#20 How To Turn Boring Physical Products Into Profit Machines with Michael Meier

Mastering E-commerce & Marketing: Lessons from a Pro

In this insightful episode, Parker McCumber dives deep into the fundamentals of e-commerce and marketing strategies with expert guest Michael. They explore the importance of understanding your audience, crafting compelling ads, and leveraging mutual experiences to build connections. Michael shares his personal experiences, including a major email marketing mistake and the lessons learned from it. They discuss the significance of the human touch in the age of AI, strategies to test and improve products, and effective leadership skills. Tune in to get valuable tips on how to stand out in the competitive e-commerce space and drive better results in your marketing efforts.

00:00 Understanding Your Audience
22:16 Connecting Through Shared Interests
23:11 Email Marketing Failures and Lessons
24:47 Differences in Marketing Strategies
27:35 Crafting Effective Ads
31:07 Leveraging AI and Fundamentals
33:48 The Future of Advertising
35:53 Learning from Old-School Advertising
37:11 Effective E-commerce Strategies
37:59 Importance of High Margins in E-commerce
39:58 Leadership Challenges and Personal Growth
41:15 Building Relationships and Effective Communication
45:16 Mission Brief and After Action Report
48:59 Final Thoughts and Social Media Presence

Transcript

0:06

I was trying to think of a really good hook, just barely, but I was like, man, I want to say something like, this is my like superhero friend Michael. I used to think that I was the best in the world at Facebook ads, and then I met Michael. I took a framework that Michael taught at an. october in ner circle meeting with Bruns Russell Brunson. I plugged it into my lowest performing ad set and in just a week's time, it had matched my highest performing ad set. Michael, how are you? Man? It's awesome to have you on the show. Thank you. Thank you. I'm good. You? I'm doing good. I'm always good when you're around. Uh, Michael's one of my favorite people in Russell's inner circle, and it's the willingness that he has to share all of the knowledge that he has. Very open, very transparent about a lot of stuff, and you. A lot of really cool opportunities to learn from groups like Facebook because of how you advertise. Isn't that correct? Yeah, that's correct. Right. So tell us a little bit about who you are and what your business is. Well, I'm Michael, actually, like you said. Um, I'm from Germany, so, um, but I do mostly, um, business in the States. Uh, but I started, my journey started as a sales rep actually. So I was, um, in the hair industry, in the makeup industry. I was visiting, visiting hair salons, so I was just driving around like 70, 80 thousand. Miles per year. Just like knocking on doors. Like the old school sales. Yeah. Yeah, actually. So code drives and yeah, that's how my business, uh, journey started. And then I was, uh, in the real estate business as well as a broker, so I always was in sales. And then I read Russell book.com secrets, I think 2015, 16. Yeah. And this is where my online journey started, actually, the online marketing journey. And yeah, that's how I dig into this whole world. And, uh, yeah. Since then, I'm a, I'm a Russell Bru fan. Is like, I'm a follower and, uh, I try to learn everything concerning like funnels and ads and, yeah. And then this is the, the, the short form, let's say like this. So tell me a little bit about how did you get into sales, and then how did sales transition you into the business? Because it takes a special kind of person to be good at sales Yeah. And to actually make a career out of it and, and do that for a living. But then how did you also leverage that experience and take it into business ownership? Yeah, because there's a lot of. People that are salesmen, they try to get into business, they try an entrepreneurship, it gets overwhelming because all of a sudden it's not just sales, it's managing the business. Right? Yeah. So I was like, my dad was working for Wella, the big, uh, hair care company actually. And so this is how I got. Into this wall, hair care and stuff like this. And yeah, I was just like, like I said, a sales rep, um, just driving around. But what I learned in this time is persistency, like just like keep going. If even if you get like 10 nos, there will be a certain time where we get a yes. Yeah. Or probably two or three years in a row. And this is what I learned when I started, especially in this industry. I was, I was coming from an world like in insurance, real estate coming in, in the hair care world, which was completely different. I was. Like it was way more emotional selling than either, like talking about numbers and stuff like this. So what I did, I went into this world, like I did the real estate selling, but it didn't work out. So I had like 50 nos at the beginning when I started till I had my first. Yes. And this was the persistency. Um, I think that's the same kind. And when you get into business and as an entrepreneur, you need to be persistent. Right? Keep going. Yeah, definitely. Even if you fail, there will be a certain time where you'll be successful. These overnight stories that you hear sometimes this is just happening because you had failed seven years, eight years, nine years in a row. Yes. So, um, and this is, yeah, some kind of, um, I would say comparison that you can have. And it's the same line when I went into the online marketing space, the time as a sales rep actually helped me to understand sales copy copywriting, um, by a persona. Yeah. And having these objections in mind that you have usually in a one-on-one conversation. So I knew when I write a landing page, for example, when I write an ad, um, I have to keep in mind my prospect has so many objections and I need to cover them in my ad or my landing page already. So this was some kind of transition, the objection in mind and, and the persistency as a business man in general. Yeah, definitely. I, I like how you talked about you learn these skills, you develop them even more through your salesmanship journey and that made your trends. Actually easier because you understood what was happening from the bigger perspective. Exactly. Yeah. So I think that's a really good tool that our, our viewers could definitely use. So tell us a little bit about, uh, the business that you run. I think you got a couple aspects of that now, right? Yeah, right. So I do, um, mostly physical products. So we run several