediately because I'm trying to look at something else. And, but you're distaste, some may say hate, goes a little bit deeper within this space, but so many, again, so many brands are using these. It's just making me crazy. So, I want to talk about these and get your opinion, the backend and the numbers that are guiding your distaste for these. But even to start with, what do you think is pushing this trend and what data are these merchants seeing that's causing these email pop-ups for discounts or anything just to become the norm? If you don't have it, you're weird almost at this point. Jon: Brands, what they're doing is they see another successful brand they look up to have email popups and they say, "It must be working for them. We need to do this as well." It goes in line with all the little Shopify apps that are out there that just spread like wildfire overnight, and then they'd disappear just as quickly once everybody realizes they don't actually move the needle, but they saw their competitor trying it out, so they thought they showed as well. Tons of examples of that. I think that's generally what happens here, first of all. Second of all, the brands see that email is their highest revenue channel, most likely. And so, they say every time I send an email, it's like printing money. So I should collect more emails. And that sometimes even comes down from the executive level, down to that marketing manager who is needing to implement that, whether they think it's right or not. And third, I think what happens is that brands look at a success metric of how many people do we have on our email list. And they see these pop-ups collect email addresses. And so, they assume they are working. And I guess the goal that they usually have is just to collect email addresses at all costs, right? And they're thinking, "If I get someone on my email list, I can then continue to market to them and the rest will fall into line." And that just is a huge problem. It's, to me, it's the wrong way to be thinking about it. And after optimizing sites for 11 years, statistically, it's not accurate. Ryan: Being an e-commerce brand myself, I know that if my email list goes from 10,000 to 20,000, I'm probably making more money from email. So, where are brands missing the logic behind these pop-ups and not equating to larger email database equals more revenue from emails every time I send one? Jon: Yeah. I think, I don't have an issue with collecting email addresses. As I said, it should be, and looking at 10 decades of content and data around emails, it definitely can be your highest revenue channel. The problem I have with is the method of collecting, right? So, let's just start with that. I mean, we could, there's lots of directions, we'll, I'm sure we'll go today about the method of doing it around discounts and everything else, but let's just talk about the pop-up form in itself. And what I mean by that is just there are multiple ways to collect email addresses. You can start with those who have ordered and how you have the actual customer contact information that you own, right? If you doing an owned to sale, as opposed to something like an Amazon, then you have that information, people you can remarket to and continue to sell to. However, if you just put a pop-up on your site versus maybe even baking a form into the page, right? Where customers who are actually interested, will scroll down to your footer and they'll enter their information because they're super interested. Right? I would almost encourage anyone listening to this to set a separate form up in your footer and tag people who fill that form out as higher intent, because they actually are interested in what you had to say. Now, the problem with a pop-up, let's just talk about straight up pop up, not an exit intent, right? Ryan: So, you're categorizing your email pops up into different buckets? Jon: Yes. Yes. There's different types. And I think that's important here because the one that I want to eliminate from the internet is just the pop-up. As soon as I come to a site, or maybe as soon as I start scrolling or even the timed ones that come up within a couple of seconds of loading the page, those are the ones I want to eliminate. Now, exit intent. Let's put that in a different category. I'm not as opposed to those. But what I'm talking about here is the disruption to the consumer experience, the interruption factor as well. Think of your site like a retail store. Now I know your wife has a retail store, right? If I walk into her store and she jumped out at me and said, "Here's a clipboard, give me your email address." I'm going to probably have a negative reaction to that. Right? Ryan: At least she's cute. That does help. Jon: Well, Hey. Ryan: Popups, aren't as cute. Jon: Hey, you know what I mean? You could make, you could put a nice looking picture on a pop-up, but that still doesn't change the fact that I'm there because I have a problem that I'm looking to solve. And I'm at the website because I think that their product or service can solve my pain or need. And all of a sudden now, before I know anything about the brand, something led me there, was it I clicked on an ad or a Google search or someone told me about it, so I have idea that they can help me solve my pain or need. But then all of a sudden I just get there, I still don't know about the value proposition of the brand, I don't know much about their products yet, but then I'm getting hit up right away being asked to give them information. And I think that that's just disruptive and I can promise you every test we've run where we've eliminated that pop-up conversion rates have gone up on the site and sales and revenue. Now yes, you will collect less email addresses. But I argue that's not a bad thing in this case, with this type of pop-up. And the reason is a couple of faults. So, first of all, the email addresses you're going to collect out of those pop-ups are going to be very, I would argue they're not going to be very effective, right? Because you're getting a consumer who is entering their email address into that pop-up specifically to get rid of the pop-up in a lot of cases, because they... This goes into more things like negative intent shaming, because maybe in that popup, it's a pretty common trend now for a company to say something like, "No, I don't like discounts and offers." Ryan: Gosh, I hate that. I had that happen a couple of days ago. And I was like, "Of course I like discounts. I'm not an idiot, but I just don't like you telling me that I don't like discounts." Jon: Right. You're you're hurting the brand, right? And you're hurting your customer experience and that's damaged that you now have to repair. So, within the first five seconds of getting into the website, you're already have dug yourself a hole you have to get out. Ryan: Yeah. And I think brands are getting kind of like, "Ooh, we're kind of that little unique, give it to the man brand. And we're going to use that humor." [crosstalk 00:07:34] That doesn't necessarily come through because I actually don't know you yet. And maybe that's my first... I don't know that that's the type of brand you are. I was looking for a pair of board shorts. And now all of a sudden you're telling me I'm an idiot before I even know that you're, that's the voice of your brand. Jon: Exactly. Okay. This is another great example of real world for this, right? Popups are just like those people who canvas on the street corner, who come up and you're just trying to walk by and get to your next location, right? You're trying to get some job done in your life, going to the coffee shop or whatever it might be, you have a meeting you're walking to. And Greenpeace, not just to pick on Greenpeace, but they're out all over in Portland. They run up to you with a clipboard and they say, "Hi, can we chat for a minute?" And it's like, "No, I'm trying to get something done. This is not a good time for me." And then they follow you, "Well, did you know that this is happening with the environment? And this is happening." And it's like, "Yeah. You know what? That might still be important to me, but now's not a good time." And they're like, "That's fine. Just give me your contact information. We'll follow up with you." And it's like, "No, no, no. I don't know who you are." Right? I don't want to just give some random person my contact information. And then what are you doing with that contact information? So, I think the problem is, is that marketers stop having empathy for what the consumer is going through on the other side of the screen, and they just feel like it's okay because they can't see that person to do these really poor consumer experience activities on their site. And that's what I try to fight against with this. And unfortunately pop-ups is the worst example of this on the internet. And so, that's why I ended up fighting against it. Ryan: Oh yeah. And it's people like me that are probably helping give them bad numbers since my computer saves the email address na@na.com for all of my form fills that I don't want them to email me on and I'm like, "Yeah. Yeah, here you go. Have that." Jon: Well, that's exactly it. So, now let's talk about the data that a marketer's going to get back out of this pop-up, right. So, a new site pop-up, you just came to this, a new visitor pop-up I should say. I get a form. Sometimes it just says, "Give me your info and you can stay up to date on the latest product releases, et cetera." So maybe they're not really dangling a carrot there. Right? I can't figure out how to close it. Maybe there's no close button and it takes over the entire screen and it's really annoying. So what happens? You put in an email address that like na@na.com, right? So now the brand has pretty muddy CRM, right? Their customer data, their marketing data is pretty horrible. Now what's going to happen there is, they're going to start using all that data. Some will clean it, but I guarantee you most don't based on our experience and what happens is they're going to use those email addresses that are uncleaned. They're going to start sending them through their email platform. And then they're going to get a ton of bounces, a ton of spam complaints for those who might be okay, it might be good, or they're going to get a bunch of generic Gmails that never get opened. And I promise you one thing that's happening with your emails and large providers like Gmail, MSN, et cetera, is they're tracking when you send an email out to a thousand people, Gmail knows that at that same email is going out to a thousand people on their platform, and they're looking to see how many people are opening and clicking on that. And they're tracking that data to make sure that spam doesn't get through. And if nobody's opening it, nobody's clicking it, it's more likely to end up in that dreaded promotions folder or just directly into spam. [crosstalk 00:11:07]. And that's not even without people who are actually seeing that email and marking it as spam, which is only going to hurt your deliverability. So, over time what's happening is the quality of your email list is going way down only because of how you collected that as emails and the methodology you went through. And so, what happens then is you've turned what should be your highest revenue generating channel into something that is no longer producing at the level it used to, even though you have more email addresses on it. Ryan: Got it. Okay. That makes a lot of sense there. And you can kind of send yourself in a downward spiral. But I can also see the logic behind getting to that point. If logic states that me as a brand or a website, I'm willing to break even on my first order from Google ads when I'm buying traffic to my site, and then if I don't have an email up and I put it on, I'm like, "Oh, 10% discount. That's only going to increase people's conversion rates because I'm giving 10% off. But then these are people that maybe weren't going to buy, but now are because people that were going to buy, maybe they would anyway without the discount." So, I understand that logic to a degree, but how do you see that logic break down when somebody actually starts going through with that execution? Jon: Well, so now we're combining two negatives. We're taking an email pop-up that's disruptive and we're making it a discount. Now what's happening is same thing. As you said earlier, I just got to the brand, I don't know anything about the brand or their value proposition, et cetera, but now you want my contact information, and also you're already giving me a discount. Now, why are you offering a discount to somebody who just got to your site? They haven't exhibited any signs of intent to buy just yet, other than showing up at your door and you're giving up precious margin and you're creating a discount brand right away. Where it's the first thing I know about this brand is, they're going to give me a 10% off for giving me an email address. It's like, "Well, okay." And what's going to happen here is a couple of things. One is, you're creating a discount customer who sees your brand as a discount brand forever, just because that's the first impression they have. And the problem with this is you've done it just to collect an email address. Well guess what? What's going to happen now is that person's going to put in their junk email address again, the one they use just for discounts and pop-ups, right? Ryan: Everybody's got one of those. Jon: Exactly. We all use Gmail for that, probably. Right. So, then what happens from there? Well, perhaps they might open the email, maybe not, more likely not. They just wanted that discount code. And the worst offenders in these popups are the ones that, where they collect the email address without any verification, they don't email you the discount code. They just show it in the box in the pop-up. So, they just give it to you right away. Well, then that's even worse because you're putting in whatever email address you want and you're still going to get the discount. The other thing here is that, now every time I come back to buy, I'm going to want that discount. And I know I don't need to pay retail. I know that you're going to offer 10%. So, what am I going to do? I'm going to open your website in incognito, and I'm going to give you another fake email address just to get another discount code or another junk email address, or I'm going to do that Gmail trick, where you can put a plus sign and then anything you want after the plus sign. So, it's like Jon+, whatever I want @gmail.com and it ignores anything with the plus sign and after that. Ryan: That I did not know. Jon: So, you can create [crosstalk 00:14:31] a million email addresses just out of your one Gmail address. And most email platforms allow you to use a plus sign because it's a valid email character. And so, it's really interesting when we start working with brands, one of the first things we do when they put up a fight about removing their pop-ups, or at least running a test around it, is we go into their email database and check for the plus sign and see how many emails have a plus sign in it. And most of it it's like, plus spam is what people put, right? Or they'll even get more tricky. People who are really, want to know if you're selling their email address, or if you're giving it away or if you're abusing them and they do plus in the brand name. And then it's like if you sell that email address or share with a partner, do anything else, they now know where that came from, and they're even more upset with you when that happens. So, I think it's really important here that people, brands really need to think about not discounting because you're basically taking what is a bad consumer experience and you're making that a bad experience for your brand too. And you're just doing that to collect an email address. And now you've created a discount customer right up front, who's forever going to look at your brand as a discount brand. And that's a really hard hole to dig out of in the future. Ryan: Well, and I think a lot of brands don't give consumers enough credit, and I think people pick it up pretty quick, where they know the strategies to try to get discounts. Especially people like me that just because I can, I'm not going to give up 10% of my money to a brand just because I like them. If I can keep 10% in my pocket, I will, even if I can afford the full price, which generally is the case, if I'm shopping for it. And so, my wife knows that I'm the cheap one in the relationship. And if she's going to go buy something, she knows that if she can tell me she bought something, but got a discount, and I'm like, I'm much less likely to put up a fight about that. And so she knows the strategy. It's like, "Okay, all I need to do on my computer is start to move my cursor towards the navigation bar and boom, exit intent pop up." Or she even tells me now, she'll just, if she's interested in something, but it's not a need, it's a more of a want, she'll go put things in shopping carts, and then just wait a few days. She's like, "I don't need it right now. They're not going to run out of inventory. I'm going to go set up a shopping cart, I don't care. See if they sent me a discount." [crosstalk 00:17:29]. Almost all of them do. I mean, just people figure it out. It's not complicated. Marketers, I think sometimes think too much of themselves like, "Oh, we're going to do this. And we're going to trick all these people into spending so much money with us." And I'm like, "Nah." Jon: Well, I think that's exactly where having empathy for the consumer really comes in, right? And just saying, "If you, if this is happening to you, what's the experience you want to have?" And I think this goes back to a whole nother episode we can record on discounting and why that's a challenge. I mean, we just did, you and I just did a webinar yesterday and a big portion of that was about discounting with one of our partners. And I thought it was really interesting because so many brands are discounting. And when you think about this, you could be doing so many things that are and offer and not a straight percentage or dollar off discount. And I'm okay with doing an offer in an email. And there's a lot of other ways to collect email addresses that tie in with offers, right? I mean, you could do "Coming soon, get on the list to be first notified," and that's providing value for an email address that they wouldn't get unless they gave you the email address. But it's also valuable to them. You could do, something where it's like, "Hey, if you sign up for our email list in checkout, you get free shipping." Right? So, you're giving some value. It's not a straight dollar or percentage off discount. You're doing an offer and there's scarcity. You could say, "Hey, these products sell out. It's sold out right now. If you sign up for this list, you'll be notified." And we have a brand we work with, a really high end camping brand, that a lot of their products, they sell out before they've even landed in the United States for manufacturing, where they just have a running list on their product detail pages that say, "Hey, this product is sold out. We have a new product coming in soon, get on the list, we'll notify you. And it will be presale before it goes up on the site." Now there's a lot of value to a consumer who wants a product and is interested in that and giving their email address for that purpose. And it's a much better way to collect an email address over offering a discount. So, now they're selling these products before they've even hit the site. They're selling them at 100% margin or, well, not 100% margin, but without draining their margin by discount, right? Ryan: Or marketing. Jon: Or marketing costs. [crosstalk 00:19:54]. Yeah. What? Fractions of a penny to send that email. So, I think it's really interesting that brands immediately go to this discount right upfront and present that discount through such a disruptive manner that they have to use an email pop-up. Ryan: I think it's just, I mean, it's the easy button that they're thinking about. They're not taking that next step and actually having conversations with people, strategizing what could my options be? Because even me, having you as a friend and a business partner and various things, I come to you and I'm like, "Okay, Jon, I know you don't like discounts, but I know that there's value in somehow doing something like that, that maybe is not a discount, that keeps me from being a discount brand." And you've got phenomenal ideas for ... Now, we should probably do one, a thing on that. But you don't have to give a discount to give a discount type thing, which is a difficult thing. You have to really think through it. Jon: Right. Yeah. And you got to be creative with the offer, right? And sometimes people, like you said, it's the easy button. There's so many Shopify apps, for instance, that do these pop-ups and do discounts. Then there's apps that are really cheap to free that will do customized discount posts for email address exchange, stuff like that. It blows my mind because they see other brands using them and they think it must work for them, so we're going to do it too. Or they just, they think discounting is the only way. And I really argued that as soon as you get into discounting, it is impossible. It's like a drug, a really bad drug. It's really hard to get off of that. You got to wean yourself off of it because now everybody is expecting and they're not going to pay retail price. I mean, we talk about how your wife sends you to Michael's to pick up stuff on the way home. And you know that she's going to have a 50% off coupon, no matter what. And if she didn't, for whatever reason, she couldn't find one right then, or whatever, you just ask the person at the register when you're checking out, like, "Hey, what's that? What's the coupon that went out in the mail last week? Do you have it?" And they're like, "Oh yeah, it's right here. Here you go." And they just scan it [crosstalk 00:21:55]. Ryan: Yeah. That actually happened a couple weeks ago. [crosstalk 00:00:21:58]. I was, I got in line, she was like, "I couldn't find my code. Can you just pull one up on your phone and do a search?" I'm like, "Okay, yeah. I'll figure it out." Jon: Exactly. So, they're a discount brand and you go to them because they're a discount brand. There's nothing wrong with that if that's how they want to do it. But I would argue that, they're never getting out of that, right? They're just going to have to slash all their prices if they want to stop doing discounts. Then what promo or offer can you run because you've got razor thin margins at that point? Ryan: Yep. No. And I think one of the points you hit on too, is part of that other bucket of email popups, which you don't hate, those exit intent things. And this one works phenomenally well, for me at least, with one of the clients you've worked with in the past is Nike. One of the shoe companies you're based in Oregon. And I have an affinity for Jordan 4's. I'm not a sneaker head, but that's the one shoe that I grew up always wanting and I couldn't get them because didn't have enough money for them when I was a kid. But now I can. And so, I do keep up on the releases. And so, in this case, I gave Nike all my information to avoid the FOMO, the fear of missing out scenario. And I went to Nike site today just to see what they were doing, saying, "Okay, Jon worked with them. Did they get the message when he was working with them?" And they use only exit intent, no discount. Do you ever advocate for discount at... Well, I already know the answer. But exit intent, how should brands be looking at that? Is there anything besides FOMO or anything to do besides offering a discount that you've seen be successful? Jon: Well, I think that there's a lot of options that you can do in these pop-ups. But specifically in exit intent, this is where it's one of those things that you should really be looking at segmenting your audience and tailoring the message with those pop-ups. So, for you, let's think about the journey you just mentioned you went through. You were, you love Jordan 4's and you were looking at those on the site and they popped up with an exit intent and you were like, "Yeah, sure. I'll do that because I want to be the first to know when new ones are released." There's value there for you in that, right? And they knew, this is a collector shoe, if you will. And most of the people, you claim you're not a sneaker-head, but let's be honest, you probably are if you're into Jordan 4's, right? Ryan: Probably. Jon: And so, the reality here is they know that. That people who are looking at this shoe aren't discount motivated because for them it's all about having the Jordan 4, that they don't need the discount. They could sell those out, no problem without ever discounting them. And in fact, you and I living in Portland, Oregon, we're blessed that we get to go to the Nike employee store occasionally. And whether we're working with them or, somebody who does work with them is able to share a pass with us occasionally. And I can tell you that they have some Jordan's there, but it's not their top sellers. I say that because at the employee store, there's a large discount when you shop there because you get employee pricing, but they don't have their top sellers, usually, in the collectible ones, like Jordan's et cetera there, because they don't need to discount them. If you want them, you're going to just go up on the site and buy it at retail. So, I think that too many brands skip right away to the discount when there's other value adds you could provide. And that's where, again, you got to do a little bit of thinking on that. It can't just be the easy button. Ryan: Okay. So, pop-ups, avoid coming to the site pop-ups. Exit intent could be worth it, but you make sure you're adding some value to that, that customer that causes them to want to give you a real email address and not necessarily just throw a discount out. So, all companies want more emails. Do you have any strategies that you've seen be successful in your experience over the past decade in the e-comm world for brands to get more emails? Jon: Sure. I think there are some great ways to do, I mentioned earlier, some segmenting. So, let's say you run somebody in to your site from a Google ad that has a specific message, your value prop in it, aligning that with the message that you share for an email signup, right? So, maybe they're searching for a specific item and they get to your site and it's out of stock, well, there you go, now you should do not a stock email collection. I think that the biggest mistakes I see around email forms are that they're missing some key information. The first is you really need to set expectations on this email form. What does that mean? Well, you need to tell people what they're signing up for and how often they're going to hear from you. Pretty simple. But most brands say stuff like, "Sign up for updates." It's like, "Why do I care about updates from your brand?" Right? "I don't need more updates." Nobody needs updates. But if you me, I'll be the first to know when Jordan 4's are released, I'm in, right? That's what I'm here for. That's what I want to know. So, it's all about saying, "Okay. Well, how often are you going to hear from me?" Well, maybe it's, "I'll email you once a month." Okay. I'm okay with that. If you say, "I'm going to email you every week," I have to think twice about it, but if I really am into your brand, maybe I'm okay with that. Or maybe it's where we have special product bundles that are only for email subscribers, "Sign up and you can learn about our bundles, exclusives." Right? Things of that sort, that aren't straight up discounts. Ryan: Almost like a merging some of this email acquisition with your loyalty program. Jon: 100%. That is a great way to build email is through loyalty. It's through having, whether you want to do something as complicated as a point system, or just as simple as saying, if you're on an email address, you will get access to things that people who aren't on the email address. Ryan: And people are willing to give you more information, generally, when you're providing value outside of discount. For example, Nike, I give them my birthday. No other company gets my birthday. [crosstalk 00:27:51]. But they're telling me I'm going to get a special reward on my birthday. And I'm like, "Cool." I like Nike. They do have some trust. They built a brand that says, "I can trust them with my data already," just because I have an affinity for them and I've been wearing Nike's for, geez, 30 years. So, there is some of that that maybe not every brand is going to be able to get to, but you can probably do some pretty solid segmentation in your customer database if you had everybody's birthday. Like, Hey, this person's 20, this person's 40, they probably need different messaging. They probably have different interests, different disposable income level. Jon: Yeah. Yeah. The 20 year old is aspiring to get the Jordan's. The Ryan Garrow age folks are really out there to [crosstalk 00:28:35]. Ryan: 22. 22. Jon: Okay. Okay. If you say so. And so I think it's, now you can afford the $300 pair of Jordan's and you're excited to buy them because you've earned that right over all these years of hard work, right? And so, or those two years of hard work, if you will. But I think it's one of those things where most brands aren't even segmenting. They're just doing that really clear scatter shot, hoping to collect email addresses, just to build their list. And I just, again, that's the wrong philosophy, whole-heartedly, full stop. Popups are not the way to do that. And I just, it pains me when I see brands do that. Part of me is because our mission at The Good is, I say all the time is just to remove all the bad online experiences until only the good ones remain. And email popups are such a bad online experience. I'm on a crusade to eliminate those. And part of that is to help brands understand what damage they're doing with these initial email pop-ups. And it's true, I don't hate them just because they get in my way as a consumer, I hate them because of what they do to the brand over time. And the experience that you're putting consumers through is really negatively affecting the brand and the brand perception. And then most brands are applying a discount on top of that, so they're kind of adding fuel to that fire of just negativity and it's really just going to hurt them. Ryan: And the one thing I'll leave with would be the best emails you can get are from people that have purchased from you. So, if you just got more aggressive on getting more customers through marketing or driving people to the site, those people in your email database are going to be infinitely more valuable than anybody that just wants a coupon code or signs up just to have you go away or an email pop-up. So, I would challenge a lot of brands just to say, if you're comfortable giving an additional 10% discount, so you're taking 10% off your top line for somebody, why don't you just get 10% more aggressive on your marketing and get that customer to actually buy something and get more of them and increase your market share because that's the type of emails in my database that I'm going to be in love with. Jon: Yeah. I mean, you mentioned right up off the top that you're happy to spend your initial margin on that first purchase to acquire the customer through Google ads or whatever advertising you would do to get them to the site, so that you can continue to market to them and go after that customer lifetime value. And that's the right way to approach this because that's sustainable. Where if you're just going to give a discount and someone's only going to purchase once, because they can't get that discount again, or maybe they just see you as a discount brand, then you're going to have a bigger issue. So, I'm all for paying to get people to purchase, but I'm not, I don't think you should do that through a discount upfront. Ryan: Yeah. Don't go the lazy way. If your marketing team or your agency is telling you, "Use discounts or we can't do our job." It's time to maybe look outside that. Jon: Yeah. Find a new marketing agency. People come to us all the time and they say, "Well, we've been doing optimization on our site." And I say, "Okay, great. Let's talk about what you've been doing." "Well, we put a pop-up on, we offer discounts and our conversion rates went up." I was like, "Well, yeah. You know what? Every house will sell at some price. Ask any realtor. And they'll just say, 'Well, we'll just keep reducing the price until it sells.'" And it's like, well, eventually you're going to sell it for less than you bought it for. And that's exactly what's going to happen with your brand too. Ryan: Oh, and didn't you, you have some stat around, you give a small discount, your conversion rate has to go up just some astronomical percent. What was that number? Jon: Yeah. Mackenzie did a bunch of research on this. They surveyed and did a bunch of research on the, it was like the top 1000 e-comm sites. And what they found was that for every 5% that you run a discount on, you have to acquire, it was like 19% in additional sales just to break even on that discount. Ryan: And most people are not only giving 5%. Jon: Right. It's way more than that [crosstalk 00:32:36]. Ryan: It's usually 10, 15, 20%. Jon: And so, you really have to think about this. Now for 5% discount, is that 5% discount going to get me greater than a 19% additional sales? Likely, that's not the case. And, in fact, the article that I read on that said, and I'll have to quote it, but it said "This rarely to never has ever happened." And I was like, "Okay. So, they said rarely, never, and ever in the same sentence." Ryan: Yeah. Having done this a decade, I can almost guarantee you that that has not happened. I mean, because you would just double that maybe for 10%, you have to get 38% increase in revenue for a 10% discount. There's no way. Jon: If, I mean, if that's how the math works out on that, then yeah, you're screwed if you start discounting at that rate in reality. Because yes, you've collected email addresses and markers will come back to me and say, "Jon, yeah, sure. That's if I only do it on that first sale, but now I'm going to have those customer in my database for a lifetime." And I'm like, "Yeah, but what are you going to have to do to get them continue to buy? You're going to have to give another 5% off and another 5% and another 5%. where do you get out of digging that hole? Right? How do you fill that hole so that you're getting your margin back and your customer lifetime value and your average order value keeps going up? How do you make that happen?" You're better off it doing an offer. And, yep, it may equate to 5% off, but in the mind of the consumer, you're giving them an offer, not a straight dollar or percentage off. And then you come back the next order and you're not having to fight on a discount, you can give them some other offer, perhaps if that's needed. So yeah, we should definitely do a whole show, Ryan, on discounting. I think that could be another way to share one of Jon's things he hates on the internet. Ryan: Yes. I think we for sure should do that. Man, there's so many, so many good things in this. Jon, thanks for the time. I appreciate it. And I come away learning lots of things, including just adding a plus sign to my emails now. [crosstalk 00:34:30]. I can track where I'm being sold. Jon: There you go. Well, I appreciate you bringing the topic up and helping me share one of my missions. So, thanks for doing that. Ryan: Thank you

