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0:01:56 Hey, Yap Gang.
0:02:00 I always say that knowing how to sell is the most important skill that an entrepreneur can have.
0:02:03 Selling is at the core of every business.
0:02:06 It’s how you connect with your customers, build your brand, and grow your business.
0:02:11 And today I’m going to be giving you a mini masterclass on how to sell.
0:02:16 I recently partnered with Pipedrive, which is a CRM platform, to host a webinar about how
0:02:17 you can crush your sales goals.
0:02:21 And we’re going to be replaying it right now on the podcast for anybody who missed it.
0:02:26 You’re going to hear all about the benefits of activity selling, how to hit your sales goals,
0:02:30 optimize your funnels, boost conversions, leverage AI, and more.
0:02:34 I’ll also go into how to visualize your sales pipeline with Pipedrive.
0:02:38 Now, this is a webinar where I presented a fancy slide deck with it.
0:02:42 So if you want to follow along with the presentation and demo, go check out the show notes and you can
0:02:44 get the link to the presentation.
0:02:49 If you enjoyed this webinar and you’re ready to step up your game, I highly recommend that
0:02:51 you get a free 14-day trial with Pipedrive.
0:02:54 It’s 100% risk-free, no credit card required.
0:03:00 You can just go to youngandprofiting.co slash sales for a free 14-day trial and 20% off
0:03:01 your membership.
0:03:07 That’s youngandprofiting.co slash sales for a free 14-day trial of Pipedrive.
0:03:10 All right, if you’re ready to make it rain, let’s get started.
0:03:18 Welcome to our Crush Your Sales Goals webinar presented by Pipedrive.
0:03:22 This is the first sales webinar that we’ve had for the year.
0:03:26 If you just joined, I was mentioning that I totally updated all the content, so lots of
0:03:31 new ideas and hopefully going to set you up for success at the top of the year here.
0:03:36 So if you haven’t yet, let me know how many people are on your sales team.
0:03:42 So far, it seems like it’s all a lot of small sales teams, which is perfect for what we’re going
0:03:43 to go over today.
0:03:50 Now, if you guys have ever been to any of my webinars, you know that it’s real work, right?
0:03:53 So this is not something, some fluff.
0:03:55 We’re going to go over real concepts.
0:03:56 You’re going to learn.
0:03:57 You’re going to want to take notes.
0:03:59 So what are you going to do to make the most out of today’s class?
0:04:02 Are you going to grab some tea or coffee?
0:04:03 I’ve got tea.
0:04:04 I’ve got water.
0:04:06 My phone is on silent.
0:04:08 I’m not checking my email.
0:04:09 Get a snack.
0:04:11 Make sure your kids are out of the way.
0:04:12 Your pets are out of the way.
0:04:13 You’re going to focus.
0:04:18 We’re going to be here for about 75 minutes going through content.
0:04:20 So I want you guys to be focused.
0:04:23 Let me know what you’re going to do in the chat to make the most out of today’s session.
0:04:28 Drop your name and date to solidify your commitments in the comments.
0:04:32 Yeah, you guys will get a replay of this.
0:04:35 So you don’t have like, but I still would take notes because it helps you like really
0:04:36 remember things.
0:04:40 So let me know what you’re going to do to make the most out of today’s session.
0:04:42 Write your commitment in the chat.
0:04:48 Well, you guys are going to, something new that we’re doing is I’m pulling like the best content
0:04:53 that I have from my podcast to make these a little bit more interactive, engaging.
0:04:55 And so you’re going to hear from Chris Voss.
0:04:59 You’re going to hear from Shelby Sapp and a few others in this webinar.
0:05:01 So it should be fun.
0:05:01 Okay.
0:05:09 So before we are jumping into the content, we’re going to have about 30 minutes of content.
0:05:13 We’re going to do a demo, another 30 or 40 minutes of content.
0:05:17 So before we do that, so I don’t have to interrupt in the middle of the session,
0:05:22 since we’ve got a lot of the folks on already is to sign up to the demo.
0:05:27 So Kate, if you can drop this link in here, youngandprofiting.co slash crush your sales,
0:05:31 I would join it on your computer because we’re going to do a demo that you can follow along with.
0:05:35 So Kate will drop that link in the chat.
0:05:36 Make sure you guys sign up.
0:05:37 It’s no credit card.
0:05:39 There’s no gotchas.
0:05:42 Just sign up so that you can try it for 14 days.
0:05:43 Okay.
0:05:44 We’re going to move on.
0:05:50 So in case you don’t know a little bit about me, I am the host of Young and Profiting Podcast.
0:05:53 It’s the number one entrepreneurship and business podcast.
0:05:55 I’ve been doing it for over six years.
0:05:59 I’m the founder and CEO of Yap Media.
0:06:02 It’s an award-winning social media and podcast production agency.
0:06:08 And then most recently, a couple of years ago, I founded the Yap Media Podcast Network, which is my main focus now.
0:06:16 So essentially, I grow and monetize other top business podcasters like Jenna Kutcher, Amy Porterfield, Neil Patel, Russell Brunson.
0:06:22 I’ve got a lot of legendary podcasters in my network, and we’re the number one business and self-improvement podcast network.
0:06:25 So I do a lot of sales.
0:06:37 My main job at Yap is I’m the spokesperson of the company, and I really am taking most of the major brand sales calls, agency sales calls.
0:06:43 A lot of our agency retainer deals are like $10K minimum a month.
0:06:46 Most of them are like closer to $20K to $30K.
0:06:50 Our brand deals, you know, I’m closing million-dollar deals sometimes.
0:06:52 So I’ve got a ton of experience with sales.
0:06:55 I would say that’s like one of my main skill sets aside from marketing.
0:06:56 So I love sales.
0:06:57 I know a lot about it.
0:07:00 I’ve interviewed every sales expert in the world that you could imagine.
0:07:07 And so a lot of this learning is just things that I’ve come across on my podcast and my own personal experience.
0:07:10 And so I’m excited to share with you.
0:07:14 So today we’re going to talk about bottoms-up sales strategy.
0:07:18 We’re going to talk about driver trees, becoming a sales psychopath.
0:07:22 We’ll go through pipeline management with Pipedrive.
0:07:24 We’ll talk about funnel optimization.
0:07:34 We’ll talk about the concept of the favorite and the fool and halves and elves, which is just something that can help you identify your leads better.
0:07:40 And then we’ll talk about AI in the future and how AI is going to impact sales in the future and what you can do to prepare.
0:07:41 All right?
0:07:47 So starting with bottoms-up sales strategy.
0:07:48 And, guys, I’ve got your chat up.
0:07:50 So let’s make this interactive.
0:07:57 So if you have questions after I’m done with this section, I’ll pause and kind of take a look and see if I can help answer anything.
0:08:01 But let’s make this interactive and as fun as possible.
0:08:04 So starting with bottoms-up sales strategy.
0:08:09 So first off, how would you guys all define the word selling?
0:08:12 How would you define the word selling?
0:08:14 Don’t look it up.
0:08:15 Don’t Google it.
0:08:18 In your own words, what is selling?
0:08:19 Okay, we’ve got a lot of good answers.
0:08:27 So we’ve got giving value, being of service, selling words, presenting a product, exchanging a service for money,
0:08:37 providing true value, helping somebody make a decision and change, convincing somebody what they need, creating value tied to client needs.
0:08:38 Okay.
0:08:40 So lots of good answers.
0:08:44 Annoying for some people.
0:08:45 Okay.
0:08:48 So you guys gave a lot of good answers.
0:08:58 But in my opinion, and technically, selling refers to the actions that you take throughout the sales process and the closing of the deal.
0:09:06 So a lot of people refer to sales as making money, making a sale, right?
0:09:08 Providing the value at the end of the sale.
0:09:11 The value is really after the selling happens, right?
0:09:16 Selling is all about the actions you take throughout the process.
0:09:22 There’s a certain actions that you take that will cause a higher probability of getting more deals.
0:09:28 So most people focus on the results rather than the actions and the process leading up to deals.
0:09:30 And you need to do the opposite.
0:09:31 Okay.
0:09:37 You need to focus on instead of results-based selling, activity-based selling.
0:09:37 Okay.
0:09:41 So you want to go from results-based selling to activity-based selling.
0:09:50 So a lot of people’s go-to-market strategy are falling flat because they’re doing it backwards.
0:09:52 They have top-down approaches.
0:09:57 And it could be from the executive team, from the finance team.
0:09:59 Maybe you are the executive in the finance team.
0:10:01 And you’ve got some goals.
0:10:04 You have industry standards of growth percentages.
0:10:09 You have broad metrics like the marketing spend that you have.
0:10:13 And it’s essentially just not based in reality.
0:10:16 You’ve got random goal-oriented metrics.
0:10:19 They’re set on different targets that you’ve created.
0:10:23 But it’s not actually based on tested outcomes.
0:10:26 So that results in no realistic or actionable plans.
0:10:32 So you actually, instead of wanting to take a top-down approach, you want to take a bottoms-up approach.
0:10:41 And essentially what a bottoms-up approach strategy is, is that you work backwards from the close.
0:10:44 So you go from close to the first sale activity.
0:10:46 Now, this requires you tracking your data.
0:10:57 So this means that if you haven’t been tracking your actions, and a lot of you guys mentioned you’ve got a small team, you’re solopreneurs, or you’re just like a single entrepreneur.
0:11:00 You’ve got to work backwards and start to track your data.
0:11:10 And you’ve got to figure out what are the different sales funnels that I have, and what are the actions that I take in these different sales funnels, and which one of my sales funnels works best that I want to lean into.
0:11:14 And so sales is really a volume game.
0:11:18 How many clicks, calls, conversions do you need to hit your sales targets?
0:11:25 And then you’re going to want to track your data and figure out how many actions you need to complete each part of your sales process to hit your goals.
0:11:29 Once you do that, you can set a stretch goal.
0:11:31 And I’ll go over an example.
0:11:34 So if this is feeling cloudy, I’ll go over an example in a second.
0:11:38 Once you do that, you can hit your stretch goal and make sure that your number is right.
0:11:46 And then you can break the targets into easier chunks so that you know what you need to do and what your team needs to do to achieve that result.
0:11:46 Okay.
0:11:51 So driver trees is how you do this.
0:11:56 This is how you determine what actions you need to take, all of your different rates and things like that.
0:11:59 And there’s three steps to create a driver tree.
0:12:04 Number one, you determine your pipeline activities.
0:12:08 So you determine the measurable actions that drive results in your best performing sales funnels.
0:12:14 So this is all the calls that you’ve made, your email sent, your direct messages sent, your follow-up sent,
0:12:17 the lunches that you’ve taken clients to.
0:12:20 It’s just any sort of action that you take to close a deal.
0:12:26 And like I mentioned, you’re going to want to think about all the different ways that you get clients because I’m sure it’s not just one way.
0:12:32 And you’re going to want to figure out what are these separate funnels and map out the actions to each of these funnels.
0:12:41 And then you’ll actually be able to see which funnel is working better and which funnel you want to spend more time with and what actions you want to spend more time on.
0:12:42 Okay.
0:12:45 Then you have to collect the results.
0:12:54 So a spreadsheet or a CRM tool, a sales tracking tool, you want to collect all your past results.
0:13:01 And these can include things like clicks, webinar registrations, webinar attendees, emails opened, calls booked.
0:13:02 Okay.
0:13:07 Number three is you want to calculate your performance rate metrics.
0:13:13 So that’s analyzing your past data to collect all the key rates to help you forecast future performance.
0:13:18 So that’s conversion rates, click-through rates, average order value, attendance rate.
0:13:27 So let me know, do you guys understand how, like the general concepts, steps one through two, three, to create a driver trade?
0:13:28 Okay.
0:13:32 I’m going to put it into, I’m going to show you an example.
0:13:42 So do you guys know what the different sales funnels that you have that currently you’re using in your business?
0:13:46 Let me know.
0:13:47 Type it in the chat.
0:13:48 What are the different types of sales funnels are you doing?
0:13:49 Webinars?
0:13:51 Are you doing discovery calls?
0:13:54 Are you going to live events?
0:13:56 Okay.
0:14:02 And then do you know, out of all the different funnels that you have, do you know the best performing one?
0:14:08 Or do you feel like you need to analyze your data and determine what the best performing sales funnel is?
0:14:18 And do you guys know what key activities that you do in order to get that, all the different actions in your sales funnel?
0:14:19 Do you guys know the different actions?
0:14:30 So for example, when we have a webinar, it includes DMs, it includes an opt-in to sign up, it includes a follow-up email, it includes a bunch of different things.
0:14:33 Do you guys know those steps or do you need to actually map out those steps?
0:14:35 That’s great.
0:14:38 So this is going to be super relevant for all of you guys.
0:14:39 This is going to be a game changer.
0:14:45 It was a game changer for me when it came to selling my courses specifically.
0:14:50 So I’m going to go over our driver tree example and we use webinars.
0:14:54 So typically we have a webinar with a one-month lead-up for promotion.
0:14:55 Okay.
0:15:01 And so the first thing that you’re going to do is analyze your past results.
0:15:02 So like I said, you’ve got to be intentional.
0:15:06 So now that means you’ve got to map out all your sales funnels.
0:15:09 You’ve got to map out all the actions that you take and you’re going to start to track that data.
0:15:15 It could just be like in a spreadsheet, but you need some sort of past result in order to get started.
0:15:19 And then you can keep adding onto it and start to get averages and things like that.
0:15:21 So you map out your funnel.
0:15:24 You use past data to determine your key rates to forecast future results.
0:15:31 So in this example, we made $21,000 in revenue.
0:15:32 Okay.
0:15:37 So we had 21 web course conversions at $1,000.
0:15:43 So essentially when I’m mapping this out, I start backwards from a past result.
0:15:43 Okay.
0:15:48 So $21,000 in revenue, that was 21 course conversions at $1,000.
0:15:51 We had 350 webinar attendees.
0:15:53 So it was a 6% conversion rate.
0:16:00 We had 700 webinar registrants and emails, which was a 50% average attendance rate.
0:16:05 We had 1,000 clicks, and it came from 10,000 direct messages.
