The E-commerce Leader

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[00:00:00] This is the E-Commerce Leader, a show for you, the owner of a thriving online business. In this shorter episode, we bring you our hot takes on some topical central e-commerce subjects, fresh from our expert panel, Chris Green, Jason Miles, Kyle Hamer, and myself, Michael Vizi. Let’s jump in.
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[00:01:00] MV: Uh, folks, welcome back. Hey there folks. Welcome back to the e-commerce leader at Roundtable, where we have a chat about whatever’s on our mind, and there’s always something on our minds where people with brains teaming with thoughts and ideas around business and e-commerce. So, um, in no particular order, Kyle, why don’t you kick us off?
[00:01:16] KH: Yeah, no, sounds good. Uh, top of mind for me, uh, over the last few weeks has really been. Uh, regarding Amazon and specifically how if they’re gonna be able to pull off their upstream storage that they started to roll out in beta. And if you’re not familiar with this, uh, Amazon over covid bought a bunch of warehousing space cuz they thought, whoa, we need more f b A space cuz they had this huge covid bump.
[00:01:38] Well then they’re left with all this additional capacity that they didn’t actually need. So what they. Testing and trying to do is convert those warehouses to an upstream long-term storage called warehousing and distribution, roll it out in beta. Now it’s really interesting because what that could potentially do is compete against three pls in the marketplace at some level for Uh, their price per cubic square foot for long-term storage was really competitive. Um, I think it was at like 40. Uh, per cubic square foot in the, during, like non-PE season, which, which is really competitive. And then they guarantee a 99.9% in stock rate on F B A. And they actually automate moving the inventory over from their upstream storage to their um, To their FBA fulfillment warehouses, and they’re not the first to do this.
[00:02:29] There are other bigger three pls, like Deliver, which Shopify just purchased this last year that does some the exact same thing. They have upstream storage, then they have their fulfillment network and they’re moving stuff back and forth. So to me, I think it’ll be interesting to, to see how that impacts logistics and if it can streamline costs for people and make your, uh, logistics planning.
[00:02:48] More efficient. We make your operations more efficient as an Amazon seller, there are currently still some restrictions. Not every category applies. Uh, like for example, if it has an expiration date, you can’t use long-term storage, so that does take out a lot of grocery and some other products that would be impacted by that.
[00:03:05] The other thing is that it is definitely still in beta, so not everybody’s gonna be able to put inventory into it yet. But I think if you couple that the warehousing and distribution with their global logistics program, Which is where you can basically do, uh, shipping, uh, shared shipping costs from China on the, on their boat.
[00:03:23] They have a logistics program that they run out of China. , you could really streamline atten potentially your cost structure where you could actually send in your container right to Amazon distribution and warehousing, and then just trickle feed stuff into fba, which will have an impact on like the I P I score, which is the metric that Amazon uses to measure how efficient you are in your inventory and therefore granting you.
[00:03:46] More capacity in, uh, F B A. So to me, I think it’s interesting to play with, I think it, you know, does it, does it save people money? Um, from, on the three PL side, I think it’s, it possibly could. And if they can pull it off and, and make it an actual program that, that makes sense and works for the, the sellers of the world, I think they might have another extension of FBA that, um, will benefit the seller in, in a big.
[00:04:15] MV: Interesting. I mean, so from the very sort of Amazon centric point of view, I think there’re much broader, um, things to talk about here. But I would say the first thing that always strikes me with Amazon is like, Hmm, but all my eggs in one basket, and now we’re gonna put even more of them into one basket
[00:04:29] And there’s the cynical side of me, the downside, the other side though is of course the, the cost of three. I’ve seen my, um, , A lot of my clients sort of have their, their net profit or their pre-tax profit based on the fact that the three PL and logistics is just so much of a cost. Yeah. When you have to use it.
[00:04:44] So, you know, that’s the, one of the things that strikes me is there’s big up and big downsides. Really? Yeah. No, a hundred. Even shipping costs, like even if you use a three PL to do like direct fulfillment to your customers, the cost of actually shipping. It’s hard to beat FBA in terms of their cost structure for it.
[00:05:03] KH: I mean, and you could end up paying 30, 40, 50% more or higher sometimes using a three PL to ship directly to the, to your consumers and your customers. So it really does, it’s, it’s worth exploring if you, if you are an FBA physical product. Like how is that gonna impact your, your cost structure? Because if you can actually trim it, yeah, I mean I still think you probably need to have some level of a backup plan to Amazon as a three pl, but I don’t think you need to rely on it as heavily as you once did potentially moving forward.
[00:05:39] But it’s always good to have a backup plan.
[00:05:41] JM: Three pl the bane of people’s existence. All I hear from coaching clients is . My, my warehouse is really screwing everything up. I’m having to fly to wherever to confront ’em cuz they keep ghosting me or they, like. We had one client whose warehouse literally burned all his products. They caught, they caught on fire
[00:06:02] It’s like a three year drama in our coaching client’s life, and they were underinsured. Oh yeah. So yeah, that is, that if Amazon can solve that problem for, you know, for third party sellers, then, you know, I mean they, they, they were pretty good until they outgrew their, their physical space, outgrew their ability, you know, the demand for the space and then they, , you know?
[00:06:28] Yeah. Rank raking up the fees. And then of course people hated that and they, they cap your inbound, sh they do all the shenanigans to try to minimize the, of total holdings they have in their system. And it’s so infuriating for people. It, it is, I remember the day where you could literally ship in like, uh, container full of goods directly to fba and you could just sit on it and leave it in there for the year and not have any sort of negative impact.
[00:06:52] But to say, you remember the day is. What was that, three and a half, four years ago? ? Pretty much long ago. . It was like, it was like five years ago. Five years ago ago. Like when you could actually do that. Yeah. And but then they progressively, to your point, they realized it’s, there’s no money in being in the warehouse storage business.
[00:07:10] It’s only money being made in the fulfillment business of them moving goods. And they said, I don’t want to, we don’t wanna store your stuff. We only wanna sell things to, to customers. Therefore, now you have long-term storage fees, now you have FBA storage limits. You gotta figure out a way to store your stuff, you know, on your own and then just send it in.
