Sell Stories Not Product - Kyle Cole

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to check in to check out the podcast about E commerce leaders and how they got to where they are and where they think e commerce is headed. On today's episode we have Kyle Cole, co founder of the Hero's Journey. My name is Justin Aronstein and sitting next to me is Connor Burke. We're excited to have you, Connor. How are you doing today? [00:00:22] Speaker B: I'm doing pretty well, Justin. I'm doing good. How are you doing? [00:00:24] Speaker A: I'm doing great. I love this conversation. It's all about using storytelling to sell. Instead of selling products, sell a story. And it's really based off the Hero's Journey, which is literally my favorite storytelling model from Joseph Campbell. I learned about this in high school and it blew my mind of what a story is that goes all the way from the Norse stories to what you see in Star Trek and Star wars today. I, I think this is an amazing episode and I learned a ton of how powerful stories can be in E commerce. [00:01:02] Speaker C: She says, excuse me, can I check in? Says the manager, how long you staying? She says, one night, maybe two. Well, I'm just passing through. I'm just passing through. And I said check in, check out, check in, check out, check in. [00:01:36] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:01:37] Speaker B: From the top, one more time. [00:01:40] Speaker E: Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Kyle. We're really happy to have you. How you feeling today? [00:01:46] Speaker D: I'm feeling good. You know, I, I'll be honest, this is my first podcast appearance, so I'm feeling pretty good. I'm feeling pretty excited about it, but yeah, good stuff to talk about. [00:01:55] Speaker E: So awesome so far. You're, you're doing great. [00:01:59] Speaker B: It's one of our first things too. We're just now exploring the podcast space. So next we'll actually go to space like Katie. [00:02:05] Speaker D: Okay. [00:02:08] Speaker B: Like we're starting. Starting left. [00:02:09] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:02:11] Speaker E: So tell us, what do you own at Hero's Journey? What's your day to day look like? [00:02:14] Speaker D: Yeah, so I'm very much in charge of like the day to day operations. So customer service, we call it here. I'm going to use the word hero a lot. We call it hero service. I do a lot of the kind of reporting, making sure our ad account is performing well and not just burning money on fire. I do, I make sure that our warehouse, they have everything they need, paying all the bills, talking to our finance team. So I'm kind of just doing all the day to day, kind of like in the mud type of things. [00:02:42] Speaker B: Has there been maybe like any highlights of yours this week or maybe any weird unexpected incidents? Things that don't you know, I, I. [00:02:51] Speaker D: Would say that I was talking, we, we work with an ad agency for ad buying and we heard that our ads are performing the best out of all their clients. So that was pretty exciting to hear because I mean positive ad performance in the, in the modern, in the modern e commerce space is like, it's like finding a unicorn in the forest. So anytime, I'll take it, I'll take it. You know. [00:03:14] Speaker E: Did they tell you why? Like what they attribute it to? [00:03:18] Speaker D: They did not tell us why actually. Now that's probably a good question. But you know, it's one of those things where you don't, you don't argue with it. You're like, hey, you think, you think I'm pretty? I'll take it. Like, I don't need you to tell me why I'm pretty. [00:03:31] Speaker E: That's awesome. So, so in terms of like all the things that you are dealing with on a day to day, there's some strengths that you have and there's some weaknesses. What do you find that you're best at? [00:03:42] Speaker D: Yeah, I definitely thrive in the like, what's the problem? How do we solve that problem? Very good at creating like an action plan of okay, like this is where this is going to go. We need to do this, this and this and creating an action plan. Um, I'm, my co founder jokingly calls me the meeting master. Cause I'm really good at just like hosting a meeting. Um, which is a weird thing to like be proud of. But you know, is that a compliment or not? I don't know but I, I, I think so. [00:04:13] Speaker B: I feel like today it is in this, in these modern times. That's a hard. [00:04:17] Speaker D: Yeah, it's like, it's like how do you enjoy the meeting but also keep the plot right there? You have to keep, you have to have that both, both of those things kind of in tandem. And so yeah, that's kind of like my strength is just I'm very much a people person. So helping people feel seen, understood, know what their objectives are and then also having a good time while we do it. [00:04:39] Speaker E: Awesome. And where do you rely on others? [00:04:43] Speaker D: I am like, I'm blind to product details, to be honest. When we first got our samples for our very first product ever, we had like three different colors of the same red. And my co founder was like this one's perfect. These two suck. And I was like, those are all red. Those are the same color. And, but he has like this like this sixth sense for quality and