0:16:11 So once you understand all of your actions and the results that you got, the clicks,
0:16:15 the people who actually registered and so on, you can start to get your performance metrics,
0:16:21 which is the 10% average click-through rate, the 70% average registration rate, the 50% average
0:16:22 attendance rate.
0:16:23 Okay.
0:16:27 And then you can decide on a new team goal.
0:16:36 So if I want to generate $35,000 on the next webinar, then all I need to do is plug in the
0:16:41 performance metrics that I have and work backwards to get the result that I want.
0:16:45 So I basically need 35 webinar conversions at $1,000.
0:16:47 Then I just do the math.
0:16:50 That means we need 584 webinar attendees.
0:16:55 That means we need 1,168 people to register.
0:16:56 Okay.
0:17:03 And then that also means we need about, you know, 1,700 clicks, which means we need to send about
0:17:09 17,000 direct messages total and about 4,000 direct messages per week.
0:17:10 Okay.
0:17:16 So basically I’ve just figured out how to get to my new team goal based on actual results.
0:17:21 I didn’t just, you know, point my finger in the air and say, I want $35,000 next time.
0:17:22 Go do it.
0:17:24 I have clear direction.
0:17:30 Hey guys, I need us to move from 10,000 direct messages to 17,000 direct messages.
0:17:34 If we want to hit this goal, does that mean that we need to extend the time to the webinar?
0:17:40 Does that mean we need to add another salesperson to help us do more direct messages, right?
0:17:46 And then you can also divide this by the day and give people what they have to do per day
0:17:47 in order to hit that goal.
0:17:54 It also helps you understand, like if you’re midway and you haven’t hit a certain amount of
0:17:56 registrants, you know that you’re behind your goal.
0:18:01 So all the time when I’m doing webinars, I’m like, hey guys, we need X amount of registrants.
0:18:03 We still don’t have that.
0:18:04 We need to do more.
0:18:06 We need to do more DMs.
0:18:06 We’re behind.
0:18:08 Maybe our message needs to be improved.
0:18:10 Maybe our opt-in needs to be improved.
0:18:14 Something is broken because we’re not hitting our average metrics and we need to figure out
0:18:18 what we can do better to get the result that we want.
0:18:26 Now, once you have your team goal, you can then figure out your per rep metrics.
0:18:33 So if you have five sales reps, which is the example here, you can then work backwards and
0:18:39 figure out how many direct messages they need to do per week, per day, for the month-long
0:18:46 period, and you don’t only want to figure out how many first step actions you want.
0:18:52 You want them to understand that their ultimate goal is that they need to get 117 webinar attendees
0:18:55 and ultimately 7R webinar conversions.
0:19:02 And the other thing when you’re doing a per rep analysis to think about is that you can then
0:19:05 see who’s doing something differently that’s working better.
0:19:10 So you give two different reps the same goal.
0:19:16 I need you to get 117 webinar attendees, 7 webinar conversions, and somebody does better
0:19:19 even though they sent the same amount of direct messages.
0:19:22 For example, it could be that their message was better.
0:19:24 Maybe they did better follow-ups.
0:19:27 Something about their process is different.
0:19:32 You want to figure out why is this person performing better and how can I then scale that
0:19:35 to my team and keep improving what we’re doing, right?
0:19:42 So it’s really cool to start tracking team-wide, to track per person, and really start to evaluate
0:19:44 all the actions people are doing, okay?
0:19:54 So one thing to remember with activity-based selling is that you are really focused on your
0:19:54 actions.
0:19:57 You’re focused on what you can control.
0:19:59 You’re focused on the process.
0:20:05 And you know that if you do all the right actions, that sales is a volume game and you’ll end up
0:20:06 getting a good result.
0:20:10 And you can’t worry about the results while you’re taking these actions.
0:20:16 You want to have a really strong, confident mindset while you’re activity-based selling.
0:20:21 And we all know that sales is very stressful, right?
0:20:28 Sales is the type of activity where most of the time you’re going to fail.
0:20:33 There’s other professions out there where, like, for example, if you’re an accountant, you learn
0:20:35 the rules of accounting, you’ll be a good accountant.
0:20:40 If you’re an electrician or a plumber, you learn the process of fixing something, you’ll
0:20:42 probably have a good result.
0:20:45 But sales is based on other people’s emotions.
0:20:48 And you can’t control other people.
0:20:52 You can do all the things you know will tend to have a good result.
0:20:54 But at the end, you don’t really know what’s going to happen.
0:21:01 And so you need to approach every single sale, every single interaction with a mindset of confidence
0:21:05 and that you are going to close the deal.
0:21:07 You need to have a high level of confidence.
0:21:15 And you need to be able to control your energy, control your emotions, and just do the actions
0:21:20 that you know you need to do, even if you keep getting no’s along the way, okay?
0:21:23 So you need to replace your anxiety with confidence.
0:21:32 And here we have Shelby Sapp, who is a young sales influencer entrepreneur who’s generated millions
0:21:36 of dollars in sales, and she’s going to talk about becoming a sales psychopath.
0:21:40 So you’re like blowing up on social media.
0:21:43 You’re doing really well on Instagram and TikTok.
0:21:48 And I saw one of your videos and you were talking about how you need to be a sales psychopath.
0:21:51 Oh, yes, you do.
0:21:52 Talk to me about that.
0:21:58 So I like to say you have to be a complete, literal psychopath in sales, because a lot of
0:22:02 people think sales is super cool, the shiny thing, you can make a lot of money.
0:22:04 It’s like, yes, but you don’t get paid to show up.
0:22:07 You get paid to go the extra mile.
0:22:12 And sales is something to where it’s a direct reflection of your work ethic.
0:22:18 So if you really want to make it worth it and to be that top 1% cream of the crop, you have
0:22:25 to be a little bit of a psycho, not only in your work ethic, but also in your ability to
0:22:29 just know how to regulate your emotions throughout the day.
0:22:35 Like, for example, you’re going to go call, call, call, door, door, door of no, no, no, no.
0:22:39 But you have to go into every single encounter thinking, this is the sale.
0:22:41 This is the person that’s going to buy from me.
0:22:45 When maybe the last 10 people told you to yourself, you know?
0:22:49 So to me, that’s so psychotic because that’s not normal.
0:22:50 That’s not normal human behavior.
0:22:57 You have to trick yourself into being this psychopathic mentality in order to really reap,
0:23:00 in my opinion, the true benefits of sales.
0:23:04 Because that really does come from the top of the top, the best of the best.
0:23:09 It’s so true because like nobody really knows like what your track record is.
0:23:12 Nobody knows how many sales you made before that day.
0:23:14 The customer knows nothing about you.
0:23:15 They don’t know your ranking.
0:23:17 They don’t know anything about you.
0:23:22 So you can come there with good energy and, you know, just have the confidence and know
0:23:25 your stuff and they have no idea how well you’ve done in the past.
0:23:26 Exactly.
0:23:32 And it sounds so simple, but it’s really not because having that conviction in your voice
0:23:38 and that sure tone and that confidence, that energy and the aura, when you just got demolished
0:23:41 by every single person before is so hard.
0:23:44 But like you said, they really have no clue.
0:23:50 So you almost have to like brainwash yourself into being like, this is the client that’s going
0:23:50 to buy.
0:23:54 And that one client that buys, that commission is going to make up for all of the no’s that
0:23:55 you had that day.
0:24:00 So all it takes is the one you can’t let the other people get to.
0:24:01 Yeah.
0:24:03 So you heard it from Shelby.
0:24:05 You’ve got to become a sales psychopath.
0:24:09 That means approaching every opportunity, like you’re going to get the sale.
0:24:14 That means not being worried about what happened before and just being in the moment, focusing
0:24:15 on the process.
0:24:19 Like we said, focusing on the activities, the actions you have to take, having a really good
0:24:24 work ethic and making sure that you hit the actions, no matter what the results were in
0:24:24 the process.
0:24:28 After the event is over, it’s not about ignoring the results.
0:24:31 We want to evaluate the results once it’s over.
0:24:34 Once the event is over, once the month is over, we evaluate what we did.
0:24:36 How can we be better?
0:24:40 But in the moment, it’s all about the actions that you take and the volume of the actions
0:24:45 and just being as positive and as confident as you can in that moment, whether it’s in
0:24:48 DMs or on the phone or in person.
0:24:49 Okay.
0:24:51 So we had some questions.
0:24:56 So we had some questions.
0:24:58 I’m going to just go back and clarify some things.
0:25:04 So just to make sure that everybody is on the same page.
0:25:07 Somebody had a question, course conversions versus attendees.
0:25:12 So I’m going to go back to this really quick.
0:25:16 So conversions are people who actually bought the course.
0:25:18 Attendees are people who attended the webinars.
0:25:20 So that’s how granular you want to get.
0:25:21 Okay.
0:25:23 So you send a DM.
0:25:24 The DM has an opt-in link.
0:25:26 People click that link.
0:25:28 Then they go to an opt-in page for the webinar.
0:25:33 They type in their name, their email, and they register for the event.
0:25:34 They get a calendar event.
0:25:39 There’s probably some automated emails that happen because they give their email.
0:25:40 They register for the event.
0:25:45 But then only 50% of the people show up to the webinar, right?
0:25:46 Then you do the webinar.
0:25:51 And if they buy on the webinar or afterwards, that’s up to you to decide what the time period
0:25:55 is of tracking conversions associated with that webinar.
0:25:59 And that’s people who actually buy, right?
0:26:01 So hopefully that answers your question.
0:26:04 How do you send 10K DMs efficiently?
0:26:06 Virtual assistants.
0:26:11 On LinkedIn, your DMs are unlimited to your first connections.
0:26:14 So it’s just all about getting first connections.
0:26:16 And then you can DM them whenever you want.
0:26:17 Question.
0:26:22 If this is new Salesforce and do not have much past history, do you use past sales from other
0:26:23 salespeople?
0:26:23 Yes.
0:26:28 You can just use past sales data from other people, other events that you’ve had.
0:26:32 And then you can try to tailor it once you have more realistic information about your new
0:26:33 sales team.
0:26:37 What strategies to manipulate conversion rate?
0:26:41 We’re going to talk about that later when we talk about optimizing funnels.
0:26:42 All right.
0:26:43 Cool.
0:26:45 I think those were all the questions.
0:26:48 Okay.
0:26:51 So do you guys want to lean into activity-based selling?
0:26:53 Is this different from what you’ve already been doing?
0:26:54 Yeah.
0:26:59 This is also something that you’ve probably done before, but like things get busy and then
0:27:01 you just kind of like are on a hamster wheel.
0:27:06 And it’s always good to just like reset, especially in the beginning of the year.
0:27:09 And also make sure you stop doing things that are not effective.
0:27:15 Or you can kind of optimize, like we were talking about, we’re going to talk about optimizing
0:27:15 funnels.
0:27:22 You can optimize a step that might not have like industry standard performance.
0:27:29 Like for example, let’s say, you know, your conversion rate is 2%, but it should be 6%.
0:27:30 So what do you need to do differently?
0:27:30 Right?
0:27:33 So I think just evaluating what you’re doing is always smart.
0:27:35 Slowing down, stepping back.
0:27:41 Can you guys see yourself using a bottom-up strategy if you’re not using one yet?
0:27:43 All right.
0:27:48 So according to Pipedrive, sales team used the following tracking.
0:27:54 4% pen and paper, 17% spreadsheets, 79% CRM software.
0:27:56 What are you using today?
0:27:57 Or are you not tracking at all?
0:28:00 Let me know in the chat.
0:28:03 Are you using pen and paper, spreadsheets, CRMs?
0:28:07 Well, that’s what Pipedrive is.
0:28:13 Just so you guys know, Pipedrive literally was started to revolve around activity-based selling.
0:28:19 That’s like their whole ethos is that sales is all about the actions you take and to be more
0:28:21 activity-focused rather than results-focused.
0:28:28 So pipeline management is an incredible way to visualize your sales process, to track all
0:28:29 your activities.
0:28:34 Having the right CRM is crucial for your sales success.
0:28:38 And this is coming from Pipedrive’s website.
0:28:42 We believe that in sales and marketing, just like in life, you can’t control the results,
0:28:45 but you can control the actions that drive deals towards completion.
0:28:51 So their whole thing is designed around helping you understand all the actions that you’re taking,
0:28:57 tracking that automatically, and being able to see if there’s anything going wrong.
0:29:01 It actually has like AI that will tell you, you need to do more emails, you need to do
0:29:01 more calls.
0:29:07 And you just basically input that historical data so that Pipedrive knows how to guide you
0:29:09 and your sales team along the way.
0:29:19 Pipedrive is a CRM that enables you to customize your sales process based on your specific individualized
0:29:20 sales funnels.
0:29:25 It was specifically designed by salespeople for salespeople.
0:29:28 It is both a sales tracking tool and a CRM.
0:29:33 So there’s lots of CRMs out there that are really focused on communications and contact management.
0:29:42 Pipedrive is both a sales tracking activity, sales tracking tool, and a CRM, traditional CRM,
0:29:46 where you can see every single email you’ve sent, every single DM you’ve sent, save all
0:29:47 your contact information.
0:29:50 Pipedrive also has a lot of automations.
0:29:57 They’re really innovative, and they’ve got lots of new AI tools that are really exciting
0:29:58 that are coming out.
0:30:00 You can do automated follow-ups.
0:30:03 You can do AI-generated email templates.
0:30:05 And then they have amazing reporting.
0:30:08 I think my favorite part about Pipedrive is all the reporting that they have.
0:30:11 And in our demo, we’re going to show you what their reporting looks like.
0:30:18 Pipedrive is also a very popular platform that’s integrated with every single app that
0:30:18 you can imagine.
0:30:23 So you can check out their integrations during your free trial.
0:30:32 So we have more content after this, about 45 minutes of educational content.
0:30:35 But before we do that, we’re going to start the demo.
0:30:37 You guys already signed up to the demo.
0:30:40 If you guys have not yet, please go ahead and do that.
0:30:42 Drop that link in the chat.
0:30:47 Kate, we’re not going to spend a ton of time because I had everybody who was on earlier sign
0:30:47 up.
0:30:52 And I’m going to answer some questions while you guys do that.
0:30:54 If you guys have not done it yet, please sign up.
0:30:56 Let me know down in the chat if you’ve done that.