[00:07:27] Yeah. The amount that we deem to be appropriate for your particular, yeah. I gotta tell you, the control freak in me, I always, and we, you know, do this in our own business as well. I just encourage people, bring it, bring it in house as much as you. You know, and obviously, uh, you know, FBA is gonna have its own load of volume of goods, but beyond that, you know, can you ship, you know, have a shipping manager have, you know, people don’t wanna do it, but then they’re caught in the web of, you know, drama of other people’s businesses.
[00:07:57] So what do you think, Chris?
[00:07:59] CG: There’s a lot. Affects all this stuff. And I think the piece that maybe people aren’t realizing, and maybe we are not even thinking about it here, but to me it’s prime eligibility that drives so much, so many decisions, so many. All of this stuff is based on is it prime eligible or not?
[00:08:20] Otherwise, who cares? Shipping products is not hard. Warehousing stuff is not expensive. Like it’s not a big deal. Mm-hmm. , but if you want your stuff to fly, It has to be prime eligible. So you have to use fba or you have to use some kind of print on-demand platform that has prime eligibility through KDP or virtual by Amazon, all this stuff.
[00:08:40] So Kyle, you’re, you’re giving me all these like numbers and using all these words to just make me, like, wanna shut down and not even listen all this like fancy logistics, uh, upstream, downstream, all this stuff. And I’m thinking, okay, how can I be okay? I’m gonna focus. I’m gonna listen to Kyle, where are the opportunities here?
[00:08:57] Because that’s, you know, some people can hear something and be like, oh, I don’t wanna deal with it. Or, Hey, you know what, I’m sure there’s opportunities here. Something in books. How can I get my books into this system to where it’s gonna make sense and I get lower costs and get it to, and I’m like, wait, my stuff stop print on demand.
[00:09:09] That [00:09:10] doesn’t affect me at all. Uh, how about like merch and merge my Amazon? It’s like, no, that stuff doesn’t affect me at all. And then I found this Valentine’s Day card, actually, I just made it really. Print on demand assistance Valentine’s Day, and I’m just thinking of all these problems, like I don’t have to even think about what you’re talking about, Kyle, like it doesn’t even, it doesn’t affect me one bit except the prime eligibility keeps coming back because I’m writing a new book.
[00:09:34] I would love, it’s about flipping. It’s like, like, you know, yard sales and like the easiest stuff that you can do to make money on the internet. And I’m like, you know what? Here’s how you do it. I’m gonna bundle my book with any Gary V book, right? Buy one of Gary’s books, get my book absolutely free. It’s the perfect interests, a perfect lead magnet.
[00:09:51] It’s, it’s perfect. But you know what? I can’t bundle books as the primary product in a bundle because of Amazon. Restrictions and limitations. You have to pay attention to some of those details and I’m like, you know what? I can just sell them on eBay. You know what? I can just sell them myself. I got a Shopify store.
[00:10:07] I know a guy who knows everything there is to know about Shopify. Not a big deal, right? What am I losing? Prime, prime eligibility, which means I’m back to, do I do fba? Do I do? Like how can I get my stuff to be prime eligible and maintain control and limit my exposure and minimize my risk and lower my costs, but remain prime?
[00:10:26] That’s just why Amazon still is that 800 pound grill. Like they hold all the cards. If you want a humongous chunk of e-commerce business, your products have to be prime eligible, not exclusively prime eligible, but have a prime eligible option. Let’s all say it together. Prime eligible . That’s said it’s less about fba, right?
[00:10:47] Because like. I was one of the very first B sellers on fba, and I remembered and I wrote the first book about fba, and I remember telling everybody I read the Long Tale, it’s probably. I probably interpreted the long tail book the wrong way. Cause I was like, oh, long tail, this stuff will, everything will eventually sell, send in that 20 million ranked book, it only costs 1 cent per month or 1 cent per year.
[00:11:07] Long term. Like, not, not even long term storage fees. It’s just a basic storage fee. Uh, just send everything in. I’m sure Amazon was like, oh, who wrote this stupid book? Who, who is sending guy in? We’ve got, I’m probably responsible for the reason when you try to send in a VHS copy mm-hmm. of speed with Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock where they say, no, no, we’ve.
[00:11:25] we’ve got enough of those in the warehouse. Okay. We don’t need 754 copies of speed on vhs. Okay. Enough. And it’s, you know, things have changed and like, you know, the, the theme is like, you gotta change along with business. You’ve gotta like listen to people like Kyle and be like, Hey, is there an opportunity there or not?
[00:11:42] And decide is there, or is there an opportunity somewhere else? And you know where to spend your time and where to, you know, put your attention. Uh, for some sellers, what Kyle said is very, You know, for print on demand sellers, we’re thinking, this is so awesome. Not that it’s not important, but I don’t have to worry about that stuff.
[00:11:58] Yeah. Which is why I, I spend so much more time on the print on demand side, but it’s, there’s a lot out there. Yeah, a hundred percent. That reminds you really of that, that Elon Musk quote, which I think I’ve learned from a guy called Jason Miles on the internet court, which is the best part, is no part, which is, in other words, if you don’t have to do the painful thing in the first place because of your business model.
[00:12:15] That’s the best thing. The second, the opposite extreme though, to your point Jason, of are you willing to build your own fulfillment, um, center and combine it with, you’ve gotta be prime manageable. So to combine those two points, so Chris is, and Jason’s, I would say, I’ve got one client that has done that.
[00:12:30] They’ve got their own warehouse and they’ve got so seller fulfilled prime, which is hard to get, hard to maintain. and you’re risky and unless you’re really good at what you do. But what you do have, of course, is a warehouse with highly trained staff. Yeah. Such that you are not got the same sort of single source to NCI as bring everything in f b, and you’re not subject to the f b inbound shipment, uh, problems, which so play.
[00:12:51] Like people at q4, particularly seller prime, not easy to achieve though seller fulfilled. Prime key metric is speed of shipment. Mm-hmm. , eBay used to demand that of us 10 years ago. Here, here’s the interesting thing about seller got the door in two days or in trouble. I mean like, yeah. So seller, seller fulfill prime was this big push that Amazon did and then they rolled it back.