e-com stores and brands, but do I do also a lot of, uh, consulting, coaching, um, in, yeah, in the e-com space and Facebook ads and stuff like this. That's what we mainly do. And it's still the same. I mean, it's, it's like building a brand. It's like it's the same kind of road always, right? You have these up and downs. It's like you need to be persistent. And what we are doing currently is we are building a completely new brand and we are working on this project in one and a half or two years. So we thought we can ramp it up in five months, six months, but that's not the case, you know? Yeah. But we are still working on it. But it's the same. Again, you need to be persistent, consistent. And now hopefully we can log. The first product somewhere in August. Um, but it's, it's, I think it's, even if you think longer you are on the game, it's get at a certain stage easier. No. Yeah. It's just like your mindset is different. Right. When I was like, when I had these up and downs at the beginning, these downs especially, they kept me down mindset wise. Now it's just like, okay, it's happening. When I'm up, I'm prepared. I will be down probably in two or three months again because something is happening. Yeah. And that's the world of entrepreneurship, right. And yeah. Learning to. Be fluid with that though. Exactly. I think is a, is an important secret. We've uh mentioned persistence a lot here. Yeah. Something that I tell my viewers often is I, I call it the entrepreneur Success formula, but it's consistent action and consistent learning equals success. Right. As long as you keep trying and you keep learning how to do it better, how to be more efficient, how to be more effective, how to reach your audience, you'll win. Yes. It's as simple as that. Right. As long as you don't give up. The persistence key is what? Lets you keep taking action and keep learning then. Yeah. I love that. So you mentioned that, um, you do physical products and you do coaching. Yes. I'm curious, and it's totally a selfish question because I do e-commerce and I also do coaching. Uh, what difference have you seen in how you have to advertise between the two different businesses? Yeah, so it's like, um, I think the advertisement itself is when you do your homework, starting out with knowing your. A persona. I mean, if you drive sales or if you drive an opt into whatever page it is or whatever you do a funnel, it's always the sign, same kind of, um, process. I think it's you have a problem or you have a pain and can you solve the problem or the pain within your ad on your landing page? And I think that's always the same kind of process, right? So your ads are not running. And I do my research. I will find the, the, the ways how you get in my coaching drawing, for example. If you have, uh, I don't know, hair problems for whatever reason, I will find these kind of problems. I know exactly how to talk to this specific audience to get them on the landing page and to drive the purchase. So I think it's like the process is more or less the same. Find the problems, desires, anxiety of your audience and just, um, dig deep into it and solve them in your add. And that's, that's, that's it. I mean, it sounds so easy. It does sound so easy. So, uh, I mentioned at the start of this video that your problem. One of the best people in the world at Facebook ads.'cause I thought I was like in the top tier and then I met you and I'm like, oh, this dude's so outta my league. Do you recommend, uh, as a general rule then, is paid traffic, your preference for generating leads? For example, if we have, uh, viewers in there starting an info product or a coaching business, it's daunting to go into paid ads early. Yeah. What's your recommendation for generating traffic for a new entrepreneur? Well, actually, when you start fresh, I would say just organic at the beginning, like YouTube. It depends on the, on the niche you are in, but if it left like some products or educational products, I would go definitely into long form, like YouTube videos, stuff like this. Yeah. And then I would head over if I get traffic on. My land. So I would install the pixel, for example, from the beginning, but then I would try to get organic traffic and feed the pixel with high quality leads, which means when you get someone from organic long form on your landing page, it's highly likely someone who's warm. And this is the goal at the beginning, just. Um, to warm up the pixel organically because if you start fresh and you have no idea how Facebook ads work, then you burn a lot of money. Of course. So it's like either when first warm up the pixel and then start to run ads, it's way easier this way. I really like that you mentioned YouTube especially. Yeah, so I, I've been telling people this story. I sat next to a dentist at Funnel Hacking Live this past February and he, um, he was telling me he doesn't pay for lead generation anymore. He gets paid for lead gen. I said, well, hold on man, I'm spending thousands of dollars a month on ads. Like, what are you, what are you doing? He says, okay. So I'm a dentist. I make YouTube videos about being a dentist. Like how does a dentist brush his teeth? How does a dentist, uh, you know, drill a cavity? How does a dentist, or what does a dentist recommend for mouthwash? Boring videos? When you think about it like that. But people use YouTube as a search engine, right? So they go to YouTube with their questions. Exactly. In that sense, they're already niching themselves down for the platform. It makes it easier for YouTube to put your content in front of the right people. Yeah. So then you get viewers that want to view your content. Your content develops the relationship with the viewers, and then you generate a high quality lead. The beauty of this too is that the more subscribers you have, the more views you get on YouTube. YouTube does the ad revenue share? Yes. So you can get paid on YouTube and generate leads on YouTube, and once you have a video uploaded to YouTube, it's there forever. Always generating leads for you. Yeah, it's gold. I love the, the idea of starting with YouTube and then conditioning the pixel there as well. That's probably a mistake that I made early. I threw a bunch of traffic at my page. And it wasn't warm and it wasn't high quality, and that probably makes it take longer for me to optimize that pixel and get some good results. Yeah. What you could do, for example, if you want to, if we keep in the topic, like warming up a pixel, I mean, it's like if you