0:31:01 Mark is asking, if one only uses Pipedrive, should that be the only tool to stay around
0:31:01 to track your sales?
0:31:04 Or would you recommend also tracking in Excel as well?
0:31:09 I think that if you set up Pipedrive properly, you won’t need to use Excel.
0:31:14 That’s the whole point is that you want to get out of spreadsheets and move to Pipedrive
0:31:15 to track all your sales.
0:31:22 And Pipedrive on their blog has all this documentation of like how you can basically make that transition.
0:31:26 So if you’ve been tracking in sheets, that’s great because you basically have the foundation
0:31:30 to then, you know, upload that information into Pipedrive.
0:31:34 Let’s hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.
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0:33:08 Hey, App Fam.
0:33:12 Do you guys know that feeling when you’re juggling a dozen sales leads with your team?
0:33:17 You’re trying to close all these deals, and then suddenly you realize, wait, did we forget
0:33:18 to follow up with so-and-so?
0:33:19 Shoot.
0:33:20 Nobody did.
0:33:23 And now we lost the deal because we weren’t organized.
0:33:27 Yeah, fam, you’ve got to get the right system in place for your pipeline management if you
0:33:28 want to scale your business.
0:33:32 And my favorite CRM and sales tracking tool is PipeDrive.
0:33:36 They’re the first CRM made by salespeople for salespeople.
0:33:41 PipeDrive visualizes your sales process, and it’s really all you need to track your sales,
0:33:43 communications, contacts, and run your team meetings.
0:33:46 PipeDrive has a powerful pipeline management.
0:33:49 You can see exactly where every lead stands at a glance.
0:33:54 They’ve got automated reminders and follow-ups to increase your productivity, and it eliminates
0:33:56 repetitive, time-consuming tasks.
0:34:01 PipeDrive’s CRM features were developed around the principle of activity-based selling.
0:34:06 They have real-time reports and an AI assistant that helps you focus on the activities that are
0:34:08 most likely to lead to a sale.
0:34:10 And PipeDrive is always innovating.
0:34:13 In fact, they’re gearing up to launch a whole new suite of AI tools.
0:34:17 With PipeDrive, you’re not just managing your sales, you’re supercharging them.
0:34:22 So if you’re ready to take your sales game to the next level, head over to youngandprofiting.co
0:34:25 slash sales and start your free 14-day trial today.
0:34:31 That’s youngandprofiting.co slash sales for your free 14-day trial on PipeDrive.
0:34:35 Yeah, bam, it’s 2025, and a new year means new opportunities.
0:34:40 For a lot of you out there, I know you’ve been thinking about one thing over the holidays,
0:34:43 and that’s starting your own business or side hustle.
0:34:45 But of course, you’ve got so many questions.
0:34:46 How do I get started?
0:34:48 How do I come up with a brand?
0:34:50 How am I actually going to sell things to people?
0:34:55 Well, yeah, bam, I want you to take a deep breath because Shopify’s got you.
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0:36:08 Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash profiting.
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0:36:14 Go to shopify.com slash profiting to start selling on Shopify today.
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0:36:24 Okay.
0:36:26 All right.
0:36:30 So if you guys want to sign in and follow along the demo, you can.
0:36:33 If you want to just pay attention and play with it later, go for it.
0:36:34 It’s up to you.
0:36:37 But if you have access, you can actually follow along during the demo.
0:36:43 And now I have Eamon from my sales team going over a demo account of Pipedrive to just show
0:36:47 you guys specifically how you can use Pipedrive for activity-based selling.
0:36:51 We’re not going to go into like too much of like the contact stuff that is traditional CRM.
0:36:55 We’re really focused on how this is related to activity-based selling.
0:36:58 Hello, everyone.
0:36:58 I’m Eamon.
0:37:03 And today I’m going to walk you through how our sales team uses the core features at Pipedrive
0:37:05 to crush sales every year.
0:37:06 Let’s get started.
0:37:10 So the first step in Pipedrive is to set up your pipeline stages.
0:37:16 Think of your pipeline as a visual representation of every step a deal goes through before it closes.
0:37:21 Pipedrive allows you to fully customize these stages so they match your specific
0:37:22 sales process.
0:37:24 Here is how to do it.
0:37:27 Click on the pipeline button in the right corner of your dashboard.
0:37:34 Create or rename your stages to reflect your steps you typically take, such as prospecting,
0:37:38 qualifying leads, closing the deal, signing the contract, and so on.
0:37:42 As you can see, Pipedrive already gives you a template that you can use.
0:37:48 So once you set up your stages, you can start adding deals into the appropriate stage right
0:37:48 away.
0:37:53 The visual approach keeps your team aligned and ensures nothing slips through the cracks.
0:37:58 Next, let’s talk about focusing on actions that move the deal forward.
0:38:05 It’s easy to get caught up in the final outcome causing the deal, but really the day-to-day
0:38:08 activities are what makes the difference in the sales process.
0:38:16 So a sales activity in Pipedrive can be anything from a phone call, an email, or a scheduled meeting
0:38:19 to a launch maybe, for example, with a potential client.
0:38:24 Whatever you need to do to nurture that deal, you can log it in and schedule it in Pipedrive.
0:38:26 Here’s a quick example.
0:38:28 Let’s say you have a new lead.
0:38:34 You might schedule a discovery call, then follow it up with an email and confirm the next steps.
0:38:40 Pipedrive will book these times in your calendar and remind you of these activities, so you’re
0:38:45 always on top of your tasks and never miss an opportunity to connect.
0:38:52 As you work on deals and complete activities, Pipedrive will provide you with real-time tracking
0:38:58 and insights to help you crush your sales and refine your approach.
0:39:03 If you need to adjust course, let’s say you notice a conversion rate drops when moving the
0:39:09 deal to a qualified stage, with Pipedrive reports, you can spot these trends early and take correctional
0:39:14 actions, maybe offering a more compelling proposal, dedicating more time to customer needs in
0:39:15 that stage.
0:39:22 This kind of feasibility ensures that you and your team can pivot quickly and keep hitting
0:39:23 your goals.
0:39:28 Finally, when you have your pipeline set up, you’re focusing on the right actions and you’re
0:39:32 tracking progress, it’s time to optimize and grow.
0:39:38 Pipedrive’s automations help you scale your sales process and achieve even bigger goals.
0:39:44 For example, the automations can take care of administrative tasks, like sending follow-up
0:39:51 emails, you can schedule the follow-ups beforehand, or updating deal stages, saving you time and
0:39:51 effort.
0:39:57 As you refine your winning formula, you can set even bigger sales goals and continue to push
0:39:59 your team to new heights.
0:40:01 All right, this is Pipedrive in a nutshell.
0:40:04 Hope you got some insights and back to the webinar.
0:40:13 So as you can see, super effective, especially those of you who are not using a CRM yet, even
0:40:20 if you are using a CRM, one that is designed specifically around your sales process is super
0:40:25 helpful so that you can do activity-based selling, not have to work in spreadsheets and be able
0:40:29 to just see your dashboard to evaluate how things are going.
0:40:31 Hello, everyone.
0:40:32 I’m Eamon.
0:40:35 Yeah, I think Pipedrive would definitely be good for a recruitment agency.
0:40:37 It would work for any sales funnel.
0:40:43 And the beauty of Pipedrive compared to other CRMs is that you can totally customize your
0:40:44 steps in the process.
0:40:48 But like I said, you need to just outline what your sales steps are first.
0:40:54 So if you guys aren’t using Pipedrive right now, are you excited to give it a try?
0:40:56 You’ve got a 14 free day free trial.
0:41:00 Are you excited to give it a try and see if it will work for you guys?
0:41:03 Okay, we see a lot of yeses.
0:41:04 What about forecasting?
0:41:07 Yes, Pipedrive has forecasting abilities.
0:41:12 Pipedrive is one of the most reputable CRMs in the industry.
0:41:17 So anything that like HubSpot would have or any other CRMs, Pipedrive has.
0:41:21 And it’s more of like a nimble tool.
0:41:24 And I’d also say that it’s really great for small teams.
0:41:25 It’s more affordable.
0:41:27 HubSpot’s very expensive.
0:41:35 But yeah, so I feel like it’s just a really, really great option for smaller businesses and
0:41:36 sales teams.
0:41:42 Okay, so if you guys want to sign up to Pipedrive, you can click that link.
0:41:47 If you already haven’t yet, you already get the 20% off your annual if you end up signing up.
0:41:51 And right now you have a free 14-day trial to give it a spin.
0:41:55 That’s how we started with Pipedrive before they were even a sponsor or a partner.
0:41:58 We just used it for 14 days and we loved it.
0:42:01 And we just moved all our sales ops to Pipedrive.
0:42:03 So give it a try.
0:42:04 You don’t really have anything to lose.
0:42:06 You don’t have to put your credit card.
0:42:11 I would just set up some sales funnels, try to see if you like the ease of use.
0:42:13 It’s a really intuitive tool.
0:42:15 It’s very easy to use.
0:42:19 Okay, let’s move on to optimizing our funnels.
0:42:23 So here is Sean Cannell.
0:42:26 So now we’re going to move on into how do we actually improve our conversions?
0:42:32 How do we improve all the different activities that we’re doing and continue to get better?
0:42:35 Because it’s not only about taking more actions.
0:42:38 It’s also about stepping back and figuring out what is broken.
0:42:42 How can I improve so that I can ultimately get more conversions and better results?
0:42:49 And this is what you do once the period of sales is over when you’re analyzing everything that you’ve done in the past.
0:42:52 So here’s Sean Cannell on your funnels being broken.
0:42:55 And then it’s kind of like online marketing best practices.
0:43:05 I think the naming of whatever you’re giving away free, the desire of what you’re giving away free, alignment on the entire thing and congruency.
0:43:08 Congruency is that when they land on the page, they’re on the right page.
0:43:11 People have horrible landing pages, navigation above.
0:43:13 It doesn’t even seem like it’s them.
0:43:14 There’s not authority there.
0:43:15 It doesn’t load.
0:43:17 It’s like malware notification.
0:43:18 There’s all kinds.
0:43:19 I mean, it’s kind of stressful.
0:43:21 Someone’s like, man, there’s so many things.
0:43:22 You just want to remove friction.
0:43:30 Sometimes the biggest mistake is like you’re making a video that have people thinking one way and giving a call to action that’s not related.
0:43:37 Think about what video would attract the ideal person for your opt-in.
0:43:43 What opt-in would attract the ideal person for your offer?
0:43:48 And those things are broken all the time in people’s businesses.
0:43:58 Like someone opts in, but they’re not the right psychology, psychographics, demographics, because it was a cool free thing, but did it really align?
0:44:15 And then the YouTube videos, if you were talking about how to hire team members in a video, and then you were like, and by the way, if you want to download my 21 tax savings guide, like not horrible, because maybe some people are like, that does sound interesting.
0:44:35 The reason they’re there, the better guide would be a freebie that’s like, you know, and if you want to get my scripts, my job interview scripts for how to really filter out the wrong candidates and lock in the right candidates, just go to think filter, thinkhiringscripts.com or click the link in the description.
0:44:43 So that would be my biggest thing is like, I think the strategy of the content that attracts the right people, then the opt-in that ties together concruency and the whole thing.
0:44:52 And then again, a good sales process and funnels, you know, you probably have endless episodes in your own library of some good stuff on making great funnels.
0:45:05 But what’s powerful about that is it is a psychology, everybody listening to this needs to know, thinking about their whole, you could call it sales journey, the whole customer journey, thinking about the entire thing start to finish.
0:45:08 And that is a never ending process of tweaking.
0:45:09 Yep.
0:45:10 All of us could improve it.
0:45:13 My we, ours is probably a six out of 10.
0:45:15 And we’ve done pretty well.
0:45:19 Like there’s, there’s so many, you know, things that small tweaks lead to giant peaks.
0:45:22 And so just being willing to be like, can I change my opt-in in the future?
0:45:24 Can I change my offer page?
0:45:29 As I’m just my offer page, the checkout page, and the thank you page, and, and then follow up.
0:45:30 And what do I want to do next?
0:45:31 And is that all aligned?
0:45:38 And usually when, when things are not working, it’s just because a piece is broken and there’s some kind of like cognitive dissonance that happens or something.
0:45:44 Sometimes from YouTube to your landing page, it’s, it’s not quite what it looked like.
0:45:46 And, and, you know, all these little details like that.
0:45:54 One of my, so hopefully that gets you in the mindset of being willing to analyze your entire funnel.
0:45:57 So not only the activities you do, but what is the language on the page?
0:45:58 What does it look like?
0:46:00 Is anything broken, right?
0:46:03 So that should be helpful.
0:46:04 And then it’s kind of like online.
0:46:13 And Russell is going to talk about actual strategies for optimizing these content pages.
0:46:15 I love that.
0:46:18 And I can, I can just hear all the passion in your voice.
0:46:19 And I teach marketing too.
0:46:23 And something that I always tell my students is like, it’s all about the nuance, right?
0:46:29 It’s like these little tiny tweaks that get people to make the decisions that you want them to make.
0:46:35 So can you talk about subtle nuances that people can do within their funnels that can make or break their funnels?
0:46:36 Yeah.
0:46:38 So first off, it comes back to what I mentioned earlier.
0:46:42 So there’s always three things in every page of a funnel.
0:46:43 So the hook, the story, the offer.
0:46:47 And I always tell people like, if you were to hire me, I do console days for a hundred grand a day.
0:46:48 People fly out here.
0:46:52 Like I always tell them like, all the thing I’m going to do is I’m going to look at every page of the funnel and it’s either going to be a hook, a story, or the offer.
0:46:54 Like one of those things is, is always off, right?
0:47:02 So a good example, I have someone that’s in my inner circle and they had a webinar that was teaching people how to like make money with local reviews or something like that, right?
0:47:04 And they had this webinar and they had a webinar that was really good.
0:47:07 They had a landing page, register, everything was there, right?
0:47:12 But it was costing them, I think on average, it cost them like $25 per lead to get someone to register for a webinar.
0:47:17 And then from that, it was like, I think they’re like 12% of the people who registered actually showed up.
0:47:21 So it’s costing them like $150 for every person to show up on this webinar.