In every business there are tools specific to that industry or type of business that will help them grow. Ecommerce is no different. CRO is one of the most important tools to grow an Ecommerce business. Today, Jon dives into the role CRO plays in Ecommerce businesses. For help with your CRO: https://thegood.com/ TRANSCRIPT: Ryan: Oh Jon, most people start businesses because they've got skills, knowledge, and the desire to control their work and what they're actually doing on a day to day basis. I would also guess most business owners want to grow and in every business there are tools specific to that industry or type of business that help them grow. E-commerce, as we know, is no different. You and I both know CRO is one of the most important tools to grow an e-commerce business and it's never a bad time to grow. Ryan: Today I'm really excited to dive into the role CRO plays in e-commerce businesses. You, Jon McDonald, knowing more about CRO than anyone I know, can you start us off today by giving us your thoughts on CRO and the growth process of an e-comm business, at a high 30,000 foot level? Jon: Yeah, sure. Well I think the best way to think about this Ryan is that there's only a small number of ways to grow your company just at a high level before even thinking about conversion rate optimization. You can get more new customers, you can get your current customers, or even those new ones, to spend more with you, and you can get your average customer lifetime value up by getting those customers that have purchased to come back and purchase again. Those are really the only three mechanisms you have for earning more revenue out of your business. Jon: So, of course, traffic generation can hit that first one really well. We might argue, and maybe you could fill in on this a little bit Ryan, but traffic generation, when done well in digital marketing, can help you also increase average order value. Then remarketing, you can resell to the people who have already purchased perhaps and you can run campaigns around that. Jon: But I think if you're really looking to impact the first two of those in a major way, conversion rate optimization is really going to be how you're going to get a higher return on that ad spend and how you're generally just going to convert more of your visitors into buyers. So if you're thinking about growth the biggest lever with the highest return on investment, and of course, I'm biased, but I think that the highest return on investment is going to be conversion optimization because with a small investment in making it easier for people to purchase on your site you're going to get a high value back that's going to be sustainable over time. Ryan: Well yeah and I think even on a previous podcast we talked about CRO after the sale even and increasing some of that lifetime value in areas I hadn't even considered actually being CRO. Like even some of the things in the shopping cart post purchase which would increase lifetime value had never even occurred to me. Ryan: I think it does play in all three, but I think for most people as they're thinking through their entire e-comm business they're going to probably see CRO in those first two buckets of growth. As you're looking at e-comm businesses and you analyze tons of businesses, is there a place in the growth curve of an e-comm business where you really see CRO as being the most impactful? I'm thinking in my head of a bell curve and growth or maybe you're growing up to a plateau like where would you in a perfect world insert CRO? Jon: Well I think that you need to have enough traffic to effectively do certain types of CRO. Let's break this down a little bit. Let's look at this bell curve in three chunks. The first chunk would be the folks who are just getting started, maybe we'll just say less than a million dollars in revenue, which is a pretty big gap there. But that first million what you really need to be focused on is making sure people know that you exist. Jon: They need to have an easy to use website but normally you're going after those early adopters who are willing to put up with a little more complications on your site than the average customer. So it's really important for that first third of that curve that you are mainly focusing on driving traffic that is going to hit a very specific segmented marketplace that is going to be your key customers that are going to stick with you no matter. Jon: You probably aren't going to be converting much on branded terms because people don't know who you are, so when people do find your site, at that point, you want to make it as easy for them to purchase but you're not going to be able to do things like AB or multivariate testing because AB testing and multivariate testing, et cetera, require enough traffic for you to get results in a meaningful timeframe. Jon: So in that first third what I usually would want people to do is when I'm looking at these companies I want to see them collecting data. What do I mean by that? Well are they actually looking at great analytics data? Have they actually ever dived in there and customized it a little bit or is it just they just put the snippet from GA on their site and that's all they have. Jon: Couple other things to be thinking about there, like you could easily pretty cheaply get things like heat maps and movement maps. You can do that type of stuff to start understanding how people engage with your website and just make changes based on data. You don't have to test it, right? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: Just make the changes. The best way to test there is just to do week over week or month over month. Now if you're making changes every day that's going to be hard to really know what worked well, but I don't want that to stop brands. They should still be tweaking their site as much as possible and then sticking to perhaps even larger changes in that first third. Ryan: In that space, in that first third, a lot of times the business owners generally don't know best practices on website. They know their industry, they know their products well. But how much would you as that business owner trust your gut looking at small pieces of data like that on a daily, weekly basis where you can't actually get an AB test and have full confidence that this is what is better. You just say hey, go with your gut on that because it's probably better than not going with your gut? Jon: Well I think that it goes back to the phrase I say quite often which is it's really hard to read the label from inside the jar. I think that with that in mind that it's still as an owner of a site and a daily operator you're still too close to it and you really still need that consumer feedback. Collecting that data and paying attention to it, even if it's only 100 visitors a day or a week, that's still data that you should be looking at. Where are people leaving, what pages are they getting stuck on perhaps, where are they dropping off in the funnel, that's all good information to know where are the holes in your bucket because they're flowing right through that bucket instead of collecting them as revenue. You really need to know where those holes are and that's really what I'm getting at here. Jon: The other thing you can be in this first third of that curve, go talk to consumers. You should email every single person who buys personally. There's not a volume at that stage under a million where you can't email every single person individually and just ask them, "Hey, this is me, this is actually me," just start the email that way. "I'm sending you a personal email. I want to know why you purchased and what your experience was." That's it. Jon: I have never gotten an email like that and I purchase online almost exclusively now, that's my job. I have never gotten a personal email from a brand. It's always an automated give me a thumbs up or thumbs down, or what's my net promoter score and they're doing it in a really horrible way. I don't want to rate you on a scale of 1 to 10, that's not what this is about. I'm not going to waste my effort there. If you sent me a person email and said, "Jon, thank you so much for buying from me, we're just starting out, as you likely know. If you didn't know, well hey, welcome to the small club. Excited you're here. Jon: I want to know about your experience because we want to continue to improve our site. Can we chat for 10 minutes at some point or can you just spend 10 minutes right now just write down your thoughts? Nothing is going to be better than that." There's a lot you can do in that first third that people just aren't doing and that's what I'm looking at these businesses if I'm going to give them a passing grade they're doing at least some of these items and most aren't. Ryan: No, I think that's important as somebody that's launched my own brands. You get, as a business owner, so many different directions that many times it's difficult to I think step back and think about okay, if I am selling online what's the most important thing to me right now. If I'm acquiring traffic I need to make sure it's doing the best. I don't like wasting money. Ryan: So I think most business owners probably need to do a little more of what I would consider some of that grunt work on their own where maybe it's not going to be your most favorite thing to do, but it's highly important if you really want this brand to work. Jon: Right. I think to get to that next level, and I would say that middle of that curve is generally a million to 25 million, big gap. But you can get easily get over a million by just doing what I mentioned. If you put in all that grunt work you will get over a million dollars a year in revenue of your site. Then once you get over that point you will likely start having enough traffic, and by enough traffic, let's just say 40 or so 1000 visitors per month. At that point, if you have 40 or so 1000 individuals hitting your website, and I should say users instead of visitors, there's a difference there in analytics. But when you have that 40,000 users on your site you can now start running AB testing on your site and actually get things to hit statistical significance, which is the mathematical formula that's going to tell you that this is proven with math that it's going to improve the metric you went after. Jon: I think that's what's really important here is that once you hit that middle part of the curve that you are really starting to invest in data-driven decision making that is run by testing ... and usually in this part when I'm looking at these businesses, these are the ones who have some money to start growing and reinvesting on a regular basis. It's usually no longer just the owner spending their own money to grow the company because when they got over that million mark now they have some employees, they start having enough margin, ideally, that they can reinvest. Maybe the owner is still involved, but they also might have hired a digital marketing manager or an e-comm manager. Jon: So at that point, that's when you really start to see some rapid growth and that's why that band is typically a million to 25 million because you can really grow pretty rapidly in there if you're AB testing in each of these 3 points we talked about earlier, which is the first time visitors, getting people to buy more, and then also a repeat customer. You can start optimizing all three of those because you have enough traffic going far down the funnel where you can even run tests in the checkout, which typically is going to be one of the pages that has the least amount of visitors to it because you're only in checkout if you're actually going to buy something. That gives you a wide range. Jon: Now if you're over 25 million, what I really start to look for there on that growth curve at that point is these people have in-house teams, generally, focused on optimization. They've proven out the value in that middle tier and now they've moved up to the top tier and they can start having a whole team centered around this, and if they don't, they realize that they're missing out. They know that they're missing out but there's something else holding them back from doing that. Jon: Generally, that's when they also either start to outsource that or they're looking to augment their team and come up with some additional new, fresh ideas because at that size they start to realize that they're too close to their site and they need some outside ideas. It could be as simple as they're just looking for test ideas or it could be as simple as they want to accelerate their testing and do more of it, or they want to train up their team and refresh the skillset there. Ryan: Got it. So grunt work "CRO" what we termed an earlier episode CRI where you're just making improvements to the site that are removing some friction even if there's not tests to back it up, you're just seeing some of the friction. Really it's 40,000 visitors, million dollars plus in revenue, really want to take the next step and grow. If you don't want to grow you're probably not even listening to this podcast. Jon: Right. Ryan: So you're probably not appropriate for this anyway. But here's something I don't think I've ever asked you about this, and I don't know why. Obviously when you're doing CRO on a site it's impacting everything all the site, all visitors are going to convert better once CRO process is going. What traffic channels generally see the biggest uptick in conversion rates once you've started the process and you're really seeing some good improvements going on? Is there a certain part of the site or type of traffic that you're seeing as just takes off really, really well? Jon: Well I think that it can affect the entire lifecycle of the customer, as we talked about earlier, and thus all the different types of channels once they get to your site. Now in terms of traffic generation channels, I think that generally what we see return on ad spend does improve because you're getting more people to convert. Now at The Good, we focus exclusively on onsite test, so we don't do any testing offsite, so we're not testing ads or any of that type of stuff. Jon: That's where Logical Position in your team comes in. But what we do see here is the match between having a successful ad campaign direct that visitor to an optimized portion of the site, that is like adding fuel to a fire. At that point they both become way more effective. So there's definitely synergies there. Jon: Now in terms of overall channels, generally, we see organic go really, really high. This is because people are already looking for you. They already know you exist. At that point, they've made their mind up that they likely want to purchase, maybe they heard about you through a friend, or it's all those channels that are going to have the people who are going to clearly fit your ideal customer profile. Jon: Now you're going to see those organic numbers really start to increase and improve because you've made the site easier to use. You've reduced all of the barriers that person who already really wants to buy that they're not going to get as frustrated. They're not going to have a reason to desert like they had prior to optimization. Jon: So that's one of the benefits because at that point you can get your cheapest traffic to be optimized and convert higher, then that's where you're going to see a massive return on your investment. But that's not to discount that you would see higher conversions from people who come by clicking on an ad and I think that's really going to be valuable in terms of return on investment. So there's a couple ways to look at that. Ryan: For a business's initial foray into CRO do you recommend their focus be on increasing the number of conversions, increasing the average order value, something else, or all of the above at the same time? Is there an order that I should be looking at those as a business owner? Jon: Yeah. I think that unfortunately The Good is in an industry called conversion rate optimization, so a lot of people come in with the expectation that conversion rate's the only metric that matters. Now I totally understand that 100% matters and if you can move that lever then you're going to see a massive return on your investment in it. But there are a ton of metrics that you do want to be looking at that are I would argue as valuable, if not more valuable and more sustainable. So if I get your conversion rate to double or I get your average order value to double we're going to have this very, very similar outcome, mathematically. People spend twice as much or let's just break it down, I get 100 people to spend $2 or I get a 100 new people to spend $1, we're going to make the same amount of revenue, right? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: So I think you want to look at these metrics more holistically and then develop a plan to one, analyze where your weakness is. Maybe you already have a really strong steady conversion rate and it's more about getting your average order value up, or maybe you notice that your cart abandonment rate is really, really high, or maybe there's not enough people even adding something to a cart, so there's all these clues, there's all these clues around why people aren't buying. Jon: If you just focus on conversion rate you're going to be, as a consumer, an untrained eye or maybe just somebody who's in that first band of up to a million dollars. They're going to go online and read a bunch of articles about improving conversion rates, and the reality is, a lot of them are just going to start running discounts, do pop-ups. Do all these that will show you an immediate boost of numbers but it's not sustainable in any way. And you start having long-term systemic issues where you're stuck on the discount train and once that discount train leaves the station your consumers are always going to be expecting discounts at every single purchase and every single stop, and that's really hard to get off the tracks once that happens. Ryan: And that's not a fun business. Jon: Right. Nobody wants to be in the business of, how do I put this, of giving everybody free stuff. It's basically what it is if you over discount. So I think you really want to be thinking about what metrics are most important to moving the needle for your business. The only way to do that is to go back to what I said earlier, which is early on in your business you need to set up the right tracking. You need to get used to looking at the numbers and you need to start making data-backed decisions. If that guides you into understanding where your metrics could be improved then that should be where you're going to start working on your optimization moving forward. Ryan: Oh man, and I will double down on that statement. I have talked to so many businesses in the startup process or they've been in it a couple years even and they're with a platform like a Shopify or a Bitcommerce and they don't have Google Analytics. How are you looking at your business, oh I just look at the back end of Shopify or Bitcommerce. It's like wow, there is so much more available in a more robust analytics platform than just your shopping cart or the web platform that you utilize that I think both can be important for various things, matching each other up, verifying certain things are working, but for sure make sure your analytics is working and tracking reasonably close. Because even with the Shopifys and the Bitcommerces of the world that have 1000s, millions of users if you're Shopify, the implementations of analytics do not work the same on each one of those. They don't line up correctly all the time, so you got to make it at least line up as close as possible. Jon: Yeah and there's one thing that one of your team members at Logical Position, Brian Aldrich, he really hammered into my head over the years. I've seen him speak at the same events all the time, and stuff. He always says, "You need a single source of truth." Unfortunately, if you the e-commerce platform be your single source of truth you're missing out on a full picture. Jon: So just getting started early on using Google Analytics, or some analytics package, I mean I don't know why you wouldn't use Google Analytics for this, but make that your single source of truth because no two analytics packages are going to line up exactly, and I think that's the point you're making. Jon: But if you just look at one of them like Shopify's built-in analytics that's great for at a glance how did I do day over day, et cetera, but the reality is, it's not going to help you optimize your site so you really need to have that real truth, source of truth, be something that is a full picture of the consumer experience. Ryan: Funny enough, analytics is top of my mind because I had a contact from another one of our partners. He's going off to look at other businesses to get involved with and one of them was an analytics company, so he had me sit down and talk with him to see what it was about and if it had some validity. They started their pitch at me was, "Well you already know analytics is bad, right? Google Analytics?" I was like, "Well, no." Ryan: Their whole thing was like oh yeah, Google's just bad. Google Analytics is bad because it gives itself too much credit and doesn't actually let you see the full attribution of everything. I'm like, well, I mean I don't believe that. But you see it's probably more in depth analytics products across the board. Does one in particular stand out as a business owner when you're looking at things? Is Google Analytics okay but actually bad or is it Adobe is way, way better, or something most companies haven't heard of that they should be looking at in addition to analytics, or instead of? Jon: Well I think you make a good point here and that's that every analytics package is going to be a little different. The thing is it's all in how you use it and the consistency in which you use it, it doesn't matter which platform you use. Also, a startup doing less than 10 million, they have no business looking at Adobe. They can't afford it, just be upfront about that. So it's also what is your return on your investment going to be? Jon: If you are spending a ton of money to get some data but you're not utilizing that data to get a return on that spend then don't do it, what's the point? This is where Google Analytics really serves in a great need is yeah, look, you're giving data to Google, if you're not paying for it you are the product. So the reality is it's a trade off. A lot of people think there's privacy issues in giving that data to Google, and whatever. Jon: Reality is that if you're a site doing under a million dollars a year, or even way more than that probably, Google doesn't care about your data, quite honestly. They've got bigger fish they're working with. The reality here is that out of the box Google Analytics is a great tool to get started with. Then if you don't ever touch it and you don't customize it, yeah, there's going to be better tool sets out there that come customized out of the box. But what I highly recommend is that you start learning early about Google Analytics, you learn how to set up custom dashboards, you learn how to feed information into GA through events on your site. Jon: There are limits on what type of personally identifiable information you feed in, but you can still feed in stuff without tying it back to a user pretty easily. You don't have to send a user's email, or an order number, or a phone number, or any of that kind of stuff into GA to warehouse it there, but you should be able to feed in whenever someone buys a product you can event that says this product was sold and this is the dollar value. That's not tied back to anybody. Jon: So I think there's a lot you could be thinking about there that could extend the Google Analytics to do everything you need and it's going to happen pretty easy out of the box. Now if you're looking to do segmentation that's really drilled down and have a lot of other information, you're going to need tools on top of Google Analytics to do that. But quite honestly, Google Analytics is great for the vast majority of brands out there. Ryan: Good insights, I appreciate that. As we're winding up I do have one more question that maybe it's interesting for people or not, but what's been the longest CRO engagement you've been a part of? Jon: Yeah, it's a great question. If I understand why I usually get this question it's because people want to know how long can conversion optimization influence growth. Is that basically where you're going with this too? Ryan: Yeah, it's like is it 2 years, is it 10 years, is it 6 months. Jon: I have a couple of answers to this. The first is that we've been in business over 11 years and if conversion optimization was not a sustainable thing then there'd be no way we'd be in business this long. I think the longest that we've been, I would say, we had a customer for four or five years and the engagement ebbed and flowed over time, meaning that we would sometimes be launching a lot of tests and sometimes just be holding their hand as they went through changes and coming back and forth. But they were a paying customer of ours for a handful or quite a few years, however you want to look at that. Jon: Now an average, an average goes about two years. Right around that timeline is when I see an average customer that we've helped them get to that next level where we have helped proven the value of conversion and optimization to the point that senior management decides this line item, that's not going away, so we should probably hire and bring that team in-house. I applaud that. I think at that point it makes sense. Jon: If you have a brand that has grown and you've used optimization, and you know that you're going to continue doing this, and you have successfully changed how you think as a brand to where you know that you are going to use data to make decisions, that you're going to put the consumer interactions on your site first, that you're going to really, truly care about your consumer's user experience on your site and the customer experience over all, then great, we've done our job. Jon: We have fulfilled The Good's mission of removing all of the bad online experiences until only the good remain. If I can do that at a brand and help them eliminate all of that, and want to have that same mission, and carry the torch, then I applaud that. So I think after about two years is generally when I see brands start to take that in-house, but there's a lot of brands who decide not to and continue to work with us beyond that. Ryan: In the CRO process does it ever work where you can start and stop constantly like hey, I want to do a three month here, stop for six months, do another three months, six months, stop, does that ever work or is that just more butter and can't finish the process when you start and stop constantly like that? Jon: Yeah, look at it this way, if you want to run a marathon are you going to train to win a marathon by one week running and then taking a couple weeks off and then running again? No. You need to build up [crosstalk 00:27:03]. Ryan: Did you get my training schedule? Jon: Yeah. I'll leave that one. Ryan: Yeah. Jon: But I think it's interesting, a lot of brands and business owners approach it the same way, they just feel like hey, well I can go optimize my site right now and do this once, and be done with it. That's not how it works. I think anyone can go out and do this checklist but that's just step one, that's really just the beginning. So I think all in all that when I see that and I try to set that expectation upfront and when somebody says, "Yeah, I'm going to do this for three months and then reevaluate," it's like well you know what, we can always reevaluate. We can just have that conversation at any point. Jon: But if you're only truly going to do this for three months then we're not going to be a good fit. In fact, do not spend your money on optimization at all because it's not going to have a sustainable long-term impact. You're better off just taking that money that you are going to spend and just running a bunch of discounts on your site, or spending it to drive a lot more unqualified traffic, or doing a lot of other things just to get your brand out there. Jon: But if you really truly want sustainable investment and optimization it needs to be a small amount spent on your site in a regular interval over time and it needs to be a long-term line item. So spend each month and compound that growth very much like a retirement investment account. You need to put a little bit in with every paycheck and then eventually you're going to start getting a lot out of it that it's going to just grow and grow and grow over time. Ryan: That is a phenomenal analogy, I think, for what CRO and what you should be looking at it as. Thank you Jon, I appreciate all the insights today. Ryan: Is there anything I didn't ask that I should have or a point that you wanted to get across in this topic that you couldn't get in there? Jon: I think I wanted to emphasize that CRO can be done at a company of any size, it's just the methodology in which you're going to do that. So I think you have the option to look at getting some data and making data-backed decisions at any size company. How you might use that data and approach, are you going to use that data to run AB testing? No, not for every size company. Jon: But I do think that there are options for every size company. So the mistake I see small brands make is that they feel like they can't do optimization because it's just too expensive and they look at it as an expense instead of investment, and perhaps they're intimidated by the data. But I think that there's a lot of options out there. Ryan: Jon, thank you as always for enlightening me and teaching me something new. I appreciate it. Jon: All right, looking forward to the next chat Ryan.

ABC's Ryan Burrow joins us live from Chicago.  Things are looking a little bleak...  three weeks til opening day.  What's going on Ryan? So the two teams in the last world series can't put a team on the field.  It's a Utah company that's exclusively handling tests for ballplayers.  What's going on?  Some major players have already bailed.  31 players have Covid.  Are they gonna have a real season?  

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.

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.