do a great research on your audience and you know exactly, um, what the problems and pains are, and you find some long term keywords very cheap actually. Right? If you see, I mean, you don't go into the big keyword. You, you, you go deep. Into the long take keywords and you just write like blog posts or adv victorious and run paid ads to the, um, blog posts, for example. You collect actually someone who's interested, otherwise you wouldn't click on the long take keyword. Yeah. And you feed the picture with the right information. Very cheap. Oh my gosh. That's genius. Yes. So that's why this is what I'm talking about, something I never even thought of doing. Yeah. Now I've run blog posts to do that, but I've never done the paid traffic aspect. Very cheap. Especially if you go for long tail. No one is doing it. They're all lazy, right? Yeah. So they're going for the big keyword. So, but do the, the homework. Sit down for one or two days, really dig into it. It takes a week or two. Your pixels warmed up with the exact audience that you want. So it's, the beauty there is you drive that traffic and then they warm up a little bit because they're reading it. You're developing authority through your blog post, your video, and then you just retarget them with the Exactly. Yes. So good. That's a, I love that. Yeah. Okay, so you're in the beauty space. You run Facebook ads. Yes. What's the coaching side look like for you? Um, actually it's like, um, I mean, it, it's not, it's don't, don't do a lot of one to many stuff. It's more like one-on-ones. It's more consulting than coaching, I would say. Um, I do some, I'm stepping more in like a growth partner, like a fraction CMO, seeing where, where the issues are and. And, um, try to solve the problems. Sure. Um, that's more or less like what I do now, what I'm willing to do now in the future. Just like I'm building out currently one too many a coaching program where just can help like media buy, create strateg, just someone who wants just to run their own traffic. Um, just get going and keep starting and then scaling actually, like it's a full program from Yeah. And I, I think you said the other night you're merging those to some degree. Uh. Uh, was it you that said you were adding challenges to the front end of your products? Yes. To the, uh, e-comm products? Yeah. Okay. So this is a, a huge innovation when it comes to e-commerce. I never thought of it. You, you planted the seed from what you, but I'm thinking about how I can do that now. What does a challenge in front of an e-comm product look like? Yeah. And why does it work? So what, what the I base idea was? When we started the challenge itself, we had on one of our products a very high return rate. So the idea was how can we get the return rate down, actually? So then, um, we, because we are in a coaching space, it's like, it's not only to warm up an audience, but also like how just to educate them on a certain product. So what we did is we are running now a seven days challenge, and since we are running a challenge, it's just like each day actually, we show how to use the product. In different kind of daily situations and in different kind of techniques. And since we started this, not only did the conversion rate went up, we also, uh, dropped the return rate by 50%. So higher conversion rate. Lower return rate, higher profit margin. Absolutely. And this was like a project we planned out maybe four or five days, then we executed it in two days and yeah, probably it's now, I don't know, four, 500,000 more profit a year just because we implemented it. Wow. A talk about a, a bottom line mover, so something that you can implement then if you're trying to do e-commerce or physical products, teach the, uh, the customer how to use those products after they purchase it. Right. So you still sell it like it's a normal eCommerce product and then you coach them up on it after they receive the product. Yeah, and the beauty there is that depending on the product, they could be a three day challenge, a five day challenge, a seven day like you're saying. Yeah. But you give them. An intimate understanding of how to use it. And while you're doing that, by the way, those are all touch points that they have with your business where you're building a relationship. Yeah. And they're solidifying the fact that you are the authority in that space. Yeah. So when they need a similar product or they need something to compliment their product. Yeah. They just, it's automatic. It's you, you're the answer. Yeah, exactly. That's, uh, and the, the next idea is like, because we are launching new products now in August, is we probably have to rerecord it, but then we pitch in each, on each day and a complementary product to upsell. Very good. So to increase immediate lifetime value, because then we probably can spend way more on the front end because we make the money back way faster on the back end because sometimes e-commerce, depending. On the niche, it's often the loss in the front end, and then you earn back the money in the life with a lifetime value, right? So that's, that's sometimes the game you have to play in, in, in e-comm and especially in the beauty niche. So yeah, that's the idea. Something that worked really well for me in e-comm was I went with a higher ticket product up front, and then all of my additional products were value adds back to it. So it prevented me from being, um, upside down or negative on my ad spend and. Then it, everything on top that was sold was icing on the cake, essentially like that. Uh, that's been something that I typically recommend for an e-commerce store to set up is you have your core products and then you have accessories to those products that drive additional value for the customer. Uh, how do you recommend somebody getting into e-commerce or if someone's interested in e-commerce, what do you recommend they do to start? Well, actually it's like, um, e-commerce, like testing products, of course. You need to have a system in place where you constantly can test new products. What's working actually? Um, now of course we have the tariff issues, which is a bit Yeah. Difficult to test. Yeah. Especially if you have products from China. But in general, I would say, if you want to go into E-com, look for products that you, or like. No. For niches where you feel, uh, great in Right. So something that, you know, you have knowledge about. Don't do. Like, I mean, I was in beauty for like 10 years just driving around, so I knew exactly which kind of