0:47:23 And then the webinars actually converted to really good.
0:47:28 Like they’re teaching the process, they sold a really good offer and they did really, really well, but it was just, the conversions were bad.
0:47:31 And so they wanted me to help them rebuild the entire funnel and the webinar and everything.
0:47:34 And I was like, I don’t think it’s that big.
0:47:35 I think you’re just missing one thing.
0:47:42 And I said, when I look at the registration page, their headline was something like, learn how to make money with helping local businesses with local reviews.
0:47:45 I was like, the problem with that is there’s no curiosity.
0:47:46 When I see that, I’m like, oh, this is a webinar.
0:47:50 Teach people how to make, you know, they’re going to teach me how to make money with local reviews.
0:47:54 And if you think you know the answer already, then first off, you’re not going to register.
0:47:58 And if you do register, you may or may not show up, but you’re like, I think I know this is about register.
0:48:00 And if I’m, you know, if I’m bored, maybe I’ll show up.
0:48:00 Right.
0:48:02 And so all we did is we took that.
0:48:06 I was like, let’s just change the hook and make it more like, let’s make more curiosity in the hook.
0:48:10 And so we changed it from how to make money, teaching people how to do local reviews or whatever.
0:48:18 To like, um, if something like this is the loophole we found to help, uh, make extra money, uh, helping local businesses.
0:48:20 And this is not, and we talked about all the things it wasn’t.
0:48:21 This is not doing Facebook ads.
0:48:22 This is not doing Instagram.
0:48:23 This is whatever.
0:48:24 All the things that people might think it was.
0:48:25 Talk about what it was not.
0:48:28 Instead, register to find out exactly what this new thing is.
0:48:30 And then we’ll show you how to use inside your business.
0:48:32 So we just made it more curiosity based.
0:48:34 That’s all we changed on the registration page.
0:48:37 And it went from like $25 per registrant.
0:48:39 And I started getting registrants at $5 a piece.
0:48:41 So drop the cost down to one fifth.
0:48:45 And then because people didn’t know what it was, unless they showed up, the red, their show break
0:48:47 went from like 12% to like 26%.
0:48:48 Wow.
0:48:51 So between those two things, all of a sudden the metrics, the business changed.
0:48:55 And this funnel went on to make them millions of dollars just by changing a hook on a page.
0:48:56 Right.
0:48:57 So that’s how it’s like you talk about.
0:49:01 It’s just like simple psychology that these little tiny tweaks, little tiny changes have
0:49:03 huge impact across the funnel.
0:49:03 Right.
0:49:05 And so for me, like, that’s what I’m always looking for.
0:49:08 That’s why I look at so many people’s funnels just to get ideas of like, oh, look how they
0:49:09 did that.
0:49:10 Look how they did this.
0:49:14 And the more I see people buying ads, like the telltale sign of like, people always ask
0:49:15 me, how do you know a funnel is working?
0:49:19 Like if the company is spending a lot of money on ads, you keep seeing it over and over and
0:49:21 over again, they’re probably are doing something right.
0:49:22 And so I’ll click on it.
0:49:24 I’ll go look at like, oh, look how they did that.
0:49:24 Look how they frame that.
0:49:26 Look how they made this offer.
0:49:29 Look what, you know, and we’re just looking at those little things and they’ll come back
0:49:30 and test them on our pages.
0:49:34 And like I said, a little tweak like that can dramatically change the metrics of a business.
0:49:38 So it’s like searching for buried treasure and then applying it back to your business,
0:49:39 which is so much fun.
0:49:46 So I love what Russell said, especially at the end of analyzing your competitor funnels.
0:49:48 Who is your competitor?
0:49:50 What are their funnels looking like?
0:49:54 What activities do they do for top of funnel, for mid funnel?
0:49:56 What are their landing pages look like?
0:49:58 What is the language that they’re using?
0:50:04 And you can take their, like the things that you think are working well for them and apply
0:50:05 it to your own business.
0:50:10 And so not only optimizing your funnels, but optimizing, but analyzing your competitors’
0:50:11 funnels.
0:50:13 I love that.
0:50:13 And I can.
0:50:21 So an example of this is something that we do at YAP and that we’ve tried to fix, which
0:50:22 is our attendance rate.
0:50:24 Our attendance rate is great for webinars.
0:50:27 We get a 50% average attendance rate.
0:50:34 However, I interviewed Kat Norton and she told me that for webinar registrants, she gets
0:50:39 a drastic increase in her attendance rate by collecting people’s phone numbers and then
0:50:40 texting them.
0:50:48 So an example of optimizing a funnel for us would be to start testing text.
0:50:55 And so if we were to just not change anything, so if I just had the team continue doing 10,000
0:51:02 DMs, but we implemented text reminders, which can be automated and we’re able to jump from
0:51:09 50% attendance rate to 80% attendance rate, I can hit my 35K-ish goal with that change and
0:51:12 not necessarily sending out more DMs.
0:51:18 So it can really have big impacts and you want to see like what part of your funnel can
0:51:19 you actually improve?
0:51:21 Is there a way that you can improve the click-through rate?
0:51:26 Is there a way that you can improve the conversion rate on the actual event, right?
0:51:28 So you always want to look at that and try to optimize.
0:51:34 So based on everything you just heard, are you inspired to start optimizing your funnels?
0:51:39 And if so, like what’s one idea that you will do after this call?
0:51:42 Well, thank you guys.
0:51:44 You can listen to all those episodes.
0:51:47 Kate, maybe you can drop the episode links in the chat.
0:51:49 That Russell Brunson episode was epic.
0:51:54 I have so many sales episodes, guys.
0:51:57 I’ve interviewed every single human behavior and sales person in the world.
0:52:01 Okay.
0:52:05 So benchmarks for conversion rates.
0:52:09 They’re going to be different by industry, but that’s something you can go on ChatGPT and
0:52:10 check out.
0:52:13 That’s going to be totally different for every single activity.
0:52:18 It’s going to be totally different for every single type of event.
0:52:22 So for example, like webinar events are going to have different conversion rates than a sales
0:52:27 call, but you can find that information online.
0:52:33 And you can also use your own past results as your benchmark and just keep improving from
0:52:34 there.
0:52:39 Working backwards, figuring out how to automate, laying out the funnel.
0:52:40 Yeah.
0:52:42 The hook story offer is brilliant.
0:52:45 That entire episode with Russell is amazing.
0:52:50 Also, if you guys want more webinar content, I’ll write this in the chat.
0:52:52 I have a two-part series with Jason Fladline.
0:53:00 And we go over how to create the best webinar ever for like two hours.
0:53:03 So if you guys want to get into webinars, check that out.
0:53:07 We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
0:53:09 Yeah, fam.
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0:54:43 Young and profiters, I know so many of you are in your grind season.
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0:58:00 So let’s talk about prioritizing your time.
0:58:04 Now, a lot of us seem like we’re selling services.
0:58:09 It also sounded like you guys are taking a lot of sales calls.
0:58:14 I saw discovery calls a lot in the chat when I was asking what your different activities were.
0:58:19 So when you’re not selling one-to-many, you really have to be careful with your time.
0:58:24 You’ve got to make sure that you’re taking the right calls, that you’re focused on the right thing,
0:58:28 because time is the most precious asset that we have.
0:58:36 And Chris Voss told me once, it’s not a sin to lose business, but it’s a sin to take a long time losing business.
0:58:44 So you want to make sure when you’re on these sales calls, you’re trying to disqualify whoever you’re talking to as soon as possible
0:58:48 so that you can focus your time on the people who are actually going to buy from you.
0:58:54 You don’t want to just be a busy bee taking calls that are like very low probability.
0:58:59 You want to focus your time on your best case scenarios with your sales.
0:59:04 So you want to think about, are you the fool or the favorite?
0:59:04 Okay.
0:59:12 So as soon as you get on a sales call, your number one goal is to figure out, are you the fool or the favorite?
0:59:18 Because when somebody gets on a sales call with you, they’re 70% made up before they even get on the call.
0:59:20 They know if they’re going to work with you or not.
0:59:26 And oftentimes they’re just using you as a reference, like doing their due diligence.
0:59:32 They may not actually be like intentionally like trying to waste their time.
0:59:37 They might think they should be getting three bids or whatever it is, but their mind is already made up.
0:59:39 And you need to decide, like, are you the fool or the favorite?
0:59:43 So you’re the fool if they’re asking you for free information.
0:59:45 They just keep asking you for stuff.
0:59:48 They’re really unresponsive.
0:59:49 They keep you waiting.
0:59:50 They miss the first call.
0:59:51 They’re late.
0:59:53 They don’t respect you.
0:59:54 They don’t respect your time.
0:59:57 They’re all about price, right?
1:00:03 They’re asking for the lowest price early on, or they won’t introduce you to any decision makers.
1:00:05 So they’re just wasting your time, okay?
1:00:10 Your favorite, on the other hand, is they’re treating you like an insider.
1:00:14 They’re sharing exclusive details.
1:00:18 They’re talking about how they’re going to work with you, not if you can do something for them.
1:00:20 They treat you with respect.
1:00:21 They’re seeking out your input.
1:00:23 They’re treating you like a trusted advisor.
1:00:27 They’re bringing the key decision maker on the call.
1:00:31 They’re negotiating what they’re going to get in the deal, not necessarily the price.
1:00:33 They respect your prices.
1:00:34 They respect your work.
1:00:39 And so you need to find out if you’re the fool or favorite early on.
1:00:41 And part of that is just paying attention, right?
1:00:44 Paying attention to what’s happening, what happened before the call.
1:00:51 And you can take a 15-minute call to, like, 100% solidify if you’re the fool or the favorite.
1:00:55 If you’re the fool, you want to disqualify your weak leads early.
1:00:57 You want to ask direct questions.
1:01:02 You want to, instead of lowering price, shift the conversation to value, differentiation.
1:01:10 And you also could try to uncover gaps and ask, like, you know, what would it take for us to be your first choice, right?
1:01:15 And, you know, if you’ve got a lot of options, just, sorry, we’re not a fit.
1:01:22 You know, they could come back to you and you can be the favorite because you put your foot down and stayed confident and assertive.
1:01:26 Now, for the favorite, you want to stay confident.
1:01:27 You want to stay assertive.
1:01:35 You also don’t want to give them time to think, to basically reconvince them that you’re not the favorite.
1:01:37 So you want to close quickly.
1:01:38 You don’t want to let them second guess.
1:01:42 You want to push for the highest pricing, better terms.
1:01:46 You definitely don’t want to throw out free promotions if you’re already the favorite, right?
1:01:55 So once you know you’re the favorite, offer stands as it is, there’s no flexibility in price, close quickly, and you’ll do well.
1:01:58 So there’s a magic question.
1:02:02 And we’re going to hear about it from Chris Voss.
1:02:07 So what questions should we ask ourselves to understand whether we’re the fool or the favorite?
1:02:15 Ask yourselves, how can I fearlessly find out early on without hurting anybody’s feelings?
1:02:18 Because I’m not going to ask legitimate questions.
1:02:22 How do I allow myself to find out early on whether or not I’m the favorite or the fool?
1:02:24 If you don’t want to try, you’re holding yourself hostage.
1:02:29 I mean, release yourself because you’re the one that’s holding you back.
1:02:32 And this scares the heck out of so many people.
1:02:38 If they can get over this hurdle, if they can just put themselves in a mindset to find out,
1:02:45 then they’re going to be a long way towards using these skills because it’s about releasing yourself in many ways.
1:02:46 Steve, would you agree?
1:02:47 Absolutely.
1:02:59 And this is a concept that I really resonated with because in football, this is what we were trained to do, read the situation.
1:03:01 Read and react, read and react.
1:03:05 There’s lots of clues and you’re looking for the clues.
1:03:07 You just have to know what you’re looking for.
1:03:11 No one knew that there was a favorite and a fool.
1:03:15 The moment you start looking for the clues, they’re all over the place.
1:03:17 It’s not a sin to lose business.
1:03:20 It’s a sin to take a long time losing business.
1:03:28 And, you know, the real reason why real estate agents work seven days a week is because they don’t work five.
1:03:36 If they actually work five days a week, actually work, rather than spending time chasing after business they’re not going to get,
1:03:38 they wouldn’t have to work seven days a week.
1:03:40 They wouldn’t have to be on call 24-7.
1:03:43 So I take sales calls all the time.
1:03:49 They usually start with some sort of discovery call where you try to figure out what’s the client’s problems.
1:03:50 Can I help them?
1:03:51 Can I not help them?
1:03:55 So what are the things that we can do in that conversation to know whether we’re the fool or the favorites?
1:03:58 What are the things that people do or say that will give us clues?
1:04:09 Well, the first thing is to just ask what is the most horrifying question for everybody until they understand how good it is.
1:04:13 And that’s to say to the other person, you got a lot of options out there.
1:04:16 I mean, I got solid competitors.
1:04:17 You could go to them.
1:04:18 They got great resumes.
1:04:20 Why me?
1:04:26 That is like the magic phrase.
1:04:30 I mean, it’s an emotional, intelligent, surgical strike.
1:04:37 Why does certain things to people that are vastly different than what is normally portrayed out there?
1:04:39 Why is like this?
1:04:42 It’s an emotional, intelligent, surgical strike.
1:04:52 You should never ask why unless you want them to defend you because why always triggers defensiveness,
1:04:54 which is the bad advice.
1:04:59 Find out their why is good advice, but it doesn’t tell you that you shouldn’t ask them why.
1:05:08 Except if the why is about you and you are going to get an unguarded, honest answer or you’re not going to get an answer.
1:05:12 And if you don’t get an answer, why you?
1:05:14 There ain’t no why for you there at all.
1:05:15 That’s so interesting.
1:05:17 So basically, you’re asking, why me?
1:05:24 Because you want to get a gauge of how much they respect you and if they’ve picked you already and how much research they’re done.
1:05:26 So if they say, if I say, why me?
1:05:28 And they’re like, Holly, you’re the number one LinkedIn expert.
1:05:31 Everybody knows you make all the influencers on LinkedIn.
1:05:33 Then I know, okay, I am the favorite.
1:05:40 But if they say, I Googled you and you popped up and I’m interviewing three other people, then I might be the fool, right?