Ryan explores whether you should or shouldn’t use PPC automation tools to assist you in your paid search efforts. The answer isn’t so simple. For all your PPC needs check out: https://www.logicalposition.com/ What's covered today: What is PPC Automation? Should we use it? What are the benefits to Automation tools? What are the drawbacks to Automation tools? TRANSCRIPT Jon: All right, Ryan. Today we're going to talk about PPC automation, or pay-per-click automation. Now Ryan, I've been hearing a lot about pay-per-click automation tools. Now, this is mainly with brands who are doing one of two things. I see it when they're either trying to save a dollar by not working with an agency, and they think, "Hey, automation can help me do all of these things that my pay-per-click agency is doing for me." Or, they're just trying to scale their traffic up extremely quickly, and they see automation as the holy grail of them being able to do that. So, I'm really excited to learn about this, because I keep hearing about it, but I don't know much about it, and so I'm happy to have an expert to discuss this with. So let's just start by defining what PPC automation is exactly. Ryan: It's a big topic, and PPC automation can mean so many different things to different people. But high level, it generally means not touching certain pieces of an account, and having some type of computer system make decisions for you, within the Google or Microsoft Ads space, and it's even going into the social world as well. But basically, something gets done without a human touching it. Whatever that looks like, it's from high level computers. Jon: So, it's not an all or nothing. Because I was just looking at this as an all or nothing, like you're either using automation to run your PPC, or you're not. But you're telling me that just having some automation built in can actually be beneficial, as opposed to just going full automation. Ryan: Yeah. And there's different thoughts on that, just like everything online, even in CRO, I'm sure that it has to do with... Everybody's got an opinion, and it's different than everybody else's, on what works or what doesn't. It's based on their experiences or what they've seen, or what they've been told. And so, you've got extremes, where Google Smart Campaigns are an automation in Google Shopping, that will literally do everything. All you do is give it a budget, and what your return on ad spend wants to be, and it goes and does that. If it can be accomplished in the system, it will do it. If your return on ad spend goal was too high, for example, it's just going to sit there, and not really spend any money. If it's really low, it's going to spend a lot more money, and get you a lot more clients because the potential's there. Jon: So you're telling me automation can't solve all of my hopes and dreams. Ryan: I wish it could. There's some people that will promise you that, for sure, but if anybody is telling you that, they are lying, or they have an ulterior motive in place for you and your business. And on the other side, there are ways to use automation that help but don't necessarily do even the work in place of a human doing the work. And, as with most things, and my most common answer, which is also my least favorite answer in questions about digital marketing, is, it depends. Where should your business lie in that space around automation, specifically in the PPC realm? It's going to depend on where your business is at in the life cycle, what you're able to afford as far as agency or humans doing work, and what are the long-term goals of the business, or what are you trying to accomplish? Ryan: And so, let me take it in a few phases I guess, in kind of explaining what I believe in automation. You've got the full automation, where you're just going to either use a tool, or, for most businesses, use Google's Smart Campaigns in the e-commerce world to spend money for you in Google. I think in some spaces it does make sense, but it also comes with a very large asterisk, where you're having Google do all of this work for you to grow your business, but Google's goals, generally speaking, are different than yours. As a big, publicly traded company, they have responsibilities to their shareholders to grow their revenues and profits, just like you as a business owner have a responsibility to yourself or to your employees to grow revenues and profits. So for most businesses, Smart Campaigns and full automation in Google is not my recommendation, and it is mainly around understanding what's going on in your account and the ability to really scale. Ryan: But small advertisers, just starting up, you've never spent before, you really want to see if your business online has some legs to it if you start spending money, I do think Smart Campaigns within the Google space do have a place to play in that. And if I had to put a line in the sand, probably somewhere around $500 or less a month in ad spend to kind of prove a model. My wife, for example, would make me prove something to her before we actually jumped with both feet into a business and say, "Yeah, let's throw a bunch of money at it, and really see if it works." She'd say, "All right, let's kind of see what happens if you just kind of let Google do something on the side here to see what happens with 500 bucks over a couple months, 500 a month for a couple months." I think there's something there. Ryan: On the other spectrum, no automation, where you are 100% customized, doing everything either with an employee or an agency internally running an account on Google and Microsoft. That has a place to play, and I think that pool of companies where that makes sense is probably in more of a mid-tier type business model where you're spending a few thousand a month, maybe as high as 10,000 a month, where you're really just one person doing all the work for you, and you can do a lot of customization, because generally when you're at that spend level, you're not the biggest, you're not the smallest, but you're having to compete with some of those biggest, and you need some of that kind of surgical precision to find those specific keywords, or specific searches for specific products that really makes sense for your company, and you've seen the conversion rates that work. Ryan: And then, the vast majority of businesses fall kind of in the middle, where you do need some automation, and you do need some human strategy and somebody else, and some humans touching the account as well. And so, focusing on the middle is where it gets most complicated. So, for the majority of businesses out there, it's how much, or what parts of the account really make sense there. Is it an internal employee with some automation? Is it an agency using humans, and some automation? And what goes first? Is it the automation first, with a human checking on it, and making sure it's working? That's going to be a broad spectrum within the space. Jon: So, I'm hearing that it makes sense to prove out a business. So, prove out a new product perhaps, somewhere where you're just going to spend a little bit of money, and you want to start and see if there's a good product market fit there. And if so, then it would make sense to expand beyond just automation. But it does have its use cases, which is great to hear. So, okay. So, you've talked a lot about, there's three tiers to be thinking about, right? And that that kind of messy middle is where "it depends" is usually the answer, which makes sense. So, let's talk about some tools around this. What are the benefits to using pay-per-click automation tools? You mentioned one of them being to prove out a marketplace, but in terms of the tools themselves, can you talk a little bit about what the automation does in that sense? Ryan: Yeah, so there's a lot of different areas of PPC that you can actually automate. And a lot of PPC automation came about, let's say maybe 10 years ago it really started to get some traction, around bid management, and having some computer system actually automate the bid changes in the account, because it does get mundane. It does become difficult, in the middle of the night, for example, or around the clock, to be making changes in an account when you actually have humans working your account need some sleep. And so, bid management was really the beginning of the space. And so, that's constantly there. It's still there. Google even has automations built into their platform now around bids. They have enhanced CPC, which I believe, Jon, you had some fun with that setting when Google changed some settings around that. I believe you spent upwards of $200 per click on Google when we looked at your account together. Jon: Yes. That's where automation became dangerous. And again, I know nothing about this, right? And so, I thought, "Hey, I'll let Google handle it," and I clicked the box, and then ended up spending a lot of money. Ryan: Yep. Oops. And that, it happens. It's not, obviously, what happens all the time. But when automated systems get... be doing what they're told, I mean, they have to still have input from a human, they can do things that maybe aren't intended, and that is really the big thing you have to be aware of in using automation. They're really as good as the inputs you're giving them, or the person designing the algorithm. And so, heavy trading algorithms are really impacting stock markets all over. And so, big drops, big swings up and down can happen because of automation. So, you just need to be coming in with some concern or just awareness that that can happen, so you're watching it, no matter what level of automation you're using. Ryan: But there's bid management, there is automated campaign management. In fact, one of my competitors that's been around for even longer than us, and they actually have a really good name in the marketplace, they built some automated systems to take search queries that converted and build them into ad groups automatically, because that became some of the more mundane time-draining things that were happening, when you'd see a search for this specific product that you hadn't seen before, you're like, "Oh, that converted, that's great, let's make sure there's not more of that out there. Let's build a specific ad group for that search and capture all of it." Great strategies. And so, the main argument that a lot of agencies that are using automation and automated systems that are helping internal employees and agencies scale is you can spend more time strategizing on growth and let these automated systems do a lot of the stuff that are just sucking time away from maybe the things that are more mundane and you don't need to be spending high-powered talent on doing those things. Very logical. I mean, there's no scenario in which that sounds like a terrible idea. Ryan: What's happened with that, that I've seen over the last 10 years, is a lot of agencies have adopted this automation, and it's allowed for tremendous amounts of scale, without having to develop a bunch of humans to understand what's going on, or to know how to communicate with clients, which is in no way bad. But what's happening is as this scale is happening at a lot of agencies that I'm seeing their accounts is they're losing their touch with what's going on, and then how to strategize for actual growth because this tool is doing so much of the work, that they can't go in and say, this client may say, "I really want to start doing this," or, "I want to move my return on ad spend goal to this," or, "Should I be breaking into this market?" And because these tools are doing so much of the work, that question isn't as easily answered as if by somebody that was actually in the account all the time that saw the search queries, that was doing negative keyword reports, that was doing all these wonderful things, and bid management, that could actually respond very quickly and say, "Oh, here's what you need to be considering as a business owner or your marketing team when looking at this question." Ryan: And so, that's been one of my big concerns. I think about stupid, stupid movie, but Idiocracy, where you've got a guy that's been dead for so long, comes back and everybody's really dumb, and he was not smart back when he lived, but everybody got so much dumber because of automation and the world doing everything for them. I worry about that. I don't think it's happening across the board at agencies or internal teams, but I really have a lot of respect for groups of people, or agencies that have to be in the account regularly, and I see a lot better results, generally speaking, when somebody's in a Google Ads or Microsoft account making the changes, because they're seeing in real time what's happening in the market, and they have to have a lens where they're looking at things through and say, "Why is this happening? I have to go solve this problem or understand it a little bit more." Whereas, if a tool's doing all the work, they don't have to try to get in there and understand what's happening, or what is the competitor doing that's causing this to happen in this account. Jon: I heard you talk a lot about search and search ads and Google and, okay, so Google has some automation. Does Bing have automation? Microsoft Ads. Ryan: They do have some, and it's not as old as Google. So, I can't say that it works as good or has as many advancements because I also don't look under the hood and I don't understand all the engineers and what they're doing. Microsoft obviously has some very smart people and they're doing some great things in there. So, a lot of the same things you see in Google, Microsoft Ads also has a lot of that capability for automation, and I would use a lot of the same automation the same way depending on where you are in the business cycle and what is needed in your business. Jon: Okay. Now, what about social channels, because that falls under pay-per-click for me, right? Ryan: Yep. Jon: So, what about things like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter? Is there automation built into those platforms? Ryan: There is some level of automation built into almost every platform, and I look at it almost the same no matter who or what platform it's on. It's an old example, but it still rings true. I wouldn't give all my taxes to the IRS to have them do them for me and tell me how much I owe them. We're diametrically opposed to what should be happening in that scenario. Jon: Right, success is different for each of you, right? Ryan: Exactly. Jon: Okay. Ryan: Exactly. So, if Facebook is doing everything for me and I'm just giving them a credit card and hoping that it does well, there is a piece of Facebook that wants me to succeed, but Facebook's success is more important to Facebook than my business succeeding. They know that if my business fails, another one's going to come up. Same with Google, same with Microsoft, same with LinkedIn. It's all the same. So, I, having been in this for a decade, I step a little bit away from automation whenever possible and I say, "Okay, how can I understand this better? How can I try to beat what the automation is doing?" Because what I've seen a lot of times with the engineers that build automated tools, way smarter than I am, as far as coding, math. I mean, it's not even close. But we're coming up with a strategy of maybe why this should be bid up or bid down, or maybe why this keyword should or should not be in the account. Ryan: I've still seen the humans making better decisions on that, and I think the machines and the AI is a very popular term. Artificial intelligence, everybody wants to be able to say that they do have a lot of that in their agency or in their organization, because it sounds really good. Like, "I've got this artificial intelligence that's really pushing growth and doing a lot of my thinking for me." Again, not bad at all, and I actually recommend businesses step into that space to understand it more and to use it where it's appropriate. But I still think when you have human searching and the change is constantly happening, we know that something like 15% of all searches done on Google every 90 days have never been done before. So, what is an artificial intelligence going to do with a search term that's never been done before? It can gain some insights possibly, but as we're blending in search query reports now voice search with text search, like, I type it into my computer or I search for it on Alexa or Google Home. There's a lot of different intent behind that. I've seen better results from humans looking through that and being able to filter it. Jon: Right, right. Especially working with natural language and understanding the intent behind what people are searching versus just what they say, right? Ryan: Yeah. Yep. Jon: Okay. Ryan: And so, yes, companies need to be looking at automation and considering the opportunities available, and then how is that going to compliment what they currently are doing? I don't ever look at, long-term, replacing humans... I mean, again, in the next five years that will be my long-term view. You can't predict anything in the digital space beyond five years, and really, anything longer than a year is, you're throwing darts at a dartboard way far away. But I don't foresee any time soon where I would be comfortable with my money on full automation, no human looking into that or doing it, or having a serious play within that space. I spend a decent amount of my own money on all these platforms, and I see the automation. I know the biggest players in the space. I mean, if you're in the PPC world, Marin, Kenshoo, Adobe, Acquisio. Probably hundreds of others that are doing the same thing in bid automation, in addition to Google and Microsoft, including Facebook will do some bid automation based on goals. There's no shortage of those. There's no shortage of very, very smart people working to create the next best automation. Jon: I think you made a good point earlier, and that's something I think you just touched on right now even, but it's in the favor when you do bid automation of Facebook or whoever to have that bid go up and up and up, right? So, automating means that escalation seems to happen more quickly. Is that not true? Ryan: Yeah, I mean, we saw it in your account, right? Where you were averaging in your business $20 a click, which is reasonable, based on how you spend money and the returns you get. But then all of a sudden, if everybody is on automation and everybody's using Google's automation on Google, how does Google know who's going to win? Does Google play, you know, make it socialist where everybody gets 5% because there's 20 people advertising, so we're going to even it out and make everybody little? How do you grow beyond that? And that's where logic comes into my side and says, okay, we can't all be on automation or there's just, there's no win. There's only so many ways you can look at moving bids up or down, for example. They can only move up and down, they can't move sideways, they can't move diagonal. And so, it's understanding more about the user as we add layers in from a remarking perspective, from an RLSA perspective. The more information we have about this user allows us to get more aggressive or less aggressive than maybe a competitor that doesn't have that information. Ryan: And so, all of these layers we add on add complexity and give opportunity to people that have that data. So data is actually probably, in my opinion, more valuable than some automations. The more data layers you can get, and you can get lost in data, so don't get me wrong, the idea that "Oh, big data, all you need to do is look in all these thousands of Excel sheets to figure out where that one specific customer is that you want and go find them and bid on them." It's more about using that as you're making adjustments and using the understanding and strategy behind why you may or may not be making this move. Ryan: It's fascinating, when I look at all the people I've hired in the digital marketing space and the people that have really succeeded on the backend of making the moves in an account. It's really, from a human perspective, becoming an art form in how you look at a Google Ads account, and you're kind of, I joke with the guys and girls on the team, or ladies on the team, that it's kind of like the Matrix, where you're looking at just all of these digits flying around. And the really good paid search account managers in the account really see it in a much different light than somebody like myself that would go in and say, "Yeah, okay, I see it says $200 and it says conversion." They're seeing all these different layers because of their experience. I mean, some of our people have been doing this for over a decade, 15 years actually, in the accounts, doing it, and they're so efficient and so crazy of what they can do. Ryan: And we've matched that up with people that are very good at gaming, like, the strategy piece of gaming. And so, really, we're looking at almost the gamification of digital marketing, where we're looking at these and saying, "All right, you're trying to beat these other advertisers." I'm a hyper competitive individual, as you know, and you're pretty darn competitive as well, in your basketball and marketing world. I want to win. And we find people that really want to win, and then they add their ability to see all of these moving pieces and saying, "Hey, if that competitor of our client goes out of business, that's unfortunate for that company, but it's really good for us and our client." Ryan: It becomes fun but also interesting in how you're taking that human that is really good at paid search management, and what we're trying to do is kind of make, right now my best analogy is kind of the Terminators. How are we using technology and bolting it on to them to make them more effective at what they do? Rather than replacing it, how do we give them things they can look through with weird glasses or things they can add onto their mice? What are we doing to make them more efficient as a human, and that's how we look at technology and automation. Jon: So next time I visit Logical Position, I'm going to be interacting with a bunch of cyborgs basically. Ryan: I mean, hey, if my vision comes in place. I mean, maybe two years out on that one. Jon: Dart board, right? That's one of the darts. Ryan: Yeah, one of the darts. But it's... I think the best use of PPC automation, personally, and this is my lens I look through and how we're looking at automation internally at Logical Position is, for the majority of companies in the middle, it's, how are you supplementing the humans? Instead of replacing them, how are you making them able to do more? So, we use, scripts are a great automation that a lot of people don't think about. We're using scripts to say, "All right, this ad group had a hundred impressions by 6:00 AM yesterday and it has zero today. What just happened? Something is broken there. Let's go in and see that." Replacing some of that minutia or things that just get really bored or tedious, or we just don't have the scale of a human in a large account to get to all of those pieces efficiently. How can we say, "All right, I need this to go do that"? Maybe it's not going to go through the search query reports for us and find all the negative, but it can bubble up some opportunities. Ryan: I've talked to a phenomenal technology company, Metricstory. If you haven't checked out Metricstory I think they're really cool, and they're really, man, they have some smart engineers. They're doing some automation where they're able to bubble up new opportunities based on scraping a Shopping search query report and saying, "Hey, these converted and they're actually not showing in your text ad or search portion of your account, from a search query perspective. You should put this keyword in there because it's converting on Shopping." And it can, based on their algorithm, their really smart algorithm, it can even give you an estimated return on ad spend, saying, "Hey, this keyword we think is going to get this based on ad groups around it." Ryan: So we're really looking at leveraging some of that in our efficiencies. Say, "Okay, if we have that, can we make this person able to focus more on bids on text ads because we have this filtering a search query report on Shopping?" Or we're able to find losers in the search query report on the text ad side much quicker than we could if we had to comb through it by hand. Jon: Yeah, this is a really interesting point, adding on to what people, the strategy that a human person can bring to this, with a little bit of AI, helps them to push this even further. But you still have to have the insight that somebody is bringing to the table with that experience to really pull out the meaningful changes. And I thought it was really interesting, you said earlier that aligns with this, bids and these automated bid machines, they only can go up and down. They can't go sideways or diagonal or any other dimension, right? And that's what a human is able to do. Ryan: It's a frustrating answer, but every company should be looking at kind of a backstop. And then also, if you're a company that has one person managing your account internally, I always had the worry as an agency of the bus theory, like what if they get hit by a bus? I told my team, nobody could take the public transportation because you can not be hit by a bus. We don't have enough backups. But in that scenario it's like, okay, well, who else is going to be aware of that? And it can't just be an automated system that's going to be continued going if they evaporated tomorrow, because it's unencumbered, you know, what's going on. Ryan: So, having some automation helping them, but also documenting things too so that an automation doesn't need to take all of it, but that another human could come in and replace or augment as well if somebody needs time off or pregnancy or birth or sickness, all these other things that we, at scale, with 750 employees here, we can do that automatically but a lot of companies don't have that ability. And so, they need probably a little more automation just to protect themselves but also ensure that there are some humans looking at things. Jon: Well Ryan, this has been extremely educational for me. Thank you for sharing all the knowledge around this. I am really looking forward to the day that I walk into Logical Position and I'm interacting with some cyborgs and then having you bring that skillset over to The Good so that we can continue to do the same on the conversion side. Ryan: Oh yeah. That looks fun, huh? Jon: Yes. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for educating me today. Really looking forward to not spending $200 unnecessarily on my own ads by checking a box for automation in the future. So, thank you for saving me on that earlier on. Any last words on this? Ryan: Of course, you can just send me a $200 bottle of wine and it'll be just the same. Jon: Perfect, I know what you like. It's in the mail. Ryan: No, I think it's good just to always be careful with automation. Don't assume it's going to work for you always. Just have smart humans working with you. Jon: Awesome. All right, thanks Ryan. Have a wonderful afternoon. Ryan: Thanks Jon.