these really nitty. Gritty things that I just like, they fly over my head. I'm very much like, okay, now we have the thing. Let's fulfill it. Let's get it out. Let's get it moving. And he's very like, let's slow down. Let's make sure all these details are just like, absolutely perfect. So, yeah, I'm jealous of him sometimes for that, but that's interesting. [00:05:30] Speaker B: I'm thinking I'm looking at your product here, and I love the concept. For one. My major in college was actually in screenwriting, so I love the kind of Joseph Campbell's Hero's journey. I just thought of this question, but in the role that you play, do you feel like it. It could be similar to something you might see in like, a fantasy novel, you know, and feel free to not answer this question. It may not have a good answer. But, you know, do you feel like maybe you're like the, you know, the warrior or the wizard or the. I don't know, whatever. You would be the. The other characters. The healer. [00:06:02] Speaker D: Yeah, you know, it's. It's funny. There's two answers to that. So we had. We worked with a guy named John for a long time, and John's the best. And he went through and he was like, he gave everyone's departments, like, a fantasy name just because he thought it was fun. So I was the. I was the operations oracle, right? And like, Nick was the product Paladin. Paladin. So did all that. But honestly, the. The origin of the business is very derived in story. So, like, my co founder and my best friend and my roommate at the time, like, we were all. We were living in the house and he came home to me one day and was like, I have an idea for a nerdy journal. And it was all because he watched Lord of the Rings that weekend. He watched Lord of the Rings and he opened up his journal and he was like, why can't I have a journal? That also makes me feel like Frodo, right? Like, why can't I feel like I'm going on this epic quest? Because these goals that I have for myself are like epic quests. These are really difficult things to do. And so we actually found that the. That narrative arc is what inspires us when we don't want to do what we have to do for our goals, right? It's like, well, Frodo didn't want to get up. Frodo wanted to have second breakfast or whatever you want to say. But no, Frodo knew the task at hand. And went and attacked it. [00:07:25] Speaker F: Right. [00:07:25] Speaker D: So there's a lot of kind of literary devices in the product and screenwriting. So we're big movie buffs. [00:07:34] Speaker B: That's awesome. Yeah, that really tracks. We talk about that a lot at Mobile first too, that I think storytelling is a really strong tool that you can use for like almost anything. And like to speak to your strength about hosting meetings, it probably is because you sound like you have a good understanding of storytelling. And I think that's really what makes those meetings good or enjoyable is when people can really understand how to set things up, how to set an expectation, prove that expectation out and then allow the listeners or the, the attendees to, you know, put those pieces together themselves, which is essentially what you do with a good story. So that's awesome. I love to hear that y' all incorporated that into the business and obviously it looks like it's working out really well. It's a cool product. [00:08:16] Speaker F: Thank you. [00:08:17] Speaker D: Yeah. The other thing on that is like a great story. You never ask yourself, why am I hearing this right? You're just right into it. [00:08:24] Speaker F: Right. [00:08:24] Speaker D: And so a great story speaks for itself and it really tackles a lot of those problems that we run into. The worst thing in, in the business world, the worst thing that could ever happen to you is a meeting that could have been an email, right. That everyone, everyone's experienced that and you're like, this is a two sentence email. But now I spent 30 minutes. But a great experience, whether it be goal setting, a meeting or even a conversation with your friend, like you always know why you're there. And it's like, that's, that's the beauty of being able to kind of just be whimsical and be like, you know what, we're going to just take this to level 1000 and make this the most insane story of all time. And you're going to, you're going to enjoy it. So yeah, it's kind of the idea. [00:09:06] Speaker B: Yeah. That's really cool. [00:09:08] Speaker E: Awesome. So let's look back on your career a little. How did you get started in E commerce? What's your origin story? [00:09:15] Speaker D: Yeah, a bit funny because my life has been very much like, I will never do this. And then it's the exact thing that I end up doing has been my story so far. I was a college athlete and I had a fifth year of eligibility and I was like, I don't really want to get another major. So I just, I got my MBA because I was there and they were going to pay for it. So I was like, why not? [00:09:42] Speaker B: Real quick. I'm sorry. [00:09:44] Speaker D: I ran tracking cross country. Yeah. So I was one of those guys running the short shorts, running around parks. But, yeah. And then I took this MBA program, and for some reason, this program was catered towards, like, small business and entrepreneurship. Like, it was, like, through and through, all about