mascara is working, what kind of hair. Hair is working. But if you have no touchpoint with beauty and you start with beauty, it's difficult because you don't have the feeling, you don't get the, the, the yeah. Emotional part with these kind of products. So find products that you, um, that you like. That you understand and then just find suppliers around you. Test small, just like buy 50 products, uh, on stock or even drop ship it and see if it's working. Yes or no. I mean, it's just like, um, and you don't need, you don't need to get a lot of sales at the beginning. Just see what are the metrics? Do I get at least clicks? What, what are my cts, my CPCs, and these kind of stuff I would just recommend. And then test 20 products per month and see what sticks. So there's a couple things to unpack there. That was like that replay that last two minutes. That's the value. Two minutes here. So a lot of things to unpack. Um, one of the things that I've done in the past that's helped me split test, but also mitigate my risk. Is I implement a presale model. Yeah. And what that essentially is, if you don't know, launch your products, create your designs, launch your products, but you don't have any physical products yet, and you just put a note on the top of that sales page that these products will ship in three weeks, four weeks, whatever. Right? Uh, but you can already drive traffic. You can collect sales. And the money that's coming in to buy those products is the money that you use to actually go and buy the products from the manufacturer, the supplier. Bring them in and then ship them out. So you mitigate your risk on launching a new product that way. Bonus points when you do it in a split test. So I do a pre-sale launch with two products, and if one of them gets very poor reviews, that's okay. We just funnel the traffic back to the other product. Yeah, right. It works really well in like clothing and designs. So if you have, uh, let's say you do like. Hawaiian shirts or something like that, and you want to test a couple designs, throw them all up for pre-sale. If you have a handful that don't sell, you just, Hey, sorry we didn't get enough to make these a reality. Or, Hey, sorry, these are outta stock, and you just drive their traffic back to the ones that you are gonna make. Yeah, and you're gonna get. 30, 40% of those people that convert on top of what you already have. Yeah. So I'm a big fan of, of that. Um, gosh, I have to go back in my head'cause there was so much I wanted to talk about from that last paragraph. He talked about your passion and your interests as well. I tell people this is critical. You have to work in a, a niche that you are actually interested in and passionate about. If you don't, you don't make real content. Right. You wanna make content that is authentic to you and to the people that are gonna be buying that product. And real people recognize real things. Yes. If you are making fake content,'cause you're trying to pedal products online, it's not gonna stake. Your advertising's going to suck. But if you make legitimate content from a perspective of you being passionate about the product, that's where people connect with that and resonate with your message and you win. Right? 100%. And it's like, it's not only your product, it's also. What kind of audience are you actually looking for? Right? So if you have, I don't know, let's say you are 20, 25 and you have no touch point with retirees and you, you have suddenly a product which fits in this group. You have a product that you don't understand and suddenly an audience that you don't understand. You know what I mean? So it's like, and that's, that's the problem. What I often see is like there's no congruency between a product and an audience understanding. And that's why I always say, okay, not only the product, also the audience is important. So if you are like a Gen Z. Or something, you start out look for products that you like and in your kind of audience group, like what are your friends like, uh, like what, what are your, you know, so that's, that's the most important thing. It's not only the product, it's also the audience, and that then you have the, the perfect fit between product and audience. So something we've talked about a lot this week at the Mastermind is that you can't really understand things that aren't in your frame of reference, right. It's the same concept. You can't market to people who have a different frame of reference than you. Yeah. You can't, uh, build relationships with people who can't see a similar frame of reference. One of the things that worked for me in e-commerce, 'cause most of my customers are actually 20 years older than me and retiring, so it's like. How do I connect with those people? And the, the secret was mutual experiences or shared interests. Right? Right. Everybody has some commonalities to some degree just because we're humans. Yeah. So if, uh, you know, for example, this 25-year-old genzer is trying to market to retirees in Florida. What do they both have in common? Maybe it's that they like warm weather in the beach. Maybe it's that they're, you know, patriotic or maybe it's that, you know, there's different, different interests that can bring people together, but you have to know enough about your audience and your market to understand what those interests are and how to tell the story relating your product to those people and those interests. Right? Something that I did really bad actually recently. I'm gonna be embarrassed to tell. Story. Did I tell you about my email? Mess up? No, my book. Okay. So I wrote a book. The book is called, how the Hell Are You Doing This? Yeah, I've seen it. Yeah. I sent, uh, I treated it like an e-commerce product. I sent out an email blast to my list and I said, Hey, here's this book. This is what you're gonna learn. It's awesome. Buy it. I sent 50,000 emails and I got zero sales. Oh no. That's embarrassing to say. I got on a call with, uh, Dave Linda Baum. I'm like, Dave, I don't know what happened, man. I sent all these emails. I got a few hundred clicks, no sales. I'm like, what happened? He's like, dude, those people are interested in one thing. Exactly. And you know, they're interested in that. You are trying to sell them something completely different. And there was no bridge. Yeah. There was no story that connected them. That was nothing for them to feel invested in that. Yeah. So they didn't, so they didn't buy. And I'm like, okay Dave, I'm gonna go try again. Created another