Earlier this year, we helped migrate one of our first clients onto Shopify Plus. As part of that re-platforming, we tried a new app called Retention Rocket that had dramatic results. That shouldn't be a surprise if you're familiar with the co-founder. Dylan Whitman started BVAccel, the largest Shopify agency. His experience as an agency owner directly led to the creation of Retention Rocket You'll hear: How insights as an agency owner led to the creation of Retention Rocket Why rising acquisition costs are the biggest threat to your business The intentional reason they're NOT in the app store Ryan Somrak Started in the eCommerce industry 10 years ago running sales for Bronto software where they grew the company from 0-50M having never raised a single penny of VC funding. Successfully sold to Netsuite for 200M in 2015, and eventually purchased by Oracle in 2016 where he helped open their 1st Santa Monica location. Now Ryan heads up sales at Retention Rocket. Tune in for more details! Special Offer from Retention Rocket Retention Rocket: Free Install & Free Trial 50% Off 1st 2 months Platform Fee Dedicated resources to install for non-Shopify Plus stores. Show Links Example store: Yvonne Estelle's Transcript Kurt: Hello and welcome back to the unofficial Shopify podcast. I'm your host Kurt Elster in a beautiful kind of gray, rainy, but I don't mind Skokie, Illinois, high top, Westfield Old Orchards professional building in. This is my version of Wayne Tower in Gotham city. Anyway, I want to hop in the time machine and tell you a story. Kurt: A good eight years ago, early in my career before I was the Shopify guide and fully committed to it, I had an office and below that office where some retail shops and there was one wonderful shop called [inaudible 00:00:37] that sold fine linens and tableware and basically expensive French home goods for your house. And it really is very pleasant store to go into and it turned out the owner had an interesting background and was a fun person to talk to and she said, you know, right now my website, I think she used to like Front Page. She's like, I wish I had something better. I said oh I cold help you out with that. Kurt: And we got them on Presta Shop. And it was way better. But you know, over time it was a big pain. And she stayed on that custom Presta Shop theme we developed for seven years until at the very beginning this year we moved her to Shopify plus and it was just phenomenal. I mean you can imagine going from like old and busted to the absolute super car of a E-commerce platform that is Shopify plus, really had a phenomenal impact on her business. First just in time savings, then second in a better user experience that resulted in a higher KPIs across the board. And then third, the sheer number of opportunities that were opened up by apps. Like in the past, her Google shopping was, she was literally like writing her own Google shopping feed, manually uploading it. Kurt: I mean, just crazy stuff. So now we get to automate that stuff, which freed up bandwidth for this single owner seven figure business to then turn around and start trying new things. And of the new things we tried was one that utterly prints money and has been a phenomenal experience that I want to tell you about, and that's retention rocket. So it was new to me, I was skeptical, but it looked cool. The more I learned about it it sounded good. So I said, okay, well let's give it a shot. We tried it, and just utter phenomenal success. So I've got with me Ryan Somrack from retention rocket and I'm going to, we're going to pick his brain and hear about retention rocket and why he believes it is absolutely crucial to your marketing, along with a brief history of the platform because it's kind of interesting. Kurt: So Ryan started in the E-com industry ten years ago running sales for Bronto. It's my understanding that Bronto is like the enterprise equivalent of Klaviyo and he while with them went from zero to 50 million and ACV having never raised a single penny of AVC funding. Yes, a man after my own heart, successfully sold to NetSuite for 200 million in 2015 eventually purchased by Oracle where he helped them open their first west coast office in Santa Monica. And now Mr. Ryan, where are you? Ryan: Hey Kurt, now we are in San Diego. Kurt: And whatcha doing in San Diego? Ryan: Yeah. So I'm running the sales team here at retention rocket. Kurt: Cool. And what the hell is retention rocket? Describe it for me? Ryan: What retention rocket does right, is essentially we are a retention platform that is going to gear conversations with folks, sending the right message at the right time to folks, but most importantly through the right channel, right? So if you look at how E-commerce continues to become more competitive as merchants are duly pressured by the increased ad cost and new online competitors, as a consequence of that, right? Teams are getting leaner, larger merchants are cutting staff and smaller upstarts or are comfortable running lean, teams leveraging technology. Essentially what we want to do, right, is build a retention platform that can drive on its own for clients. So that way, again, when they are paying these customer acquisition costs to get people on their site, we're then capturing their information, whether it's email or SMS or Facebook or push, right? And so that way what we're able to do with deliver messages to retain those customers through whatever channel it is that they prefer. Kurt: All right, so recapping, we run, presumably a lot of folks run Facebook ads. Facebook ads, as we've discussed on the show, are getting more expensive than ever. So you've got this high acquisition cost to drive someone to your website and then once they're there, obviously we want to compete, keep them there. But even if we had some extraordinary conversion rate, like 5% , which would be super high. That still means that 95 out of a hundred people don't buy, but they still, we still spent the money on the ad, right? Kurt: So we want to convert, retain, as many people as possible into customers. So in the past that's all right, we're going to follow up with some dynamic remarketing and we've got like, if we're really sophisticated, we're going to send it a multi part, so like three or four abandoned cart emails. And that would be part of like a larger piece of software. What I'm hearing is in retention rocket, the sole focus of your automation suite is cart abandonment recovery, really. And in that like just have it, that's just the pure focus and it's doing it in more than just email, to multiple channels. Ryan: Yeah. So think about it in this way. Right? So we started off, it was only natural for us to start off in the SMS space. Right? So to kind of give you a brief history of retention rocket, right? So our co founder Dylan Whitman was running one of the largest Shopify agencies in North America, BB Excel. Kurt: Well truthfully, I like, BB Excels' reputation is great. I like Dylan with a lot. I met him a few times and that was part of my interest and willingness to try retention rocket. I'm like if Dylan is behind it, I need to pay attention to it. Ryan: Yeah. And so that's kind of the initial reaction that most people get when we talk about our, when we introduced SMS right up front, a lot of people are hesitant about it because their initial response is, hey, we don't want to pester the customer through text messaging. And usually our response behind that is, is, well, whether you're sending them a text message, right, versus an email, if you're sending out a four part abandoned series email, how much non pestering are you doing versus you know, sending them out a one time text message to try to recoup that through a different channel? Ryan: But essentially going back, right, so Dylan working with BB excel, what he was able to do is work with a variety of merchants in the world, right? Surrounding E-commerce. And he kept coming across a consistent problem with these E-commerce shops specifically on Shopify, which was retention marketing was just taking too many systems, too many technologies, and it was way too complicated to execute. And for the people who were executing it, it was costing them so much money to where they were constantly having to worry about the overhead cost of it. So at the end of the day, again, marketing tools should empower marketers and technology should not essentially bog you down. And so that's kind of where we wanted to focus the core solution, is how do we make a tool that's easy to use for everyone. And also a tool that when we turn it on right, you can start seeing demonstrable revenue day one. Kurt: That's, yeah. Well, that's always a great win for customers. I love that. The common story that we hear from entrepreneurs, from merchants on the show is they have a pain or problem in their own life. They identify a problem and they go, "Hey, I could do this better. Why not me?" And it sounds like that exact same path got followed in software by Dylan, and having you, you said, you know, hey, this thing's going to be easy. It's going to be a quick, fast to use. Having used the thing, that is how it feels like it is no nonsense. It's not bloated. It's not over complicated. Coming from a software development background. I appreciate dashboards like that. All right, so we've established where it came from. Walk me through a certain, you've got to have a roster of cool clients on this thing. Give me a few. Just drop those names. Ryan: Yeah. We work with a variety of clients. So think of like Ivory Ella, Pura Vida, Kopari Beauty, Head Kandi Pro, Brooklyn. And so those are just a variety of clients that we work with. And then from a total demographic standpoint, right? We work with over a hundred clients today, I, and we're constantly growing again, being only a 13 month old company, having a hundred plus clients. You can kind of see the adoption rate that this is starting to take place. Kurt: Yeah, I was going to ask, hey, when did this start? All right, so just over a year ago? Ryan: Yeah, February. That like the first week of February of last year is when we officially kicked things off. Kurt: Oh, so I'm imagine, you're just starting, you've probably got like these are the core things we fixed and I mentioned you've got a long roadmap, run me through, or we've established what it does, it's retention, but really, you know, we're gonna stop browse abandonment, cart abandonment. Walk me through currently the tools in your toolbox that let me do that. And then some of the stuff that's on the roadmap that's going to be coming down the pipe soon? Ryan: Yeah, so currently what we do today, right from think of it, from when we launched our MBP, was an SMS abandonment feature, right? So somebody reaches your cart, right? Or they reached the checkout page. Most people are already collecting a phone field in that checkout or cart page, right? And so what we're doing is we're collecting that opt in, right, and then we're triggering out an abandoned text message that goes out to those customers. Ryan: Additionally from that, right, we're also providing different opt in widgets. So think of tools like texts to opt in. So you'll walk into a lot of stores, especially on Shopify, what you see today, these clients are starting to run pop up shops. So what we're doing right, is we're allowing those customers to do like a text in campaign. So, you know, text Kurt, right to 12345 to receive a SMS, like specific promotions. Right? Kurt: Those are like, those work well as radio ads. I always hear those on like Sirius. Ryan: Yeah. Kurt: You know, like Howard Stern and they're like text blah blah blah 2345 to get here, you know, free info. Ryan: Yup. Yup. Kurt: Okay cool. Ryan: Yeah. We also do things like form builders, right? So we created, after speaking with some of our customers when we launched them, right? One of the biggest things, or the concerns that they had were, hey, we've been in business right, for ten plus years we've collected a substantial amount of emails, but we've never done text message marketing before. How can we start to convert those people in a rapid growth type way. So what we've done right, is allow them to create a separate landing page, whether it's on their site or whether it's one that we actually can create in the platform itself to where you can now start leveraging the email subscribers that you have and push them through like your normal monthly newsletters that encourage those customers to then sign up for like, mobile VIP offers through the site. Right? Ryan: So now you've got an email that's triggering out to your normal customers, giving them the ability to now sign up for another channel where they might receive let's say one to two messages per month and that could be just exclusive only to like those mobile users. So that's one of the other tools. Ryan: We're just also about to release a push notification tool, right? So our whole goal right, is to start now rolling out a lot of these separate performance marketing channels. And then for us, right, it's going to start to determine when these customers are so because we're integrated into Shopify, we're able to track when that order is completed. And so for us, right, it's again, it's not focusing on, hey, we want SMS to be the main driver of it. It's really to understand, hey, this customer is receiving three to four messages a month across email, push, Facebook and text, right? We're now able to track when this customer is purchasing so we can determine like when they should receive which message at what time and when they should start falling off the different engagements from those channels. Kurt: Oh, so you're adding machine learning to it? Ryan: Yeah. That's going to be towards like the second half. Now that we're starting to collect all this data, right? Our longterm goal is to start collecting those algorithms on when the customer is purchasing, when they're making that purchase, what channel they're making that purchase on. Right? So let's say if I set up, you know, a five part abandoned series, that five part abandoned series might be a five part multichannel engagement, right? Between SMS, push, email and Facebook. But if I know that the customer purchased after receiving a text message, they automatically fall off the funnel of the remaining channels that are supposed to go out. And then now I know, hey, this customer purchased through a text message at a, you know, a 5% off coupon as opposed to purchasing through an abandoned email where I might have leveraged at 15% off coupon. So again, it's starting, we want to start to leverage again, how you want to start sending out those messages to the customer. Kurt: All right let's walk through a practical example here, cause my fear is that people aren't grasping how cool this is 'cause it may be hard to picture between, you know, buzzwords like sales channel. Yeah. All right. That wasn't a great example of a buzzword, but the ... Ryan: AI, AI is a great buzzword. Kurt: Yeah I did say machine learning. Okay. So let's walk through an example. I'm, we'll go with you Yvonne Stills, since you started with that one, I'm on Yvonne Stills dot com ,I find like, oh, these are the place mats for me. I add these to my cart. I start to check out, the doorbell rings, I moved on. What happens? How are you going to fix this for me? Ryan: Yeah. Yeah. So from there, right on the backend, we've set up based on, again, working with Yvonne and understanding what she doing from an abandoned email standpoint because it's safe to say, right, most people are sending some type of abandoned email today. Right? Kurt: Lord I hope so. Ryan: Right. Yeah. And if you're not ... Kurt: Get to work. Ryan: Yeah, right. Yeah. You're behind the game already. So essentially what we did right, is we sat down with Yvonne to understand when those emails are going out from a time perspective, we know from our end, right, that went an abandoned text message is sent out. 97% of the time that message is opened within the first three minutes of receiving that text. So again, you got to think about when a customer is abandoning, they're really essentially abandoning for a couple of reasons. One, there's customers out there that are really just looking for a discount. The other ones, there is something that could come up where they might actually have a question of they abandoned, does the short coming a different color does the shirt, do the shoes coming in different size. Right. My kid threw up in the kitchen sink, right? So now I've got to attack that. Ryan: So essentially what we're able to do then, right, is trigger out that automated text message to go out after a unique set of timing that the customer chooses. Right. Some of them send a text message out within the first 30 minutes of someone abandoning. Some people send it out after two hours of when someone abandons. So for us it's understanding when they're sending an email. So that way we can determine when we should send out a text. So now let's say I've got an abandoned text that goes out after 30 minutes, right? I follow that up after let's say four hours of sending an abandoned email and then let's say 24 hours from then, right? I want the last notification to be through, let's say their Facebook messenger account if we've collected that opt in. Ryan: So now I've got three different channels that I'm now following up with the customer to say, to remind them the purchase. So let's say they then received that text message, they open that text, right? They click on the link that's provided there and then they make that purchase. As soon as that purchase is made, right? It's an notifying Shopify on the back end that that order has been completed. So what happens is, is they fall off any abandoned email program that was set up and they would fall off any Facebook notification that's scheduled to be pushed out. Kurt: Oh dude, sweet. It's painless and seamless. All right. So for my experience with Yvonne was like literally she was like, yeah, let's set it up. And then you guys set a meeting, and then like by that afternoon it was up and running and going. Is that, did she get special treatment because this is, this is one of Kurt's clients? Or is this just because it's this easy? Ryan: Yeah, no. So it really is that easy, right? So if you, if you look at it, right, the new breed of advanced and fast growing merchants, they just want, they just want software that works, right? They don't want to have to think about it too much. They want it to produce revenue in a way where you aren't bombarding individuals X number of times. And they also want to be able to turn it on. Right? And then kind of let it go from there. Ryan: So essentially during all of our on boards, that's when we, we sit down with the customer, right, to understand like, hey, what are the different channels that they're already working in today? And then the strategies behind that and then we introduce, right, what are the strategies that we see from a multichannel perspective work for our clients. We set up their campaigns, we configure the best practices behind that and then from there moving forward, right as soon as we turn it on. Right. They've got dedicated teams behind them to help assist in any way because at the end of the day, right, it is software. It's a certain channel that most people have not gotten into. So they need that hand holding experience, which is where we typically win most of the time. Kurt: All right, so devil's advocate question here is this thing lets you some retention messages through text, number one, and it's actually we should, it wasn't noted, you know when I tested it, it's MMS. So like I got a text message with the product photo in it. It was really cool. You're in push notifications, there's Facebook messenger, there are existing solutions that do all of those things individually. Devil's advocate question, like what's the difference or the advantage here? Ryan: Yeah, no, that's a great question. Right? So I think the biggest thing that we're going to be focusing on is that these tools that we're going to collectively put into the platform, right, are not going to be things where it takes an entire team to run those technologies, right? So I think that's primarily like the first and biggest thing is that, so ease of use is really our biggest focus. I think the next thing that is going to be the biggest game changer is that we're going to be able to start collecting all of the data and from a predictive intelligence standpoint, right? Predict from an automation way of like, Hey, we noticed that customer A converts 10X higher, throw an email at a 10% off coupon, push them down this flow. But we know customer B converged 20X higher through an SMS and no coupon at all. Right? Ryan: So maybe we want to save that coupon, right? For someone that we know purchases more through, let's say email, we're going to now push customer B through like the text message funnel. So again, it's starting to understand like, where the customers are purchasing and how often they're purchasing. So then that way you can start leveraging. Another thing that we're looking at right now is, is think of like post mail, right? So companies that we know have purchased, like maybe they purchased one time and they haven't purchased within the last six months, right? Send them actual postcard, a with an offer tied to that, right? Kurt: Does it do that? Can I do that now? No? Ryan: No. It doesn't do that now, but that's exactly what we're working on. Right? So ... Kurt: That's be cool. Ryan: It's not leveraging just one channel to try to steal an attribution from another channel. We could care less about what, you know, what channel makes the sale. Right? We literally just want to understand from a customer viewpoint, right, which channel is communicating to that person and which channel they're responding the most with. So instead of say, hey, I want to have an email platform, right? And then I want to have a Facebook message platform that's going to try to take the acquisition away from my email, right, now you've got two conflicting platforms trying to steal the attribution. For us it's more about understanding what these customers, or where in the funnel they're making these purchases from first and foremost. Kurt: Yeah, it's an important distinction that I had not picked up on, that is a big advantage is you've got better attribution as opposed to like last, touch attribution that a lot of these platforms use, so you have like multiple apps all taking credit for the same thing. It's silly. Ryan: And the hard part of balancing that is right is when we start chatting, like when we go that deep with customers, a lot of the times we're having those conversations with customers that have never done SMS before, So now like you really have to kind of dial it all the way back and and look at first and foremost and say, okay, what are the retention strategies that you're doing today? Most people that we talk to are like, our retention strategy isn't that strong. We're really focused on the customer acquisition side, which we can completely understand and relate with, especially as technologies are changing and the rapid pace that E-commerce is going through. That's a valid point. But people, I think in the next, you know, in the next twelve to 24 months, you're going to see a dramatic change and people trying to focus on how do they grow the LTV of a customer and then how do they grow the AOV of a customer. And that's where I think retention is going to like take over by storm, right? Ryan: It's because now you've spent all this money to get somebody to your page, so now it's a matter of like how do you get that person to then not only convert one time on that page, but to keep that customer for let's say 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, and to take them from $60 in revenue, right to $120 in revenue over the course of that 12 months. Kurt: It's absolutely a safe bet, as acquisition costs keep getting higher, eventually currently profitable E-commerce businesses won't be sustainable anymore unless they have that shifted focus to, okay, let's focus on retention and we're going to, you're going to see that represented in a few key performance indicators where, all right, what's our lifetime value? What's our average order value? What's our repeat customer rate? And I think you're absolutely right. Not like, if you're thinking, oh, that's a hot take, it's really not. It's inevitable. Ryan: It really is. And again, it's not to focus on one channel over the other, like email, like you hear these things, that email is dying, right? Or email is going away, right? That's just 100% false. What's happening, right, is that there's just been so many email providers, right, that the space in general is just a bit saturated and email is so cheap, right? That people can send, you know, five, six messages a week to the same customer. Right. And it's relatively inexpensive, which is why I think email is going to continue to be around. Ryan: Our position, right, is you need to find, you need to find a real like, almost like painting a picture, right? You need to find a way to where you're not just focused on one specific outlet to start responding to that customer and that's all part of like what we're even learning as a company. Right? Do we know if a back in stock reminder is better notified through push notifications than email or text? Do we, you know, do we notice that hey, a new product launch or, or let's say you know, basically hey an update to some new products that we're rolling out. Like should that be going through an email as opposed to anything else? Do we think a buy one get one free sale is more geared towards SMS then email or push? These are all things that like we're starting to at, and which is I think going to be the biggest proponent of like how customers start to trigger out their marketing messages. Kurt: No, absolutely. Okay. Going backwards a little bit. What is the, if we've got all of these channels unified in one app and we don't have to deal with a bunch of separate apps and now we're collecting this data. Okay. Then it stands to reason. You may have a cool dashboard, but it's also, it's a 13 month old app so, I don't know if it isn't there yet. Talk to me about the reporting and what that dashboard it looks like a little bit? Ryan: Yeah. So right now we're able to look at total messages sent right from a channel perspective. So if you sign up and you use like our Facebook tool, if you sign up for obviously SMS and push, right? We'll the able to tell you how many messages are going out through those various channels. We'll be able to report on how many people have opted in through those various channels. Then we can take a look at a sales attribution's as well as revenue generated. Right? So what we're going to be doing moving forward is we're actually going to dive in a little bit deeper from a reporting standpoint. So from like a customer level, right? You can actually look at the customers who have opted in. You can see things like their their last purchase. You can see things like the last item that they abandoned. Ryan: You can see things like total orders that they have on your site. You can see the average order value that they have on your site and we're actually putting them into predefined segments. So then that way when people start to send like outbound promotionals through text or through push or through Facebook, right? You're now able to maybe not send the same message to everyone. You can now start to dissect, hey, I want this message with free shipping to go to customers that we know have purchased more than twice. We want the customers who have purchased less than twice, right to receive, maybe like 5% off or something like that. Ryan: So from there, right, we're also going to be tracking things like opens, clicks, conversions, and then we're also going to be, from a diagraph standpoint, being able to show you exactly where customers are opting in. So, for example, right, if we know that we've got 30 customers that sign up for the text to join campaign versus maybe 15 people who have signed up by abandoning a product versus 10 people who have signed up after completing a purchase, right? You obviously want to know where some of these folks are are signing up. So then that way you can also determine like, which message should be going out to those folks as well. Kurt: So dope, dude, so sick. Ryan: Yeah, it's exciting. So we're super stoked, you know, like at the same time we've got, you know, we've got a two year roadmap, that like we're looking ahead on which is, you look at that and you're like, shit, like that's a long roadmap. But you think of like where E-commerce is going to be, you know, two years from now. I mean just over the last 12 months, like it's changed so radically, just with the changes that are happening within Facebook itself, right? Like, and the customer acquisition costs between now and 12 months ago. There's just always a constant radical shift. So for us, right, it's the challenge for us is, is staying on focus to the roadmap that we have in hand and making sure that we develop a product that again, is easy to use for the customer. And then first and foremost drives them revenue the moment that they turn it on. Kurt: So cool. Yeah. Well that was what amazed, me was how rapidly we were able to get the thing going and making sales. But one objection possible, objection here some of the brands you rattle off, I know her on Shopify plus Yvonne Styles is on Shopify plus. Do you have to be on Shopify plus for this thing to work? Ryan: Yeah, great question. No, you don't have to be on Shopify plus a to use the APP. So right now in its current state, right, we work with Shopify plus and people who are on Shopify, you know, either regular, or if they're on Shopify advanced and Shopify itself is just such an easy platform to work with. It's also a reason that we wanted to start there before venturing out. Kurt: That makes sense, on the topic I noticed like all right, another devil's advocate question. This thing's not in the Shopify APP store and I noticed like there's some big popular apps that aren't in the APP store. What's the deal with that? Ryan: Yeah. So in our current state, right, we're really focused on building, with how young we are still in our current state, we're focused on building one to one relationships with our customers and solving their problems. I think over time, right, as our product eve continues to evolve, you'll see retention rocket in the app store. So we're definitely looking at something like that. We just want to make sure that from a timing perspective, that we're able to deliver right, what the customers are looking for. Kurt: That ambulance you order just arrived. Okay. Nope, that makes sense. The way I'm hearing that as if it was in the APP store, anyone could just click install retention rocket. It's much harder to scale that experience, versus right now it's easier for you to work one on one and have that very high touch onboarding by having it just, okay, you sign up for it on the retention rocket website. Ryan: Yeah, because here's a perfect example of it, right? We get someone who's never done text messaging before, right? They download the retention rocket app in the APP store having never done anything with text messaging before. Like, their question is going to be, you know, what's the best way to op customers, via SMS, what's the best practices on sending SMS, right? Do I send once a week? Do I send twice a day, right? Do I send once a month? So these are all questions that for each customer, they're all going to be different, right? It depends on are, you know, are you a Pura Vida, right? Versus you know, a TAF clothing. Like are you selling $30 items right, where you don't care what the discount is a or are you selling, you know, $400 pairs of shoes that you're not discounting at all? Ryan: So for us, right? It's really a matter, the tool we know will be effective, right, when done the right way. And that's why we want to sit down with those customers and really understand like what they're doing today and how we can incorporate retention rocket to take them to the next level. Kurt: Cool. So what's, what's the typical ROI or results of using retention rocket? Ryan: Yeah, that's a good question. Right? Kurt: 'Cause it says you've got so far, you've got a 20 million that you've revenue increase for retention rocket customers. I see that on your website. Ryan: Yeah. I mean our average, I would say for people who do, from an abandoned cart standpoint, right? I'm just from a recovery standpoint and we've got customers that average anywhere from 300 to a thousand bucks a day, even more, right? Like I don't want to single out the people that we see doing like 4K a day. And I know that's a big average, but it also determines, right, again, like the amount of traffic that they're driving on their site, right? And the actual, the cart value of when someone abandons, right? Ryan: So I'd say typically, on average you can see about 300 to a thousand bucks per day in revenue. The conversion rates that we're seeing a range anywhere from 19 all the way up to 38% right? We've got a reach a fashion retailer down in Auburn that when we turn it on and we ran a 30 day performance forum, they drove over 40K and sales. They had a 46% open rate and a 38% conversion rate. Kurt: That's crazy. That's nuts. Ryan: Yeah. You think about it, right? If you, if you're doing an abandoned cart emails exceptionally well, you're seeing anywhere from let's say like a 12 to 15% conversion rate. Right? That could be fair. So imagine, right? If you increase that even another 9% or 10% what's that doing to the bottom line of the business, and for some of these folks, right? Who are just starting, you know, on a Shopify, an extra 300 bucks a day in revenue is a really big impact for them. So that's kind of some of the things we've seen from an outbound standpoint, people who were doing, I think you'll start to see more and more of this as people start to engage with SMS more, right? Ryan: The average ROI that we see is anywhere from a nine to 10X on those out bounds. Kurt: Alright, you've already sold me on it, stop selling, I want it. How much is it going to cost me? Ryan: Yeah. Right. So we do it based on different tiers, right? So it's based on the amount of orders that they do per day. So it could be anywhere from 99 bucks a month all the way up to 1000 bucks a month. And then from an outbound standpoint, right, they just pay a per message costs on those out bounds. So if they send a regular text message, or like a regular hundred 60 character SMS, you're looking at a penny per message. If they send an MMS like you were referring to earlier where they send something like a picture in there or a Gif, right, you can even include a two minute video inside those tax. You're looking at two cents per message. Kurt: That's cheap. Is there a set up fee for it? Ryan: Yeah, so typically there's a setup fee. So what we're going to do for anyone who wants to try it out, right from, from viewing on the podcast is we're going to do a free install for them as well as ... Kurt: Alright they're gonna shake you down. All right. We'll do a free install. What else do they get, any more? Keep it coming. Ryan: A free install. We're going to do a free trial for them. Kurt: How long is the free trial? Ryan: Yeah, the free trial will last up to 30 days. Kurt: Okay. Free install ,free trial. Gimme more. I need more? Ryan: Yup. Yup. You're going ... Kurt: Let's turn those pockets inside out. Ryan: So if they want to sign on right after after the trial, right. We're going to do 50% off their first two months of the platform fee. Kurt: Oh yeah. Okay. All right. That's you've been properly shaken down so we get free install free trial, 50% off for the first 60 days. Did I miss anything? Is that everything? I mean this is pretty good. All right, where do I go to get started? Ryan: So you're going to, there should be a link that's provided to the podcast, right? Kurt: In the show notes, all right. Exactly. Yeah, so in the show notes that they sign up through that link, it will then generate back to us to give them that special promotion. All right, listener note. If you're on you're on your phone, tap or swipe up on the episode art and it will open up the show notes and you'll find I will stick that in there. Like big heading, special offer from retention rocket. We turned Ryan's pockets inside out and then that will have the link, like a special shortened link that will take you to the page to get the offer. Or if it doesn't, I'm sure you could just, when you're doing the onboarding doc, I heard about you for Kurt, give me those free 60 days nerd and they should help you out there. Don't call him a nerd though, I guess Ryan: Say whatever they want when they sign up. Kurt: Cool. All right, well here I got one. An odd ball question for you. What apps have really good synergy with retention rocket? Like if I really want to make sure that I'm getting the most out of retention rocket, is there anything I should already be doing that would make me a good candidate for it? Ryan: Yeah, right. So I'd say the, the platforms right? That we're working right now on to build some pretty cool use cases. So [inaudible 00:34:56] won, right? Clavio from like an email perspective, smile.io from a rewards. Kurt: Love smile. Ryan: Yeah. Right. So we're working on some really good use cases with them on how they can incorporate SMS to their client base. Right. And then we're also working, we're going to be working pretty closely with recharge from a subscription standpoint, which I think will be, will throw out some really good use cases on people who obviously are abandoning subscriptions or things like auto refill reminders. So stuff like that is going to be down, actually not, pretty far away. So we'll be rolling those out pretty soon. So I think like people that are using those technologies seem to play really well with retention rocket. Kurt: Super Cool. Wow. All right. I got to go sign up. I gotta go sign my wife up for retention rocket. Thank you Ryan. This has been fantastic. I'm inspired. I got to go set this thing up. Ryan: Yeah, we appreciate it, man. So thanks for the help.

So you are working a day job and you are wondering what can you do to get to your financial freedom sooner, rather than later!??!! I met Ryan who is living that life. He has a great day job, but he also wants to do something on the side to help build his financial foundation. Ryan not only figured that out, but he created a system that makes it possible to use his discretionary time wisely. Tune in on this interview as Ryan shares his secret!! Grant: Welcome to another episode of financial investing radio, so I'm very excited because I have in the house with me today, a visitor that I just recently met through someone that I know online and they pointed me to this person. They said, Grant, you need to talk to this person because he's doing a kind of investing that I know a lot of people in the corporate world think about, which is this uncertainty of what's gonna really happen to what's going on in my life, but without going any further. Well let me back up and stop and say, welcome. Ryan. Would you take a moment and introduce yourself? Ryan: What's up everyone? Ryan Helms here coming to you from right now, dark outside Atlanta, Georgia. But uh, yeah, I've been in Atlanta for about five years now. And uh, you know, I create content to help people with nine to five jobs, create freedom in their life. Grant: That's really cool. So how did you arrive at this? I mean, you just one day say, hey, this might be a good idea. Are there must've been some sort of impetus that got your attention and said, hey, I better do something about this? Ryan: Yeah, so for me, I, moved up to Atlanta for my job, which I have no disdain for at all and I came up here and I spent about the first two years I really kind of nose down kind of work, like you know, I'm going to make a name for myself in this company, which has worked out quite well. It was a good strategy, but it got me to a point where I wasn't burnt out, but when I looked up it was on the horizon and I knew I had to like step back, pull myself back for a bit. And unfortunately when you're early in your career in corporate America, you get about two weeks vacation and yeah, it's kind of unfortunate, but I'd used all two weeks of that because I sat on the couch which is about eight feet behind me right now. And I bought a plane ticket to Nairobi, Kenya and had no. Yeah, I had no plans at all. I was literally scrolling the Internet, had no intentions to buy a plane ticket on that Friday night, but I purchased that plane ticket because it was $750 and I thought, man, that's a pretty good deal to go all the way to Africa. I did that and that was in July of 2016 and I made the trip November of 2017 or no, November of 2016 and you know, while I was there it was just. First of all, it was an amazing experience. It's like going on a safari and spending a week on Zanzibar and all this, all these cool things. But you know, as cliche as it sounds, I really had like this epiphany moment when I was there. I was meeting all these people that were doing all these great things in their life that we're allowing them to have this freedom to travel. Like I was meeting people from all over the world and oftentimes they had different paths on how they got there and how they were traveling. Some of them were on vacation like me, but a lot of them were traveling for like two years and I'm in a year and all these things and when I left there I didn't necessarily know what I wanted to do because I'd never had that mindset before. It was always like it was. Yeah. That was like working in the corporate, Grant: So you are thinking "Hey, I'm being a good employee." So you're in the grind, right? And then you saw a flight where price was away from value. I think they call it a sale, right? There's a sale and you're like Nairobi, let's go! So you run into these people out there that are like, they're traveling around. So this pop that idea in your head. All right. And keep going. What happened? Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, I'm on the plane ride back from, from Nairobi, Kenya, coming back to Atlanta and I said I, I need to, I need to create this freedom my life. Unfortunately I look at my bank account and I was about $55,000 in debt, not counting like my mortgage. So like consumer debt. And I said, alright, so how can I expedite the process of paying this debt off? Because that was the, that was the first thing hanging over my head that I knew if I wanted to be free quote unquote free, however you define that for me, it was financially free. Like I didn't want the burden of, uh, have that hanging over my head and have to make decisions based on money. So, uh, I said, how can I speed this process up? So the next thing was how can I create alternate streams of income? Right? So when you're working in a corporate environment, you can't just walk up to your boss and say, Hey, give me a 20 percent rate. Is that Grant: Well, you can try that, but how far does that go? Not far! Ryan: So, uh, so I just started to, for one pull the reins in on my finances, on my budget, things like that really started to understand it because I made good money for my age being at this time, probably like 28 or so, uh, and made good money enough to where I never had to look at my bank account. And I never did. I just knew I had enough money to spend and never was like, it was like I didn't know the password to my Wells Fargo account, that kind of thing. I just knew that I could do what I want it to do and not have to look at my bank. Grant: Maybe you were rich in the world's terms in the sense that you didn't have to look at your bank account, you were free a little bit, right? And you said you didn't have to look too much. But when you saw these other people on your trip you realized your current salary wasn't giving you the freedom at the next level. And that was the epiphany, right? Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. So I spent a, I spent some time figuring out how could I, how could I help speed up the process of, of paying this debt down. Uh, and then I came up on, okay, I'm going to start a side hustle, so I'm going to do something outside of my day job to help, uh, put me down this path. And the first thing I did was always been into fitness and things like that. So I started this a fitness business on the side focused on corporate individuals and it was called corporate fit in. That was going well in through that process though, I had a lot of people asking me how I was doing everything because at this time I was traveling around the world for my job, so I was constantly on the go and still putting out content, still building this business on the side and I didn't know how to answer people and they said, how are you doing it? I was like, I don't know. I'm just, I guess I'm doing what everybody else will be doing if they were doing this. Now stepping back though, I realized it was the systems, right? That's what was allowing me to, to manage all these moving parts in my life was how much I had systematize things. So that was a turning point for me. I said, okay, I don't really see myself doing this fitness thing. It doesn't thrill me. Like I enjoyed fitness because I liked working out. I didn't enjoy it as much when I was helping other people. I created the why. First off I had said, all right, I have a process, I systematized my life in this way to enable me to do this, and I sat down and put pen to paper. The output of that was a physical product called the side Hustle and journal, which I ended up launching on kickstarter a November, so almost about I guess 10 months ago now. November of 2017. Grant: Cool. Alright, so 10 months on Kickstarter. So you said something interesting you came up with this system, the system that the intent of the system has to help someone take themselves through the fitness experience. Is that right? Ryan: So the system that I was referring to was the system on how I was actually a managing my nine to five job, quote unquote, doing all this stuff on the side, hanging out with friends, still still having some form of a social life. That's the system I remember referring to it Grant: That's your system lead people to help them create their side hustle; while they have another job. So there's a lot of people that are in that situation right there. They've got the day job, they want to figure out the side hustle. You've got the system where you figured this out. So it's been 10 months, it's been out there. What's been the impact of that? What have you seen? What have been the results? Ryan: Yeah, it's been cool. So on, on it was really challenging because like I said, I had no audience at all going into this space and I went in it kind of backwards to most people. Most people start like on the content creation side, build some awareness for their, their personal brand, things like that. I like to make things difficult for myself. And went with the physical product right off the bat. Surprisingly I convinced 600, a little over 650 people on Kickstarter to back the project. Uh, so that was a good start to kind building my list. It was kind of a jumpstart to building my list. And since then it's been awesome. I've been really focusing on interacting with that community, really giving them an authentic view at me. So making it, like really showing them, I'm not a guy just selling them a product, I'm a guy like them. I'm a guy on this journey with them, uh, trying not so much to put myself on this pedestal above them. Show them that, hey look, I'm just following what I'm doing. I'm just like you, like if you come on this journey with me, what we're going to cross the finish line about the same time. So that's what I've been doing the past 10 months is, is bringing people on that journey, uh, leveraging the physical product itself as a way to get people to come on that journey with me. Right? So that's, that's the entry point into my ecosystem right now. Uh, so yeah, that's kind of where I've been at the past 10 months. Grant: That's amazing. So, so the style of investing, given financial investing, radio style of the investment here is that you have a way to leverage your discretionary time to produce additional income in your life and make a change without rocking the boat in terms of, you know, you're stable work and stable for now all with the intent that you're shooting towards. So do you have an idea how long it would take for someone applying your system? Regardless of how they apply? Right. I mean they could apply it anywhere from a creating embroidery products to selling books or whatever. Right. You use it for anything, is that right? Ryan: Yeah, for sure. Grant: So if they applied the system, what sort of timeframe would they expect as a two year or three year process where you think they could break free financially or get to that next level? Or does that depend hard to say? Ryan: It's probably too hard to say based on individual factors, but I think what you'll gain right off the bat is the systems that will enable you to leverage this time and actually like it's like finding, you know, you find money in the seat cushions and things like that so that you find time in all of these places that you don't realize you actually have time and it all goes back to just being very intentional about what you're doing and you know, the journal itself and the system within the journal is about discovering like what do you want to be intentional about and then how can you maximize your time around it that could give you time to do a lot of things. Not only could it give you time to invest in yourself by, you know, creating a side hustle or a business on the side, but I mean you could even, it could free up time to do actual investing. Maybe the stock market is what you're really into, right? This system. So could be the foundation for developing your new investing strategy. Doing the research, who you want to getting more methodical about those processes that are required to do really anything, whether you're investing in yourself or in the market, so, uh, it could really be applied to anyone in the amount of effort that you put in will determine the speed in which you reach it. Grant: I heard a seminar recently from a guy by the name of Alex Charfen. You ever heard of him? Ryan: Yeah. Grant: And Alex was, he said something that sounded kind of similar where he said that he has this thing called a a time study, I think was the term he used, which was take a moment to think about how you're spending your time. And he said, I guarantee if you take two weeks to really evaluate and log and write down how you're spending your time, he said you will find places where you are wasting a ton of time and that will free up to then be able to do the kind of system you're talking about. Is that right? Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. And I agree 100 percent. If you don't put it down in front of you, you'll think you're efficient with your time, but there's going to be inevitable gaps in the product says, you know, the reason I put out a physical product for this and I've had so many people saying you need to make an APP, you need to do this. It's because there's so much activity going on in your phone, right? There's so many things and beings and bongs like every two seconds for something like this as important as like getting time back and, and, and creating something great, but out into the world, you need to carve out a section of non-distracted time and really figure out, you know, what, what do I need to do, how can I get there? So that's, that's what I'm all about. Exactly. As you know, putting it down on paper and putting it in front of you and visualizing it. Grant: How much, how much non-distracted time does a person need in order for, to, to make some effective progress? Is Fifteen minutes enough or does it need to be more? Ryan: Uh, for me, I think it needs at one given time. I think it needs to be more, I think the, the uh, you know, the length of period of time should be definitely longer than 15 minutes. I would say at least 45 minutes so that you can, it'll take you 15 minutes, get focused on what you want to do and if all you have is 15 minutes and you have 15 minutes every two hours, yeah, you may be getting, you know, three hours worth of work in that day, but you'll probably only get about 15 good minutes worth of work as you will be starting over every 15 minutes. And as soon as you start to get in your groove, you're going to be, it's going to be over again. So I like to try to carve out a larger block of time of at least an hour so I can make sure I can get focused on what I'm trying to do and actually execute on something. Grant: I think that makes a lot of sense. I've seen multiple studies where people have identified the cost of a distraction in terms of productivity in every time we get distracted with the amount of time it takes in order to get the context back into your head so that you can begin to be productive again. That sounds like that's what you're describing. Absolutely. I used to. I used to ride a lot of code earlier on in my life and my career and every time I'd get distracted, right, it pull me away. It would take me a long time, like 15 minutes, get get into mine, mine everything where I was right in solving a particular problem. It was so expensive to do that. It sounds like you've optimized on that principal to help people invest in themselves, to invest in their future by taking advantage of the discretionary time they have to really reach the real goals. That's cool. You're good. Anything about goal setting as part of this? Is that. Is that a key part of your system provides? Ryan: Yeah, so the product itself, I always say like the backbone of this tool is what I call it, a molehill system. Grant: So why, why do you call it the mole hill system? Ryan: Uh, I was sitting at a Starbucks one Saturday morning working on this and I knew I had this system in it and just from a marketing standpoint, I knew I had to name it something, right? It couldn't just be, it couldn't just live in here. And I was thinking and I was like, man, I was like, don't make a mountain out of a molehill because that's what a lot of people do. You have this, this little obstacle in your way and you just stay in there for months looking at it because you're just so terrified of it. So like the, my thought there is, is you're breaking down, you know, this big mountain into these really manageable mole hills that you can just easily surpass on a daily basis. So the mole hills or things that you're doing every single day and the mountain is what you get at the end and you don't actually ever have to climb the mountain. It's just basically the finish line at that point. Grant: Oh, I see. So the mole hills or series of steps that take you up to the mountain. So what's been the impact of people that have applied the system so far? What have you seen? Ryan: Yeah, so that's one of the coolest thing for me is the satisfaction from just seeing people use the tool and the community that it's creating. So one of the things I did with the Kickstarter was create where it's like an accountability system. So I said, you know, if you want to back this tier, one of the things that you'll, one of the offers in this tier will be all partner you up with somebody. And actually just, this has probably been about three weeks ago now, but I got a uh, I got a email with a picture in it from two guys. And at first all I saw was a pitcher and I was like, why are these two guys sending me a picture? And they were in Milan and I can tell they were in Milan because of the cathedral and the, and one of the guys was from Switzerland and one of the guys was from New York and they were sending me the email to say, thanks for connecting us. This is my accountability partner. We decided to meet in Italy. We'd been working together for the past eight months using the journal. So yeah, things like that are just awesome. And just to realize that you're impacting people and knowing that there's probably other people out there that aren't sending you those emails that are impacting as well. So it's been very, very cool. Just to, uh, just to see how an idea in my head most nights mostly created in a Starbucks down the street is changing people's lives. Grant: That is really awesome. I appreciate you sharing that. That's all happened. Just within the 10 months since you put it out there, if someone wanted to go find your materials, wherever they go, did they go find it? Yeah, Ryan: Sure. GritAndHustle.co; it literally right there on the front page. If you want to check out the side hustle journal, you can get it for free. Just download the free PDF there and if you want to get a hard copy you can get that as well, but feel free to just download the paper version printed out, see if it's for you and if it's for you, awesome. Let me know if you have any questions. I'd be happy to help. Grant: That's awesome. Very good. Okay. Any last comments, thoughts before we wrap? Ryan: Just, you know, a lot of people say this, I think it could actually further closing comments, but just take action. Get out there, create freedom, whatever that means for you. Like for me, uh, I think about freedom as being financially free to do what I want to make decisions, not based on money. Freedom for you may mean something totally different. So figure out what that means for you. And then start taking action so that you can get there. Grant: Okay. So it's GritAndHustle.co. Got it. Excellent. Ryan, thank you for joining. This is Grant. Thanks for joining another episode of Financial Investing Radio. Until next time, take some action.