[00:13:12] Yeah, cuz it probably worked too well. Exactly, because like what, what is the primary driver to use? FBA is to Chris’s point, you get prime eligibility. So if it worked too well and people are moving out of FBA and they’re losing money, guess, guess what? Program was now on a wait list? Only seller who failed Prime.
[00:13:30] Mm-hmm. . Yeah. There you go. Well, it’s always, it’s a, it’s a cat and mouse game, right? With an 800 pound gorilla. Yeah, as you say, cutting mask, getting with an 800 pound gorilla. That’s pretty much it. Well, so, so change topic quite violently, but I mean, um, I’m going to segue using Chris’s visual cue of the, the Valentine’s card.
[00:13:49] So, um, I’m always , I always think of Valentine’s Day, uh, in, in the following way that I go out and spend more money than I feel I should as a consumer. And I think, ah, this is a great marketing opportunity. That reminds me I should talk about that. So, um, , tiny bit of a spin on it to try and make it less kind of something that you bung on your blog post because you can’t think what else to write about.
[00:14:08] Um, The interesting thing about Valentine’s Day, let’s go back in layers. So Hallmark has been selling cards for Valentine’s Day for about a hundred years. So they’ve done very well outta, they commercialized something that was a famous festival that came off the middle age when people in, you know, medieval times in Europe gave each other cards that came off the back of.
[00:14:27] A beatification via Pope and, and sort of creating a saints day. And that came off the back ultimately, like so many Christian festivals was pasted on the back of a Pagan festival, which is pretty fruity and I won’t tell you what they did, but it was, you know, quite sexy and not particularly what you call romantic.
[00:14:43] So that struck me as an interesting, uh, it’s spin on the whole business. Cause I, I just kind of nerded out about this cuz I couldn’t see it last night and I was just googling Valentine’s Day. . And um, obviously one very obvious thing to just remind people to do is make sure you catch the major festivals.
[00:14:57] Like I had a, a client who’s selling, uh, chocolate bundles, uh, products recently, and they were doing very well. I said, okay, go and produce a hundred of ’em. Those, he said, what? I said, yeah, it’s working. So double down, triple down, quadruple down, and we’ll see how it does. But I said, okay, your focus has to be Valentine’s Day.
[00:15:10] It’s really to totally simple. Don’t miss the obvious. So that’s the first lesson for me. But the other one, You know when there is something that has more depth historically and it has resonance, there is a deeper kind of holder that has on the consciousness than if you just come up with something like Prime Day, which is a big deal for Amazon sellers and will exist in 10 years.
[00:15:29] Who knows? So those were my thoughts about Valentine’s Day. So I check that one in there.
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[00:16:24] you like the history of Valentine’s Day, or I would market it as is your product for one of those older. to see who catches it or to, and just to differentiate, uh, like I wasn’t paying attention. It’s Valentine’s Day today.
[00:16:35] I’m like, oh. It’s like, oh, shoot, okay, . It’s just, you know, it’s today on calendar. Uh, but I’m like, you know what? I was gonna send an email to my list, and I’m like, you know what? I’m not gonna send it today because it’s gonna get mixed in with any other marketer company that’s putting out a happy Valentine’s Day from your favorite streaming company.
[00:16:50] Or like, Mistake in my opinion, but I’m not gonna like lump my message in with, with all that extra stuff. So you do have to pay attention, whether it’s for managing inventory or for promotions or for just not being tone deaf, depending on what it is. All of a sudden you’re like, oh, I shouldn’t say that on this day, kind of thing.
[00:17:06] Um, yeah, people love to spend money. I mean, everybody here knows it’s just a day. Everybody here knows that you’re a significant other. Other does. He’s gonna get mad if you don’t spend a hundred or $200 or something even more ridiculous on this date. But we do it anyway. So from the other side, we might as well sell something to everybody that wants to buy something anyway.
[00:17:24] And yeah, you know what, there should be like an advertising campaign of like justify, hey, you know how you couldn’t justify this purchase all year long? Well, why don’t you get it for Valentine’s Day? And like a justification, you could rerun that, that type of promotion for every single day, every single holiday or, yeah.
[00:17:40] No, don’t get me started on, we’ll go down to a marketing idea path. We’ll never get off. Sounds great. I like this justified buying an expensive thing because of, of some kind of holiday. I think that’s brilliant. Justification buying. Yeah. You write a whole book about it. Uh, there’s, I would a huge opportunity for Valentine’s Day o obviously the huge opportunity in a lot of holidays in terms of marketing.
[00:18:01] We had a client who did a very cool thing is primary customers are, uh, are women, older ladies. And so he ran a flash sale during the super. And it was like 40% off only during the game itself. And it was a really novel thing because, you know, a lot of people do a, a [00:18:20] sale of some variety on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, president’s Day, that kind of thing.
[00:18:25] But his was a kind of a novel twist on making something unique out of, uh, a surprising, you know, uh, annual day. And, uh, that was pretty cool. I liked, and he crushed it. I mean, he just, he totally destroy. This is kind of an interesting take on using a special day in a, in a unique way. We were differentiating, which is probably the bigger point, right?
[00:18:48] It’s loud out there. Yeah. Yeah. How do you someone see your message and it’s differentiate. Yeah. And his thing was so smart because he didn’t have to say it overtly to his. Customers that the sale is happening during the Super Bowl because number one, you don’t care about the Super Bowl. And we all know that generally the husbands are gonna be obsessed with the Super Bowl, and therefore he’s giving his customers an opportunity to go shop online, have a fun time during that period of time where it otherwise would just be, you know, kind of, uh, you know, not into a game or, you know, you know what I mean?
[00:19:22] And that’s, that’s maybe sexist or whatever. , generally speaking, at least in our family, my wife watched the game with me so she could watch the commercials and uh, you know, that’s kind of what we do. So, yeah. All, all the people like me that don’t really know what the Super War was until you told me about it on the podcast the other day.