email, uh, big sales text, sales letter. I wrote out my story. I tried to kind of model it after, like how Russell Brunson does his storytelling emails, and I sent it out to like 20,000 people and I got like four sales and five sales. But I got a couple and I'm like, okay, I just need to warm these people up. Maybe there's some, I'm like, that's a 0.0001%. That's convers rate. Yeah, that was, that was a big fail. There is a difference. You know, you mentioned in info coaching, uh, and e-commerce. Now there's a difference in how those are marketed. To some degree, the concepts sound the same, right? You gotta warm up your pixel. Yeah. You're gonna send traffic to it. Uh, but have you noticed any difference in maybe the creatives, like what makes a difference to selling your coaching or your challenge versus just a product off a shelf? Actually, like I said at the beginning, it's, it's more. Um, once you understand the problems, desires, anxieties, objections of your audience, the process is more or less for creative. The same in a, I would say e-comm. Uh, you focus more on the product itself. Depends what kind of product it is. If it's like, I don't know, hair to you can show it, it's way easier to sell. If it's a skincare, uh, you need to drop a lot of benefits. You need to know the problems. You need to transition the problem into a solution. And then the landing page is a big. Part of it if you run advertorial and stuff like this. Um, so you need to find the transformation from I have a problem and I definitely buy the solution. That's, that's always the point, right? When we have a purchase, it, it's, it's buy the solution. And I think with coaching it's not different. If you have a problem in ads or whatever, and I know your pain points in ads and I hook you with the right, uh, problem and I guide you through my ads. Transition you from my problem again into the solution and the landing page is there's the congruency you purchase, right? Because you know, I'm the guy who will probably help you out. So I think it's like the process and I was running a lot of creatives in on and ads and different kind of niches. I did sa, I did um, e-com, I did info and the process. Creating a creative is more or less always the same. So it's. So, you know, the process is more or less always the same. And, um, I'm a fan of, um, understand your audience, really like a deep understanding instead of just getting into any shiny objects or follow a specific trend, you ha you can, like any TikTok trends, whatever, but I, when you see people like John Cables, Ted Nicholas, especially John Cables, who is doing di or who was doing right Diese ones in the 1920s Yeah. Where research was difficult, but where newspaper, the. May was difficult, but even these guys, everything that they did, we, we do also in, in, in our time, right? It's just, we do it online. So that's the only difference. But the biop psychology was 19, 20, the same like it is now. So understand your bio persona, understand what drives they, what kind of problems do they have and solve them. That's the easiest way how to be successful. Absolutely. Especially in ads. So you talked about, uh, identifying, you know, the, the problems and the anxiety. Ease of your, your ideal customer. Yes. This is the framework that, that Michael was telling me about, uh, last October that I plugged in and really helped my ads go. Um, do you mind talking about why that's powerful and what that looks like for someone who wants to put that in a, an ad? Of course. So, uh, what I always do is like, um, I make a small list just like problem anxieties, desires, objections, and then I head over to like Reddit or something or, um, if you are in, in the e-commerce space to Amazon, just check your competitors' reviews. Start to read them and try to find patterns, even if it's problems or benefits they they have with their, with your competitor. And just start to write them down, put 'em in the list and start to count what you find. Let's say, I don't know, um, I have HEALTHSCOPE issues. And you always see the same kind of patterns start to count them. And a certain point you have a, a huge list where you have like some problems you find 10 times or 15 times, and some you find even just one or two times. So then you start to concentrate of course, based on the ones you find most because this, you know, based on research Yeah. A bigger problem. Exactly. So that's how, this is how I then create, create my ads and craft my ads. So when I have, let's say I found 10 problems with a lot of, um, frequency, then I just go ahead and, and see. Sometimes I use exactly the same kind of wording in the review and driving as a hook, because that's not only the problem of the audience, it's also the same kind of tonality, the language that your audience speaks. So you have actually a win-win, right? So you find the problem and you use the tonality, and this is what I try as a hook. Then I can see immediately what kind of problems trigger my audience. Yeah. When I know this, then I go to the next step, and then I start to write like video copy and, and ad copy, uh, more in detail. But the first step is just to audit testing. It's so simple. The beauty of this too, if you're in e-commerce, is those same places that you're drawing the reviews from and you're trying to find what the problems are. That's like market research you've used to develop and enhance your products. Yes. For example, I sold, uh, protective gloves for a while, and one of the things my competitors always said was the glove would rip between the thumb and the forefinger. Yes. So the very first thing I did was contact the supplier and say, Hey. I wanna make a glove kinda like this. Showed him some pictures and I said, but we have to reinforce between the thumb and the forefinger. So they add a piece of leather there, double so we can fix it. And then you still know that that's how you need to structure your advertisement. So you take that hook and you say, these gloves won't tear. Right. There you go. If their complaint is it tears, these gloves won't tear. Yeah. And they look at 'em and they're like, Hey, that's kinda like the gloves that I like, but these ones are stronger. They won't tear. Yeah. Or if somebody says. The materials are too weak. These break, you're pitching your ads to this is the strongest product. Yeah. And it won't break, right? It's so simple. I love it. The thing is, you know, a lot of people, especially when you're starting off or you're aspiring in