Ryan Daniel Moran was a preacher-in-training turned entrepreneur. He moved to Austin with little to nothing to his him name, and launched Amazon businesses that he eventually sold for over 8 figures. Ryan did us all a solid – really – by documenting and sharing his journey. The Freedom Fast Lane Podcast helps entrepreneurs at every stage of their business, from startup to exit. In this interview, Ryan shares his top three “mistakes”, or as discussed, things he wishes he did differently as he looks back. He openly shares his story and journey, in the hopes that other entrepreneurs do things to maximize the value of their business (and life). Through Ryan's conference, Capitalism.com, he helps bring like minded entrepreneurs and experts in the ecommerce space together to build brands and businesses that last. While he may be a preacher-school-dropout, Ryan still has a way of delivering the goods when it comes to advocating doing the right thing…so good things follow. Episode Highlights: [1:25] Who is Ryan Daniel Moran? [4:38] Is it better to buy or build? [6:43] Ryan thinks we're in a “seller's market” [8:05] What are Ryan's “mistakes” and what would he do differently. [11:30] Does it matter if you like your buyer? Does likability matter? [13:52] The likable buyer story…who won out over an all cash buyer. [15:12] Mistake # 1 – playing the short term. [17:25] Mistake #2 – telling people what to do and diminishing their talent. [18:51] Ryan shares his staffing team numbers. Inhouse and remote. [20:06] Mistake #3 – Ryan wishes he spent more money on advertising, customer acquisition, and brand building. [22:51] Why is a 100% Amazon business worth less than a Shopify store? [24:00] What channels would Ryan expand to – beyond Amazon.com [25:30] The first “nut you have to crack” [27:02] Ryan disagrees with Joe! [30:40] Brands last, product businesses don't. [31:06] Should you be thinking about a possible exit at all times? [33:05] What gives Ryan the “goosies”. Ok…he didn't say goosies, that was JLo. [33:58] Know what you will do with your money before you sell! [36:10] Should you plan your next brand before you sell, or stay focused? [39:29] How do you get more Ryan Daniel Moran Transcription: Mark: So if I could go back in time I would do a number of things different than I did in my entrepreneurial past especially before I sold my first company. And I have told you the story before that when I sold my first company I sold it for $165,000 only to find out that a year later the same person who bought the company got an offer for 350,000 without changing anything about the business at all. So … and there's a lot of regrets I have by not going back in time obviously I think anybody would like to have that ability. Joe: I'm glad it's that instead of saying you're bringing me on as a business partner. Mark: Well, you're here so I can't … I might not say that to your face. Only when you're on vacation and I have somebody else filling in as guest host. Joe: Well, Jason doesn't listen to the podcast, let's talk about him. Mark: Right. Exactly. Joe: Conversation … no regrets there. Yes and Daniel Ryan Moran was our guest and he talked about some of the regrets or as we called the mistakes because that's how he learns in life as many of us do by making mistakes and in trying not to make them over again. Fascinating … fascinating yes they're our podcast today Mark. I don't know if you recall … if you were there for his presentation at Smart Record over the last summer in Austin but he got up on stage and he spoke for 60 minutes with no script, no PowerPoint presentation and everybody was captivated. And the information that he has in it … volume of entrepreneurs that he works with and the velocities, and the approach, and everything about the way he does business and the way he literally … I mean not literally, preaches business. Okay, he's a … he was going to be a preacher so I want to say preacher school dropout. He chose to be an entrepreneur instead but the way that he talks about things is spot on with the way that we see the most successful entrepreneurs run their businesses. They focus on a number of different things and they implement those and maybe someday if they choose to exit they're in a great position to do so. Ryan talks about all of that including his own two exits that combined totaled over eight figures. Mark: Daniel Ryan Moran, same Moran that comes from Freedom Fast Lane right? Joe: Freedom Fast Lane Podcast where he talks about his story. You know five years ago he had a car and he drove to Austin, Texas and he decided he was going to launch an Amazon business and record his journey. And his journey is not over yet. It's on a new adventure, a different larger adventure but his journey kind of came to a new chapter after selling the last Amazon business that he had. But he talks about it all the way through on the Freedom Fast Lane Podcast. He got tired of seeing people do things the wrong way and learned ways to cheat at conferences and started to do his own conferences through capitalism.com and bringing good like-minded people together that build strong foundation long term value businesses and he talked about all of that today. Mark: Fantastic I can't wait to hear it. Let's go to it. Joe: Hey, folks, it's Joe Valley from Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got somebody that a lot of you might know already. His name is Ryan Daniel Moran. Ryan, welcome to the show. Ryan: Joe thanks about having me in, let's make some magic. Joe: Listen I was having a barbecue last night we had some friends over and this is an absolute true story and one of them is an entrepreneur wannabe. She's in the corporate world and she bought some Amazon products and she tried something and it didn't work but she's going to go at it again someday and she's grilling me … she always asked me how things are with Quiet Light Brokerage and she starts asking about the podcast. I said yeah we're doing all right and hey have you ever talked to Ryan Daniel Moran just like that and here you are today we're talking to you. You're kind of a little celebrity I should say … little, you're kind of a celebrity; a rock star maybe for this … look it was a 50 year old woman. She's rather attractive and she knows who you are. Ryan: Well you know it's like my ideal market is attractive 50 year old women. We all know that that's the market I'm after right now. So tell her to give me a … maybe call me maybe. Joe: She loves listening and the fact that you're first and foremost helping people that's what she loves about it. She says someday she's going to get back to it but she loves listening and she's going to take that leap at some point in the future so good for you. And listen as I said prior to the intro we don't do fancy intros. So if you would … I know it's hard to talk about yourself but give folks a little bit of background about yourself; who you are, where you came from, and what you're all about. Ryan: Yeah. I invest in and I start physical products brands. And the way that I got to that point was actually as a pastoral student back in 2006. I built my first website and started my first business in between high school and college on my shared dial-up computer in my living room and hand coded websites using raw HTML in a software program called Dreamweaver. If you are old enough to remember Dreamweaver and you know it well. So what's funny is we hear a lot of people who are talking about building and … or selling businesses thinking about the good old or either like all the opportunity is gone now or the good old days have these … man, I was hand coding websites in Dreamweaver on a dial up computer. Do you realize how much more opportunity we have now being able to build websites on platforms and sell products on Amazon? So the opportunities are way way bigger now but I was just trying to find a way to supplement my … what I expected to be $30,000 a year salary as a pastor. Now fast forward a few years I did not finish the pastoral route for reasons that would be probably best left on a second podcast that you have Joe that's going to be called quiet skepticism. Joe: Yeah, some kind of … something where we're helping people, we're guiding them off that path right. Ryan: Exactly; quiet go to the light we'll call it. And I did not finish that route and I became a full time entrepreneur. So I was in really involved in the internet marketing space for many years until I really decided or realized I hated that crowd. I didn't like hanging out with those people. So I was like what a conference where those people hung out and I took the skill set that I had from Search Engine Optimization from Pay-Per-Click Marketing from Email Copyrighting and I applied it to physical products brands. And I've had a couple of different exits in the physical products world and now I'm an investor in physical products businesses because it's what I know. It's who I can help the most. And I think it's one of the biggest upside is in the market right now whether you are selling or building a business or buying a business, I think there's a tremendous amount of white space with the transition from big brands into more what I call micro brands mostly Internet based that's where I see the biggest opportunities right now. So that's a … I've had a couple of exits and the total over billed were eight figures in cash exchange. I still own a minority stake in a few of those businesses and have a portfolio business but my primary focus is investing in physical products brands and I have a media company for entrepreneurs at capitalism.com. Joe: Okay, so when it comes to investing people look at buy versus build. In fact, we had a podcast recently with our newest broker Walker Diebel who wrote about a book called Buy Versus Build and there's a really long subtitle and it was a … it quickly rocketed to the top 10 podcasts that we have. And you're talking about investing, do you think it's better to buy versus build at this point in your career or would you recommend somebody that's just starting out to scrape some dollars together and bootstrap something and start? Ryan: Yeah, it's better for me to invest but it wasn't better for me five years ago. In 2013 when I took my first sale on Amazon.com for a physical product I know business investing in physical product brands. I know businesses buying physical products brands now … back then I was buying a lot of websites. And you know what I was buying Joe? I was buying search engine friendly websites with email lists … social media followings weren't this big back then, but with audiences, followings targeting each market that sold affiliate products; because that was what I knew. Joe: That's what you knew. Ryan: I would have been a lot of people who are like looking for the system and that you are the system. You are the machine. And your machine is unique to you. So applying your machine to different opportunities is where value is created. So for me, I'm … at this point, I have more upside as an investor because I already have all the retail connections. I have the connections to sell businesses. I'm connected to other investors. That's my own skill set but the entrepreneur who I invest in is way better suited to start that company than I am and that's what capitalism is. Where I get the value that I bring in combination of the value that you bring and when we bring them together it's greater than the sum of our arts. And so for me yeah I'm … I have more value as an investor but to say like it's better I think would be a mistake. Joe: You know I think you're absolutely right. It depends upon the individual's situation without a doubt. I bought and I've sold and I've invested as well and I can say each were successful in their own way and each were very very difficult in their own ways as well. You'll learn along the way from the mistakes mostly. Ryan: If I could Joe I will add though, I mean globally I think we're in a seller's market. I think we're looking at buying versus selling if I give it a binary choice I do think we're in a seller's market right now. Joe: I have to agree with you 100%. When we have a good quality listing come … I had a conversation with someone this morning who wants to buy. And he's a referral from somebody who already bought and this guy is doing great so I want to do what he's doing. And the response is look when a great listing comes along you need to be prepared. So the more listings you look at the more you're going to know the right shit when it comes along. And you need to be able to act fast because you and a dozen other people are doing the same thing and they're going to make an offer on that business. So I agree it's a seller's market but at the same time, the multiple still don't get pushed too high. It's still the buyer to decide that. You and I as sellers, as brokers can pick whatever number we think the value of the business is but we don't make the final decision at the end it's usually the buyer. The seller's got a lot to say about it because they can say yes or no. But it's still the buyer makes the decision in terms of the value for the most part. But you just recently said you've exited a couple of different times in the last few years. What did you learn in that process if you look at the exit? Or maybe do you want to talk about the fact … the mistakes you made maybe building and what you can do to help the entrepreneurs that are listening or perhaps the exit and maybe a little bit of both. Ryan: Yeah well, there's one thing in particular that I think was on the stake if you will and it was thinking that the buyer had all of the control. By the way, this is C money right here or by a … my … he is the one who wants to make great on the Internet. Joe: For those listening and not watching somebody just walked into the background. Ryan: Yeah, so the mistake that I made was thinking that the buyer had all of the control. And if I could redo this Joe, the truth is if you built something, if you built a business you're the one with the asset. You're the one with the goods that money is chasing you, people want to buy you and so often the seller comes into market and is like the thing that I'm after is the check and I'm hoping that I get the check and that immediately puts you in the frame in which you're the after. You're the one who is not in the power position. So we share them with an offer and the seller is like thank you please oh please Mr. Money Pants I would like your money. And now they're in a position to beat you up over earnings, over … in the negotiations. So what I wish I had done was recognize the fact that I'm the one with the goods. I'm the one with the asset that people want. I'm the one courting the offers. People are making offers to me. There they want one I got not the other way around. So if you're in that position and you're willing to say no and you combine that with the turn ship that says here's what I'm looking for, that to me puts the seller in the frame of mind repair and the negotiating position. I didn't do that. I discovered that after the fact and I really could only have learned that by going through the process. I learned … I personally learned by making mistakes and paying for them later. Joe: We all do. Ryan: Yeah but that's a mistake that I wish somebody had told me before I went to market. Joe: Or is it … the buyer that you're referring to is it a strategic buyer or did you have your business officially listed and people came to you? Ryan: Yeah, we had it listed and we were acquired by an equity group. I still own a minority stake in that company and I'm in great terms with the equity group. I'm really happy with the buyer. I have become friends and obviously business partners at this point. But had I gone to the market with terms that I wanted I probably would have ended up in a more favorable financial position when it came to closing. Joe: Well, the next time you have a transaction you'll know that and you'll be able to make adjustments. Ryan: Right. Joe: Really I think like you said the check isn't the end all, it's more about … I think almost in many ways what your next adventure is going to be. I know that a lot of folks that I work with and myself included when I exited I was just … I sold too late. I was emotionally tired and I think that's the absolute wrong time to sell. You should sell … you should plan to sell, just don't wake up and decide to sell. But when you're emotionally tired you're not doing everything that you can to maximize the profits of the business and that's going to drive down the value. And you're going to get beat up at the end if you're so committed to that check that you can't negotiate a little bit more for something else and be willing to walk away from that buyer if they're if they're not a good buyer. And correct me if I'm wrong but just tell me how you think here, I always find that it makes an enormous difference if you like the person that's buying your business or the one … if you're buying a business from. It's not just about the check. It's not just about the money. It's the people you're doing business with. And I think that as a seller you can get more value if you're respected and professional and likable and the same as a buyer, if you're a buyer and you're professional and likable and complement the owner on the business that they built that you're going to get a better transaction out of it versus all the hard core raw street negotiations. What are your thoughts on that? Ryan: I don't know if you are right or wrong because I intentionally don't do business with people that I don't like. [crosstalk 00:15:45.7] Joe: So, therefore, anybody that wants to buy a business from you if you don't like them then you've got to do that to work with somebody you like. A classic- Ryan: I don't think everybody has that mentality though. I think I would even go as far as to say the majority of people are buying and selling based on numbers or like the deal and very few entrepreneurs get to find every purchase as a person. And so I think most people are approaching it by numbers and logically rather than is there a connection here. I personally … just like for the protection of my own lifestyle am willing to say no to anything that I personally don't like. And what that does is it always puts me in a strong negotiating position because if I don't like somebody I have no problem walking away. And the person who has … the person who is most willing to walk usually has the upper hand in the negotiation. Joe: I agree 100%. I find that from a buyer's perspective one of the questions I get a lot from buyers if I'm up on a panel or speaking or something like this is how do I negotiate up against an all cash buyer, somebody that's got more money than me? And the tried and true answer is really is be likeable. It's … you don't necessarily have to have more cash to get the deal done and I … the classic example is I sold a business last fall. It was about two and a $2.5M and the guy had two full price offers within the first 10 days. One was from an all cash buyer who was a little rough around the edges and was hard to work with. The other was from a really likable guy who was buying with an SBA loan and actually required 10% seller financing in that. The entrepreneur, the seller of this business had the choice; you could go for the all cash or you can go for the guy that he liked. He actually chose the full price SBA buyer and chose to carry a 10% seller note versus working with somebody that he didn't like. So in that situation, I think it makes a difference in terms of … buyers that are listening be likable. If you're working with a broker you absolutely have to be likeable because they're … as you said it's more of a seller's market. And there's a lot of buyers out there. There are buyers that are competing for that same business and when they're likeable they're going to build rapport and when you build rapport you sometimes learn about things before they hit the market as well. Ryan, talk to me about some of the mistakes you've made in your own business. Maybe two or three of the biggest mistakes that comes up at the top of your head. Looking back and learning damn I screwed that up if I ever do that again I'm going to it a different way. Ryan: Well, every time I've made a mistake it was because I was playing the short term. So when I have made short term decisions I usually make bad decisions. I like to say that the longer term that I can make decisions the wiser I am and the better decisions that I make. I said before that people forget that behind every purchase is a person … that goes for customers too and all relationships are long term relationships. Or the best relationships are long term relationships. So if you are aware that behind every transaction is a person and you play it like it's a long term relationship you end up building the better company. Sometimes in spite of a short term decision, meaning … for example as we're recording this there's a … in the Amazon there's a thing we're calling review gate where Amazon is coming in and hit them onto your businesses and removing their reviews. And it's been a bloodbath. It's been absolute bloodbath. And the people who are soaring through it are people who have been doing of the right things the right way for the longest. And the people who are being hurt the most are the people who are the most profitable over the last couple years because they played the tactic game. And like there's absolutely room for tactics inside of every business but those who have been building really solid brands and building audiences and building followings they're going to soar right through this and capture a whole heck of a lot of market share. So the mistakes that I made were always in saying what's the Band-Aid solution here rather than building for the long term. So we take a rule now in the business that we're building, we say okay here's the situation that we're in rather than talk about how we're going to fix it let's say what do we wish we had started doing 90 days ago and that would have made today a lot easier to get through? That's the decision that we need to make today which is a really hard conversation to have when you're in reaction mode. But we force ourselves to ask that question because it usually addresses whatever the root cause is that we need to fix rather than going for a Band-Aid solution. So that being mistake number one, mistake number two would be as a leader telling people what to do. There's a great book called Multipliers that really morphed my brain in terms of how I can affect [inaudible 00:20:52.9] people. And what I realize after reading that book was that I have been diminishing the talents on my teams by telling people what I wanted them to do rather than casting a vision and inviting people to build their piece of that. Now that seems kind of a nuance and maybe overly simplistic but I couldn't emphasize enough the accountability that this book brought me on how much I was diminishing the people that I was working with, And the difference in energy and growth that happened once I started correcting those issues. So as an entrepreneur, we often have like our baby that we're bringing in to our team and we're telling people how to build the baby when reality if we're working with smart people they'll probably own that area of expertise better than we can even if we can't see it. And the big distinction of that book highlights is someone who diminishes their team is usually the smartest person in the room but a real leader makes the rest of the team like they're the smartest person in the room. And that was a huge shift in my overall happiness and with the growth of my companies and it's something that I wished that I had done before I was building companies to sell them. Joe: What kind of staffing do you have just out of curiosity? Ryan: Well, the company that I just exited was a team of four. The portfolio of companies … of brands that I have is a team of five. And my media company capitalism.com is a team of six. Joe: And are all of those people in-house or do you do some … or the VA's are they working remotely or they come to the office every day? Ryan: I'm only counting in-house people so that does not count freelancers. But no not everybody … we have … there's, we are a distributed team. So like I'm recording this in my office right now, one of my team members is just right here my side. But people will come in and out. Some people … like we have a team member in Canada, we have a team member in Germany, but they're all full time dedicated to [inaudible 00:22:47.0]. Joe: Good. I asked that because you know most people that are listening would probably be considered lifestyle entrepreneurs and they have to outsource staff and VA's and people working remotely. So it's good to know that even though they're not coming into your office every day this is really important [inaudible 00:23:02.3] get their short term vision don't have that long term vision so that you don't have major major stomach aches with algorithm updates we'll review gates in that situation and then over managing of the staff you know let them be their experts; anything else that comes to mind? Ryan: As far as big mistakes that I've made … I mean we talked about the mistake in selling and as far as building the business I'll say I wished that I had spent more money on cold advertising. Like always like there's never been a business that was like ah you know I think I spent too much on advertising. I've only ever said I wish I'd spent more on advertising. Joe: Yeah, where would you have spent it because these are primarily Amazon based businesses correct? Ryan: The businesses that I personally built, yes. Joe: Right. So where would you spend that money? Ryan: So we just identified the problem because you said they were mostly Amazon based businesses so had I done things even better I would have doubled down on non-Amazon advertising. Because what … if you're an Amazon business which is like nails on a chalkboard to me because it means you're dependent on somebody else. Joe: Right. Ryan: It means that you're dependent on this channel and you've got to go double down on building a business has a different leg to the stool and that when you combine those things together magic can happen. If you've got an email list of 100,000 people that you've built from cold advertising or from buying tripwires and now you're combining that with the power of something like Amazon.com that's really really powerful. Most physical products sellers never make that [inaudible 00:24:32.6] or they get so myopic into one channel that they never spend the money and the time to go develop the advertising for another channel. I wish I had been comfortable losing my rear end on other advertising channels until I figured out those systems. It's interesting Joe, it's true that every channel you will lose for a while and then you figure out the systems and then you start to grow through it and you get profitable. The strange thing is that most people once they've figured it out and get profitable they're unwilling to go do that hard work in another area. So the way that Amazon worked in 2013, '14, and '15 was if you spend until you grab long enough you could outrank everybody else and go win but I never … I lost that hustle when it came down to Facebook Ads or influencers and people start looking for the immediate ROI. In what business is there immediate ROI? When you're building a long term brand that has sales potential … like buyers are buying the systems; they're buying profitable systems because you've already gone through that hard work of developing the systems that are profitable. But it requires you to go build them so I wish I had spent more on advertising, been more willing to lay it on the line, rolled more back into reinvestment. So I'll call that mistake number three. Joe: So for buyers and sellers that are listening, entrepreneurs that are listening it's that one legged stool, two legged stool, three legged stool. If you're 100% Amazon business it's riskier than if you also have a revenue channel from Google Ad Words and driving traffic to your Shopify store and you might be doing wholesale or B2B things of that nature but right away as I've said before if you've got a business that's just at within $100,000 in discretionary earnings that's 100% Amazon same business $100,000 in discretionary earnings but you've got 60% Amazon, 25% Shopify, I guess that would be 15% percent [inaudible 00:26:36.4] my math here, another percent of B2B that business on the other side is going to be worth 15 to 20% more. So you might be breaking even or losing a little bit of money on that land grab trying to grab more customers but if you can turn that into even the same discretionary earnings that business automatically is going to be worth 15 to 20% more because the buyers will pay more for a risk averse business that'll be around for the longer term so very very good advice. What channel would you go to first? Because there are so many options these days and building a channel off of Amazon is hard as you know. You've got to learn a whole new expertise. Where would you go first and what do most of your successful folks do? Ryan: Yeah and I'm actually going to cue on very creatively sidestepped this question because the obvious is Amazon. But where I would suggest is actually people double down on where the audience is. To me, this is the nut has to be cracked if their building a sellable company. And what that means to me it is for some people their audience hangs out following influencers. For other people that is they follow blogs or they have a blog where the audiences are already hanging out. Or some people they've got a Facebook where there's an audience. Now what most businesses, especially like a million dollar businesses, are doing is they're going channel first and trying to extract as much of it as possible. Like I'm going to go to Amazon try to rank and pull as much out of this pie as possible. Only a few people can win that game but if you switch it and you say where are my people who is the ideal buyer and where are they then the channel where you collect the order can always change. And that makes Shopify, Amazon, B2B a whole lot easier. The first nut that you have to crack isn't where the buyers hang out apart from the sales transaction and then you bring those buyers to the transaction. So the transaction to me … Amazon, easy no question. Put your product on Amazon the credit card is already there, people are already looking for it. No question, easy, done. The nut that needs to be cracked is what happens one step before that. And if there is … like if you don't have the influence, the list, the following, the traffic, the pay-per-click strategy that some way to go get those people and bring them into your ecosystem I think you are struggling from the get go and that's the primary question that I ask the entrepreneur. Joe: Yeah and I think depending upon as you say the product and what they're offering some of those different channels will make more sense. You know I had a conversation with someone this morning that has several brands and one brand has incredible numbers with email marketing and that same expertise applied to that different brand doesn't do as well. Ryan: Right. Joe: They're driving people to their Shopify store though Amazon keeps growing and out phasing everything else. So I understand identify where your customers hang out and then you've got to go find those customers. To own that list though you need to send them to your own store, not to Amazon. So are you sort of balancing between sending them to Amazon because it's all there or? Ryan: No, I just disagree. So I think that the loyalty to the brand is the customer experience. And you give the customer the ability to give you money wherever they are most comfortable making the purchase. I heard Brian Lee say where it's … Brian Lee is the founder of the Honest Company, the billion dollar brand with Jessica Alba, and I heard him say once that he considers it a win when the product is in the customer's home. That's when you've wo, not collecting it online e-commerce site, not getting into retail. It's when the product is in the customer's home. However, they get it and you want to release as little friction as possible getting the product into the customer's home. You will own the customer experience when you have their data. You have the ability to communicate a message in front of them. So if you've got the email list and you send them over to Amazon, Amazon rewards that and your conversion rate is probably going to be higher sending them to Amazon that sending them to your Shopify store. So there's a balance [inaudible 00:31:12.7] I know that I can get a higher immediate customer value sending them to my own web site because I can put them through upsells and cross sells to get their immediate data versus sending them to Amazon where I am going to have to work to get their data. I don't have any upsell experience. They might see a negative review. And so the entrepreneur is going to have to play the game of where the numbers make the most sense over the long term. But I think that the actual customer experience happens in when you communicate with them. And that's in the email message, that's in the outside of just a transaction, not just where their credit card is being added but words being communicated. Joe: Okay, I get and I'm just going to repeat it for those that are … well not smarter than me; let's put it that way. So it's capturing the customer information up front, building that relationship with them, and then simply send them to the place that they can buy the product and experience the brand with the least amount of friction and get it in their home. Ryan: Nailed it. Joe: Okay. Ryan: That's my opinion. Joe: And it all goes back I would say and it's kind of almost unspoken that the brand has to be pretty amazing so focus on that first. Build a great product, a great brand so they have a great experience and then do all that other stuff as well. Ryan: Yeah and let me address that because that often brings up the question how do I identify a brand? Like what exactly is the brand. And the brand is the way that trust is communicated to a very specific customer. Most Amazon sellers have no idea over their customers they know what their product is. If you know what you sell and not who you sell to you do not have a brand. Or you might have a brand but it's really lousy whereas if you know who the person is, it makes the product really really easy. I was just meeting with one of my team members today; we were expressing the frustration over one of our brands in our portfolio. Because when we acquired it, it sold a lot of product but it had no target market. And so we've had to do a lot of work to convert that brand into an actual brand where people are not just buying a product but they're buying something and it says about them sells. Those businesses last, product businesses don't because they're commodities. You forget about commodities and the minute that there's a better price or better customer experience their loyalty changes. But when you've got the brand people are very stingy with their trust. I want to give it to you, you have them for as long as you keep their trust. Joe: Very important message right there. Ryan, any thoughts in terms of whether someone should be building this business and always think about the future and possible exits; do you try to instill in them that they should know the value of their business in the event they wake up some day and want to move on or do you just focus on building that brand and when you're ready the time will come? Ryan: You know the real … the temptation for me is to say that no, you shouldn't be necessarily thinking about selling but I know that I'm in a different spot than everyone who's listening. So I would say if you are building this to make money, be building it to sell from day one. Because the very act of being in it for the money means that you will burn out, you will wake up and want to do something else. It's going to happen. So if that … and like let's just be real about it, if you're in it because of the payday, build it to sell because that's what you're in it for and the payday is the cherry at the end of the rainbow here. If you were in it because you've got a product you want to bring to the world then still develop the systems and processes that will keep you in the position to be in your zone of genius. And that will make you more sellable one day but I don't think it's necessary for you to know what it's worth or be making decisions based on that. So these are different goals. Now I build companies that I'm excited about and I am building them in the same way that we make something valuable because I want to be in a position where I'm just in my zone of genius. But it's a different mindset than if I'm building something because it's going to be profitable. Does that make sense Joe? Joe: Absolutely; excellent …excellent. Hey listen I know we're running out of time here I just want to say that last summer I was at the stock market conference and you got up and you spoke as did another dozen or so very very successful entrepreneurs. Each and every one of them had a PowerPoint presentation. You got up there with nothing. And you talked for an hour and the audience was captivated as was I. You have a gift thank you for sharing it. I appreciate it. Ryan: I just got goose bumps. Thank you so much, mate. I really appreciate it. Joe: How do more people get to experience that and listen to you and hear what you do share? Ryan: You know I'd love to answer that question, can I offer one more piece of advice before we go? Joe: You can offer a dozen more pieces of advice. Ryan: Wow, awesome. I'll leave it to one but if you are in this to please have a plan of what you're going to do with the money when you get it. Entrepreneurs are magicians. We remake things up here on thin air. We create value out of thin air. We create a bigger pie. We make money show up. And we also make things disappear. Joe: Isn't that true? Ryan: And if you do not have a plan of what you're going to do with the money it will slip through your fingers. I know you think you're the exception. I know you think all I have to do is invest this at 8% and I'm [inaudible 00:37:11.5]. I know you think that's how it's going to be. You will ball the money. I … right now I just heard you think “no I won't”, yes you will. So if you don't have a net for catching the money and allocating the money for your lifestyle you will be back in the grind very very quickly. I promise you, I know you don't believe me. I'm here to tell you that's the case. Have a plan for what to do with the money once you get the money. It's actually my favorite conversation to have. At some point, I'll probably have more chops [inaudible 00:37:45.3] about investing once you have a big windfall. But for now, it's like have a plan like a plan is better than no plan. And that plan would probably be best done after you sat on the money for about six months and you've gotten used to that money being in the bank account. Your second question or actually your only question was- Joe: Can I interrupt that? Ryan: Please. Joe: I definitely want to get to that but in terms of having the plan to exit, I'm always telling people look have your next adventure planned. Because entrepreneurs like you say they blow through the money, it goes through their hands like saying. I'm often saying maybe get that other opportunity started and launched long as it's not competing to get the ball rolling. So that you got some working capital maybe you're going to put it in … some of it you're not as bootstrapped although you'll be more successful probably if you are. Do you think maybe they should 100% focus on what they're doing on that brand before they sell it up until the day they sell or maybe when it gets big enough and good enough and they've done enough right they can take some of their attention and start Brand B while they're selling off Brand A? Ryan: Wow, Joe. The reason I'm saying wow is because my experience is pretty unique and that was I took about a week off and then I immediately went back to workaholism and it was the worst. It was a horrible experience. Now full disclose like at the same time I was going through separation and I'm going through a lot life changes. I threw myself into work right after the sale. I celebrated by reading books on my patio for like eight days and I was immediately back to workaholism. And I like … I roasted my body, I mean I so needed a break and I did not give myself that break. I don't know if every entrepreneur was as burnt out as I was. I was more burnt out than I [inaudible 00:39:40.5]. Joe: Most ideal [inaudible 00:39:42.8] they come to me tired, exhausted, ready to move on. Ryan: Joe, it's been over a year. I wouldn't even say I'm back now. You know I'm probably operating at 75% of capacity because I never really recovered. So should you go right back into it? I don't know. I think it depends on the level you're at and your own wiring. I make really good decisions when I'm relaxed and creative. I make terrible short term decisions when I'm stressed. And when I'm in that workaholic mode I'm a terrible entrepreneur. I wish I had just blissed out for like three months; I didn't. Joe: I don't know what the folks that listen to you every week would do if you would disappear for three months though. Ryan: Well here's the thing though Joe. I kind of did. Like my podcast sucked for like three months, three to six months and I was trying … like I'm sitting in front of mic trying to come up with things to say and I was uncreative as heck. So I sort of did disappear it was just a different way. And now I'm getting back to it and it's a completely different experience. But I actually think I did my listeners a disservice by not taking a break. And if have been just really upfront and be like guys I just got an eight figure check I am going to the beach and I will call you when I'm ready. My audience would've popped but instead, I was like operating from this place of like I'm so … oh my goodness I'm so tired and I turned off a lot of people. I know it's not the answer that you expected it's not the answer I expected to give you. Joe: No, I like it. Ryan: But I think it's true. Joe: I think sleep and rest and meditation or whatever it is to focus on is absolutely necessary. So back to that original question and you know finding out what they do with the money after they sell. How do they get more of Ryan Daniel Moran? How do they experience what that audience down at Smart Market and myself experienced where you just talked and everybody listened and took notes and all that? Ryan: Well, thanks so much, man, my media company is capitalism.com. My podcast is called Freedom Fast Lane. And I say things into a microphone and we hold events at capitalism.com that are specifically for entrepreneurs. And we're actually … we just rebooted the Freedom Fast Lane podcast. I feel as though- Joe: With fresh energy. Ryan: What's that? Joe: With fresh energy right? Ryan: Well yeah, I think you'd probably feel it from me. Five years ago I started this journey as a boy and I was … I just put everything I owned into my car, drove to Austin, Texas, started some new companies, I documented the whole experience from startup to sale. And then I kind of grew up while documenting the journey. And now there's a new journey and it's a much bigger one and so we just rebooted kind of the entire audience, the whole experience in the podcast. And my podcast is called Freedom Fast Lane. My company is capitalism.com. Joe: Okay. Well, I'll make sure those are in the show notes. I'd love to see you be more successful on this new adventure, this bigger journey. Ryan: Thank you. Joe: Let's stay in touch. I think I may see you at the capitalism conference at the end of August; let's see. At the very least we'll be to as many as we can be over the next few years. Ryan: Good to see you man, thank you so much for having me. Joe: Thanks for your time, I appreciate it. Links: Capitalism.com FreedomFastlane.com