[00:19:38] Jason, I, I think you told me privately, to be fair, you didn’t reveal my ignorance. I’m revealing it now, but there is, there’s, that’s fantastic. Kind of counter marketing, isn’t it? To go, for example, the World Cup. Like, I, I couldn’t care less about the World Cup or Harry’s latest book. A lot of things.
[00:19:53] Passionately about. So if you wanted to sell to me the fact that you were selling something that was kind of anti world cup, that that, that is much less crowded market than the very obvious thing of selling to football. As in soccer fans. Yeah. During the World Cup, whereas you said, Chris, it’s out there and you know you’re gonna make a lot of money if you can afford the advertising and punch through the noise.
[00:20:14] But if you kind of zig when they zag, uh, as they say, I think that’s really smart marketing. I like that idea.
[00:20:19] Wow. Just make sure you have a prime eligible offer on .
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[00:23:00] Excellent. Well, Chris, look, I know you’ve been house cleaning in, in your, uh, digital world, so tell us about what you’ve been up to When I’ve been out buying expensive Valentine’s gifts. , I’ll, I’ll keep, I’ll keep the, the premise of it. Very simple. I got an email list.
[00:23:14] I don’t email consistently. I don’t keep my list warm kind of thing. Uh, and I was like, you know what? I, I gotta clean this thing up. Most, most is cold and all this stuff. And the what’s stopping me is this overthinking, this overanalyzing. Oh, well what about this one person? What about this one email address?
[00:23:29] And instead of just, Committing and not overthinking and taking action and making decisions and all of these things, which apply more than just to your email list, but to everything. You’ve gotta make decisions and not have this. Oh, but what about this one potential random outlier situation? Is it possible?
[00:23:45] Yes, but it’s worse to do nothing and be like, well, I’m gonna keep all those outlier situations, you know, open just in case they work. Then you don’t get the benefit. Hey, I actually cleaned up my email list. Hey, everybody’s actually now engaged. Hey, everybody that wants to hear from you is now hearing from you.
[00:24:00] Everybody that didn’t wanna hear from you is still not hearing from you. All these simple things that you want, you’re not getting, or I’m not getting because I’m overthinking all this stuff. I spent the last hour in Convert Kit trying to figure out what’s a cold subscriber actually mean. Like when it was actually time, I said email, like I actually Googled how long ago was 90.
[00:24:17] so that I can figure out the date of like when I sent the email and who’s not opening and all this stuff, instead of just saying, look, they’re not opening your emails. Send one last email saying, Hey, I’m just cleaning this up. If you don’t hear it from me, it’s cool. If you do, here’s how you get back on my list and let it go and be done with it and not worry about these little Oh yeah.
[00:24:34] I never like, I know these situations that are going through my head and I’m fighting them, and I share this story. So anyone else that is fighting these little voices in your head, I’m like, oh, but what about, but what about this? What if someone’s still looking for you on your old a o l email address?
[00:24:48] You better better keep checking that. No, you don’t. If they need to get ahold of you, they’ll find you. Okay? They don’t need to hold onto your, oh my gosh, these are things that I do and I share. Let people know that you’re not alone if you are doing these same things. Uh, it’s a struggle, but it’s a struggle that.
[00:25:04] I’m committed, overcoming, and I hope other people can, uh, overcome as well. Oh man, this sounds like my entire is to life, like fighting myself, being perfectionist about ridiculous things. It’s, it’s, yeah, particularly emails. I, I’m thinking about what you were saying. I’m thinking, oh my God, I, I need to clean my email list up.
[00:25:20] I don’t want the deliverability is, you know, based on some of the stats, but it’s not good. Um, but it feels like a really small list. It’s exactly the same thing. Mentally as somebody letting go of revenue when actually a lot of the things are selling and making precisely zero gross profit. Nevermind any costs if acquiring a customer or anything else.
[00:25:38] And, uh, yeah, it’s hard, isn’t it? It’s hard to get things up. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, email list growth is a vanity metric until it gets too big and then you realize, wait, wait, wait. This is like expensive, first of all, and inefficient. And, uh, so list hygiene is a huge part of thinking that. and, uh, you know, nobody wants to have an email monthly bill of a thousand bucks or 1500 bucks if you don’t have to.
[00:26:02] I mean, mm-hmm. , you know, but if you get a hundred thousand, 200,000 names, that’s what you’re gonna be paying. Um, and so it is one of those things that most people don’t do, but it’s wise to do. I think the email metric that gets ignored the most is revenue per ris. , like, can you measure how much revenue per person on your list you have?
[00:26:21] Is it going up or is it going down? Like, yeah, because you can have open rates, uh, you can have amazing open rates, but if nobody clicks and nobody buys your offer, who cares? I mean, you could have 500,000 people on your email list, and if it only makes you 500 bucks because your list is bad, doesn’t do any good.
[00:26:42] Yeah, well, I, I’ve worried more over the unsubscribe and like, oh, my feelings are hurt If someone unsubscribe, oh my gosh, what, what, what did I do wrong? And making it all personal. Mm-hmm. , which is just nonsense. Uh, my friend John Lawson, who I think most of you know, , he had a phrase, uh, for his email list. He said, it’s buy or die.
[00:26:58] Yeah. Yeah. And I don’t, I didn’t like that at first cause I was thinking it was too commercial. It was like, oh, it’s my list only to get people to buy. It’s like, well, it’s not only to get people to buy, they can open, they can buy, and they’re perfectly capable if they don’t want to hear from me or they’re not interested in the offer, to not open it to delete it, or if they prefer their choice.
[00:27:16] Mm-hmm. , unsubscribe. Buy or die, like buy something, read or, or unsubscribe and, and stop taking it personal. And I hope, I’ve honestly never done this. I don’t go in and see like who unsubscribe and go look at the names and like, oh, I don’t, I’ve thankfully never [00:27:30] done that. I’m not that bad, but I could, I know it’s know, it’s there.
[00:27:33] Right. I know I could if I wanted to and I’m like, no, don’t do it. Cause it’s not personally can get back on your list if they want to. Well, one of the things that you have to think through is, what did they sign up? . Mm-hmm. . And if you have too good an ethical bribe. And the ethical bribe is why they signed up and they get it.