business, you're overwhelmed, right? There's a lot of things that you're trying to learn. You're trying to figure out. You're learning to track KPIs that you've never heard of before. Yes. You don't. And I mean, all this information that you're sharing, this is accessible to anybody, right? Anyone can get on Amazon and look at reviews or Google or eBay, but it's not something you think about because it's not something anyone ever teaches you. Right. And that's what I said, the fundamentals. I think it's also, when we look into the future, I mean, we see a lot of AI stuff. Um. I mean, AI is here to stay, right? We just need to see what is actually here to stay and what's the deep development and, and ad media buying in general in the future. But I think the fundamentals are more important than ever because understanding your audience, like knowing the problems, andie these desires and crafting messaging around it. Yeah. Is, is actually, like I said, that's the reason why you buy because someone is solving my problem. And when you see all the, I, I do see a lot of ads very generic at the moment. You see the copywriting is done by JGBT. That's, that's fine. You can do it, definitely. But the more AI we see, the more similarities we will see in ads. When you do your research, and not JGBT or Gemini or whatever is doing your research, you do it yourself. Sit down, manual, take the time, learn the language. Learn a analogy, learn the problems, then you will always be different than someone who is lazy and just go to the, the fast way using Jet GBT, you know what I mean? So it's like completely different. And I believe in the fundamentals. Mm-hmm. From the 1920s. So it's like, yeah. So something you're talking about that's kind of parallel here, and I hope our viewers are picking up on this. You, um, the more AI is prevalent, the more it gets used for advertising and content creation. The more we recognize patterns you said, right? Yes. And we identify it as, oh, that's ai and it's a sh a turnoff. It shuts us off, right? Yes. The more AI becomes prevalent, the more we want the human touch. Yes. The more we want that interaction. So doing something to differentiate yourself, like you said, you're sitting down, you're, you know, learning the old ways of doing the marketing. You're implementing those, you're collecting data, you're writing, you know, you are standing out and then you're giving it that human touch that people still want. Yeah. And are looking for It's genius. Yeah. But it's so again, it's so simple, right. It's like, but it's what marketers do since 100 years. Yeah. That's what's what drives sales actually. And yeah, I have a strong belief in that. This is actually, and I'm, I'm. Thinking that we are heading now into probably a gold rush in, in, uh, paid ads. That's what I think if you know how to do it the right way. Like I said, when we check now, mommy, maybe I'm now too technical. I don't know. Uh, when we see the Roeder update currently going on Facebook, so there's a switch now in June and July and that Facebook, or let's say all the platforms was always add to audience, right? So you had like an ad and Facebook identified, let's say, um, I don't know, it's beauty and then this kind of beauty ad fits in this kind of audience bucket. So it's, it's actually add to audience what's happening now with the meta ai, for example, when someone is searching for any problem inside of meta AI and it is heading back to Facebook or Instagram, guess what's happening? If your ad solved this exact problem, what someone was. Just asking. Met ai, you have a creative and ads user matching real time. So when you do your research coming back to the fundamentals. Yeah. When you do your research and you know, what is an audience typing into Jet GBT, what anxieties do they have and your product is solving that there's the match. So you have actually like. Said, creative messaging to user and not an ad to an audience. And that's the future. So awesome. Yes, and that's the future of advertising. So like we were saying earlier, one of the things that really impressed me about Google is you search for something. It views your content based on the description, you know, as does that answer this problem? Yes or no? If it does, it matches them. So you're telling us that Facebook and Instagram meta, you know, they're moving in that direction as well. Yes. Optimizing themselves as a search engine to solve user problems, create more value for their audience. Yes, subsequently helps create more value for the creators that are consistent on the platform. It's a really good business strategy, I think. Of course, they're not stupid. No at all. Okay, so I mean, we're kind of starting to touch on this already, the strategy of the ads, right? We're talking about the problems, the desires, the anxieties that we're agile. Those things we're talking about and drama now and this, this update that I don't know anything about what it looks like other than the stuff that you tell me so far, but maybe I'll go Google that. What kind of, um, actually let me reel myself in talking about strategy. You've mentioned the old ways, the 1920s ways of doing things a few times. Yes. Where did you learn that Actually, uh. I mean, I had, I don't know, it was after I had the book from russell.com Secrets I got from Eugene Schwartz, breakthrough Advertising. Okay. Um, it was, I, it's super, I don't know, have you seen it once on Amazon? What it actually, what it, what it cost is no cost. Somewhere between six and $700, depending on when you buy it and how much are actually available. Really? Yeah, because it's, it's a rare book. So, and I bought it at four, 500, uh, dollars at this time. Wow. And this got me into the old world of advertising. Then I bought a lot of John Cable's books, um, how to Write Headlines, and I got from Ted Nicolas Magic Words. Um, such a great book. So, and this is how I learned to kind of old school copywriting, biopsy psychology, why we buy, what drives us to make a buying decision or purchase decision. And this, yeah. This was my, my pathway and that, that's what I still use because I believe it's, it's, it's the only correct way to, to drive ads and, and to drive results. Right. I love that. Yeah. If it's not broken, don't fix it. Exactly. Yeah. Awesome. Uh, are there any other strategies that you would recommend for someone who's getting started in e-commerce? Maybe, uh, you mean ads wise, or, or in general? Or just in in general? No, actually, just stuff that we