1:05:49 Or that one or, you know, what a lot of people throw back on you, the person who either is taking advantage of you on purpose.
1:05:51 And a lot of people are doing it by accident.
1:05:54 They don’t mean to be, you know, they’re taught that it’s okay, get three bits.
1:06:00 But they’re going to say, well, it’s up to you to convince me.
1:06:06 And if they throw it back on you like that or in some fashion, you are the fool in the game.
1:06:09 So good.
1:06:16 Has that ever happened to anybody where they, like somebody said, you’ve got to convince me, show me what you can do.
1:06:23 So what questions should we ask?
1:06:25 Of course it’s happening.
1:06:29 So now you guys got this magic question in your pocket.
1:06:34 The next time you hop on a discovery call, you can instantly find out if you’re the fool or the favorite.
1:06:36 You can say, hey, why me?
1:06:38 Why did you want to work with me?
1:06:48 So, and it also puts you in the power seat because it shows that you’re not desperate, that you’re asking such a vulnerable question to your sales lead.
1:06:50 Okay.
1:06:53 Exactly.
1:06:57 And you don’t really want to work with somebody who you, you have to prove yourself.
1:07:01 You want to start the relationship, especially a lot of you guys mentioned that you’re like a small team.
1:07:06 You might be working directly with the client that you’re not only selling, you’re probably executing the offer afterwards too.
1:07:08 You want to work with somebody who already respects you.
1:07:13 You don’t want to work with somebody who like wants you to keep proving your, proving yourself, right?
1:07:17 They’re going to be bad clients, which brings me to the next point.
1:07:24 So, also, when you’re evaluating your clients, you want to think about are they halves or elves?
1:07:29 So, half is a hard, annoying, lame, frustrating client.
1:07:33 These are high maintenance, low profit clients or deals.
1:07:35 They require a lot of effort.
1:07:36 They drain your energy.
1:07:38 They often don’t pay well.
1:07:39 They’re haggling you.
1:07:42 They cause stress, delays, endless negotiations.
1:07:47 They might be like really unresponsive or too responsive.
1:07:48 They always want your time.
1:07:50 They think you work only for them and you have no other clients.
1:07:54 Compared to elves, they’re easy, they’re lucrative, they’re fun.
1:07:59 These are your ideal clients that are profitable, enjoyable, efficient.
1:08:00 They respect your time and expertise.
1:08:03 They don’t haggle over price and cause unnecessary headaches.
1:08:09 So, if you go and you try to convince the person that believes you’re a fool,
1:08:13 they’re going to be hard, annoying, lame, frustrating clients anyway.
1:08:14 So, you want to drop them early.
1:08:20 You know exactly when you get on a sales call if you’re dealing with a half or an elf.
1:08:21 Okay?
1:08:24 So, you want to be able to attract the elves.
1:08:25 Not all good revenue.
1:08:27 Not all revenue is good revenue.
1:08:30 We are so picky with our clients at Yap Media.
1:08:33 If somebody just gives me a tough time on a sales call and I’m like,
1:08:34 this person’s going to be a headache,
1:08:37 I know that they’re going to take away time from my elves.
1:08:41 And I want to retain my elf clients.
1:08:41 Right?
1:08:43 You want to retain your good clients.
1:08:45 You don’t want to bring in people that are going to suck up all your time.
1:08:48 You’re going to work twice as hard for all your profit.
1:08:51 So, part of this is also just thinking about the fact that, like,
1:08:53 not all clients are good clients.
1:08:54 Okay?
1:09:03 So, one of the things that you could do in Pipedrive related to making sure you’re
1:09:07 taking the right clients is that you can label all of your leads however you want.
1:09:11 You could even label them fool’s favorites, half’s elves, right?
1:09:16 You can have whatever titles that you want to help guide how you’re going to spend time
1:09:17 with these clients.
1:09:21 And when you draw the line and when you drop them in the sales process,
1:09:24 once you’ve identified if they’re not a good fit for your company.
1:09:30 A lot of people will waste their time, you know, bringing people all the way to the finish line
1:09:32 only to discover that they’re the fool.
1:09:36 So, you want to figure that out as early as possible and you want to figure out how
1:09:40 interested they’re actually in your product before you spend so much time with them.
1:09:46 The other thing with Pipedrive, and we’re going to move on to our AI section of today,
1:09:50 is that you can automate a lot of repetitive tasks.
1:09:52 So, you can trigger personalized emails.
1:09:57 You can transfer ownership to another rep once a deal reaches a certain stage.
1:10:03 They’ve got AI-powered prompts and they’ve got a lot of new AI features that are coming soon,
1:10:08 like deal summaries, where it will take all the conversations that you’ve had in the past
1:10:11 and summarize what the current status of the deal is.
1:10:14 It’ll also summarize emails for you.
1:10:17 So, they’re coming out with all these new, like, beta AI.
1:10:21 And that’s one of my favorite things about Pipedrive is that they’re always innovating
1:10:23 and they’re really fast to innovate.
1:10:27 They have an AI sales assistant.
1:10:31 So, like I had mentioned, on your actual reporting, it will identify patterns.
1:10:35 It will recommend high-potential deals, next actions to prioritize.
1:10:41 They’ve got an email generation, email deals, AI deal summaries, like I was saying.
1:10:43 And they also are coming out with AI agents.
1:10:48 So, who here has heard of the concept of AI agents?
1:10:49 Okay.
1:10:50 So, some of you guys heard of it.
1:10:51 Some of you haven’t.
1:10:54 I interviewed Reid Hoffman, who is the founder of LinkedIn.
1:10:57 And he’s also the co-founder of, I think it’s OpenAI.
1:11:00 And he talked to me about AI agents.
1:11:01 It blew my mind.
1:11:06 And it’s important for everybody to hear this because this is going to be our future in the
1:11:07 very near future.
1:11:14 So, when you say super agency, basically what you’re saying is we have human agency with
1:11:14 AI.
1:11:17 They’ll be helping us become better humans.
1:11:19 And that’s why we have super agency.
1:11:23 And then AI itself is going to be able to do things on its own, right?
1:11:25 So, can you talk to us about how AI will have agency?
1:11:29 And then how do we imagine humans actually interacting with AI?
1:11:33 I talked to Mustafa Suleiman, who I know is your colleague.
1:11:35 And he told me, like, every human is going to have an AI companion.
1:11:39 And it’s going to help them, you know, go on job interviews, start companies.
1:11:42 So, talk to us about those kind of concepts.
1:11:47 So, part of what freaks people out a little bit is, like, you know, we are going to this
1:11:48 agentic universe.
1:11:53 We’re all of a sudden, as opposed to having phones and PCs, which we’ll still have, we’ll
1:11:53 have agents.
1:11:55 And, by the way, we’ll have more than one.
1:12:01 We may have one that we’re, you know, particularly the hollow or read, you know, ongoing companion,
1:12:04 always, you know, always around us and helping us with things.
1:12:09 But there’s going to be a suite of them, you know, with kind of different specialties and
1:12:10 different engagements.
1:12:14 And, by the way, you know, your office is going to have one, your working group is going to
1:12:18 have one, and, you know, probably your podcast is going to have one, you know, et cetera.
1:12:22 And we hear fairly soon, and people say, well, if they’re agentic, does that take my agency
1:12:23 away?
1:12:23 And the answer is no.
1:12:28 The same way that when you work with colleagues, and you work with employees, and everything
1:12:31 else, that doesn’t actually, that expands your agency.
1:12:32 That doesn’t take it away.
1:12:37 And, by the way, you know, these agents will be making predictions off all the data, which
1:12:41 is a lot, more than any of us have, about what things will be really good for us.
1:12:47 And agents are going to be the primary mode of kind of navigation.
1:12:51 What we describe in superagency is an informational GPS.
1:12:56 So in this entire informational digital world, we’ll do that.
1:13:00 And there will be more agents than there are people.
1:13:03 One of the things that I think people haven’t really fully tracked yet, but I think what would
1:13:06 be very interesting, is how agents end up talking to each other.
1:13:10 Because when we have that many agents, you know, part of how you and I are going to coordinate,
1:13:13 like we say, hey, what should we talk about in the podcast?
1:13:17 Well, one of our preps will be, your agent will talk to my agent.
1:13:18 Oh, my gosh.
1:13:21 And they’ll kind of go, well, you know, these topics will be really good.
1:13:25 And, you know, hey, when you ask a question this way, it’ll be great.
1:13:26 And when you answer it this way, it’ll be great.
1:13:27 You know, and da-da-da-da.
1:13:28 And, you know, that kind of thing.
1:13:30 Or this could be a really new, interesting thing to try.
1:13:34 And that will be part of the world we will be in.
1:13:35 Yeah.
1:13:37 Thinking about agents is so mind-blowing.
1:13:43 And when I think about AI and all the talks that I’ve had, a lot of people talk about it
1:13:44 as being like a great equalizer.
1:13:49 Now, as I’ve thought about it more, I realize that it’s like you have to be the best trainer
1:13:50 of the AI.
1:13:55 Like, I kind of imagine everybody being an entrepreneur, having agents that work at their
1:14:01 personal company, you basically have to be the best at coordinating your agents and figuring
1:14:05 out how to, like, mobilize all that AI and all your AI support.
1:14:08 And so smart people are going to be smarter at that, right?
1:14:11 And creative and innovative people are going to be more creative and innovative when it comes
1:14:13 to their own agents.
1:14:17 And so I just feel like a lot of people are probably worried that, like, you know, there’s
1:14:19 not going to be any room for them, to your point, as humans.
1:14:23 But I really think it’s going to be how you manage your AI.
1:14:30 In addition to training, it’s also deploying, organizing, executing, you know, strategizing,
1:14:31 all of the above.
1:14:36 And that’s part of the reason why, you know, kind of with super agency and the other kind
1:14:40 of content that I’ve been trying to get out there in people’s hands, like, start playing
1:14:44 with it, start exploring, because you want to start building the muscles and getting engaged
1:14:45 with it is really important.
1:14:47 And that’s the most central thing.
1:14:51 And again, part of the reason I called it agency, because it’s like, you know, own your
1:14:52 super agency and go do it.
1:14:58 And part of the super agency is when millions of us all start doing that, it benefits all
1:15:02 of us much more than just even the technology benefits each of us individually by ourselves.
1:15:10 What are your thoughts around hearing that, especially if you haven’t heard of this concept before?
1:15:17 Even if you have heard of it, I’m sure Reid gave you a different perspective of how we’re going
1:15:18 to use AI in the future.
1:15:23 What are your initial thoughts when you hear about AI agents and how they’re going to help
1:15:25 us with all these different activities?
1:15:30 You might have an AI agent that helps you drive, an AI agent that helps you with your email,
1:15:32 an AI agent that helps you with your calendar.
1:15:34 Yeah.
1:15:38 It’s exciting, but we’ve got to get used to it now.
1:15:43 And that means interacting with tools that also embrace AI.
1:15:49 So if you’re on a CRM that’s not talking about AI and not giving you features and not constantly,
1:15:54 you know, improving with the technology that we have today, you’re going to be behind.
1:15:59 If you’re not leveraging AI to create your content and create the best content,
1:16:03 I use AI, you know, for hours.
1:16:09 I use AI, it’s my chat GPT is open with me all day and it’s saving me so much time.
1:16:13 If you’re not doing that, there’s probably something wrong because you need to start
1:16:16 working with it and getting used to working with AI.
1:16:22 Right now, one of the best things to do is to just use chat GPT and use tools that are
1:16:23 leveraging AI and open AI.
1:16:28 So how are you going to leverage AI for your sales strategy?
1:16:34 What are some initial ideas that you guys have of how you’re going to leverage AI?
1:16:35 Well, that’s great.
1:16:37 Keep leaning into it.
1:16:40 It’s going to be a wild ride the next few years.
1:16:46 And like I mentioned, you want to work with a sales tool that is embracing it.
1:16:50 And Pipedrive is coming out with AI agents, which is really, really exciting.
1:16:53 All right, guys.
1:16:57 Well, that concludes our webinar on sales.
1:17:00 I appreciate everybody showing up today.
1:17:05 If you haven’t yet, make sure you sign up for your 14-day trial on Pipedrive.
1:17:06 You get 20% off.
1:17:08 If you guys like it, let me know how you like it.
1:17:12 And I look forward to seeing you guys on the next webinars.
1:17:14 I’ve got a lot of different webinars coming up.
1:17:16 So I hope to see you guys there.
1:17:18 Thank you.
1:17:20 Thank you that you guys like the session.
1:17:21 I appreciate it.
1:17:23 We will send out the recording.
1:17:26 Awesome.
1:17:27 Appreciate you guys so much.
1:17:29 And looking forward to the next one.
1:17:31 Awesome, guys.
1:17:32 Have a great day.
1:17:34 I’m glad you guys liked it.
1:17:35 Bye, all.

0:00:13 This listeners sold $100,000 worth of golf gloves on the side from his day job, and he’s here to break down the highs and lows of starting a direct-to-consumer e-commerce brand, willing something new into existence.
0:00:21 I think it’s a pretty cool story from chipgolfco.com, Chip with two Ps, Randall Pulfer. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show.
0:00:26 Thank you so much for having me, Nick. I’ve been a longtime listener of the show, so very, very excited to be here.
0:00:41 Love it. Always love to showcase listener success stories. Stick around in this one. We’re going to cover how Randall came up with this idea, how he found the right manufacturing partner to make it reality, plus the marketing efforts that have worked to start to generate some profitable sales.
0:00:55 Now, I want to start with your idea-generating process for this. Again, you go to chipgolfco.com to check these out, but it looks like the main value prop is to take a quality golf glove,
0:01:12 where historically the choices, well, you want it in white, white, or white, but make it fun, right? To give it a little bit of a design that showcases the player’s personality. Talk to me about the inspiration, the idea to, well, maybe we can innovate on the design side here.
0:01:26 Yeah, no, that’s exactly right. So, I myself am a golfer, as is my co-founder, Tyler. And, you know, Tyler and I met in college. And one of the things that we, you know, knew early on was that we both had entrepreneurial aspirations.
0:01:40 And, you know, we wanted to find a product that we could sell. And we wanted to do it in an industry that we were passionate about. The golf industry was kind of booming. And we saw, you know, all these new companies coming out with these funky shirts and different styled hats and belts and everything.