[00:27:49] They’ve been satiated that like you gave them something, they wanted to join your list. They didn’t want to join your list. They wanted what you were giving them to join your list. They got that. Your emails for the next five years was never a part of their calculus. Right. You know, they just wanted the goodie that you’re offering to join the list.
[00:28:07] Peace out, which is totally cool. Thank you. Yeah. Right. Which is totally, but if you’re good enough, like if, if you can keep them because your right five years of emails are actually having kind of value in them, or maybe they didn’t ever want to do that. Maybe they just wanted the thing and they got the thing and they, which is still cool.
[00:28:23] Which is still, which is still good. One of my favorite campaigns to send when I was doing a lot of email marketing was the dear John, , which is essentially, Hey, you haven’t been engaging or opening up for emails. Maybe we need to break up. If you want to keep going, great, click here. If not, here’s the unsubscribe link.
[00:28:40] Go for it. . That’s exactly what I’m doing. But I can’t send it today cuz today’s Valentine’s today, right? Yeah, it’s, yeah. But John, yeah, I’ll talk about 10 Valenti hilariously. You shouldn’t do. You should do your breakup email on Valentine’s Day. I think you should. I think I should. The thing is, It wouldn’t, it would be, it would be entertainingly blunt and I think the people that like that kind of thing would sn air and probably resubscribe.
[00:29:04] I would if I saw that. Well, lemme, lemme ask. When, when it’s been done to me on email list, you know, I’ve been marginally paying attention to maybe I haven’t done it. It, it definitely triggers, like I’ll open that email and be like, oh. And then make a decision, oh yeah, I still want to see this person’s email and I’ll, I’ll do it, or I’ll make the decision right there.
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[00:30:09] no, I don’t wanna do it. But more oftentimes I will open that email if I get it in response. So, but here’s the, here’s the devil’s advocate side of it. If we were really trying to be courteous to them, we would interpret their non-op openings as their message and not make them do another active. that we didn’t want, they, they didn’t want to do anyway.
[00:30:29] So just purge your list if you’re being super generous to them, but we’re not being super generous to them because we, what we really want is we really want them to open our newsletters every week and click on our stuff to buy our things. That’s what we really want. Yes, it is. That is, that could be an accurate interpretation coming.
[00:30:50] Coming from me, right. As someone I’m on a, I’ve unsubscribed, but it’s from so many things. Yeah. And there are a lot of people that I stay subscribed to that I don’t open their emails. Right. Like, Ryan Holiday sends out his daily, fair enough, stoic, whatever. I rarely open that, but I don’t wanna be unsubscribed.
[00:31:04] I get enough from his title just to be like, you know what? I need to remember my mentality of stoicism. Yeah. I’m, I’m not, if I all of a sudden stop getting, I’d be like, Ryan, what the heck? Like I was, I was on your list. No, I didn’t open anything. , but I was getting some kinda, I read your subject lines.
[00:31:18] That’s, and they really spoke to me every single day. , they should be, I’m gonna start just sending subject lines. That’s how good my, my emails will be. But that would be a fun game. I, I’d like when you get look at the open rates, you wouldn’t get deliverability. Cause the spam filters would, would block you.
[00:31:33] Okay. I need actually click and open it though. Yeah, exactly. But that’s fine. But here’s the thing, the worst thing, the worst place to be in any marketing scenario. is having your customer be ambivalent to you. Like they just don’t care. And that’s essentially when people get your emails and they don’t do anything, like at least the dear John forces them to make a conscious decision.
[00:31:50] Do I really want to value this person and I just got too busy or too distracted, or is their content not worth it or, but to, but this point they’re not, they’re not being ambivalent. You’re just misinterpreting how they use your. They’re may be saving it up for a rainy day, maybe every six months they wanna check in on you.
[00:32:07] Maybe it’s possible, it’s something you don’t want to have happen, but that’s what they. So, yeah, I mean, it is interesting. That’s the, at least stoic, you might, you might read ’em all like, you know, one Yeah, yeah. Or just it’s a reminder to go check his website or just a reminder that he’s out there like, like I know some real estate guys who put out emails just for the awareness.
[00:32:25] Yeah. Just be like, oh, that’s, if ever you need a real estate agent, which I don’t need every day or every week. or every month. Yeah, but Oh, that guy. It’s top of mind. It’s like, it’s like Koch, you know, they run commercial. Does Koch need to run commercials to make money? No. Like everybody knows the brand, but they still spend millions of dollars to be, to continue top of mind awareness.
[00:32:45] Yeah. Another example is like Jeff Walker’s, uh, work. He does it annual launch campaign. That’s free, uh, training. I like to do it every year. I don’t want his weekly. YouTube video about this and that marketing. So for a whole year, I ignore. Yeah. Then when I don’t, I don’t. So anyway, Michael, it could be a segmentation thinker though.
[00:33:04] Can if, if people that click on annual launch stuff a lot then should be in a separate list. And to your point, um, Jason, about the ethical bribe, uh, there’s a very, very interesting point. I’m, I literally just created one for the e-commerce theater. Right. But having thought about that, obviously, And give them, you know, your wonderful workbook, which is a beautifully produced thing with fantastic frameworks that is genuinely of value.
[00:33:26] But the thing is that we wanted ’em to open emails and buy more stuff off us. So I think that, um, one of the things to do is to try and set things up such that there is email content that is not just a bunch of broadcast emails randomly about anything you do, but is an auto-responder that relates precisely to the subject and the thing.
[00:33:43] Signed up for, and I, I have set those up in the past and it does get a better open rate, but it, it’s obviously a fantastic amount of work. So it’s only worth doing for, you know, something that’s a big, uh, part of what you do, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s my experience. Well, final thought on my side from what Chris is saying is, you know, it’s even compounded worse problem.
[00:34:01] when you personally change your story and topics and life work over time. You know, like people signed up for my list 10 years ago. We’re hearing all about Pinterest power. The book I wrote at the time on marketing on pinterest.com, well, I haven’t talked about that in the last seven years, you know, but those people still on the list.