how to run, like, an ace hardware. Like, very, very specific examples. And I remember sitting through this, like. Like, this is gonna look good on my resume, but I'm never gonna run a small business. Like, my goal is I wanted to work at an Amazon. I wanted a Microsoft. I grew up in Seattle, so I was, like, in that, like, technical, like, mindset. And I graduated. I was having a hard time kind of making the transition to the career world. I got a sales job. I got, like, an entry level sales job that, like, anyone could get at Yelp. I started with 80. There's 80 people who started on their first day with me. That's that first day. So I was like, you don't feel very special when you walk in and there's 80 other people who got the exact same job as you. I was doing that, and it was good. Like, I was learning a lot of good business stuff, but I kind of had this, like, itch in the back of my head of, like, I need to explore business, whatever that ends up meaning. So when my business partner came to me with this idea, I was like, okay, this will be the perfect, like, side project. This will be a great thing for me to kind of, like, explore what it looks like to build a product. We ran a Kickstarter nine months after the idea was pitched, and we raised $15,000. And we were like, oh, like, I was kind of hoping for it to fail low key, because I was like, I don't know how to ship a product. I don't know how to, like, I don't know how to do any of this stuff. Obviously, we were so happy that it got funded, but, like, we joke that, like, it would have been way easier if it didn't. And then, yeah, we kind of just like, started running it on the side. We're just like, we would get up at like, 4 in the morning, pack journals, put them in the car at lunch, take them to the post office, ship them out, go back to work, go home. It was like a crazy kind of experience. And then, yeah, we started scaling really fast. We made 90,000 the first year. We had cleared $150,000 through February of our second year. And we were like, oh, this is like, making way more money than Our day jobs are like, this is making a lot more money than our day of jobs are. So we made the plunge and then now I'm an E Commerce guy. But really was never the goal. The goal was always just to kind of have a fun story. I guess that's going to be a theme. But the goal was just to have a story of a time that I started this like nerdy journal product with my friend. And it turned into like something that I've been doing for the last seven years. So it's been pretty cool. [00:12:27] Speaker B: That's awesome. I feel like that I've heard a similar story, but nothing that unique, especially with the product that you have. But it's always funny how when you're not looking for something, you end up finding it and it's sort of what happened with you. That's awesome. [00:12:40] Speaker D: Awesome. Absolutely. [00:12:41] Speaker B: Do you think if there were going back. I mean it sounds like things really worked out, but do you think maybe there would be anything if you had like a time machine you could go back and tell yourself something. Is there anything you would go back and change or maybe do differently that you think would benefit you now or. [00:12:55] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, it was. I mean there's probably a hundred things that I would change. One of the biggest ones was so in the E commerce world, there's this thing called a3PL. If you don't know what that is, it's a third party logistics partner. They ship your product for you. It's a warehouse. We were, we were in the middle of our second year. Product was scaling super fast. We were running out of garage space to fulfill the journals. And we were like, you know what, we'll have so much more time if we just work with a 3 PL and they ship the product. That way we can really just focus on growing this thing. We signed up with a very famous 3 PL and it went awful. It was like they were sending the wrong products. They were getting destroyed on the way there. It was just like. And the ticketing system was like this really like archaic model of us being like, hey, we've had 15 tickets this week about journals that exploded. And they were like, yeah, whatever. It was just awful. [00:13:52] Speaker E: But that destroys your brand promise. [00:13:54] Speaker D: Yeah. It was like we couldn't handle it. I was like, I'm spending more time with hero service tickets than I was spending fulfilling journals. Like, I may as well just fulfill journals if I'm going to be taking that time's going to get traded. But here's the key mistake. You would think that the 3pl was the key mistake. That's not the key mistake. The key mistake was, is I took the cost for them to fulfill a journal, and I multiplied that out by the amount of journals that we wanted to sell. And then I created a budget for how expensive our warehouse could be. But the issue was, is that it was the amount of journals that we wanted to and expected to sell, not the actual amount of journals that we wanted to sell. Because I said, oh, look, we're saving money. I created this scenario where we're. We're saving fake money. And ultimately we signed. It all worked out and it was ended up being a really great experience. But there were a lot of nights where I laid awake at night