0:01:53 And yet, for some reason, golf gloves was like the one product that just, like you said, literally remained black and white. And we said, that just shouldn’t be. We looked online. We found a couple companies doing it, but the designs were pretty lackluster.
0:02:02 And, you know, doing our competitive intel, we ordered a few of them, and they were extremely low quality. Patterns would peel off. They just wouldn’t really last that long. They didn’t really feel that good.
0:02:09 I, myself, love a good leather golf glove. High quality. They last a long time. Makes for really great grip of the club.
0:02:09 Yeah.
0:02:17 And we said, why can’t we combine these two? A high quality glove, some good designs we’re seeing in all other aspects of golf. And so that’s kind of where the idea started.
0:02:33 It’s an interesting example of trying to find some blue ocean in a big market, you know, and a big market with kind of a rising tide of interest. Hey, here’s an outdoor activity that anybody can go and do. And it reminds me a little bit of StrideLine.
0:02:46 This is like the athletic licensed socks where, you know, hey, you can already buy shirts and hats and jackets and everything else with your team’s logo on it. But have you thought about socks? You know, here’s a little bit of a new space.
0:03:07 Similarly, we just did the sunglasses episode with Mike Ettenberg. It’s like, well, you know, my uniform is dictated by work. But here’s like one little element where I could add my own style and personality to do these sunglasses for first responders. And so it sounds like kind of a similar play where nobody else is doing this or nobody else is doing this well. So here’s an opportunity to play.
0:03:17 Yeah, no, it’s definitely like a niche in a very big market. I think a reason a lot of the bigger players haven’t done it is gloves have historically just not been like a super high margin item.
0:03:43 I think a lot of these companies, it’s not their biggest seller. They’re much better off focusing on shirts and clubs and balls and everything. And so we said, well, we can focus on it. I mean, it’s perfect for us, you know, wanting to just have some side hustle income, see if we can’t grow this product. And, you know, we’ve found ways to continue to improve that margin. But, you know, it’s been a challenge in that sense. But it’s also opened up a huge opportunity for us. And like you said, kind of a big market with a lot of big time players as well.
0:04:12 I want to pause and ask, you know, why physical product? Because a lot of times you’ll say, okay, I’m interested in golf. I have a passion for this. I see the growth chart going up and to the right. And so we’ve seen people do like content sites like Sean Ogle’s Breaking 80 comes to mind on like the content side. We’ve seen people do, okay, I’m going to, you know, sell into the golf space. I’m going to, you know, do drop shipping for these, you know, big garage size golf simulators or something.
0:04:42 I think people could set up or we had David Paxton was doing like daily golf steals on an affiliate model where I’ll, you know, source the best deals on gear and send those out every day. And on the e-com side, okay, naturally, I’m going to have higher startup costs, because I got to order a bunch of these, I’m going to have potentially lower margins, I got to go pay for ads, like there’s a more, there’s more moving parts, like what attracted you to this model versus, you know, any of these others that could have, you know, scratched that same itch in the in the golf niche.
0:05:12 Yeah, no, I mean, I’ve always kind of had an entrepreneurial mindset. And one of the dreams that I had when I was a young kid was I wanted to create a product and I wanted to see it in a store or I wanted to run into somebody in public and they’d be wearing it. Okay, something like that. So I’ve always been geared towards products. I also have an engineering undergrad. So a lot of what we do is physical product related, you know, we’re not necessarily all in on computer science or things that are very tech. It’s very product heavy. And so that’s kind of where my initial interest was.
0:05:23 Interest came in. And then to your point about like choosing, you know, what product at the time I was living in an apartment. So I didn’t want to have a product that was going to take up my full apartment. I wanted something that was going to be a little bit smaller.
0:05:35 And that’s kind of where gloves just kind of fit the perfect that fit the bill for lack of a better term. I mean, it allowed me to store it. It’s a natural repeat purchase as well, which I thought was really interesting where gloves are designed to not last forever.
0:05:49 Sure. They wear out after a while. Yeah, they wear out after a while. And that’s sort of the intended, you know, that’s how they’re supposed to function. I mean, so it provides this unique business model where, you know, shirts, for example, people buy them and they usually keep them. They can wear them for a really long time.
0:06:06 Gloves do kind of have to be replaced every once in a while. So yeah, I mean, the physical product stuff is just something I’ve always been interested in wanting a physical product. I can certainly tell you it probably would have been easier if I chose not to do something with inventory, let alone the number of SKUs that we have. But it’s been it’s been fun.
0:06:33 Yeah, I mean, it does check some of these boxes of being really small, lightweight to ship, you know, decent price point where it’s not completely, completely commoditized. So there’s, there’s definitely some advantages to that. And it’s something where if I can, you know, I can design it once I can have it made, and I can sell the same thing, you know, not the same, not as elegant as software to multiple different customers. But like, you know, there’s, there’s some advantages of scale there, too.
0:06:53 So I don’t mean to take a total, like, dump on on this idea. But just curious to get your thoughts on that. So what happens? What happens next? So you’re saying, like, we want to do the gloves. And now we got to find somebody to manufacture this or like, what if we just what if we just sold little stickers or decals to put on top of your existing golf gloves? Like, where do you go next?
0:07:03 Yeah, I mean, I have never brought a product to market. And so kind of my first thing is most people is just Google start Googling around. We tried Alibaba tried to source some samples from there.
0:07:27 And they all came back from various different countries that when we did a lot of our product market research, most of the big players were producing their gloves in Indonesia. So we kept Googling, you know, Indonesian glove manufacturer, and eventually came across a couple, sent some cold emails, as most people do, and got some responses back, did some sampling. And, and that’s how we found our current manufacturer that we work with. So it was just the old Google machine.
0:07:44 All right, what you do in design yourself. And again, you go to chipgolfcode.co chip with two P’s, you can finally you take a look at some of the designs. They’re not overly complex, kind of like a repeated pattern, like almost emoji style. But like we do this design yourself. Did you have to bring on a designer? What was that process like?
0:08:13 Yeah. So the designs we’ve done completely in house, which for someone, like I said, engineering background, I’m not the most creative, most artistic person. The first rendering of this was just in PowerPoint, just to get the, you know, the initial samples done. And we’re actually starting to get a little bit more creative with some of our designs and taking them outside of just the thumb and the Velcro latch, which if you see, that’s most of our, where our designs sit. Because, you know, we actually did a little bit of product market research and found that people do like having the simplified white glove.
0:08:42 And that’s why we wanted to keep the majority of it white. That being said, we are moving into some different designs where we’re starting to design other aspects of the glove, like the, you know, the actually entire thing. So yeah, most of these were just done in house and they were rough at first. We’ve gotten better as we’ve gone. But yeah, the sampling process took a while to finally get the scale and everything right. And every time we did it, it was two to three months, you know, by the time the manufacturer actually can do the screen print and get it to you, ship it to you, go back and forth, it can take a little bit of time.
0:09:01 Yeah, it’s painfully slow. And those early, it’s like, okay, come on, because we can’t really iterate and provide feedback until we get the thing in our hands and do all this stuff. But I love this idea of, hey, we noticed, you know, on the Wilson package or, you know, whoever else is making these, you know, big name brand golf clubs.
0:09:27 It was made in Indonesia. So there’s a big hint. We can go try and find the same manufacturers. I remember talking with Chad Rubin years ago, and he was just talking about this direct-to-consumer play where you could almost find the same factory where Lululemon is getting their leggings made and just say, can I white label these? You know, can I, you know, make this design enhance? It was like really, really interesting how you could go out and find those actual facilities.
0:09:35 And, well, I don’t have the same level of branding and marketing budget that they do, but maybe I can undercut that. It was like, oh, here’s an interesting way, or here’s my unique spin on it.
0:09:47 So you go get the samples, you get a design or, you know, a fit that you like. And here, you kind of alluded to this as the challenging piece of all, you know, hands are not one size fits all.
0:09:55 So now I got to, you know, order four or five different sizes of these. I got left-handed, I got right-handed, but trying to put together a minimum order.
0:10:01 What was that minimum order? Do you mind sharing what the startup costs look like here?
0:10:15 We did like an initial survey. We had pulled some Facebook groups, just like golf enthusiasts and said, hey, we’re thinking about making this product. What do you think? Can you input your size, your email? Try and get sort of an initial, almost like pre-order list.
0:10:24 But also, we wanted to gather information on, like, what is the distribution of sizes out there? How many people are medium-large versus extra-large? Things like that.
0:10:31 Because when we’re talking about an initial order, we wanted to make sure that we, you know, ordered it to a rough proportion that we actually think we’d be able to sell through.
0:10:38 Is it, like, evenly distributed, or is there, like, a bell curve where, you know, two-thirds of the people are medium or whatever?
0:10:44 Yeah, it’s pretty normally distributed. Usually, most people are going to be medium, medium-large, or large. Those are kind of the three most popular sizes.
0:10:53 The majority of golfers out there are righty golfers, meaning that they wear their glove on their left hand, which we’ve had some confusion on people ordering.
0:10:57 I’ve tried to make that very clear, that it’s on your left hand for right-handed golfers.
0:11:04 But, yeah, so the initial order quantity from our manufacturer was a minimum order quantity per design of 1,000.
0:11:09 And so, you know, we were trying to say, okay, well, can we mix sizes in there?
0:11:12 They’re like, yep. Can we mix designs in that quantity?
0:11:17 No, it’s got to be unique per design because they got to print the custom leather, and so that’s sort of their startup cost.
0:11:18 Okay.
0:11:21 And so, we ended up deciding that we were going to just go with two designs, right?
0:11:23 We weren’t going to roll out a website with just one design.
0:11:28 We wanted to give some elements of choice, even though two designs really isn’t that much better.
0:11:32 So, our first two designs were our Texas Hold’em and our Feeling Lucky.
0:11:35 We figured, you know, golf, gambling, sort of go hand-in-hand.
0:11:36 It’s a pretty popular thing.
0:11:40 I also love the name Texas Hold’em, kind of playing off the Texas Hold’em theme.
0:11:41 So, I love that.
0:11:43 That was the first design we did.
0:11:52 And the Feeling Lucky is just kind of your green clover, the idea of being lucky, hole-in-one, golf initiated, you know, in Ireland and Scotland and that sort of area.
0:11:53 Okay.
0:11:54 So, those were the two designs we rolled out with.
0:12:07 We did 1,000 of each of them, and between the actual raw materials, the shipping, and everything, it ended up being a little bit over $10,000, which, you know, for two people a couple years out of school was a pretty big investment.
0:12:09 Thankful for my co-founder, Tyler.
0:12:15 We were able to split the upfront cost so it wasn’t like I was completely going out on a limb on my own.
0:12:16 Yeah.
0:12:21 But, yeah, it was a pretty sizable investment, a little bit more than I think I would have initially anticipated when we got into it.
0:12:36 Yeah, but you’re doing these manufacturing runs and hopefully find a partner that is like, okay, this is probably lower than they would like to do, too, but, you know, maybe this company grows over time and we can scale up as that happens.
0:12:46 Now, how did you figure out, okay, so I’m a little over $10,000 to get 2,000 gloves landed, and then you figure out how much to charge on the other side for these things.
0:12:54 I’m trying to think of, like, when the last time I bought a pair of golf gloves, it was probably $15, $20, like, from the pro shop.
0:12:56 Like, I don’t know, what kind of price did you land at?
0:13:01 Yeah, so we went into PGA Superstore and just walked around and we were like, what are these competitors pricing these at?
0:13:08 And for the premium ones, they were upwards of $18, $20, sometimes $22, $24 for just a good leather golf glove.
0:13:13 So we said, okay, you know, I’m not sure that we’ll be able to fully compete on price, but we did try.
0:13:14 We said, okay, we’re going to price this at $18.
0:13:17 We really didn’t do a ton of math.
0:13:19 We just walked in and said, hey, they’re selling for $18 to $20.
0:13:21 We’re going to sell for $18 to $20.
0:13:24 We also love the idea that there’s 18 holes of golf.
0:13:25 Make it $18.
0:13:25 Kind of fit.
0:13:26 Let’s roll with it.
0:13:27 Sure, sure.
0:13:27 Okay.
0:13:34 So we did that and, you know, we’re thinking, all right, you know, our cost per unit is like, you know, eight, nine bucks or whatever.
0:13:36 And, you know, that leaves us plenty of margin.
0:13:43 And then, you know, as we started to get into it, and again, this is sort of my engineer’s fallacy, I just didn’t factor in marketing at all, right?
0:13:46 I’m thinking, we’re going to make a great product.
0:13:48 People are going to be lining up to buy it.
0:13:49 It’s going to sell itself.
0:13:50 We’re going to be great.
0:13:56 And then all of a sudden you realize that, nope, you actually are going to need to market this product and there’s a cost per acquisition.
0:14:00 And so very quickly we realized, you know, $18 probably wasn’t going to cut it.
0:14:04 At the time, we were also charging for shipping on top of that.
0:14:07 So, you know, total cart value would be maybe $23, $24.
0:14:17 And, you know, we got some advice early on just to include shipping, makes, you know, the conversion rate a lot higher, just build it into the price.
0:14:19 People hate being charged for shipping at the end.
0:14:22 So we ended up bumping our price up to $24.
0:14:30 And once we started to expand to other channels, Amazon, Etsy, Walmart, there’s all these additional fees.
0:14:35 And one of the ways that we could make it make sense was to increase the price on those platforms.
0:14:40 Well, we didn’t want to have the product mispriced on various different platforms.
0:14:42 And so we ended up just bringing it up to $28.
0:14:45 It takes care of kind of the fees on a lot of the third-party platforms.
0:14:48 And we haven’t had a ton of resistance to that pricing.
0:14:50 It is definitely on the more premium side.
0:14:54 But again, our product is very differentiated, not only in the quality, but in the design.
0:14:58 So we feel like, you know, it’s okay on the upper end of that price point right now.
0:15:07 And we do offer bundling savings and, again, try and increase that average order value to get the price per unit for the customer down and still make it make sense for us.
0:15:08 Got it, got it.
0:15:12 No, that’s helpful to hear that it doesn’t have to be set in stone, right?