[00:34:20] I guess they’re hearing the latest thing, which they didn’t ever really sign into, you know? So that’s another reason to sort of update and purge and think through the buyer die, or the dear John. I think you can have fun with it. To your point, Chris, I think it, it is a kind of, there’s a terrible fomo fear of letting go of something that could just possibly have been valued.
[00:34:41] I totally hear you on that. And I guess that one, one antidote to that is to have fun with it and go a bit the opposite way and do a Dig John letter and, and, and be cool with the fact that you’re gonna get a bigger percent of unsubscribes from that than you would for most things. Cause it’s supposed to be having that answer.
[00:34:55] But, uh, so, so Jason talking of, uh, , gonna take away beautifully work talking of books, which we weren’t. Tell us about your thoughts about books. . Alright. Right. Book, book Club is this topic of mine for me today. Uh, no, not about my own book, although my own book I’m working on is doing well, it’s number one right now in nonprofit management, uh, category on, on Amazon, but I came across a book that I wanted to mention because I want to advocate for the topic and I don’t know what to do with it other than just talk about it with people.
[00:35:22] It’s called Cobalt. And, uh, it’s by a British, uh, university professor said Arthur Carra. I first heard, um, the narrative is about the book on the Joe Rogan podcast. And then, um, it was a presale at that point and it came out on February 1st. It was in New York Times bestselling book this last week. And um, so I got the audible edition and it’s basically, A description of to, to specifically say what it’s about.
[00:35:51] It’s about conflict minerals in the Congo and, uh, the copper belt region runs from Congo to North Zambia, Northern Zambia. It’s called the copper belt. Uh, so I’m familiar with it. The area been to Zambia a ton of times, and that’s where our ministry is. But I had never really understood the detail associated with what’s called artisanal mining.
[00:36:12] And, uh, Mad scramble right now that the world is going through to get cobalt. And as it happens, this is the place on the earth that has the highest conservations of cobalt that’s as accessible at sort of a surface level. And um, this book is an expose on, um, the worst hell you can imagine in terms of forced labor, uh, child basically slavery.
[00:36:35] Um, , these kids basically from, you know, childhood are in these, uh, [00:36:40] artisanal mining, uh, camp projects. And, but the, the hellishness of it is this stuff’s toxic. And they also dig minds, shallow minds to go after this stuff. And they send all the kids down in these minds. They literally have mind collapses every week.
[00:36:57] And, uh, this book is just a punch to the gut because the bottom line on this stuff is lithium is, is what they’re all after. And lithium is a key ingredient and every, uh, you know, battery storage device for electronics and the lithium, the pursuit of it is just, it’s an unquenchable global appetite. Right.
[00:37:19] And, uh, I mean, I, I, I love my iPhone. I love my iPad, I love my, I Mac my MacBook, you know, my AirPods, the whole thing. But listening to this book is just like, my gosh, uh, what are we doing? And all the big tech companies deny anything associated with artisanal mining and say it doesn’t exist. And this guy has all the proof, the interviews, the photos, the videos, uh, and it is just, So sorry to end our conversation on a down or note, and I don’t know if you guys have looked.
[00:37:48] Conflict minerals or not, or the whole cobalt. Um, and you know, lithium, uh, battery diba, it’s brutal. I’m a big follower of, uh, Peter Zion, and he’s a generalist. He’s not a specialist in this area, but he does talk about a lot of things where he said, I’m agree, but I’m agreeing he could do math. And he says, so I don’t get invited to the green conventions, and this is one step further than that, which is, , there is no such thing as a free lunch.
[00:38:10] I mean, yes, electric cars are gonna be less polluting. They kind live in London, which is just absolutely toxic atmosphere because of, of the, uh, the cars belching out, exhaust fumes and, okay. So you have various things you can do about that, all of which have ramifications. But the whole electrical thing, like it’s mm-hmm virtuous or modern or somehow gets away from physics and awkwardness of mining things in difficult places.
[00:38:32] Not only is it not as, as green as, as that, and it’s not just better than coal or oil mining, but it turns out the complexity and the human rights challenges are about 10 x what you’d have with any of those industries. Yeah. So it’s, it’s a huge area and it’s one that the world’s gonna have to grapple with if it’s absolutely serious about electrifying, cuz I, I don’t.
[00:38:55] I, I think this is just like the thinner of the wedge. It’s huge complexity apart from anything else. Even if you just ignored huge, which I don’t think is to do. Um, there isn’t enough of these minerals, uh, in the world a according to the, these things that I’ve read in many cases to build anything like enough electric cars to replace the gas and diesel ones, like nothing.
[00:39:13] Like. So there you go. Yeah. Big, big topic. . Yeah, and you know, it’s kind of interesting, you know, like Tesla and Apple are the two obvious, you know, corporate demanders of this product. Tesla’s my number one stock holding. I sold out of my Shopify’s shares early in the pandemic and moved everything on my portfolio into Tesla.
[00:39:34] So as a shareholder, , it’s really tragic. And Joe Rogan did a Twitter poll and he said, who can solve the conflict minerals situation? Toyota, gm, Ford, Elon, you know, and basically everybody voted and it was this, you know, unanimous, Elon’s the only person who would honestly figure out how to solve this. And he is moving to battery storage systems that are lithium, uh, free, I guess.
[00:40:01] But he hasn’t really come out. , like you’d think the righteous thing to do, not religiously, but you know, just socially would be to come out and say, look, I’m gonna talk to this guy. I’m gonna say, you know, name this and actually, you know, talk about how we’re addressing it and I’m waiting for, you know, Tesla to do it.
[00:40:21] Or Apple. Cuz you’d think they would have like a moral high ground they’d step into mm-hmm. if they would own it. And I’m not talking religiously of course, I’m just, just socially cultural. , like, it’s just such an obvious evil, um, you know, so anyway, you know,
[00:40:38] no, there’s been a lot of bad things in like human history and I’ve, I, I haven’t done enough. I’m not a specialist or an expert on any of this stuff, but I have seen a pattern of a lot of things that had very, very negative things tied. I mean, kind of an easy one or a less or non-controversial one, um, is like factory farming.