not knowing how I was going to pay this warehouse bill for that. Because we also had to. Not only was it super expensive, but we had to hire people to go in there and fulfill the actual journals and had to manage that system, and it ended up being very costly. That was my don't count the eggs before it hatch moment of just like, just because you expect to scale this a certain direction doesn't mean it will happen. You have to kind of take real data versus the anticipatory data that you want to have. I love that. [00:15:29] Speaker B: That's such a great answer. And in all honesty, that answer is why I think we do this podcast is for those little pieces of information that hopefully some other e commerce manager is listening and they'll hear that and steer clear of it. [00:15:42] Speaker E: Yeah. So when you're forecasting in the future, how are you going to do it differently? Because you're always going to have unknowns. [00:15:47] Speaker D: Yeah. The first question is, could I afford it now? Right. Like, if you can't afford it now. Because I think that the future of your business looks a lot more like now than it looks like what you want it to be. And that just. It will end up looking like you want it to look, but it's going to look like now for a while and that's okay. [00:16:05] Speaker F: Right. [00:16:05] Speaker D: It's like the. If anyone's done like a train for a marathon or train or like try to lose weight or whatever it is. Like, you have to live with your current form until that form is ready for the future form. So, yeah, definitely I would focus on can I afford this today? If things didn't get better would be the first question I ask myself. The second question I would ask myself is, if things go get worse, how am I going to cover this? Do I have the opportunity to get outside funding? Do I have an opportunity to kind of like make an amendment to my lease or if it's triple net lease or whatever it is. Right. Do I have a way out of this opportunity? And then the last thing I would say is like, is this good enough for the best case scenario? [00:16:49] Speaker F: Right. [00:16:49] Speaker D: You also don't want to have a situation that breaks if things go get way better. [00:16:53] Speaker F: Right. [00:16:54] Speaker D: And so you have to. You have to keep all of those in line. But the. The main advice would be, if today was today for a lot of days, would I be able to afford this? And that's kind of the. That's the moral of the story with pretty much everything. [00:17:08] Speaker F: Right. [00:17:09] Speaker B: That's good. [00:17:11] Speaker E: Thank you. [00:17:11] Speaker D: I love that. [00:17:13] Speaker E: So it sounds like when you started this, you guys knew you had a product, people were willing to invest in it. But growing an E commerce business was new for y' all. So was there anyone that kind of helped guide you along the way to how to figure that out? And what did that guidance. How did it come? How'd you find it? [00:17:32] Speaker D: Yeah, it's. We. So we actually hired a CMO who we later had to, like, part ways with. But as like an early member of the team, he was like, massively influential. He is a writer, and so he was like, obsessed with the kind of like, author model of building an author business. So think about, like, the guy who wrote Subtle Art not giving a fuck, or Ryan Holiday or these great authors who also have massive Internet brands who don't have to focus on publishers because they can. They can create their own noise. [00:18:09] Speaker F: Right? [00:18:10] Speaker D: Yeah. And so he. He like, sat down with my business partner and was like, here's what we're going to do for our first Kickstarter. He's like, you're going to spend 15 minutes writing a blog. Don't spend any more time than that. 15 minutes. We're all going to write. Once we created three pieces of lead gen and then we just put a little bit of money behind it. We were just like, trying to try to start building an email list. Just something. Right? Right. I think I wrote like nine C.S. lewis quotes I use every day in my sales job. Was my. It was my blog post. Um, and so we. We built an email list to about a thousand members on like $800 in spend, which was pretty exciting at the time. We were like, that's. That's not a bad return. Um, yeah, I didn't know what a good return was, but it didn't feel like a bad one. Um, and he really just kind of like helped us build out the early framework for how we were going to like build out our email list and then ultimately what turned into our community got it. Because the community has really been kind of like the backbone of the business. And so he was very much our peer. He was like, I went to college with him, me and Nick, we all went to the same college, we're all the same age. But he just had done a lot of research and marketing and this kind of author style marketing systems and it was just like it really built the parameter and then we were able to. I'll give you this story, cause it's funny. So I knew nothing about direct to consumer marketing. I mean zero, zero, zip, zilch. And I would like Google stuff like what's a good conversion rate? It was like three or whatever. And our conversion rate at the time was five and a half. And we're like, we're killing it. We're absolutely, we're murdering on