What are the different aspects needed to grow a sustainable business that is transferable and valuable? Today's episode is all about planning a successful strategic exit plan when selling your business.  Whether it be online, offline, or hybrid, how you lay the foundation for your business is the key to a smooth transaction even before you start the process of selling. We are talking with Ryan Tansom, a fellow podcaster, consultant, and successful business seller all about how he turned his sale into a springboard for helping others accomplish a great exit. Episode Highlights: How a strategic exit compare to a financial exit. Figure out how to align growth strategy with exit strategy in order to get what you want out of the deal while taking into account the financials, the company culture, and the potential legacy involved. When an offer comes to the table it is important to weigh all the variables. Think about any way that the buyer can do to add to his profitability. Show them all the things the things they can do and package it up for them. Network early and often with people who align their motives with yours. Make sure you know what the buyer's business continuity goals are. From knowing their goals you can come up with ways to fill their strategic plan. Understand the industry on both sides of the transaction so that you can design how the business can look for a strategic exit. Prepare early for the sale of a business so you don't get any nasty surprises during due diligence or negotiation. Ryan lays out the framework of a strategic sale. When strategic exits work and when they don't. Transcription Mark: Joe, how are you? Joe: I'm good, feeling old and tired but pretty good how about you? Mark: You are old and tired and I'm catching up quickly. Joe: But I'm not cold it's 63 in North Carolina today and you going to get snow this weekend right? Mark: Stop it, Stop it, by the time this episode airs it's going to be a beautiful year and I will no longer be recording episodes, I'll be outside enjoying it. Joe: Yes. I mean 36. Mark: Something like that, alright when we talks to people that want to sell their business, pretty common scenario, they're looking for a strategic exit or maybe they'll say, you know, we go to the whole valuation process and then they come back and then say “I've got a couple of companies of mine that might be really good fits to acquire the business right?” Nothing about strategic. I'm sure you get the pretty often on your side. Joe: Sure. Yes. Mark: Yeah, right. So strategic, how do you actually do them? Are they worth it? Do we actually get more money from them? That is the subject of today's interview. I sat down with Ryan Tansom. Ryan has his own podcast which we talk about a little bit, but he's got a really cool story, he and his dad were in business together in a traditional offline business. They are selling copiers and had all sorts of contracts there. And they went to the process of merging that company with another one. They first try to sell the company, and found out how difficult it was, then they spent some time retooling in and really planning their exit, and after they've retooled and planned their exit they were able to do a deal in just a few weeks. So his whole thing right now is to help people plan their exit and build value on the business at the same time, but I wanted to talk to him about how do you plan an exit if you want to do a strategic sale? Does that make sense? That you actually get more money from it and what are the chances that's going to happen? This is a fascinating conversation. Joe: Good. One thing that most people don't do, and that's plan their exit. They usually just wake up one day and decide, “I'm tired I want to sell the business I'm ready to move on, So you know I've talk to Ryan a number of times and I think He's life experience, what he went through  with his business with his father trying to sell finding, it was difficult and then actually putting a plan together and deciding, when he executed that plan and he'd sold the business very quickly and I think to a strategic buyer. He learned a lot and he's sharing that with people now. So It's nice that he's got the first hand experience in the sharing with people and I think he does a really good job at it. Mark: Yeah, and so in this we're going to talk about what do you need to do to get strategic exit setup and not surprisingly, it's a lot of the same stuff you have to do  if you're going to have a financial exit or a regular market type sale. Just take a little more upfront work and we talk about the chances of it actually happening. I also talk about how that it's not always the best thing. The very first business I sold went itself to a strategic exit. We ended going to a financial buyer because they actually got more money from it so we talk little about that as well. Well we get on into it because it's a lot good mini topics in this episode. Joe: Let's do it. Mark: Ryan, hey how are you? Ryan: Good Mark, how are you doing? Mark: Thanks for joining me. It's been a while since you and I met, well I think we're just talking about this a year and a half ago or something like at Caribou Coffee here in the Twin cities. Yeah you're local to me which I like. Ryan: I know we're local yet we're sitting here on video right? Mark: We should've done the very first podcast with [inaudible 0:03:58] and where he would have be like saddled up right next to me. Alright cool, well on our podcast we like to better a guest introduce him selves, probably because we're really lazy and don't like to do the upfront research but also because guest  do a better job at introducing themselves. So could you introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners? What is your story, what's your background and why are we talking. Ryan: Yeah, I appreciate it, I'm glad to be on the show I'm usually the one doing the interviewing so this is actually a lot of fun. So Ryan Tansom, my Dad and I had a family business kind of a little bit of backdrop back in 2014 we end up selling it. He grew it from the ground up, bought a semi [inaudible 0:04:32] of copiers in the mid 90's and ended up growing a very substantial business that I think we've topped for about 20 million and a hundred employees, and I joined the firm full time in financial crisis, and it was pretty much lot of all hands on deck for the seven years I was there. It was.. We realized that company was not sellable  because there's a private equity firm that was buying out platform companies in each marketplace, and we have the opportunity of potential to be one of those, and they passed on us so we spent pretty much in next 6 years, 7 years going. Okay what do we need to do to build a sellable business that either I buy it or we sell it to someone else we didn't really know what were options so we just roll up our sleeves and did a bunch of stuff. Build out the outsource, the IT. Remarketed ourselves, did a bunch of stuff, and then in 2014 ended up selling it to a local competitor here which the sale went very well financially, but we left a lot of money in the table from a lack of tax planning and some other deal structure that things we could done creatively, and then also we found out a strategic sale like that that there's a lot of redundancies, so I ended up having to fire a lot of my good friends, and family and the employees, so since then I've been in a mission to figure out how do you align your grow strategy with your exit strategies so that you will get what you want, regardless whether it's financial or you know, anything associated with your business that you know, whether it's legacy or culture, and stuff like that. Hopefully I sent too much but it's definitely the backdrop of why I'm doing what I'm doing. Mark: Alright so there's a lot that we can unpack here and we're going to have try to pick a branch and go with it, because I think there's a lot that we can unpack here. Business that you and your dad sold, this is more of a traditional offline business right? copier sales? Ryan: Yeah, where on we have15 sales representatives that were knocking on the doors and I wish we would have done something that would have been a hybrid, and we would have probably gone that direction, had we, continue grow on the business, but I think, you know, every offline businesses, which is what we were, has the opportunity to have the hybrid online stuff that a lot of that community that you're involved and I'm involved you know. Mark: Yeah, I think a lot of the online community is moving towards this more traditional business model, at least in the E-Com Space and you've seen it all. So in the and largest as company, because they do develop our staffs and in onboarding, customer service and all that. So similar to your stuff.. So I guess, let's talk first about the fact that you left money on the table, with your.. You spent six years trying to hammer the business industry, I think there's a discussion in there on it's own, like, how do you line your crawl strategies and your business strategies with an extra strategy, but I like to know a little more about the money on the table. A lot of times when we say people leave money on the table, that's because they have maximized the sale price of their business, but were there other areas where you've guys felt that you left money on the table? Ryan: You know, I think yeah, there's a lot of different variables in this, and you know, I've got a Podcast too. I've interviewed lots of entrepreneurs that have soul and I've tried to unpack this exact topic as well and there's the “Hey there's a price so I might want to give you 2 million dollars for your business” it doesn't mean that you're getting 2 million bucks because you're paying taxes, so there's the whole deal structure whether it's asset sales or stock sales, or how the deal structured from earn outs, from an SBA loan financing, whatever it is, you know, when someone starts courting you, whatever dollar amount is thrown out, there's a lot after the fact than what actually comes in your bank account. So whether that's a tax planning, the deal structure, you know, escrow all that kind of stuff, and then there's the maximize the value of the business, so there's kind of, two different key components to it. Mark: Yeah and I think, just by way of example, within online businesses, say that your [inaudible 0:08:10] corp, and somebody wants to buy your business for 5 million dollars. Great, and they're getting an SBA loan and everything looks good, but then you get to it and at the end of your purchase agreement there's this asset allocation agreement that's to how is this been allocated tax wise, and the buyer says “Well, we want to pay, out of 5 million, we want 1 million to be your salary for the next 2 years for consulting, that's part of the purchase price” well now that comes at ordinary income tax, cruise up your whole tax, percent tax situation.. Ryan: Because you know [inaudible 0:08:41]? Mark: Yeah, how much are you getting from that point, and you're from, for buyers trying to relegate towards income, makes sense because they can learn it off in a way, because they were going towards assets, it's a long period of times that they can make that of. So, there's a lot of, like you said there's a lot more complexities there, in terms of the deal structure. So let's talk about maximizing the value, the dollar amount. Did you feel like you guys left some money on the table with that? Ryan: No, actually we did as much as we could of, because our business naturally.. I got it appearing to what is the, honestly the best kind of business because we had contracts, that were locked in with reoccurring revenue, backed by bank financing, we've bundled them with maintenance, so like, if you want to buy, manage IT services with.. You know, bundle them with servers, firewalls, maintenance, copiers. I mean you'd be bundled in finances and then, it'll be 60 months typically and it'll be in.. It's as good as a mortgage, so when you're looking at what we did and what our industry.. It wasn't something that we were like geniuses or anything, either the whole industry, I've been gone that way and I think the whole industry was built of greedy sales people. In reality it was good as mortgages because you can't cancel. So, it didn't really matter when you think about a strategic sale like that, the relationships of the sales people, the admin, all the infrastructure was redundant. Because we can literally just take a bunch of paperwork and give it to someone else. And so what you're mitigating less on the sale on like the, EBITDA, multiples, because the cash flow is not the situation, it is your Han dinging over contracts. So I don't think there's anything we could have particularly done on that aspect to maximize the sale of the business, but the industry itself taught me, what, “we got lucky, is pretty much what it came to” versus “we could always use other business, where it might be, a 50 million dollar consulting company and there's nothing to sell besides a bunch of people”. So, I realized, after the facts that we got lucky and there's a lot of other ways to maximize the value of the business from the strategic operational side of it. And then it comes down to, we sold a couple of branches prior to selling the corporate headquarters, so the first time we sold our branch we got  about half the price because we didn't have preliminary due diligence done, they didn't trust us, we couldn't get the right documents and all these different things so there was technical stuff on that aspect that we, by that time we ended up selling, we knew what questions are coming at us and why. Mark: How did that impact the price the second time around? Ryan: Second time around when we ended up settled…  I mean we closed in 2 weeks. Mark: I know how. Ryan: Very substantial sale so average closing is, either we talk in months and months and months, either because, we came there with a package and said this is exactly what we have, here's our profitability, here's where every single dime goes in and out of the business, here's why, here's our, I mean employee contracts, customer contracts, lender contracts. I mean everything was just ready, versus the first time and we knew it was like, we're bumbling idiots. Didn't have any clue what they're asking and why. Mark: Yeah, we've created a very simple paradigm at Quiet Light Brokerage that we call the 4 pillars of value and that is, look at the risk of your business, the growth opportunities, how transferable it is and the last one would be in documentation. Now I think sometimes people take that documentation that light as to.. Well, it may not really make that much of a difference on the value of the business, it's just going to make it easier, actually makes a difference in the value of the business too. Ryan: 100% yup, I got people that I know, that I've interviewed and talked to, where their value actually went up by 30% because.. But with a click of a button, especially by drop box these days and software where you can, “Hey here's everything” A – you can get more buyers at the table quickly, if you can do that instead of having threads through all these documents, but, you end up as the seller end up guiding the process more than the buyers. Because in the marketplace 90.. No, plus % the time the buyers are coming in there and they're going to find every reason to discount that companies so they can  make in return.   Mark: Right! and on top of that it's risk right? So a buyer takes a little good in business with poor documentation, and they don't know what they don't know. And so they see that as being risky and they will discount an account for that risk as well on the purchase price, and you don't have your stuff together, you can't defend against it. Alright let's talk about strategic sales. Because you guys did a strategic sales and this is something that I find a lot of questions on. First let's talk about what was the difference between a strategic and a marketplace sale in your realm. Ryan: So it's my world it's every world right? So a strategic sale realm, let's start with the financial sale. The financial sale whether it's an ecommerce business or if it's a traditional business or whatever it is, someone's looking for a cash flow. What's transferable cash flow? So if I want to buy Quiet Light, if you guys are dropping a half a million bucks to the bottom line or whatever it is, I want to.. How transferable is that? So that's where the multiple EBITDA comes from. So, if I can buy that chas flow without having any risk that it's going to decline, and you apply a multiple which is how many years, what's my rate of return that I want,  3 years, 5 years, whatever it is, and the more transferable that is the higher the multiple goes up. So, I mean someone that's looking for cash flow as a lifestyle buyer, a private equity buyer, I would say that there's also strategic financial buyers which is someone that understands MNH extremely well and knows how to do this, that's kind of like a hybrid. So they're looking for cash flow and they're applying a rate of return based on the risk of the business and the asset. Then you and this strategic sale which I think is one of the funniest ones because every business owner, every entrepreneur that I sit down in front of, or I talk to, you know your business, you're intrigued better than anybody else out there, right? So you know who you'd partner with, where they collaborations with you, all these different things, and I don't want to say the multiples even they go out the window, but it's more of how fast, in terms of, if thinking of rate of return from 3 years to 5 years, or wherever the buying might be, and the rate of return is, how fast can we pay for that? So regardless of the EBITDA, now you're saying “okay well, are there complimentary products and services? Is there a cross pollination between customer list” Is there horizontal ways, there are vertical ways you guys can expand, and if you can think about everything in the terms of the buyer, the strategic buyer and what they would do with your business, you can literally model it out for them, how fast they can pay you for your company. Mark: Yeah, so this is great. I want to talk about this because we get this question, wow goodness, probably one out of every four or five people that contact us to sell. One of the very first things that they say is “Well I have a few companies of mine that might be a good fit for us” and they're thinking it in terms of that like strategic sale, they think it's going to be much more valuable to them and there is some truth to this the webhosting industry it's a classic example, webhosting, at the very first I sold working with Quiet Light Brokerage, first started Quiet Light Brokerage was a webhosting company, and webhosting company has a tons of roles because it has a bunch of user accounts that is on our servers and it's very easy to migrate that user accounts over to another server, keep the packages the same as really just paste and transfer it **** sometime **** and a monthly contract so it's really really easy without transfer overall stuffs, so like you said all of the expense profile of those companies you do really care about that because if I me acquiring a company I already have those expense profiles. I know what to cost me to host for 500 clients, so it will become a client count. Now when you're talking about strategic sale, like I said, there is not only to redundancies which you dea'lt with, first hand, it sound like,  in your sale redundancies where you have multiple sales people doing the same thing so you a lots of people go, but there is also the synergies of my crop up with one company that is a name in an industry right? Ryan: Right! And there's [inaudible 0:16:28]for us, it was, that we didn't sell telecom. It was the one thing in outsource, the IT in office technology that we didn't do, since okay, we got, you know, 2 or 3 thousand accounts, how many people can you sell telecom to? A lot, probably. So that is not guarantee in profit that they're going to make, but it makes a deal look better, you know, then you can make some basic assumptions or something like that, and then you know, cash or order discount on suppliers. We weren't taking advantage of that. So we start to think about any way. Going to that buyer and saying, here's all of the things that you can literally get packaging up for them, and you know, I think there's some people that you and I know in Rhodium, and why see that, the reason that they start on their family to start in the retail, wedding industry, they got online… well, weddings usually don't have repeat customers, you know there are couple every now and then.   Mark: Hopefully not.   Ryan: I usually do subscription services so, what are different ways that they can expand their products and services, because they have a crazy amount of volume that come through their doors every single year. Because they got a very good foothold in Minnesota here, but so it's their robes, it's their jewelry, it's there. Other things that they can sell them and they know the volume of their customers, so you know, yeah there's the sale or the purchase price and the profit but they're more looking at do I build it or I buy it? So they know how long it's going to take the opportunity cost of how long it's going to take to build it, screwing things up, all that kind of stuff. Mark: Right, alright so let's talk about how you would.. Let's say, we have a listener out there, they own a business and they're thinking, “I've really like a strategic sale just because my business is unique enough I think there will be enough benefit for maybe 3 or 4 companies that are sort of [inaudible 0:18:03]my industry. How would they want to go about preparing their business and thinking about that exit, a potential strategic sale. Ryan: That is a good question and I think you know this whole conundrum of exit planning and grow planning.. I believe that if entrepreneurs are running the business the way that they should and working on the business not in the business, and treating their business like an actual investment, then it is like, where are all the different options that I can sell to whenever and how fast can I [inaudible 0:18:29] so it's being ready no matter what. If you are in love and addicted to a girl then you're having a blast, great! But always be ready for industries that change, Google changes their algorithm, Facebook gets kind of a little bit a heat like they are right now, always preparing yourselves so that, the first and foremost is the due diligence, your docs, and knowing, and really cleaning up your financials because, if you can answer any kind of questions that even your friend would ask, the buyer is gone just, completely slam you down. So getting your house in order, the financials, and the due diligence is one thing, but then, thinking about, “Okay so these are going to be.. These five companies are companies that i can eventually sell to” Who are they and what, why and how will your decisions in the business affect where you're going. So for example if one of the companies is running and you know, he is an Amazon merchant or something or someone is running on Shopify, don't go build out a Magento, you know, spend 300 grand in Magento if someone that you're going to sell it to is doing Shopify. I mean, that's the same thing that we did. We spent 300 grand on an ERP's because 85% of the people on our industry had it. That's why we could close in 2 weeks. Knowing how you are spending the money and why in relationship to where you're going to sell, and again, so if you think about, if your service has complimentary service to just someone else. Don't go spent a bunch of money building out something that they have. Because you are not going to get a return so you're going to spend, your immediate cash flow, but then you're not going to get the attitude because they don't seem [inaudible 0:19:58] I think it's aligning where want to go and why and then also that strategic decisions that you are doing in between there. Mark: Yeah, alright I want actually bring a really basic level here, because the thing is important point to make special more talking about strategic sales. I think people get with the financial market sale where you take a look at the profitability of the company and you have Joe blow buyer come in who really isn't related to the industry. We all know that he wants to get return on that investment after 3 or 4 years, you'd see that investment come back in so it's pretty easy to apply a multiple. Sometimes when we're talking about strategic sales people come and go crazy and they start thinking, well, look at all the upside potential that is going to come about from this and so they start lowering their valuation expectations through the roof because sometimes strategic do get really high relative valuations of this realm to the financials, that said, I'm going to make a very basic statement here and I'm sure you'd agree. Strategic still need to see an ROI, right? They still need to see a return of investment. Yeah so, what you're saying is when you're building out your company, when you're really planning that exit and working on the company, think about the ROI that the potential buyer is going to have and don't build something that's going to super expensive for them to migrate it over, right? Ryan: Right and it's like, so how we went about it is, I want to know this business, I want to know why they should buy this business more than anybody else. So like, I want to know everything about their business, I want to know exactly what their marketing strategy is, what their profitability strategy is, I want to know their strategy just as well as they do, whether you can or not. Because then you can show exactly how you fill their strategic plan, based on what they're buying. Mark: Right, so let's talk about modeling a little bit. When you're talking about strategic sale in your case with your dad in your business, [inaudible 0:21:41] done in season staff and so, when you're looking at presenting the financial picture to potential acquiring company, how did you go about that? How did you pitch it as far as the ROI? Ryan: So, I had like literally our entire.. I mean we have cash list statement and we learned a lot first time, right? So I knew every single penny that went in our business and why, so we did some serious cash flow modeling so we had our whole P&L, and then we had the forecast of what was going on to the sales and the cost of goods, our profitability, and I hacked a bunch of stuff through it, and I said okay, and I buy GL code Mark.. Mark: Wow Ryan: We did a.. Yeah, I know. Because there's the, in the financial buy, there's the add backs, right? So, a hundred grand might be 300 grand on the value, whether it's being added to the value or not. So, usually in the financial buys, you want to take that off to increase your EBITDA, so that way it's applied to the multiple. But in this system the same thing were [inaudible 0:22:41] you don't need these people, you don't need these servers, you don't need these things because you already have them. So, that is all dropping to the bottom line which will then help them calculate the ROI's so, we just looked on them and say okay, here's how much of the expenses you can take out of this, with these assumptions and then move back and forth, you said, what we actually need these people, we need these things, and then you're just negotiating back and forth but it was not more in the add backs, it's more of understanding the redundancies and the strategic value behind this. So it's a similar exercise but, you know, and now comes actually kind of the same but it's more specifically to operations. Mark: Well on the key pieces I think, needs to be understood is you need to understand the industry and the business itself. We work for the financial, forex leads site, this was several years ago. And they were getting lots of leads that they were selling and they wanted to arrange a strategic sale to a forex broker. Because they knew that they were jittering these leads and so that the equation really became okay. We know how much we're getting paid out on their [inaudible 0:23:43] basis for these leads. But as a forex broker, here's where the dollar amount for the valid leads are, and now we can start modeling our what does this look like, how much revenue is this site really making, from a forex broker's standpoint and then the other value proposition there. Ryan: Yeah it's literally of about knowing both of the businesses and the industry as well as you possibly can. So you can just design exactly how it looks. And then you backing up numbers, you know, I'm just kind of making some other things up but like, you and I have talked and I think that was when you were on my show, we're talking about the hybrid of the online versus offline and so, if someone has literally the best data ever on their drip marketing, their automation in their online marketing and knows exactly the entire cost of acquisition of one wheel, and whether it's Facebook ads or Google ads, all of what the email mark and you say “here's how much all this stuff cost,” they can go in and if you're going to [inaudible 0:24:38] and sink that up with an offline business, like there's some huge power there because you know that they're not doing that potentially. So you can, there's just so many different ways to design that I guess. That's kind of the fun part. Mark: Yeah and the nice thing about strategic is that there's really, you have the ability to blow a traditional valuation out of the water, right? That's one of the big advantages. Transitions can also be a little bit easier because they already know the industry and so you don't run saying “here's how you do this little process that you should probably know anyways” it's a little easier to transition. When I talk to people about doing strategic, so I often tell them that I don't think it's a good idea for them. And the reason I say that is mainly because they're difficult to do if you haven't been preparing. How long do you think it takes to really prepare business for a strategic? Ryan: So I think maybe I'll go back with remarkable steps which is what's the order of operations I think you should do to do this correctly, right? So kind of the assumptions to repeat is beat your foundation setup, build your financials, build healthy business from recurring revenue, the clarity of all these different things, making sure you don't have a bunch of concentration in one client, all the typical ways of de-risking your business and if you're striving to make a healthy business like that then you'll have lots of options. So at the bare minimum, you should be able to sell to a financial buyer, so then called to 3 to 5 times multiple EBITDA. So you know that, financially going okay, if it's 200 grand, I know that I'm going to be getting 600 or a million. Whenever it might be, right? So I know that's how or that's my target. But with a strategic sale, you could completely blow it out of the water, but that's kind of like hunting. It's hunting for unicorns or really specific synergies so you mention 5 people, that's fantastic but, what if they don't want it? What if they're struggling? What if they don't have the money? Don't have the ability to get banked? All those different things. Those are things that you don't know and yes you should work towards them so I think, to answer your question, I don't know but really helps with that, it's like, we knew our buyer. Like  half of our employees has hog back and forth, you know, we're in the same industry trade associations so, I actually had taught the woman I interviewed yesterday at my show, she would have spent 2-3 years building and fostering those relationships, so those people could have been at the table. She didn't do that, so this is more of a relationship building, going in Rhodium Weekend, going to the YC Events, going to [inaudible 0:27:00] all these different things where people build relationships. And then what ends up happening is, I [inaudible 0:27:06] the bar over a napkin, and then you're back in the stuff. Mark: Yeah absolutely, that's actually normal when I [inaudible 0:27:13] people that want to do strategic is, if you want to know strategic, 2 or 3 years down the road, contact the companies now and don't say “Hey I want to sell to you” just contact and do that real networking stuff and get out there. Once they've become aware of your company, and you start to learn each other's companies, then you can sort of see that conversation for down the road. Ryan: And then you get out on their radar, right? Because you're not on their radar otherwise. So, there was actually a really interesting story that I heard Mark from one of the guys I interviewed in my Podcast, where he was at a trade association, he started talking one of the base competitors and he goes “Why don't you buy me?” and that's how he started and they started, you know, BS and then it went around and then the guy has said “You know what? Let's have a [inaudible 0:28:00] every 6 months call to see how you're doing” and these people literally told him exactly what to do, so they could buy him. Mark: That's great. Ryan: That was super unique, right? His name is Norm Brodsky, he wrote Street Smarts and he was a part of the small giants book, so he's on the cover of [inaudible 0:28:16] and a lot of exposure but like, I think the concept is very unique, because if you wanted to buy my business, why don't you just keep telling me what to do, and if everything works, I mean, like I said it's kind of a shooting for the starts, but I mean, you got really nothing to lose at that point especially if you don't need to sell. Mark: Yeah alright. So you said a couple of things a while ago, I think is a good foundation I have and this is a general advise, and feel free to disagree with it if you disagree with any of the advice that I typically give people and respect them on this. With strategic, yeah you can get the out of the water valuation sometimes. But it all starts with first making their business safe, financially viable business and in someone that you can sell in a financial market. You are dealing few buyers, this is probably the biggest obstacle to a strategic sale, you might have half  a dozen companies that can potentially acquire a business and the sake people make is they went in and say “I want to sell my business” then they called ABC company and ABC company's saying “Yeah we don't have a million dollars” or “You were not in our annual budget this year” or “Acquisitions were not in our plan for this year”. Ryan: Right, I'd pause you there for a second. They may have the money, but like, everybody's busy, right? So what if they're developing their own software or doing something else, they might just not have the physical time to integrate the two companies. Mark: Right. Yeah absolutely. So you need to have that relationship in place and it has to make sense as being a natural evolution. Kind of like a marriage, right? I mean.. Ryan: Yeah, totally. I mean, you're partnering up with someone. Mark: Yeah, and last thing I would say is, take a look to see if actually does make sense. That first company that is sold, in the webhosting space, I could've sold that very easily in a strategic sale, because there was so many strategic happening, we did a financial sale because we knew we're going to get more money. So, where you can often blow the top of the valuation with this strategic, it doesn't always happen that way. Sometimes financial actually does work a little bit better. Kind of a weird, odd case. Ryan: Sorry you're.. Mark: No, go ahead please. Ryan: I think the one thing to that people really need to think about, because you might blow the valuation off the charts, but I tell you what Mark, the reason why I do what I do now is because we got the financial target that we wanted to hit, I literally had to fire 60 of my friends and family. So if your culture in your employees and the clients.. You have to understand what's important here because in a strategic sale redundancies are huge. So, how will you stomached that afterwards? Like going and calling all of our employees in, they was way at 85 or something like that at that time and they only kept [inaudible 0:30:47] I mean like, that's literally the stomached ache. Are you going to be proud and happy about what you build? Is it just a financial target that's fine and you have people dispersed across the US and there's a lot of VA's and you're not orally loyal to them or if there's people that you care about, like they are role playing that strategic sale I think is extremely important so you can calibrate against all your options. Mark: That's a really, really good point. So what do you do now? What are you doing these days? after the sale, of course. Ryan: So other than being in the Podcast just like yourself, so, we have a company called GEXP Collaborative, so, it's Growth and Exit Planning collaborative, that's what it's stands for, and it took a lot of time, over the last for years.. Exit planning I think there's some negative [inaudible 0:31:33] to it because you might not want to sell right now, but it's literally both having a good business. So we combined the two which is growth and extra planning because it's like, we're talking about what are your plans and then how do you back in to all your strategic plans, they sell where you're trying to go with you options and I found some amazing people in the industry that have different disciplines because you got legal, finance, the front insurance, deal structures, you have the business brokers, you got all these people, and they all play a roll, and how do you back into that plan? So, if you kind of think, we're almost like a building, If you start a building you start with the budget and a blueprint, because you can't build a building without either of those, so the budget is your financial targets, where you want to go and why, so is there debt, net, the amount that you need or cash [inaudible 0:32:22] and what's the blueprint. So what are the five different strategic buyers and then you got the six financial purchase, timing, role, responsibility, and you're back and do it, so you can then hire the team [inaudible 0:32:34] so the growth next to planning that we do with the collaborative team is literally building the budget and a blueprint, and then actually coordinating the team like a general contractor because no one person can do all this stuff. I've been doing it non-stop day and day of four years, and I still couldn't single hand lay out to someone. Mark: Yeah, there's a lot involved with that.. now if somebody is listening to this, one of the misconception running to all the time, with clients that come to us and say I want to sell, I'm not really ready because I did not plan ahead maybe should've talked to somebody 2 or 3 years ago. We try to get people to talk to us, the brokers, a few years in advance. For you, you're focusing again on that growth as well so even if somebody isn't ever planning to sell, it still makes sense to talk about that growth. Ryan: Because the reality is you're going to do the best of your business at some point. I mean, there's people, like I work within this, the baby boomers, well they're going to die in your business but then what you're doing is you're working on the shares and the estate planning and dispersing the shares to employees, and to kids, and do trust, so he's going to sell his company, and you know what, he loves it, great! But then there's, build a business that has value and has cash flow and you de-risks then you can literally do whatever you want whenever you want. So yeah you're right it's coming ahead of time but then also knowing the people like you and building these relationships, you can't do this at the last second, you're going to leave money on the table, you're not going to be as happy with terms and conditions and so many times Mark, and I don't know if you see this, but a lot of people that are out there, and the people that are in aggressive growth path, they're all acquiring company so the out of the blue offers happen all the time. So whether it's PE firms or funds or other strategic buyers, and how do you know what to weigh that against if you don't have a plan? So you don't even know like how much I'm going to get? What terms? I mean, you're thinking on the fly and that usually doesn't go as well..   Mark: Right! The number of time I've heard from clients, get in to this process and say, “Man, I really wish I've contacted you a year ago” I mean it happens all the time, no one ever thinks about selling their business until they actually want to sell their business and I think what's really cool about what you're doing is you're focusing again not just the exit, you're focusing on growth. Because a good growth strategy is a good exit strategy they often go hand in hand. Ryan: You're back can do it. You know, I just have a little plug for you guys too, because we do not do what you do, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs, they really think, because they understand their business so well that they can sell their business by themselves, and “Oh my gosh” it's the first time you're going to do it and why.. Like every one of those professional should pay for themselves, it should be your return of investment, what to spend, because you know it's an emotional roller coaster first of all and it's like a 24/7 fire drill while you are in the process which is what your team does, right? so I think all the people, if you have the right advisors, and that's another reason left a lot of money on the table, is you need to have the right advisers. I mean it wasn't people that do it all they want, they do transactions, they understand the market, your industry, and so having the right team is crazy important. Mark: Yeah, alright could you plug as well if anyone listen to this and enjoys the Quiet Light podcasts, and hopefully you do if you've listened this long, Ryan's Podcast talks a lot about the same stuff, you talk a lot about selling, you talked to a lot of entrepreneur's who has sold their businesses before, and you go over a lot of the same material, but with a little bit of a difference spinned to it, really, really high quality content and another one, what was name of the Podcast where can they find it? Ryan: “Life after Business” Mark: Life after Business. Awesome! So we will link to it in the show notes on our Podcast page, we'll also link over the Ryan's website, and Ryan, anything else that you want us to link or to want to draw attention to, please feel free. Ryan: We got a resources tab just like you, you're my model right? So I guess I said year and a half ago, you put me in the right direction with the presence that I wanted online, so we got white papers, and resources and Podcasts and all that kind of stuff so. Mark: Awesome, so definitely check at his site and feel free to reach out to him, if you just want to talk, he's a good guy to talk to. You know I can talk all day about this stuff and someday we probably will. Thanks for coming I really appreciate it. Ryan: Yeah, had a blast Mark, Thanks! Mark: Alright. Links and Resources: www.gexpcollaborative.com Ryan's website Life after Business Podcast Ryan's podcast link