[00:40:57] Mm-hmm. where no one’s pro factory farming. Right. But for us as a society to get to a place where we can. DNA manufacture meat in a lab kind of thing. We probably, as a soci society, had to go through factory farming to get to the point where we had enough wealth and assets and technology and knowledge and cooperation to do genetically modified growing meat in a lab where if we said, look, look, look, we, we need to go from hunting and gathering and like small farms, two genetically modified giant.
[00:41:28] I don’t see a scenario where that really happened, and I’ve seen this type of pattern all over the place. You could apply it to Amazon where Amazon workers were underpaid and, and getting hurt way too often in the warehouse and all these things. Well, for Amazon to get to the size that it is, and I don’t know if this is actually kind of factually true, but to, to get to the size of scale where they can give full benefits to a factory worker in this mon monstrous company, they had to get to a profitability level where they were able to expand and grow.
[00:41:56] And was there another way to get there? I don’t know. But maybe the only way to get there was through, Hey, we can only pay this much and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And maybe the same thing historically will be addressed here to be like, yeah, unfortunately we had to go through this terrible strip mining and conflict mineral phase.
[00:42:12] Yeah. And thankfully we addressed it as humans, and now we are here. And I wish that was true. I’m saying it is. Yeah. The evolution of civility, I guess is the idea there. And I think that can be true in, uh, countries that have accountability metrics and measures and systems. And, and the truth is, central Africa has been pillaged from the time of copper awareness.
[00:42:39] Uh, rubber plant, you know, rubber trees. Uh, it’s just a, a one one. Tragic pillage after the next. And, um, and the, and the evolution of that civility has not manifested itself in those countries. And, uh, and you, and, and there’s no way around it saying that you, if you look at the situation, we’re culpable, you know, at, in the West, it’s, it’s, you can’t put it on them.
[00:43:07] And, and maybe there’s bad actors there, but you, you have to say that the culpability lies with. incessant demand for corporate, uh, profits and systems of sales for devices that we love, you know, and mm-hmm. . That’s the, that’s the, the horrible tension this book puts you in is that, man, I love my Apple products, but man, I just can’t cosign on what’s happening in the Congo right now.
[00:43:37] But I think to to Chris’s point, I mean there may be different mechanisms in history that that cause this to get corrected and in, you know, uh, in the UK and the 19th century, the factory owners were forced to up their game and stop using child labor and so forth. And then in America, as you said, that factory farming example, for example, um, But there are other mechanisms, one of which is consumer pressure.
[00:43:57] And you are right now articulating on a podcast a, a, uh, very profound dichotomy between your genuine attachment to the brands and the Apple products and your genuine revulsion against the human rights abuses that you feel are associated with it. And that is the way that can change can happen. I mean, like Nike obviously, whether it’s completely changed its game or its practices, I don’t know.
[00:44:18] But famously was an example of there were sweatshops in China or the far east. . And you know, over time if there’s enough pressure, then governments will legislate and companies will change to a degree to what degree? and how corrupt or non-corrupt it is is a different question. But I, I have got, again, talking about Chris and, and historical examples, um, I do have faith that that is possible.
[00:44:39] One should not just assume that it will happen, but I do think that consumers can have a big, big impact, particularly in America where consumers are. kind of treated like gods, on the one hand, we’re sort of spoiled children, uh, in the UK like that as well now. But on the other hand, they, they have a lot of power and that means that corporations listen to them and that ultimately means that obviously politicians listen to them as well.
[00:44:58] So I think there is a mechanism for change if we choose to grasp it. Yeah, yeah. It’s generally slow. I mean, I, I That’s, yeah. An example of like vegetarian and vegan options at restaurants is a response to consumer demand. And that’s from people saying, look, and there’s plenty of people who eat vegan for a number of different reasons.
[00:45:16] Some of them cruelty animals, like I don’t eat animals cuz they’re, let me think. And like, that’s their only reason. Now, if they just did that at home and never went out to eat and never told anybody, and like never had the discussion and never tried to convey why people eat that, you know, it would just be them.
[00:45:29] And like, like Jason, like you at home, not buying an iPhone isn’t gonna change. Right. So like, what can we do to like, make ourselves feel like we’re actually making change and actually make a change? And that’s when you understand something and you share it with people and why you’re concerned about it.
[00:45:43] And then maybe you do get a, an old flip phone. You carrie it around as a reminder and you show it to people like, oh, Jason, like he’s actually [00:45:50] doing this stuff. Mm-hmm. Oh, like this, this vegan is actually doing this. And now McDonald’s and Burger King are selling, you know, vegan. I’m sure their corporate wasn’t thrilled.
[00:45:58] Be like, we gotta make a vegan thing. Well, they did it in response to consumer demand, and I, I hopefully see a future where there is no factory farming and you can get just a perfect burger that all these, all these things, but that it’s, it’s a process. It’s a, you know, everything that’s happening in Africa right now is gonna take, it’s a generational change, but awareness and, and using the internet and the things that we have.
[00:46:20] I mean that those are things that can help push things in the right direction. Mm-hmm. and I and just have, I just try to have confidence over enough time, and this has played out over so many different things through human history that we do give back. We don’t always go in a perfectly straight line, but over enough time, everything’s going up in terms of human wellbeing and infant mortality rates and life expectancy and healthcare and access to medicine.
[00:46:41] All these things far from perfect, but it’s getting better when, as long as it keeps getting better. You don’t kind of feel like we did our job. You know, they say ignorance is bliss. Right? And I think it’s the blatant ignorance of it as a topic that people ignore that allow it to continue for that. You know, you talk about the length of time, right?
[00:47:06] The, the, the way that that gets shortened in terms of change is enough people. I’ll become aware of it and decide this is not okay. Yeah. And that we, we demand that the buyers of these minerals, right, um, have more due diligence on their sourcing and that yes, they have pressure to perform and hit that, but the pressure of them buying those sort of conflict mineral.
[00:47:35] it should be greater than the pressure of them making a dollar for their shareholder. Yeah. And that only comes through, uh, you know, con it only comes through basically the populace, the, the, the buyer, the consumers putting their foot down and say, Hey, this is not acceptable. You know, it’s, it reminds me a little bit of sort of like the blood diamond.