conversion rate. And I was like, oh, but our traffic's low. And I said to him, I said, so if we get our traffic up, like we're gonna kill it. All we have to do is get more people to our site. And he goes, that's, that's marketing. You know, like that's actually just what marketing is, just getting people to your site. So yeah, that was how rudimentary my understanding was because I thought I had like this, this big data driven insight on marketing. And he was just, nope, it was just get more people to the website. So that is the level of where I started. And then now obviously we've gone through it, but yeah, and then during COVID we did this thing called Quarantine Quest and we put some app with some lead gen money behind it. But we really just did it because we thought it was good for the world. We were like, people don't know how to have a productive day when they can't go outside. So we'll just give people little like mini side quests to do while they're in their house and then we'll create a Facebook community where they can share how they did and it'll be great. We had like 30 members in our Facebook group and I can't, this is going to sound like fake information, but in four weeks our group went from 30 members to 10,000 members on like $4,000 in ad spend. It was crazy. We ended up spending like 8,000 over the course of six weeks and our final numbers were like 12k Facebook, 40k email, which was like crazy. We were like, our whole business changed in A four week span just by live streaming, making little side quests. We gave away free art and it really was kind of like we're still like, I'll have people pop into live streams or I'll have people pop into our groups now and be like, remember quarantine quest? That was the best. And it's like that was five years ago. But it truly was like the, the beginning because we went from 90,000 in 2019 to a million in 2020. Very much off the back of that, like that, that insurgence of attention. So it was great. [00:21:45] Speaker B: It sounds like you're really flexible during quarantine and that, that I think is really what it sounds like, maybe a good cornerstone for your business too or is the cornerstone of your business that y' all are very flexible. And maybe being an E comm manager, that's something that you need to think about is you need to be able to take a hit and turn and, and you know, grow from those opportunities. I love that. [00:22:02] Speaker C: Absolutely. [00:22:02] Speaker D: I mean like think about, I don't know, I believe I, I always forget the number about like iOS 14 or whatever. IOS hit in May 2021. Like that changed the whole ecosystem of E commerce. [00:22:13] Speaker B: I remember that. Yeah. [00:22:16] Speaker D: You just have to be flexible because something like data tracking is just going to change your ability to advertise and it's going to make your business worse even though it's the same business it was the day before. And so you have to just be, you have to be nimble because if you hold too strong to things, you're just going to like, you're going to get lost. Yeah, yeah. Fair. [00:22:38] Speaker B: It's game over. You know, I think that applies to the hero's journey. [00:22:41] Speaker D: Yeah, it does. We don't have game overs though. You always end up winning no matter what. [00:22:47] Speaker B: That's fair. [00:22:47] Speaker E: So let's begin to kind of check out and really get onto the next part of your journey. And one of the things I want you to teach us is how to use community as a force multiplier for, for an E comm business. [00:23:04] Speaker D: Yeah. So I, this is like, this is like my hill that I die on. Like I think that every, every direct to consumer brand has to have something bigger than the product they sell. They have to have like, like liquid death for example, I think is a really great example of this because we think of them as the, like the E commerce D2C loved. Like they're like they're, everyone loves them right now because of what they've done. But in reality the Reason we love them is because they took this, like, hardcore metal branding to fight against, like, plastic in the ocean, right? That's so much bigger than water. And it's something that we can all believe in. And when we're buying our liquid death cans at the 7:11, we're like, you know, it's a dollar more expensive. But I believe in it, you know, and I believe that when you take that thing that people are going to rally around, and then you create a community of those people, and you create a shared value that becomes a force multiplier for your mission, which then ultimately, your product is a solution to that end. And it allows you to really build with conviction and, like, a constant ear to the ground to the actual problem you're solving. So one of the ways that we've done it is not only with communities, but we've done it with Kickstarters. We ran our first project on Kickstarters because we had no money. So that was the first one. But the second one we could have just launched on our website. We probably would have made more money because Kickstarter gets their cut. But we wanted it to be, like, a moment where, like, people could be like, I was here for your first Kickstarter, I'm here for your second Kickstarter. Look at how much we've grown, right? We've all grown this