already discussed is like, um, like you also said. If you want to test a product, just do like a pre-sale. I mean, what we also did sometimes, I mean now we can talk about, because you mentioned something, uh, we even set up landing pages, um, having a product on it. We sold it just to see if sales is coming in. Then we refunded it. If we have seen the volume's not coming in, even if we don't have stock. That's also something you can do just to. Similar products or something. Um, but in general, no. It's just like product testing and, and see what's working, see what sticks, do what you're interested in and yeah, it's, and check margins. It's e-commerce a margin game, right? Yeah. So when we, um, source any products, we always looking for 65 to 70% landed gross margin. Wow. We don't touch anything below. That's, that's, that's time out. And I know some of this is, is just the numbers game. Yes. So I deal in larger ticket e-commerce. Yeah. I aim for like 30 to 35%. Yeah. Land and margin. Yeah. You said 70. Yeah. Especially if you're in skincare and, and, and beauty. You have to take care because like you have crazy highs. CPMs in this game you have, I mean, if you have a very great offer and, and you, you, you, um, nail down the offer and you have a great bundle and you are break even or slightly profitable, um, in the front end, it's great, but usually you have to play the lifetime game. So, and if your margins are not high enough, you have a cashflow issue very quickly. So that's why you always aim, especially in the beauty niche. I'll also supplement. You need to be at 65, 70% landed. Otherwise, it's, it's, it's almost impossible to be profitable. Just telling me that though, now I know how much my lotion actually costs when it gets made before I buy it. Yes. And I'm like, what? Yeah. Well, it's another story, but Yeah. There are crazy margins in this game. Yeah. Uh, so you've provided a lot of value. Right. I appreciate your time. I know time is valuable, man, and, and. Stepping away from my family to do like this podcast and shows and work like, I recognize that that's a, a drain on us. So I'm sure you know, in a similar way, it's a sacrifice for you to come out and do the show with me. Is there anything I can do for you to provide value to you, your organization, your business? Well, actually, um, I mean, you are strong in leadership and stuff like this. This is probably something that where I'm lacking in it's, it's, um, I'm a more like, uh, I would say the nerd behind all this stuff. Um, and I, I have a big backpack as of course for, for my team and my environment. But I think they're like stuff where I definitely have issues with leadership and sometimes maybe not showing up enough or, um, yeah, because I'm the nerd, you know, so it's some kind of, and I'm also an introvert, which is then sometimes not so easy to step out always. And, and I'm, I'm fine in an environment. Like we are now, I know older people and um, so this is some kind of weakness that I definitely have and I need to work on. Yeah. So are there any problems specifically that you notice stem from that? No, it's like, it's just like situations always that I have same kind of patterns, for example, where recognize, well probably I could be more like, or go more into conversations and stuff, but that then I was not, well, I was just sitting down here relaxing, watching the situation and yeah, so it's actually something that used to feel. Very awkward for me. Yeah. I, I dunno if I had told you this before, but I'm more comfortable talking to a group of people than I am going up and shaking someone's hand and saying, hi, I am Parker McCumber. It's good to meet you. Yeah. But so much of being an effective leader at the business or organizational level. Is building relationships with the people who are getting the work done. Yeah. So I, I try really hard to have, you know, these team managers, these team leaders in my business, and I maximally empower them as much as I can. But the reason I can do that is because we've developed a trusting relationship beforehand. I make it a point anytime I interview somebody, when they come in to work for me at the very first time, we ask all the generic kind of questions about that. But I'll ask 'em what their dreams are. Yeah, true. I'll ask 'em about their family situation. Yeah, I'll ask 'em where they see themselves in five years and the answer probably shouldn't be working in my customer service call center. Yeah. But if they're not, you know, they're not always comfortable sharing those things initially, but you build that relationship over time. You continue to talk to them, get to know them, check in on their family, and you have to make sure you're doing a good job of remembering the things they tell you. Are they married? Do they have kids? Yeah. That's that kind of stuff that, and you just in passing, you know, bring the. Things up a few times, talk to'em and you'll notice that their attitude towards you becomes a lot more warm and inviting to begin with. Then they do start to share those dreams. Yeah, and you know where I run a, a call center for customer service, they, it's not their. End goal to be a, a customer service representative working for me. And that's totally fine and I understand that. So I try to make it a point to just develop them to be a more skilled, better version of themselves so that when it is time for them to leave and move on and they wanna go chase their dream, they're more prepared to do so. Yeah. And because of that advice we get like, um, referrals. Every time somebody leaves our organization, they've always referred people to come and work for us. Still. That's the crazy testimony for that. Yeah, so I think one start with the relationship building aspect. The second part of that is proactive communication rights. As entrepreneurs, we have the vision in our heads of where we want to go, where we want to take the company, but nobody outside of our heads knows what that looks like unless we explicitly tell them. Yeah. And a lot of times, even though we think we're telling them, they're not understanding it in the exact same way. So I try to be very proactive in the communication about that kind of stuff. We talk about what the vision is, and then we set goals around the vision to kind of make sure that we're hitting benchmarks as we get there and then we follow up on that. We just keep nudging and prodding to say, Hey, where are we at on, you know, X, Y, Z goals? Cool, cool, cool. Are we still on