E. B. Moss: Hey, it's E.B. Moss from MediaVillage and this is Episode 12, basically live from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. I’m with MediaVillage Journalist David Polinchock who’s an expert at CES. So... We're mic’d up together and we're going to walk around, enjoy the ambient sounds of CES 2018, and I'm going to tap your brain... a Vulcan mind meld!, appropriately for CES. We're going to ask you to give us some insights. INTRO: Ready for some insights from those inside the media, marketing and advertising industry? Welcome to Insider Insight from MediaVillage. MediaVillage.com is the home for exclusive thought leadership with content by, for and about agencies and networks. From digital experts and add tech providers to CMO's and CRO's. With villages of content focused on everything from Wall Street reports to women in media. Now let's get some insights. David: First stop? We're here at the Google Home gallery. They've put together a kind of cool exhibit of what you can do with Google Home and how it's changing how we all live. E. B. Moss: Wow, great. Google has been sponsoring everything including the city monorail where they even piped in some pretty compelling audio. So when you're a captive audience on the monorail it's instructing you to learn how to utilize Google Home like saying, "Hey Google play me some soothing music" - which is good for when you're trapped on the monorail to hear little bubbling brook sounds. They really have done a good job in their convention sponsorship presence. David: This kind of new audio assistant is what we're getting in homes and in the rest of our lives. One of the AR head manufacturers announced a partnership with Alexa so you get voice control in your heads-up display now so you can see how this is changing how people are really doing things at home. One person on my last tour had one of the voice connection systems all throughout their house and realized they had to take it out of the kids room because the kids were doing their homework by asking it all the questions and just getting all the answers. You know, there's good and bad with everything. But this ability to ask a simple question, or check my schedule works because if I already have "Hey Google" phone I can use it and I get information there but now I can move it around from thing to thing. I think what people are looking for at large is a connection of all their things so it's not "I have this list over here and this list over here". So the fact that I can ask Hey Google on my phone but when I get home at night I can follow up the conversation with my Google Home Assistant because it's all connected. E. B. Moss: Oh, so the connectivity. Got it. David: The other thing they've been working on are ear buds that translate something like 70 languages. It literally is the communicator that we saw for 20 years on Star Trek. E. B. Moss: So, I can date a person who doesn't speak English! David: That's correct. And, if you look over here we also have it in air conditioners and washing machines and a variety of things now. So that's what, to me, becomes really exciting about this: you're seeing Hey Google as you're seeing Alexa and other products leave the single device and being incorporated into all of our lives. E. B. Moss: Google Home really was everywhere at CES; trying to connect the dots with audio and smart speakers and voice assistants. The other thing that was everywhere was Audio. I spoke to Tom Webster of Edison Research, as well as the head of marketing for Audio-Technica who had some unique ways to use headphones. E. B. Moss: Tom Webster was on the panel on the smart speaker research that just came out from Edison Research in conjunction with NPR. So I grabbed him afterwards. ...Hey Tom... That was fascinating. I know that you're going to be sharing some more of this information though MediaVillage in general, but specifically, a couple of things jumped out at me today were the fact that gifting over the 2017 holiday season really should've exponentially upped ownership of smart speakers. So that was good? Tom: Yeah, we've seen the initial adoption of smart speakers grow at a clip more than we saw smart phone adoption grow when we first started tracking. It's certainly both Amazon and Google coming out with $29 units had a lot to do with that but I think eventually we're going to stop caring about the devices themselves because that technology is going to just be baked into everything. E. B. Moss: So, that's an interesting point because Google is all over the show and promoting their digital assistant, Hey Google, but it's still only about 70% in devices own versus Alexa. What do you think it needs to do to compete more? By the way I think you said we're at about 16% ownership in America right now, so there's still plenty of growth opportunity there. What do you see the differences being and how do you see it competing more? Tom: I think, first of all I have no doubt that they're both going to be very competitive devices for a long time to come and for a lot of people it's just learning the use cases. We do know from the previous iterations of Smart Audio Report that we found with NPR 88% of the people who have an Alexa are Amazon Prime members. So there is a natural connection there. They're already being marketed to, in a way that is contextual for them. I think the more that Google educates listeners about what these devices can do and just more devices. Again the technology is just going to start being baked into everything and by the way it's already on your phone. One of the interesting things we found in our research is that 44% of smart speaker users tell us they're using the audio assistants on their phone more as a result of using the smart speaker. So it's just learning education and getting people context. E. B. Moss: And a brand that has good social media followers will do a service to those followers and enhances its own position by teaching them how to use smart speaker skills that they've created, right? Tom: Absolutely. I think we used to ask ten years ago "What's your mobile strategy?" Now I think it's a valid question to ask what your audio strategy is because people want to communicate with brands. They want to communicate with brands that they care about and they want to have those kinds of relationships and those kinds of experiences. E. B. Moss: So last question.... You mentioned a couple of the obstacles that we still have to continue to overcome: the perception of trust and the perception of security. What do you see happening? Tom: Well, those are valid concerns. First of all far be it from me to poo poo them because they are in fact valid concerns and when we interviewed people who don't own a smart speaker but who are interested in the category; three of their top concerns were all related to security, privacy, insuring their data, having the government listen in on their data. These are all valid concerns and all of the makers of this technology are going to have to find ways to address them because it's one thing to say "O.K. Google or Alexa play some Fleetwood Mac" it's another to start reciting your credit card number into it or something and those concerns are going to have to be addressed. E. B. Moss: ...So now I'm heading to Audio-Technica. You might know them for their turntables and headphones. They are giving me a welcome treat of a chair massage...I'm going to put my noise-canceling headphones on right now.... Speaker 5: "Let's begin by centering on the breath. ... slowly exhale and imagine your breath moving out through your ears as well. Cleansing them, forcing out all the toxic noise you've observed from the show floor and setting it a flame to burn off like so much painful gas..." E. B. Moss: That was one of the funnest ideas on the show floor. It was practical and sort of like a forced pre-roll listen in a good way. So I'm speaking to Director of Marketing Communications for Audio-Technica, Jeff Simcox. Jeff: Hi. How are you doing? Are you relaxed? E. B. Moss: I'm so much more relaxed. How did you come up with the idea? Jeff: Well, what's one of the reasons for wearing noise-canceling headphones? You want to relax, knock out all the annoying sounds and get into yourself, into the music. We just thought on the CES show floor we'd add that little extra thing to help you relax and lose yourself and have a massage while you're enjoying the headphones. My boss is like "You've got them in the chair so give them a sales pitch." And I'm like "who wants to lay there and just hear a dry sales pitch"? So it was our way of saying "Okay, you know, [inaudible 00:11:30] in that we can give you a little bit of entertainment, give you a little bit of a laugh. Now feel the tension escape from your ears like so much painful gas." It was one of my favorite lines.  E. B. Moss: As we made our way though CES you couldn't help notice autonomy everywhere. From autonomous cars to the super sonic Hyperloop; also autonomous public transportation helping the lesser abled. E. B. Moss: Initiating autonomous drive. I'm about to experience it, in 90 seconds. What it's like to be on the road and not in control. I'm at the Intel booth right now. Very cool. But I think it might drive me a little bit nuts if I had to hear all of the play by play of the autonomous driver. Pedestrian detected, anomaly detected, slow down. E. B. Moss: Now we're at Hyperloop and I'm talking to the Director of Marketing Ryan Kelly. Ryan, It looks like a long monorail pod from the future. What is it? Ryan: Elon Musk in 2013 had a vision for a new form of transportation. A bunch of VCs at Silicon Valley got together and founded Hyperloop One. Now we are actually Virgin Hyperloop One, three years later, which is very exciting. So now Richard Branson is now our chairman. Ryan: I'll tell you a little bit about the technology. Hyperloop basically the pod that you're looking at just broke a speed record, which is really exciting. We went 240 miles per hour in 300 meters at our test site 40 miles outside of Las Vegas. We're really excited about. So how does that work, how did we get there and why do we think it's the future of transportation? Hyperloop is in a tube so this pod was in a tube, we suck out almost all the air out of the tube to almost zero atmospheric pressure. It's not a full vacuum but very, very close. What that does is it provides frictionless travel. What does that mean? That means we can reach higher speeds than Maglev trains that you might see in Japan, in niche markets. It also means that it's more energy efficient and effective because we're using passive magnetic levitation. So that means once we start and accelerate at that point we're floating. So this actually levitates above a track, which is pretty unbelievable. From a cost perspective that's huge cost saving, not only for energy efficiency but also for building track, et cetera. E. B. Moss: I know the sustainability aspect is very important to Mr. Branson. Ryan: Huge. Yeah, it's absolutely. So sustainability is definitely something that we're looking towards. We'd like to get something up and running by 2021 and if you think about where we're going to be in 2021 with autonomous vehicles, with cleaner energy and we're completely energy agnostic solution, which we're really excited about. Not only going fast but thinking about how the future of transportation works. David: Right, so being both New Yorkers I know you've gotten some approval for New York track, from discussions. Ryan: Well, there's discussions. We are a very ... even though some people might see this as a cry in the sky opportunity a lot of our executives have worked in government before. We know how the system works in the United States. You have to go through a regulatory and safety process. We don't want to be seen as a paperwork company that's going to disappear in two years faking all these different things. Ryan: So we have directors of policy here that are working with the federal government. We've made headway in places like Colorado where legislature has signed a memorandum of understanding to look at these. That's actually started already but you have to remember that we need to make sure that it's safe for passengers and we need to go though our safety process. So we kind of understand that but I think it's really interesting because we kind of have a VC type philosophy and coming and working with government. Those are some of the slowest movers. So kind of working that out, working for structure has historically been or seen as a slower moving process. Merchants of VC digital world and then combining this with structure is a really interesting combination. Not only have we seen progress in the United States, we've seen progress in the UN [inaudible 00:16:52] road and transit authority there, we have a proposal to them. The Netherlands and some Scandinavian countries. Started to talk about the UK as well. So we've made some groundwork. David: So, if I'm inside what's my experience? Ryan: Sure. Actually we're partnering with Here Technologies and this is the booth that we're outside of right now. This is the first time that we're talking about the passenger experience in public. 2017 for us was what we call our kitty hawk moment, prove the technology works. Now 2018 is about lets get real, how do we commercialize, what's the experience going to look like, how we work with regulators, et cetera. In the same way that in the digital space we expect fast on demand and we expect a personalized, customized experience we're trying to bring that into the infrastructure mind frame, which hasn't necessarily been the case because this is one of the first new forms of transportation over 100 years, We're trying to incorporate this thing. Ryan: Let's say I book a ticket for the Hyperloop. I want that experience to be one, for example, where I'm here in Las Vegas I have turn by turn walking directions so if I'm inside this crazy convention center I see yes I know I have to walk down the stairs and to the right of the Starbucks to go get my Uber, which will already be there because they know that it takes ten minutes for me to walk out of this craziness. Take my Uber to the Hyperloop get in the Hyperloop, they know that I'm having a meeting with three other people that I met at CES so they're going to give me a customized pod with meeting table et cetera. Versus I've had enough of CES and I don't want to talk to anyone I know and I just want a silent pod and then when I get off the Hyperloop powered by Here Technologies in the future when we get this thing up and running. My Uber's already there and potentially maybe there are other apps like Seamless, et cetera, that by the time I get home my pizza is there. E. B. Moss: Will this exercise for us also because you just eliminated all of the walking that we do. Ryan: Well, I don't think it's there. All the pieces are there so I don't think it's that far of a stretch to get there. Imagine all the pieces and components are there we just got to put it together. E. B. Moss: Yeah, a much different experience than trying to get on the monorail with 5000 other people all crammed into one car, which took me 40 minutes. Ryan: Let's talk about that because that brings up a really good point. So what we'd like to do with the Hyperloop is have pods leaving, seconds; fast, fast, fast. When you have a train that has certain point A to B stops everyone is crammed on the train and then pushes out at the same time. Here we're aiming for consistency so that the other modes of transportation that we're connecting with create more of a flat traffic environment versus these waves where they're not ready. E. B. Moss: I love it. Ryan, thank you so much. Ryan: Thank you so much. E. B. Moss: So we stopped at the booth called Accessible Olli and I'm speaking with Brittany Stotler of Local Motors. So tell me what the connection is Brittany. Brittany: So we are here to show a new project that was announced last CES with CTA Foundation, IBM, and Local Motors. Talking about what it means for people with disabilities or that may not have the function that everyone else has and then as well as the aging community. Trying to make vehicles that are going to be pulling the drivers and age out of them because they're self driving vehicles. Trying to figure out how these people are going to start interacting with the vehicle, making it easier for them and ideally providing them more freedom. We based this on personaes, such as Eric who, though blind legally, he did not start out blind; he's actually an engineer from IBM and was one of the big people behind trying to help us figure out how to make a vehicle and make an Olli stop accessible for somebody who is visually impaired. Another persona is wheelchair bound but doesn't like to call attention to that aspect. So having the accessible Olli be able to communicate with them and use these vehicles allows them the freedom to be going out without someone else there to continually load them because they would roll onto Olli themselves and it automatically secures their wheelchair. Push a button to release them, they can roll back out of the Olli stop and they're all set to go. So ideally you'll have an app on your phone requesting to get on the next Olli that's coming into the station with your preferences set, so if you are in a wheelchair, if you visually have issues or maybe it's your hearing Olli can actually sign back and forth to you though the stop and through the actual vehicle. We’ve got a couple of different options that we're working with so ultrahaptics - a really neat technology system which, for those who can't see or have limited mobility they can actually ... rather than having to press a button ... can just wave their hand in front of it and you feel it and it creates like a virtual button for them. But there's also extendable to some vibrations that can actually drive them to an open seat so they don't have that awkward moment they maybe have to deal with on a daily basis of maybe actually sitting on somebody that's already there but they couldn't see them. E. B. Moss: What's the revenue model for this? Brittany: We are selling Olli and Ollie stops to cities - master planned communities, which is where a lot of the elderly will come into play - and then into large campuses and theme parks. Everybody across the board is thinking about how to integrate Ollie because it helps pull down costs: they can move people out of a bus driver position and turn them into another position, gives them a few new skill sets hopefully.  E. B. Moss: Is there an opportunity or a plan to take advantage of some of the data capture via the app? Brittany: There is potential. Currently we would own all of that data though our app but depending on the partnership it could potentially be a white label for a city’s Olli. They can wrap it however they want on the exterior. There's potential for glassine products, you can put text, you can have a video playing, and it'll go on any of our windows so it turns into almost mobile advertising. David: For our readers and our listeners in this case, I think, this is an opportunity to reach this new audience in a very compelling way. Brittany: Right. You're just the only [crosstalk 00:24:35]. So you're on a university campus and you have all these students that are getting on, they're going from their parking structures to a certain place on campus but they're going to go by Pete's Coffee every single morning and as they're rolling up or they're getting ready to go up to that stop Pete's Coffee advertising comes up on the app or it comes up within the bus to show come inside tell us you were just on Olli and here's your code and you get a discount. It starts driving traffic and then that's another way that the whoever's purchasing to actually operate the vehicles they can start recuperating and making money on the advertising piece. E. B. Moss: So a traffic driver driving traffic. Brittany: We're trying to get rid of traffic. E. B. Moss: Thank you so much for your time [inaudible 00:25:21] Beautifully stated and a very important application for all members of our community to be able to be more mobile ... Brittany: More freedom for them so thank you to all of our partners. E. B. Moss: For a less autonomous but very elevating experience we spoke to the Head of Marketing for Workhorse. He described their octocoper. E. B. Moss: So what are we officially calling this? This is experimental [crosstalk 00:25:54] Workhorse: That's a good question. We've just been calling it personal electric octocopter. Octocopter, eight things octo. David: What's the range on it? Workhorse: 70 miles. David: That's pretty good, that many miles. Workhorse: Gasoline generator that powers it so once you go 70 miles toward hop you gas up ready for the next hop. Not waiting for the lithium-ion battery for hours to charge up and all that stuff. You can just keep going. Normal helicopter you have to have pedals and those handles. This doesn't have any pedals or any of that stuff. We fly like a drone. So it'd be, you know ... David: You don't fly it like a drone. Workhorse: I mean we had this on display in Paris and all the kids that came in 15 they could jump in there, let's go, let's take it up because they're so familiar with the video game and all that stuff. So that's the way this flies. E. B. Moss: So what's the flying experience like? I mean I've been in a glider and I've been in a helicopter, somewhere in the middle? Workhorse: Yeah, I would say so. It wouldn't be as much as a glider, which is just pretty basic but it is also not as complicated as the helicopter. See this only has a ceiling height of flying of 4000 feet. Okay, so it's just enough that you're up and you're flying. So, it's meant to be like a different method of transportation. In America the helicopter's been here for 78 years, last year in America they sold 1000 of them new, that's not that big of a market. So we're not really planning on taking market share from commission on helicopter. We're kind of planning on creating a new category. So you've got to think of it as a new way of transportation, like we were kidding around about the New York City and all that stuff. David: And what's the price point on it or what will it be? Workhorse: We have price point at 200,000 dollars and at this show we can take your name and ... E. B. Moss: Take Credit Cards? Workhorse: $1,000 and your place is saved in line and then we would probably start delivering them in 2020. E. B. Moss: It looks like a Workhorse experimental aircraft. Workhorse: The name of the craft is Surefly. So it's Surefly with safety and that and background.  E. B. Moss: David and I saw AR, audio, autonomy, everything at CES and we talked about how it all came together. David: So one of the trends we just to look at in general is we just saw with Olli and what they're doing. There's a huge population growing old. E. B. Moss: Yes. David: And it's a key population that has a certain expectation level of service and experience and technology and that's only getting bigger. You're seeing a lot of brands really trying to figure out how do we deal with population that's having vision problems and mobility problems and hearing problems. All the things people my age are starting to think about. E. B. Moss: The 25 year olds. David: The 25 year olds. Again, when ... as we joked ... but when you think about the 25 year olds they are very tech savvy. They're the Hyperloop audience, they don't want to be waiting on the street corner for the M35 without having any idea, in the rain, when it's coming, when was the last time it was here, did I just miss it. You know, the stuff we do every day. So you're seeing mobility things like Olli and transportation systems and whole ecosystems. You're seeing companion bots. You're seeing machine learning, artificial intelligence, computer vision coming into play to do things like my mom lives far away it's hard for me to necessarily be on top of her. And I don't know if she wants me to be on top of her; all that family dynamic. E. B. Moss: So, we actually have a theme here and it kind of wraps things up beautifully because we've seen the connected appliances, connected home. We've seen the connectivity between devices and how to make things easier in life and not having to pick up one device to do one thing and one device to do another. We've seen the continuity between I want to get some place and how do I get there. So everything is connecting us whether it's virtually or physically like with Olli, like with the experimental aircraft, like everything we've seen today is all about connectivity. David: It really is and the big thing is it's connectivity that has value to you and me not connectivity that has value to some corporation. That's where people really get the difference. I'm excited about a technology that will help my life be better and in the course of my life being better the company makes money off of that, that's great. E. B. Moss: Like the last example with Olli. Where there is branding opportunities on and within it but it's giving me something of value. David: That's correct. There equates down when the consumer feels there's no value it's changed for them. Gen Zs might say, "We get that brands trap us every day and we're okay with that, that's the world and we're fine. But what they're not okay with is that you track me every day and then you don't know who I am, if you're going to watch everything I buy you should know what I buy. You should know what I've bought and stop telling me what I've already bought.” E. B. Moss: So if you're going to connect with me, connect in a meaningful way, connect in a valuable way and ... David: Imagine you have a friend who asks you the same question over and over and over again. Right, then eventually you stop hanging out with that friend. So that's where this connectivity has great value to us as human beings. Great value. E. B. Moss: David thank you so much. This was invaluable to have a guide like you. This is Insider Insight live from the Consumer Electronics Show. I'm E. B. Moss, Managing Editor for MediaVillage. Check us out MediaVillage.com and thanks for listening.  