thing. And we ended up raising $303,000 on that second Kickstarter, which was a massive kind of uptick from our previous one. And we were able to do fun upsells. We made plushies. We made maps of a magical school that didn't actually exist. We did all these really fun kind of items that had nothing to do with journaling, but had everything to do with these stories that people loved. Because the story at the core said that you are a hero. [00:25:07] Speaker F: Right. [00:25:07] Speaker D: The main character of these. I'll show you the main character is this. Their name is you. And they're purposely made this kind of, like, character because everyone should see themselves in the hero, right? You are the hero. When people are buying these things and they're putting them on their walls and whatnot, it's like, they're not putting up our story, they're putting up their story. [00:25:30] Speaker F: Right? [00:25:30] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:25:31] Speaker D: And when you create a community around that, you now have people who are buying into that. They're coloring their pages and they're posting their pages, but they're talking about finishing their. We have somebody who finished, like, 11 Heroes journals, and we were like, that's more than Nick and I have done combined. [00:25:46] Speaker F: Right. [00:25:47] Speaker D: That's like an incredible amount of attention to detail on this product. And it really became like a community win. It became an U.S. win. And when it comes to internally, I tell people you could pay your employees with two things. You always have to pay them with money, but you could pay them with more money or you could pay them with more mission. [00:26:07] Speaker F: Right. [00:26:09] Speaker D: When your people who are working with you are feeling the impact of their work on people's lives and they believe in the mission, like that's a form of payment. That's a form of seeing this through. And you get that through having interactions with the people who are using your product. So I'm really bullish on school right now. I think that a lot explain school for people that don't know. Skool is a e learning platform that has some community features. It's definitely focused on coaching businesses and it's. It's definitely more about the web hosting side of things. But the reason I'm really bullish on it is because there's not really a feed outside of the communities that you're in. And when you go on a Facebook group, you're coming off this information highway of just toxicity through the timeline. And so when someone comes into the Facebook group, they're charged, they're ready to fight. Whereas when you get them into this kind of isolated community on school, all they have is the. Is the vibe of that place. And you're really able to kind of like hammer in on the actual thing that people are trying to do versus, like the, the inflammatory things they saw on the way in. [00:27:27] Speaker F: Right. [00:27:28] Speaker D: Cause that's really. It's really hard to. It's really. As humans, it's really hard to block that stuff out. And so I kind of. I'm definitely a lot more towards the like, just cut it out. I'm not going to try to like filter it. I'm just going to cut out any kind of like those things. I'm trying to focus on the thing I need to focus on just because it's easier that way. It's less energy. But the reason I like school is because they're definitely building it for people who are teaching people how to make Facebook ad campaigns online. It's definitely catered towards that type of audience and community, but I think there's arbitrage and using software. Wrong. Using software in a way that fits your need, not the intended need because it's like you're, you're. It's more malleable when something's new and I'm sure there'll be a time in the future where school's not. I'm not quite as bullish on it, but right now I'm really bullish on it because even, like, let's take the liquid death example. If they made a school community, they could make like modules in there that talk about how to recycle. [00:28:32] Speaker F: Right. [00:28:32] Speaker D: How many times we all gone to Chipotle and we're standing there with the three holes and we're like, we're like, we're taking the final exam on which one, which hole do I put this stuff in? And it's like, that would be such a powerful thing for them to do is to create content around how to actually recycle when you're at Chipotle or you're at the airport or something like that, right? It's like, when is food waste considered food waste versus compost? Or it's like, anyways. Yeah. So even like a company that's that big could still benefit from like an education type of thing towards their mission. [00:29:04] Speaker E: Yeah, that makes sense. So if you're an E comm leader at a company, you sell widget, maybe you know, people are excited about this more the D2C how. What's your first steps to go building a community? If it's something that hasn't been part of your DNA, like, how do you even explore if that's viable, where do you, how do you start that exploration? [00:29:27] Speaker D: Yeah, I would probably start with focus group. Because the focus group people, this is, it's in line with like modern LinkedIn strategy, right? You post something and, and then people who