0:15:20 You know, you could test something out and soon you realize, well, now we got to go out and acquire customers or there’s these different fees involved.
0:15:20 Yeah.
0:15:24 And so you’re open to testing different things.
0:15:32 It sounds like more with Randall in just a moment, including that initial market validation survey and how they made their first sales right after this.
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0:18:06 I didn’t want to go back to this initial survey that you talked about of, well, what’s the size distribution, right?
0:18:11 We don’t want to be stuck with a bunch of extra smalls at the end of the season and not know what to do with them.
0:18:15 Were this just friends and family fellow golfers?
0:18:24 Like, how did you come up with a critical mass of people to respond to this initial questionnaire, like this market research phase?
0:18:25 Yeah, it was friends and family.
0:18:28 We went on Facebook groups and just looked for golf enthusiasts.
0:18:37 Yes, I know, like I listened to a couple golf podcasts, so I looked for golf podcast groups and then we would just go in there and say, okay, here’s a lot of people that listen to similar podcasts as us.
0:18:39 They probably have similar interests.
0:18:40 It’s golf related.
0:18:42 Let’s post it in there, see if they’ll help.
0:18:49 And I think I was unbelievably amazed at how many people, you know, again, it’s, I’m asking for maybe a minute or two of their time.
0:18:54 But still, it’s like a stranger to stranger, people kind of willing to help us out, give us positive feedback.
0:19:04 So we ended up gathering, I want to say a couple hundred responses, which not huge, but it was enough for us to make a semi-informed decision on kind of the size distribution, if you will.
0:19:08 And not to mention, we also got feedback on like designs that people would like.
0:19:09 Would they buy this?
0:19:10 What would they pay?
0:19:15 Things like that, which, again, helped us kind of set the initial price and even some of our marketing strategies.
0:19:16 All right.
0:19:28 So now you get your gloves landed and you’re at this, you know, build it and they’ll come type of moment of like, you know, the line, envisioning the line out the door of the website.
0:19:31 But then, you know, how do you drive that initial traffic?
0:19:39 Do you go back to this, you know, list of 200 semi-hand raisers where it’s like, oh, it’s not super apparent there’s going to be a pitch down the road.
0:19:43 But, you know, how do you figure out how to move some of these first units?
0:19:43 Yeah.
0:19:50 Well, I will tell you, there’s no scarier thing than sending off 10,000 to, you know, someone you never know across overseas.
0:19:52 Somebody in Indonesia.
0:19:52 Yeah.
0:19:55 So I will say when the product finally showed up, I was very relieved.
0:20:00 One thing that, you know, I just didn’t even really think about was packaging, right?
0:20:06 The gloves came in like these plastic sleeves and like they were just the gloves.
0:20:08 And I was like, oh, my God, we need packaging, obviously.
0:20:13 So we ended up finding a company in China to make our packaging for us.
0:20:16 And we ended up starting with like, we actually got one here.
0:20:20 It’s like a zipper type of thing to store it.
0:20:23 So it’s like super lightweight, can ship really well.
0:20:24 Oh, yeah.
0:20:26 So we started with that, but I had to order those.
0:20:28 And then additionally, we needed to label them.
0:20:30 So shout out to my wife.
0:20:37 I ended up printing a bunch of labels for both the design and the sizing just on like our printer at home.
0:20:39 And we spent, I mean, days.
0:20:41 We had to label 2,000 of these things.
0:20:42 We were putting the size label.
0:20:49 Like we were just like, you know, manufacturer, assembly line, just passing them down, putting them in, stuffing them, labeling them, all of that.
0:20:52 So it took us a long time to get that all set up.
0:20:54 And then we were doing this out of my garage.
0:20:57 So we had to go buy some organizers and try and organize them all.
0:20:59 So we got the inventory all set up.
0:21:03 And then to get the initial customers, we started with friends and family.
0:21:07 We revisited kind of that initial email list that we got.
0:21:11 We started posting a little bit on social media, just trying to get some organic volume.
0:21:15 And again, naive as I was, just kind of assumed that, oh, my God, people are going to see this.
0:21:16 There’s nothing like it.
0:21:18 And they’re going to be lining up to buy it.
0:21:20 And I could not have been more wrong.
0:21:26 It is something that you do consistently have to demonstrate the value of the product and the differentiation
0:21:29 and why it’s worth someone spending their hard-earned money on it.
0:21:32 And that process took a long time for us to learn.
0:21:34 You know, we had never touched Facebook ads.
0:21:37 You know, we had tried organic and it was slow.
0:21:40 And we were like, well, we got 2,000 gloves in the garage.
0:21:41 We got to start moving these.
0:21:46 So we started experimenting with some paid social, started on Meta.
0:21:50 And it was a very iterative, you know, low-budget process.
0:21:54 But eventually we, you know, put out an ad campaign, saw what worked, saw what didn’t, made some tweaks,
0:21:58 reinvested some more money, kind of continued to grow it that way.
0:22:03 But it was largely via paid social traffic that helped us move the first couple thousand units.
0:22:11 What kind of ad did you find worked well for that in terms, if you can give an example of the imagery, the headline, anything?
0:22:12 Yeah.
0:22:15 So we ended up finding on Upwork a photographer.
0:22:18 And we were saying, hey, we need some good product photos of these.
0:22:19 We don’t have anything on the website.
0:22:20 We need them for ads.
0:22:24 So they had made some really high-quality photos that are actually still on our website today.
0:22:26 Those are the main photos that we use.
0:22:30 And honestly, our, again, naive ads, it was just, here’s a picture of the product.
0:22:31 Here’s the name.
0:22:32 Here’s why it’s awesome.
0:22:34 Please buy it.
0:22:36 Like, that’s basically the extent of the ad.
0:22:37 And it worked.
0:22:42 And like, that was honestly the nice thing about our product is the pictures themselves jump off the page.
0:22:46 It’s not like someone trying to sell, you know, something that everybody else has.
0:22:48 It’s just, why should you buy it from me?
0:22:50 This product is naturally differentiated.
0:22:54 So if you’re targeting it to the right people, they see it and they’re like, wait a minute, what is that?
0:22:56 Like, I’ve never seen anything like that.
0:22:57 Click into it.
0:23:00 And then you sort of trust the website to kind of convert them.
0:23:01 But it was a challenge, right?
0:23:04 Because we weren’t converting at a super high rate.
0:23:06 And it was, you know, are our ads inefficient?
0:23:10 Is it because we’ve only got two designs to choose from on our website?
0:23:11 Like, what is it?
0:23:12 It ended up being both.
0:23:15 So we ended up adding more designs and getting better at advertising.
0:23:16 But yeah, it was definitely tricky.
0:23:18 And it was a slow, slow burn at first.
0:23:23 Yeah, there’s so many factors that run into, they go into running a profitable ad campaign.
0:23:24 Well, was it the image?
0:23:25 Was it the headline?
0:23:26 Was it the landing page?
0:23:31 Like, was there, you know, lots of different places where people can fall out of that funnel
0:23:36 or lots of potential leaks in the bucket there trying to address all of those, plug all those
0:23:37 different holes.
0:23:38 But that’s interesting.
0:23:44 Was there a cost of acquisition on meta?
0:23:47 And the beauty here is like, well, you could target people who are into golf.
0:23:51 That kind of like psychographic type of targeting can be really powerful.
0:23:54 But was there a target cost of acquisition you were going for?
0:23:57 Ideally, I mean, we wanted it to be between like six and eight dollars.
0:23:59 Like, that’s something that we could be.
0:24:01 And at the time, we were really only selling one glove at a time.
0:24:04 Maybe every once in a while, we got a two glove order, but it was usually one at a time.
0:24:09 And so that was the number that we felt like we could make a little bit of money on enough
0:24:12 to sort of roll into more inventory and target that.
0:24:18 The nice thing is our target demographic of, you know, men, 20 to 50 ish, especially during
0:24:20 peak golf season, which is over the summer.
0:24:23 That CPM demographic is often very cheap.
0:24:28 So we didn’t realize that at the time, but it allowed us to not be super efficient and still
0:24:31 have relatively low cost per acquisition.
0:24:36 You know, as we’ve advertised to wider audiences in different times of the year, especially during
0:24:40 like Black Friday when CPMs are crazy, we are having to be a little bit more creative in terms
0:24:43 of increasing average order value, right?
0:24:48 To make the higher acquisition cost of, you know, sometimes it’s 15, even upwards of 20,
0:24:51 depending on the target audience there to acquire that customer.
0:24:54 So, I mean, ideally, we’re single digits.
0:24:57 I think more often than not in practice, it’s slightly higher than that.
0:25:00 And, you know, that’s where we’re trying to get better with some of our more organic
0:25:05 advertising strategies, plus email lists where we can reduce, you know, the aggregate
0:25:06 cost per order.
0:25:09 It’s something that we definitely need to get better at.
0:25:12 I mean, the cost to acquire our customers via social media is only going to get more expensive
0:25:13 with time.
0:25:17 And, you know, in order to build a sustainable business, I think finding ways to do it without
0:25:22 going all in on paid is a very important thing that we’re still very much, very much learning.
0:25:27 Anything you found effective to increase that average order value?
0:25:32 I want to say I saw something that was like, maybe it was a split test, but I thought I
0:25:36 saw something like buy three, get one free, either type of promo or something like that.
0:25:39 We consistently run a buy three, get one free promo.
0:25:42 But one of the things that has really helped is we have a new plugin on our website through
0:25:43 Rebuy.
0:25:43 Okay.
0:25:48 It’s basically like you add a glove to your cart and it says, okay, you’re only X amount
0:25:49 away from free shipping.
0:25:49 You add another one.
0:25:54 It’s like, oh, you know, you’re, you can get this free glove dryer thing.
0:25:56 This like new accessory that we have.
0:25:59 If you add another glove and then all of a sudden you’re at three and you get one free.
0:26:03 So it’s, it’s sort of moving the customer along the journey.
0:26:04 So that’s been really helpful.
0:26:09 You know, I think as we’ve gotten more designs, I think it’s natural for people to want to
0:26:09 buy two.
0:26:13 So just trying to find ways to get people to, you know, get one as a gift or get returning
0:26:15 customers, things like that.
0:26:19 As far as like getting more people to the site organically too, the thing that has stood
0:26:23 out to me is being as open, transparent, and honest as possible.
0:26:29 Like, I think one of the, you know, best videos that we had was actually talking about one of
0:26:35 the defective glove orders that we had and showing like how it happened, why it happened, being
0:26:36 transparent about it.
0:26:40 And we actually got more sales from that video, the one that was talking about how our
0:26:44 product had been low quality than any of the other videos.
0:26:49 And so we’ve tried to be more just open and honest and bring people along the journey because
0:26:54 people really want to support, you know, businesses like ours that are small, growing, learning.
0:26:58 And so that’s something that we’ve really leaned into both on the website and our ads and a lot
0:26:59 of our content.
0:27:01 And that’s worked out pretty well for us too.
0:27:02 So what, so what happened?
0:27:07 There was a screw up with the order and tell me about that.
0:27:08 Yeah.
0:27:10 So we were doing our biggest order to date.
0:27:12 I think we were ordering a couple thousand gloves.
0:27:14 It was our most popular design, the stars and stripes.
0:27:16 That one we sell out of consistently.
0:27:18 She said, all right, we’re going to order a big quantity.
0:27:22 We had already done one or two orders with our manufacturer on this glove before.
0:27:28 And we get the gloves in and they look the same as every other order we’ve done.
0:27:30 We got them in right before, you know, May.
0:27:33 So it was peak selling time, May, June, July.
0:27:35 You got Memorial Day, 4th of July.
0:27:37 People are going to be buying these up like you wouldn’t believe it.
0:27:37 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:27:39 So we start selling them.
0:27:40 We’re moving them quickly.
0:27:40 We’re feeling really good.
0:27:43 And then all of a sudden we start to get some negative reviews.
0:27:45 Hey, this design is peeling.
0:27:47 This, this glove stinks.
0:27:47 All this stuff.
0:27:48 And we’re like, what’s going on?
0:27:50 Like this has not happened before.
0:27:53 And so people were complaining that the design was peeling off.
0:27:57 So I went into my garage, I pulled one out and I just started rubbing my finger on it.
0:28:00 And lo and behold, the design starts to peel off.
0:28:01 So we talked to our manufacturer.
0:28:03 I said, what’s going on with this?
0:28:04 They looked into it.
0:28:08 Turns out they had accidentally printed the design on waterproof leather.
0:28:14 So when obviously people get wet, they’re sweating, whatever the case is, that design is going to come peeling right off.
0:28:16 And you couldn’t tell just by looking at it.
0:28:19 It wasn’t until we had had like several hundred out there.
0:28:25 And so now we’re in scramble mode and it’s, oh no, you know, we’ll refund anyone who bought it.
0:28:26 We either refund or exchange.
0:28:33 We took, you know, all the Sergeant Stripes gloves off the website, which at the time was a bulk of our inventory.
0:28:41 So that really slowed us down and it was sort of this, oh crap moment of like, you know, can we survive this from like a cash flow perspective?
0:28:45 Is this going to hurt our brand image to a point where we’re not going to be able to recover?
0:28:46 You know, what was the case?
0:28:50 And so we ended up getting out in front of it, made a video, said, hey, this is what happened.
0:28:52 This is why it happened.
0:28:53 Honest mistake.
0:28:55 If you bought, please let us know.
0:28:57 We will do whatever we can to make it right.
0:29:02 And luckily our manufacturer was able to make a new order and they were willing to refund us because they knew it was their mistake.
0:29:04 So we just had to wait in time.
0:29:04 Yeah.
0:29:10 So it didn’t completely screw us, but it was sort of that like, oh my God, how did we not do better quality checks?
0:29:22 And, you know, the light at the end of the tunnel of this whole thing is that this has actually led to a lot better process between us and our manufacturer where hopefully we can minimize these issues going forward.
0:29:31 And again, sort of a cheap lesson, like when you think about where we were versus where we are now, this happened actually last year, but our scale is much larger now.
0:29:31 Yeah.
0:29:35 It easily could have been a much more significant impact.
0:29:38 And so luckily we got ahead of it and hopefully made the fix for a long time.