track for that vision? Yes. Great. I'm gonna keep empowering you. No. Okay. I'm maybe gonna take the reins a little bit and I'm gonna, I don't wanna say micromanage 'cause that's not what I, I really try hard to decentralize and not micromanage, but sometimes you do have to take the, yeah, the reins back. Sorry, I'm starting to ramble. I just, you know, you rent some No, I messed stuff. I brainstorm it. I mean the good, luckily my wife is taking care of all the stuff. Right. But I should sometimes probably step more in, like you said, get the vision clear and, and um, it's like just letting, I mean, I'm, I'm always there when someone needs me, but I this, this proactive, right. Like you said, um, I think sometimes, well guys, you should know what our past is, right? Yeah. Because I'm constantly thinking about this past, probably an employee doesn't, and it makes completely sense. But we are sometimes so deep into our own structures that we forget about this stuff. Yes. So, and it's, yeah. Well, keep in mind the employee does the same thing, right? Some people, they, they are just there for the paycheck and they clock in and they clock out, and they don't care about anything beyond their scope of vision. But because of that, they are only focused on their scope and vision. So they don't pay attention to those peripheral things going on around them unless it's explicitly communicated to them. So here's, here's an idea that you can take. This is like the free chicken man. Implement this and you will immediately see an improvement in your leadership. No joke. Yeah. I should do a challenge around this, but like, this is legit. So in the military we use a, uh, a. I'm gonna tell you two things to do. The first is a mission brief, and the concept of the mission brief is any time you are about to go execute a mission, you wanna sit down beforehand and you want to talk about what your actual mission is. That's like the task you're as assigning or the the assignment why it matters. So what, what's the cause or what's the why behind it? And then what winning looks like. That's your end state. So if you're doing this right, it should be like, if I give an example right now, our mission is to go to the bar and grab ourselves a beer and then come back here and finish this podcast. Why does that matter? Because I'm parched and I enjoy a beer. Yeah. Uh, and then the end state is we're successfully back here with, we both have a beer. Yeah. That's a really simplified way of doing it. But anytime you give somebody directions or instructions, try and give it in that format what they need to do, why they need to do it, and what winning looks like. Okay, so we start with that. That's step one. Then totally hands off, let them go and do the thing and. And they'll surprise you with their ingenuity. It's a, a quote I use often is General George Patton from World War ii. That was our side. Well, I mean, yeah. Um, he, he said, I tell people what to do. I never tell them how to do it. Yeah. I let them surprise me with their ingenuity. I use that same concept. Right. The people who are incentivized to solve the problem are the people closest to the problem or working on the problem. That's true. Yeah. So we let them do it. Yeah. The second step is an after action report. So after the timeframe is up, or the mission is supposed to be complete, you'll sit down with them. You'll say, what was supposed to happen? What actually happened, what went wrong? And how can we do it better? So in our, you know, notional scenario of our mission to go get a beer and come back, yeah, if we make it back here and we don't have beers, we failed. So we're gonna talk about why we failed and how we can do it better next time. Maybe it's jumping over the counter to steal the beer from the bartender. Yeah. So that she can't stop us. I don't know. Um, or if you executed it flawlessly. We walked up there, we got our drinks, we came back, we sat down, we're finishing the podcast. How could we still do it better next time? Yeah. And when you frame it like that. You, you create a system in your business that is always focused on improvement. One, it's what do we gotta do? Two, it's how did we do it and how can we do it better? And you just keep doing those two things and it's impossible to not improve. Like we talked about last night in the um, midnight Mastermind. If you apply time and effort to a skill, you get better at that skill, right? If you apply those steps, your leadership gets better. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Makes, makes totally sense. And it's actually a framework, right? It's like just implementing a framework. Yeah. You need to think of a really sexy way to pitch that to people, but like that would be a good challenge. Yeah, of course. There you go. So that's already the pre-announcement? Yeah, that's the trail of soon. It's like the pre mission brief and after action report challenge. I gotta think of a better way to say that. Yeah. Yeah. But things like that I think make a, a pretty big difference. And they're small and they're easy. Yeah. Anyone can do that. It's just the what, why, and you know what winning looks like. Yeah. And then it's what do we do? Right? What do we do wrong? How do we do it better? Yeah. But just that simple act forces you to be in the mindset of improvement. Sweet. Awesome. Yeah. Do you have anything else? No, dude. Thank you so much for doing the episode with me. Thank you. Uh, Michael, where can people find you if they wanna follow you or learn from you? Well, actually I think Instagram or just like Facebook. I'm not such a social media guy. Actually. I have I think 247 followers. Dude. So that's actually really valuable, you know, so if you're an entrepreneur back home and you are watching this video and you think, well, I can't do those things, I can't run ads, I can't run traffic because I have no following dude, Michael is killing it. Well, that's true. Yeah, that's, that's actually true. But he's at the. Top of the game. Facebook teaches him how to do it better because he's so at the top of the game and here he is in like Russell Brunson's inner circle and stuff. So if, if you can do it with 250 followers, right, anybody can do it every, yeah, that's true. And even when you follow me, I will recognize you because I see when someone is following you. Very nice. Well Michael, thanks again for coming on the show. Thanks, uh, appreciate y'all. We'll see you in the next episode. Sweet dude. That was great. It was a lot of fun.