interact with your post, you send them a dm, you're like, hey, thanks for interacting with my post. Right? It's the same thing with this. You would send an email out, hey, thank you so much for ordering the widget. We'd love to get on a user feedback call. We want to make it better for you. The people that are excited about coming to that are the same people that'd be excited about joining community. So you would just say, and then you'd ask them, what would you want? What do you want a community to be? How can we make this fidget better? Widget better? And yeah, then you would just build that thing, right? You would just build it around your Personas. And the easiest way to get your Personas is just to a, already have your marketing Personas built out. But if you don't, just ask the people who use your product, ask them who they are and then build around that and then people will join. But you do have to. Here's my second hill to die on. Signing up for an email newsletter is no longer free. It is one of the most expensive purchases that we all make as consumers because you get blown up by these brands and you're like, I don't want to see this in my email. Like, the clarity of going into an empty email box that isn't full of ads and stuff like that. And so when you ask someone to sign up for your email list, you have to give them something really good because they're giving you their mental clarity. They're giving you a space in their email box. They're giving you space in the chaos of everything going on. Because if you don't offer something really good, people they'll sign up, but they'll put you in their junk email. [00:31:08] Speaker F: Right. [00:31:08] Speaker D: And then you'll never actually talk to them anyways. So you have to offer them something really, really good. And the same things with the community. [00:31:14] Speaker F: Right. [00:31:15] Speaker D: Like if you're like, we have a community, we have people who use our widget, it's like, that's fine. But if you say we have a group of people who are all surrounded around what this widget solves, then that creates a lot more kind of interest and makes it more dynamic. [00:31:30] Speaker E: Yeah. Are there any emails that you love? [00:31:34] Speaker D: I love the tracksmith emails I love because for me, I'm very into the ideals of brands. I'm a lot more. There's the, have you guys heard the missionary and the mercenary kind of difference in entrepreneurship to those that haven't. So you have, you have the missionary who. Their purpose for starting a business is to spread, like, their, their cause, and a mercenary is there to make money, right? [00:32:00] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:32:01] Speaker D: So any, any brand that sends like, these, like, idealistic, like, foreshadowings of what your life could look like if you use their product. And they have like, these beautiful lookbooks and they have these awesome videos, like, and their products kind of fit their vibe. I love those. So, like, tracksmith's emails are incredible. Yeah. Um, yeah. I'm trying to think who else does really good email marketing? [00:32:23] Speaker E: Have you looked at Howler Brothers emails? I don't know if you're on their email list. [00:32:27] Speaker D: I, I have one of their jackets, but I have not looked at their. [00:32:31] Speaker E: It's. It's pretty. It's. It's same realm of tracksmith. Just think fishing, bro. Instead of. [00:32:36] Speaker D: Oh, okay. [00:32:37] Speaker E: And instead of some person that's running cross country. [00:32:40] Speaker D: That used to run cross country. [00:32:43] Speaker E: Yeah. Or they're big Austin brand. So. [00:32:45] Speaker D: Yeah, I. Yeah, but when I do see a good one, I get really excited. It just like if you, if you're an E Commerce, like, if it. And you are managing an email team or you're an email manager, just like once or twice a month, send an email without a cta, just send an email that says like, thank you so much for being a part of like this thing. Right? Like, just like take a second, put like roas aside or whatever you want to, whatever metric you use and just be like, this is why we do this and this is why we love this and people be happy about that. And guess what? We do that probably four or five times a month. And sometimes those emails get the highest return of any of our emails. And there's not even a button on it. I refuse to put a button on them. And it still is getting like this crazy return. I don't know how they do it. I don't even know how they get to our website from there, but they do. [00:33:38] Speaker B: I love that. We actually just were reviewing a client's email list and Justin made the exact same recommendation to them. That it's just, it's showing that lifestyle. I think it actually plays into what you were talking about, that, you know, plot is a currency in a lot of ways, or the motivation, to me is a currency. And I think that's kind of what that email that you're describing does. Feeds them a little bit of plot. It feeds them a little bit of that, that motivation to go by. And that is really important. So, yeah, I love that. That ties in really well with everything else you've said. [00:34:07] Speaker D: Yeah. And then I think the last thing is, is that I don't. Have you guys ever worked with