Growth in Brisbane hasn’t been as fast as expected in recent years. Would tighter lending be a driver and what is the current state of the Brisbane market? Ryan: So, he’s heard some commentators mention that growth in Brisbane hasn’t been as fast as expected in recent years. Would tighter lending be a driver, and […] The post Comments on The Current State Of The Brisbane Market appeared first on On Property.

Heyang: When the lights go off in a cinema, five types of cinema monsters could be raising their ugly heads. How should we deal with them, or maybe are you one of them? Well, let’s go through this list. Ryan: Yeah, first of all, it’s the monsters being not the one you see on the screen, but the ones coming into your movie theater either being the eater, and this is someone who just seems to manage to eat and drink coke as loud as a train going by your house if you live on the train tracks. So this, yeah you know, with this one being said, people eat popcorn and drink soda. You know I’m a little more lenient on this one.Heyang: Yeah I was gonna say, with popcorn, like you guys eat it all the time Americans, generalization. Ryan: Yeah, we do. It is very like culture thing to eat with your mouth closed though in the US. So I think it’s a little less loud when you do so that way?Hongling: Yes, I think the eater is just like the smell and the sound and everything, if you lower it down a little bit, it will be fine. But when you do it, yeah, it’s not. Heyang: The crunch crunch crunch really is very very annoying. Oh!Ryan: Yeah, there’s couple of others we will get to them, but I just want to jump to the ones that I think are, I just wanna beat (go ahead). These are the phone flashers and the chatter box. And guys, you know what, I’m gonna level with you. In the US, like if you bring out your phone, and you start talking in a movie, someone might physically attack you. Like it is considered really rude, someone will yell like some really rude stuff to you. Almost inevitably, in the movie theater the personnel will kick you out. Like it’s just not a place where you do that. You are messing up everybody’s experience that they paid the same amount as you did. And you know, I completely agree with that. I think that’s the right way to handle it. Because these people drive me insane. Heyang: With these phone flashers, I think the worst type are the ones that are on the phone talking, these people should be kicked out! But there’s also the less bad ones, but you are bad (yeah you are still bad). That is just wechatting all the way or checking all kinds of stuff and (obnoxious). Yes that screen, it is so bright in the dark, and that could be so annoying. Ryan: Know that you are doing that everybody else dislikes you very much, so don’t do it. Heyang: Yeah it reminds me in the subway when now some people are playing games without the ear phones, and it’s so loud and playing stuff (like) videos that is also so loud. I think I mean it’s time to take the social etiquette to the next level and say: that is not ok you know.Ryan: I mean I get that, at the same time, I’m a little more lenient with the subway. But like places like the library, or like the movie theater, there’s just like a code of conduct. Just be quiet, and stop drawing attention away from the movies, so what is that being on your phone and having a conversation and seeing the light of your phone, it just takes away from the movie, pulls me out of it you know. Hongling: All the monsters we refer to, it’s that the people that they don't care about others, they just think about themselves and live in their own world, which bring us the last two types: the critics and the chatterbox, which means they talk in the cinema a lot, maybe out loud. Either they are chatting about the movie, or they are just criticizing about what they are seeing. That’s none of it, it’s acceptable. Heyang: And also the late comer. Ryan: Yeah, well the late comer does bug me. I mean like show up on time, whatever maybe you got stuck in the traffic. Um, the critic, as long as you are not doing that during the film, I don't mind critics snubs, I can ignore them, just fine when they are not distracting me from a movie. But, if they are doing it during a movie, oh, pursue! Heyang: Yeah and there’s once that me as a very calm pacifist person (so nice and sweet), yes and a lady as I am, like I just said. Well I’m not really that a lot of the times. But on the other day, when I encountered the late comer, the critic, the phone flasher and the eater, so four out of five combined in one. Yes, I brought up all of my courage, and said “could you please put a sock in it, we are trying to watch a movie here Mr.” And the guy pretty much almost was on the verge of hitting me. Yes that happened the other day, and I think those are the situations when you wonder how could people be so uncivilized and not caring for others at all. And now was the time for the very first time in my life I think, I wish I was a macho man with a heavy fist. Ryan: And I wish I was there because of that behavior is unacceptable. First of all, he did what he shouldn’t be doing. Second of all, the guy like threatening a girl, a woman in just my code of conduct, how I was raised, everything’s wrong with that, and I think it’s just really a coward thing to do on his part. Heyang: Yeah so those bad monsters do exist, but guess what, there were some good Samaritans I suppose (hooray!), who kind of helped out. And basically the strangers around me were sort of hushing the guy and saying that: if you don’t wanna see this, and you should leave. So for a moment, my heart was warmed by all those strangers in a Beijing cinema. And I think with all that support I got from the strangers. That it pretty much shows we are seeing that people’s social etiquette is kind of on the improve. Ryan: So be like those people, not like the monsters.Heyang: Yes, don’t be these five types of monsters.

Heyang: For those who want to forge a close relationship with a Chinese person, or just want to find a popular Chinese past-time, the poker game ‘Doudizhu’, which literally means “battling the landlords”, maybe a way to go. And now ‘Doudizhu” learners may find themselves more motivated as the sports authorities has announced that, first of all: this is a sport, and it’s going to receive special funding, and top players will be recognized officially. So what is all these special attention that’s given to ‘Doudizhu”, a poker game? Hongling: As you’ve mentioned, the poker game ‘Doudizhu” has been first to recognize as a sport early this year. Now there’s a national tournament of ‘Doudizhu’, which is basically for you who don’t know, it’s a popular strategic card game and poker game in China, and was officially launched on the September the 3rd. The price for the tournament total is five million Yuan, and in addition players will participate via online gaming platforms. We’ll receive master points granted by China’s general administration of sports. So basically it’s a sport, people are funding it, and you can play it online. Ryan: My my my doudizhu face, my doudizhu face, my poker face, baby. Um, you know what, my deal with it is I don’t know if I would consider it sport, me and Hongling had an argue about it before the show, but one thing it is-- it’s very popular, and people their skill that comes in to playing it, I’m sure of it. And there’s money to be made, so why not have a ‘Doudizhu’ (you make it so exotic hahaha--Heyang) face of tournament where the best in the world compete. For big prize, why not?Hongling: I gotta say Ryan said it’s not a sport, but he also believes that chess or go (Weiqi) is not a sport. It’s a strategic game. That is the background information I wanna give you guys. Heyang: You got it from him. What about video games? Cause there are major tournaments of video game playing. Can you call it not a sport? When you are exercising your brain muscles, they don’t exist. Ryan: Alright I mean like this is um where you get an English word, the relativity kind of matters. For me sport implies something physical is happening, whereas game just implies everything under it. I think this ‘Doudizhu’ game would just be called the card game in the west. Whereas when you say something it’s a sport, it’s most times—it is the thing that they have in common is they’re both competitive. You know like golf or even football, and this card game. But at the same time, completely different things are going on. Hongling: I would totally agree with having this as a tournament, cause like one hundred million people are playing this game. So for me it’s like how real the thing gets depends on how many people are participating in that. Ryan: I mean I see this sport thing because in one case, for football you have an athlete running across the football field with lots of skill, and in the other you have a guy sitting in a bathroom, smoking a cigarette, playing this game on his phone, are they both athletes? Is it a sport? I don’t know, you decide, but obviously it is very popular, and like I said require skills. So why not? Heyang: So why not?Ryan: So why not?Heyang: But also I’d like to bring in a slightly controversial side of ‘doudizhu’, that is often you know with any poker game, it could be involved with gambling, and gambling is illegal in our country, so now with this national sport be in roll getting involved promoting this poker game. It’s very interesting I’d like to see what the national policy is about on this one.

He Yang:The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen branch sent out close to 2100 denial letters touching the hearts of many students and parents. One parent said here I quote: “I am so touched. The principal has such a big heart. Not getting accepted is regrettable, while receiving the letter is just overwhelming beyond words.” Some students even decided to repeat a year and apply admissions to this university again next year. So I have heard of acceptance letters, but what is a denial letter? And why is it so special?Ryan:So basically a denial letter is letting you know as soon as been decided that “Hey, don’ t you have to wait any longer for our words. You didn’t get in and I’m sorry”. And this is very common in the USA. And I think all universities in the US will do this say “We are regretting to inform you” as always how it starts, so when you see those first words, you know how the rest of the letter’s gonna go, but so as I understand people really appreciated this, because they took the time to apply and this guy took the time to send them a message back, saying some really poetic words like “there are neither hard nor easy paths. Life comes with happiness and sorrows”. So he had quite a great speech that he send them in the denial letter and on top of that he also send them a notebook with the university’s logo and like some calligraphy work from him. This being President Xu Yangsheng of the university.Zhangwan:That’s really the communication between university and the students who have, you know, although been rejected by the university.He Yang:Yeah, first, I was a little surprised, but then did a little bit surveying around. All Chinese colleges said “Yes, I have never heard of a denial letter before”. And here’s something quite interesting. I think it’s for Chinese students, it’s kind of important, cause in the old days when you get rejected from your dream school, what you get? Nothing. So you, the young person who’s waiting to get the acceptance letter would be waiting at your door for months and if you get nothing and then you realize it’s sort of like adding insult to injury that you don’t get any thing and you’ve been waiting for so long. That is… yeah, that’s not very humane I think. So here now maybe there’s a change in things slightly. Ryan:Yeah and you know one thing, I’ll say, I don’t think happens in rejection letters in such a personal message from the President and I want to read you the guys a little bit of it, because it touched me. He said, part of the letter from President Xu reads as such: “I hope all of you remember that there’s a long road ahead of you. If we were meant to cross paths one day we will. Gaokao only makes up a small part of your life. Once you turn over a new leaf, you still have your entire life ahead of you waiting to be explored. Please be positive and confident along your journey in life.” Zhangwan:What a nice president of university.Ryan:I love that. He says you know what, this isn’t the make or a break, this doesn’t decide your life, pick yourself up, dust yourself up, you are meant to do something.He Yang:That is so nicely said and I think that’s something, it’s a bit heartwarming. So understand why some of these parents got kind of emotional and students as well, but also I’m puzzled this is something, maybe not so personal, but denial letter, rejection letter written in nice words. That’s something that in the UK, the US, it’s common practice for all universities, but why is it such a novelty in China? And people cry over this, because “Oh, this university so thoughtful for once”.Zhangwan:Yeah and because it’s rarely seen here in China.He Yang:And why is that? I think sometimes it’s about you know feeling for the other party. I think service needs just one extra little human touch and it can just make things so much better.Ryan:Right and I think I can’t speak for China, but being from the US, this is like as I said a common practice. And I think that’s something to do with encouragement. In our culture, if you fail, people don’t put you down. They try to help you say “Hey, you can do better next time and this failure was just a small bump on the path of your successful life story and how you made millions and you’re rich and you’re awesome and we wish that for all of our Roundtable fans.

【特别感谢热心听友“Amanda-怡”帮忙听写本篇文稿】Heyang: A new study found that Women who look for partners who are intelligent are less likely themselves to seek a career in the science, technology, math or engineering. Just like in the TV series the Big Bang Theory, Penny works as a waitress while her on-off boyfriend Leonard is a physicist. So guys, tell me more about the study and I just want to know do you think it makes sense?Ryan: So the research came from the University of Buffalo in the US and it identified that the dating preferences of more than 900 participants. Women who wanted a partner smarter than themselves were also less likely to show an interest in science, technology, engineering and math. Researchers said these types of women are more intent on playing a &`&traditional&`& gender role and gravitate towards more nurturing professions such as teaching and social work. Now looking at this, first of all, we talked about I believe Leonard and Penny, for all the Big Bang Theory fans out there, but I also would raise that Sheldon and his girlfriend are both scientists. (LY: Amy)Amy, thank you. And they are together. So that’s interesting we have both examples there. But specifically I gonna reference something more closer to home and that’s my sister. My sister has been published for trying to cure cancer. She’s met the Nobel peace prize winners in Germany for her research that she’s published so she’s very accredited. And she did not marry a guy that’s less smarter than her. She married another scientist who is also very intelligent guy, his name is Chris. And he’s a really nice guy. But I don’t think that women, if they are very smart, the smart women would settle for dumber guys. I just feel like this research is a little off-kelter with me.Liu Yan: I was so impressed by Ryan’s personal story. I just want to say, his family is such a bonanza of inspirational stories. Because I still remember him talking about his mother and now his sister. ( HY: Liu Yan you have just proved you are our ultimate friend of RT.) I am not kidding. I do listen to each and every episode. In the future we will get to know each and every family member of Ryan Price. HY: Maybe we can get to invite them to RT at some point if they come to visit you in Beijing. Ok, that’s another thing. But, yeah, I think Ryan makes a really good point. When I was looking at the study , I was a little puzzled, because it sounds like first of all what it’s saying is that some women are looking actively for women, oh sorry, you can (LY: that’s ok.) that’s your options too. You go girl. And there’s also woman who look for man, who are smarter. That’s one of the thing that drives you to look for a guy. I just find that a little bit strange. I think it is usually the whole package, and despite the fact that Ryan talked about smart girls going for smart guys, that kind of thing, but there are time when a smart girl who go for a guy that might not be as intelligent, you know, just maybe not as smart as she is. But he’s still ok.LY: That’s certainly ok but there’s big difference. One is you deliberately trying to score someone who is not as intelligent. The other is you have found someone who is maybe not as intelligent as you but that’s not the main thing. You are attracted to his personality. That’s a different thing than you actually actively seeking someone who is less intelligent. HY: That’s true. I’d like to share a little story. As you know I was that girl that kind of look for a guy that wasn’t as smart as I was. But he was so super cool and a really wonderful guy. That was just in high school. So basically I would ask him like math question and I totally know the answer. I nailed it. But I just asked him and pretended I didn’t know because I wanted to(LY: spend time with him) yeah, yeah, we have fun together; he’s still an awesome guy. I think this is far more complicated than just scoring the guy who’s smarter and you settle for the traditional role. But also there is this talk about the complementary roles like the guy, let’s say, is super smart in science and math and the girl is kind of just the opposite, so complimentary to each other. Ryan: I have heard that opposite attract. I’m not one to buy that. I feel like people that you share stuff in common with you will be able to go do things together like you will be excited to do things, you will share common interest. You know like if I really like magna from Japan and HeYang really likes Magna from Japan. We can talk about that for hours. (HY: Oh yeah, Manga!)Manga! I am so sorry. (HY: no worries.) you know having things in common is actually really important in a relationship and of course you want to have everything in common but having the important stuffs in common I think is necessary.HY: Totally.LY: I know for the sake of the show, I probably should present a different opinion but I’m so totally on board. That’s exactly what I think. I think having common interests and having common intensity for something is very important. And just like Ryan, I am never for the stupid belief of opposite attract. I hate hate hate that saying. You know. If that’s the theory, 男人不坏女人不爱，nice guys always finish last, so I don’t believe that. HY: I think it is the stupid girls that go for the really really bad boys. Ok maybe if you are like younger than 25, alright. But if you are 25 and you are still think like that, girl I don’t know what to do with you. You should, it is not the best.LY: Go get yourself checked out.HY: I am with you, LiuYan. But I don’t wanna say those words. Thank you for saying it. And also we’ve got so many messages regarding this topic. 静待花开 says my major is English and I hate math. I prefer to choose my significant other to be excellent at math. That is just what I want. And Jessie says I want someone that is kind of having that part that I don’t have. So I can kind of look up to him. But I would say I would go for, I just can’t help but share my own opinion, that is we should work as a team. We should be equals. And he is not dumber than you. And you can work together and move forward together. That’s the best thing I think.

Listen Mobile: The Silicon Prairie News Minute, featuring Ryan Pendell, the Managing Editor of Silicon Prairie News.  Host Jim Collison from theAverageGuy.tv – Highlighting the best startup news in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.  Recorded on December 22, 2015 Subscribe on iTunes or https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/silicon-prairie-news-minute/id1056975082# Subscribe on Android or http://subscribeonandroid.com/theaverageguy.tv/category/spnm/feed/ Find the complete show notes at https://theaverageguy.tv/category/spnm/ Jim: I did a show on Home Gadget Geeks recently with Edward Weniger about the Bitcoin scene here in Omaha. Besides owing bitcoin, is there any other way for me to get involved in the Bitcoin movement? Ryan: So one of the virtues of