[00:47:53] Uh, and now, you know, I’m like, I was driving. , I don’t know. Remember listening to sports radio and they have these commercials for diamonds, you know, for, for guys to go buy diamonds and a lot, a big part of the marketing message. What, Hey, these are conflict free diamonds. You know, it’s like, so it, it became part of the marketing Yeah.
[00:48:13] Everyday language. And I think that level of awareness needs to happen around rare earth minerals. Yeah. Um, in order to, you know, produce that kind of change. And so I think books like that should, should. Like heralded and said, Hey, you need to pay attention. You need to read this book is a hard read, but it’s the right thing to do.
[00:48:31] You need to have awareness, you need to be telling other people about it. Yeah, totally. Well, if you guys want to get a, a gut punch, read a, you know, read Cobalt read or you get the audible, that was com really compelling to me, like audible books. Um, or just read the reviews, you know, because you’ll see people’s.
[00:48:50] over the issue. Michael, I think one thing that gives me hope to, to follow on what you were saying there, Kyle, is that the, there’s in trick, how can I put this? Okay. I’m just gonna say a virtue signaling and buying an electric car. So there’s a very conscious choice that people make and like I say, this is, my parents bought a, a, a sort of hybrid years ago.
[00:49:09] My, my, this is like in incredibly oddly familiarity, this kind of debate from my youth. Yeah. My mum was very obsessed about many such ethical conflicts and um, Such people are gonna be very, very inclined to be a shocked, as you were, Jason, I think, and b, to put pressure on companies possibly more than consumers in general or of other things like, I dunno how ethical or, or not, um, diamond, um, consumers are.
[00:49:33] I dunno, I, I, it’s not the first thing that would spring to mind when I bought a diamond ring for my, my wife when we got engaged, for example. But it would certainly spring to mind if about buying a, um, a car, the empowerment on impact and environment. and the impact on other ethical things such as human rights in other countries.
[00:49:49] So I have hoped that as a sector it would move quicker than the historical average because of those factors. So there you go. Mm-hmm. , this is by the departure. I, I, I’ve kind of, uh, Yeah, well, it’s quite serious, but I, I like these, these more meaty discussions to be honest. But it’s, uh, it certainly shows that a lot of the time in e-commerce says an implicit assumption that, you know, selling more stuff is good and that’s it, you know, end of discussion as opposed to there’s always things cut both ways.
[00:50:15] there’s always a cost of stuff and in this case, I guess the cost is quite traumatizing me high. And, uh, hopefully over time that can be. I think, uh, there’s a sort of general feeling that we may be able to, uh, over time work, work towards a better life. Uh, let’s hope that’s true. Well, folks, um, we better wrap it up there, I guess, cuz um, we’re gonna go and do other things.
[00:50:33] Um, quite a sobering but interesting thing at the end. That’s cobalt read by Saddar Karara, British University professor, and, uh, I’m quite glad to escape for once the superficiality of, of Valentine’s Day and other sort of ridiculously over commercialized festivals, which hopefully it doesn’t have a hugely horrendous impact on the world.
[00:50:54] Although actually Chris is probably about to tell me that you know, all the chocolate sauce in the world doing a small. I, there’s conflict. Yeah. You can buy conflict free chocolate if you want, but I, I know we’ve gone long, but I think it’s important to, to add to this. Cause Jason, you found out about this.
[00:51:11] Through probably something that was recommended to buy this book. And then you listen to this book and now you’re sharing it here on a podcast. And the stuff that we talk about on this show is about self-publishing and exposure and marketing and yeah, email and all. If someone has something that they’re really interested in, there’s nothing stopping them from doing a little research, putting together a book, putting a little marketing together.
[00:51:30] You don’t have to do this for. You can use all of the tools that we talked about here to spread a message and use any money that comes in to get your message out more and run ads and, and marketing and all, all this other stuff. Um, so to me, I mean that’s, that’s a tie in that I hope people are, are thinking of.
[00:51:44] There’s plenty of things that I’m publish, I’m very passionate about, that I would publish books about so I can get that message out there and get it established on Amazon and have a way to distribute content and information globally so that you can spread a message. Cause I’m confident that most people are simply not.
[00:51:59] Yeah. They don’t know how bad something is around diamonds or chocolate, uh, or minerals or all these like everything related, like people don’t know about these things. Once they know, then they can make better decisions and that’s an easy way. Like so people just aren’t feeling guilty all the time to be like, no, I feel like I am doing something and I’m using the massive amounts of technology that we, we have.
[00:52:16] It’s amazing that I can literally publish a book about this topic and I already looked up the book. I put it in my. . The second book, when you search for their, for that book is a summary that someone has self-published, kind of piggybacking on what their, uh, someone else’s book, but it’s the number two result on Amazon.
[00:52:33] So anything they put in there is gonna get read by some people and you can send out a message that hopefully adds to the, the changing of things for, you know, just the world in general and improving people’s lives who are like really being directly affected in a negative way. Brilliant. That’s a. Really lovely, uh, way to end the show I think is, it’s a reminder that we have a lot of power in our hands as uh, def marketers and we can use it in whichever way, which doesn’t just mean making money as Jason, you’re a prime example cuz obviously you just casually mentioned your book, which is selling really well, which is for your charity, not for commercial activity.
[00:53:10] Right. So your. You’re, you’re in that business. Yeah, totally. I can see you are still recovering from reading this book. I’m kind of wary of reading it now. I’m gonna have to go by myself a copy and see what it’s about. It’s a tough one. It’s a tough one. But anyway, yeah. Thanks for indulging the conversation on Know it was a bit far afield, but.
[00:53:27] valuable. It’s an interesting one. No, nonetheless. Um, so folks, if you want some thought provoking conversations, sometimes tangential to e-commerce, but actually really it’s all about commerce and there, there are costs as well as benefits. Then, uh, get yourself over to the e-commerce leader.com. And, uh, also don’t forget to subscribe on any podcast near you.
[00:53:43] And thank you very, very much for joining us today in a really thought provoking episode.
[00:53:56]