like, creators who are making brands? Have you ever kind of interacted with that type of kind of environment? Yeah, I have. One of my best friends plays professional basketball in Portugal and He started a YouTube channel and he, like, has been growing this YouTube channel for the last six years over the course of his professional basketball career. And a year ago I said, hey, man, you gotta make an email list. And he's like, why? Like, I make YouTube videos and Instagram videos. Like, I don't need an email list, so. No, you need email list. Email list, Email list. Because on all of his videos, people were like, hey, can you send me your. Your workout routine? Hey, can you send me your shooting. Your shooting workout? Hey, can you send me your shoe rotation or whatever it is? Right? I said to turn Those things into PDFs offer them as a lead magnet and then send a weekly newsletter about everything that's going on in your life and then offer those workouts in that newsletter. And he grew his email list to like 12,000 people in like six months. And I was like, this is like. And now he. Now he's like, oh, I can build a business off this. I'm like, of course you can. Like, this is like, this is such a strong thing that you built. And so it's one of those things where he realized that he had something really, really good to give and it just exploded for him. And he has almost like he has 50,000 subscribers on YouTube and he has 12,000 people on his email list. And I was like, that's disproportionate. Like, that's like, you should have 200,000 subscribers on YouTube to have that 12,000. But because you had a really good thing to give away. Yeah. And I mean, I kind of stole a little bit from Nick Baer. I think that BPN is like one of the best and it's another Austin company. I think that they're like, if you can get someone from BP on this podcast, you should, because they are absolutely killing on all cylinders. But yeah. [00:35:57] Speaker E: Awesome. Is there anything on your reading list, anything that you're really excited to watch or that you're kind of thinking about either professionally, personally, or anything? [00:36:06] Speaker D: Yeah. From an audiobook perspective. I'm working through dungeon crawler Carl. I don't know if you've ever heard of this. [00:36:13] Speaker B: I have not heard of it, but that sounds interesting just off the name. [00:36:17] Speaker D: It is wild. It's fiction. It's not going to make you a better e commerce leader, but it is. It's so good. It's like a video game in your ears. That's awesome. Anyways, that's really great. Dungeon crawler Carl. I just finished a book called Working by Robert Caro and he wrote. This is actually very pertinent to Austin, but he wrote the like, most in depth doc, docu, not documentaries, biographies of Lyndon B. Johnson. And he just talks about why he does what he does and the like, the passion. He talks about research and work. Like it'll make anyone hyped about like just any kind of thing they're passionate about. Yeah. And I'm reading a book by Seth Godin right now, but I don't know the name. I think it's like practice or something. That's what it's called. Yeah, that's just all about like in the, in the digital age, you Just got to publish. You got to get. You got to get your work out there. And so that, that's a good, a good like inspiration to just like hit publish on LinkedIn or wherever you put your. Your content. [00:37:24] Speaker E: Yeah, I'd love to read that. Oh, go ahead, Kyle. Go ahead, Kyle. [00:37:29] Speaker B: I was going to say I'd love to read the Lind Lyndon B. Johnson biography. I'm a huge fan of the man. He had a. He was the first guy who had an auto. What is it? He had like an amphibious car at one point. Yeah, dude's weird. He's a really interesting guy. [00:37:43] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, no, he the. Well, he wrote like seven like 500 page books about Linda B. Johnson. [00:37:49] Speaker B: Wow. [00:37:50] Speaker D: I don't know if Linda B. Johnson's the hero of those stories, unfortunately. [00:37:53] Speaker B: I mean, he's not like a great guy. I just mean he's an interesting man. Yeah. [00:37:58] Speaker D: Yeah, that's fair. [00:37:58] Speaker B: I'll phrase it that way. Yeah. [00:38:00] Speaker D: Cool. [00:38:00] Speaker E: Awesome. And Kyle, if people want to find out more about you, where. Where can they find you? Are your socials where. Where do you want them to look? [00:38:07] Speaker D: Yeah. So if you want to check out the Hero's Journal, it's the heroesjournal co. It's a possessive heroes, not a plural. It's the apostrophe. And yeah, I'm on LinkedIn if you want to do that. I also write a newsletter, so that's more about me. Just like my experience starting the Heroes Journal work with my buddy overseas. But yeah, it's a lot more just me, my philosophical ramblings. But yeah, if you want to check that out, that works too. [00:38:30] Speaker E: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, Kyle. This was a ton of fun. And if anyone wants to find us, you can find Connor on LinkedIn, Justin Ehrenstein on LinkedIn, and we'll be doing more of this, talking to e comm leaders and learning from them. So thank you so much, Kyle. Really appreciate your time. [00:38:47] Speaker D: Thanks for having me. [00:38:58] Speaker C: Sa.