0:29:46 But it just goes to show you, like, you can always do more product quality checks on all your products, especially when they’re coming from all over the place.
0:29:51 That’s great that the manufacturer stood behind it and didn’t charge you for that reorder.
0:30:00 And you got the customer list, you could say, hey, well, let’s once, but it’s going to be a couple months, you know, lead time shipping across the oceans before we get these to you.
0:30:05 But hey, bear with us where this video end up getting posted.
0:30:12 Is this just kind of a social channel marketing thing for you to be like, hey, crazy, crazy thing happened.
0:30:17 We shipped out a bunch of waterproof peeling gloves on accident.
0:30:21 We post most of our videos across both Instagram and TikTok.
0:30:24 TikTok is something that we really leaned into more and more over the last year.
0:30:27 And that is really where it went more viral.
0:30:33 I mean, it didn’t get, you know, millions of views or anything, but it got, you know, considerably more views than most of our videos get.
0:30:41 And I think, you know, what was really encouraging was a lot of people in the comments saying, you know, this is so cool that brands are willing to stand behind their quality.
0:30:44 They’re even willing to talk about mistakes.
0:30:45 Like this is what people want to see.
0:30:52 And that was sort of a light bulb moment for me, too, is because, you know, every time I went on social media, it was very salesy, right?
0:30:54 It was like, hey, this is the glove.
0:30:55 These are the benefits.
0:30:56 Please buy.
0:30:59 But especially on TikTok, people go there for really one of two things.
0:31:01 They either want to be entertained or they want to learn.
0:31:03 Those are the two primary things.
0:31:05 And if you can do that while also selling a product, great.
0:31:10 But more often than not, people see something that’s salesy and they sort of move past it.
0:31:13 And this video was very different from what we had done in the past.
0:31:15 And that’s where the engagement sort of picked up.
0:31:26 And it was just great to see, you know, the community of people that came to support us and told us, you know, to just keep going and mistakes happen and that they would be rebuying and all of this stuff.
0:31:31 But we did have to do a little bit of damage control on some of the people that are not on social media.
0:31:33 And didn’t maybe see that video.
0:31:37 So we actually sent it out in like an email and we’re just like, hey, this is what happened.
0:31:39 You know, feel free to get in contact with us.
0:31:40 Very good.
0:31:43 You bring up an important point.
0:31:46 This is, you know, echoed from a friend of mine years and years ago.
0:31:55 He gave me what he called the rule of the internet that people are only ever online for one of two reasons, like you mentioned, to be entertained or to solve a problem.
0:32:01 So if your content can play in one of those spaces, I think you’re going to be in good shape.
0:32:07 The interesting place here is like you almost, you know, okay, you could say, yeah, I guess it solves a problem.
0:32:10 Like I need to get a better grip on my club, right?
0:32:12 And I want to do it in a way that expresses my personalities here.
0:32:21 But in general, it’s like harder to play, in my opinion, in the entertainment space, because then you’re competing with ESPN and Netflix and everything else.
0:32:29 But if you can solve a problem, especially like Q&A type of stuff, like generally an easier place to play, in my opinion.
0:32:38 But so we’re going to, in what’s interesting about the golf gloves is it’s like kind of at this impulse buy price point.
0:32:43 Typically golfers, like I’m going to stereotype, like a more affluent demographic anyway.
0:32:45 So they say, well, okay, 28 bucks.
0:32:45 Sure.
0:32:48 You know, now I can impress my friends at the next round.
0:32:49 Like, hey, where’d you get that cool glove?
0:32:54 So there’s some maybe bragging rights or uniqueness to it that could lend itself to that.
0:32:59 But it’s kind of at that impulse buy price point where it’s like, well, I’m not going to think too much about this.
0:33:04 Or you’re not going to do a ton of competitive research going out like, well, who really is, you know, the best golf club?
0:33:06 I’m going to trust that it’s a standard golf club.
0:33:14 I go to town without more with Randall in just a moment, including his marketplace sales strategy on Amazon, Etsy and elsewhere.
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0:35:52 So doing the social strategy, I did want to ask, because you mentioned, okay, we expanded to Amazon, we expanded to Etsy.
0:35:59 I want to talk about, you know, going after these other marketplaces and maybe the pie chart breakdown of where those sales are happening.
0:36:00 Yeah.
0:36:06 So the reason we really wanted to prioritize getting on some of these other platforms was they’re really just natural search platforms, right?
0:36:07 People are going on there.
0:36:09 They’re searching for golf products.
0:36:18 One of our biggest challenges was bridging the gap between people who buy, like you said, the impulse buy, usually in-store, versus getting people to buy online.
0:36:21 I, myself, as a golfer, I’ve never once bought a golf glove online.
0:36:23 I’m usually buying it in a store when I need it.
0:36:32 So we had to sort of change the way people view this and said, no, like this is a product, an article of clothing, apparel, like similar to other things that you would buy.
0:36:33 Yeah.
0:36:42 And really get people to be almost more proactive in buying them as opposed to, oh, I show up to the course, I got a hole in mine, let me run into the pro shop and just grab one off the rack.
0:36:44 So that was sort of an interesting thing we had to bridge.
0:36:48 And that’s where we said, well, we got to be where people are searching these things, right?
0:36:52 You can try and create the demand on your social media, your ad platforms.
0:37:02 But we knew that Amazon, Etsy, even TikTok, people were going in there and they were searching for golf or golf products because people were buying things online more and more.
0:37:04 And so we just needed to be on there.
0:37:07 We’ve tried advertising on all those platforms too.
0:37:09 But yeah, it’s really just the natural search.
0:37:11 There’s really no reason not to be on them.
0:37:13 You know, the only good things can really happen.
0:37:15 So that was sort of our initial thought process.
0:37:26 Now, all else being equal, is it more beneficial for you, for somebody to go to the website and buy or for somebody to go to Amazon and like start to send, you know, positive conversion signals?
0:37:29 So maybe you start to rise in the search results if somebody looks for a golf club.
0:37:30 Yeah.
0:37:38 I mean, Amazon as a whole, their fees are very, very high, but they still can tend to be cheaper than like an acquisition from paid social to our website.
0:37:46 The big advantage to having people go through your website is that you get to collect that personal information, like the email and stuff like that.
0:37:50 Whereas on Amazon, Etsy, TikTok, they don’t really let you have that information.
0:37:56 And so you do kind of limit the long-term value of your customer if you don’t get them to go through your website.
0:38:01 That being said, we will definitely take a sale on any of those platforms versus not.
0:38:07 So, you know, the natural search and higher ranking of those products and volume there is certainly important.
0:38:09 I’d say a majority of our sales still come through our website.
0:38:14 Amazon is very seasonal with golf search, as you might expect.
0:38:20 So, you know, it peaks and valleys, but definitely the majority of our sales are coming through our website.
0:38:27 Now, I hadn’t really considered Etsy as a channel for kind of a mass-produced product like this.
0:38:31 What’s the reaction like, or is there a different strategy over there?
0:38:32 Yeah.
0:38:33 So it’s actually very interesting.
0:38:38 I didn’t really think much of Etsy either, and actually when we first tried to set up our Etsy shop,
0:38:43 we said it was a product that we manufacture, and they, like, didn’t let us make an account.
0:38:45 They were like, oh, this is for handmade products only.
0:38:46 So we couldn’t get on there.
0:38:47 And I was like, okay, great.
0:38:51 So I had to create a new account and basically just say, it’s handmade.
0:38:53 And we’ve been on Etsy ever since, and it’s been fine.
0:38:58 Made by somebody’s hands, in addition to sewing machines and robots, sure.
0:38:59 Yeah, yeah, exactly.
0:38:59 Right.
0:39:03 But no, Etsy is actually a very profitable channel for us.
0:39:11 Not in terms of total volume, but I think because of the nature of our product being very different and sort of artsy in a way, it is very unique.
0:39:14 And Etsy is great for products that stand out amongst the crowd like that.
0:39:18 And Etsy ads, too, have been very efficient for us.
0:39:26 We don’t put a ton of money in there because it’s not super scalable, but it is an efficient channel and pretty consistent revenue stream for us, which I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised by.
0:39:30 Yeah, I can see it as a Mother’s Day gift, a Father’s Day gift.
0:39:37 You know, I think it plays well in that space that people might be looking for golf gifts on a site like Etsy and say, oh, that’s a unique idea.
0:39:38 Yep.
0:39:39 No, exactly right.
0:39:45 And that’s one of the search terms that we have in our products is like golf gifts, Father’s Day, all that sorts of stuff.
0:39:46 And it does pretty well.
0:39:54 Okay, and so you mentioned the biggest slice of the pie chart was your own site, followed by Amazon, followed by Etsy.
0:39:55 What’s the breakdown look like?
0:39:57 Yeah, it’s becoming more and more TikTok.
0:40:01 I think we’re posting content in there and TikTok Shop has been a growing platform.
0:40:04 I’d say TikTok and Amazon are pretty similar.
0:40:08 And then our website, our website’s got to be 60, 70% maybe.
0:40:11 And then TikTok and Amazon probably make up the majority of the rest.
0:40:12 Interesting.
0:40:17 So are you able to drive your own traffic to TikTok Shop or is that paid ads?
0:40:22 Is that, you know, going after golf influencers to try and promote this thing?
0:40:23 What’s that site look like?
0:40:28 So we tried TikTok ads and just didn’t have a ton of success with it.
0:40:32 Again, it goes back to the point of like, I know when I’m on TikTok, I don’t want to watch ads.
0:40:34 I want to watch fun, engaging content.
0:40:37 And so we didn’t have a ton of success with it.
0:40:47 That being said, there are more robust ways to advertise TikTok products on like the TikTok shop and like where it shows up in search, which we should do a little bit more experimentation with.
0:40:49 But most of the sales on TikTok have been organic.
0:40:55 It’s a lot of just trying to post videos and get people, again, virality and just getting people to buy it.
0:41:01 One of the first times we actually did this was we released a glove that had a hot dog design on it.
0:41:06 And I basically just went on TikTok and I was like, and we had not sold like very many gloves on a TikTok video ever before.
0:41:08 And I said, okay, hot dog glove.
0:41:09 I was eating a hot dog.
0:41:13 I said, for every glove that you buy, I will eat a hot dog on a TikTok video.
0:41:20 And we ended up like selling out our hot dog gloves, which I was telling myself, I was like, if that is the end outcome of this, I’ll be fine with it.
0:41:25 But there is a video out there of me trying to eat like 20 hot dogs in one sitting and it did not go very well.
0:41:26 Okay.
0:41:28 But yeah, so the TikTok stuff is all organic.
0:41:31 I think there’s ways that we can do it a little bit better.
0:41:32 Like you said, leveraging influencers.
0:41:34 We want to definitely do more of that.
0:41:38 I’ve listened to quite a few of your podcasts where people mentioned the success of influencers.
0:41:41 And we’ve tried it here and there, haven’t had a ton of success.
0:41:49 But to the point about the sunglasses episode, it sounds like the benefit is in the masses where it’s just like the more you do, you might get one or two that hit.
0:41:51 And those often pay for the ones that don’t.
0:41:54 So I think it’s just something that we have to do a little bit more of.
0:41:58 Yeah, it sounded like probably all marketing, right?
0:42:03 There’s an 80-20 to it where, you know, 20% of the accounts that you reach out to are going to drive 80% of the sales.
0:42:05 But just casting a wide net.
0:42:11 I was shocked when Mike said he had shipped out probably over a thousand pairs of sunglasses.
0:42:11 Yeah.
0:42:13 It was like, oh, this is like a really concerted effort.
0:42:19 I was like, are there a thousand, you know, first responder micro-influencer accounts out there?
0:42:20 He’s like, oh, we’re just scratching the surface.
0:42:23 I’m like, okay, you know, this is an Imagine Golf.
0:42:24 There’s probably even more.
0:42:25 Oh, there’s a lot.
0:42:26 Yeah, there’s a lot.
0:42:29 So yeah, we are definitely, that’s a concerted effort for us in 2025.
0:42:34 So if you see some organic videos with our gloves in it, that’s hopefully a good thing.
0:42:35 Sweet.
0:42:35 All right.
0:42:38 So that’s what’s coming up next.
0:42:45 I did want to touch on the tools and tech side of things where you mentioned this rebuy.
0:42:47 This is like a Shopify plugin.
0:42:52 Anything else you’re using in addition to that, either for email or video?
0:42:55 You know, anything else that is making life easier on the tech side?
0:43:05 So one of the Shopify apps that we use is Shopify Marketplace Connect, I think they call it, but allows for, you know, your inventory and orders to sync from all your other platforms into Shopify, which has been really helpful.
0:43:16 Additionally, we use this website called Built With, where we basically would go to different competitor websites, throw in their URL, and it would basically tell us all the plugins that they have on their Shopify.
0:43:21 So that’s where we learned about like Klaviyo and all these different things, and we have used those as well.
0:43:24 So Klaviyo is probably one of our bigger ones.
0:43:38 Rebuy, as you mentioned, we also use this other, it’s sort of an app, but it’s called Kero, but it actually allows other companies to sell our products on their site, and they get a commission if they get a sale.
0:43:45 So like one of the companies that we work with, they’re sort of like you mentioned at the top of the episode, they are sort of like the middleman between all these other companies.
0:43:47 And they’re sort of just a marketplace for golf products.
0:43:50 And so they don’t have to do any of the sourcing or anything.
0:43:59 We do all the shipping, but they’re sort of driving traffic to their site, and we don’t really care about paying the commission because it’s usually in line with our customer acquisition costs at that point.
0:44:02 So those are just some of the tools that we use.
0:44:04 And we do use Shopify now.
0:44:05 We didn’t always.
0:44:10 We started on Squarespace, and it was a challenge for a lot of reasons.
0:44:15 It seems like a lot of the third-party platforms and stuff just integrate a lot better with Shopify.
0:44:22 And although Shopify is more expensive, it has made a huge difference in our ability to be more flexible on our site.
0:44:23 Okay.
0:44:24 No, these are great.
0:44:25 These are really interesting.
0:44:30 Klaviyo is the email service specifically for e-commerce brands.
0:44:32 Karo is a new one to me.
0:44:44 This is really interesting where it’s almost kind of an affiliate program of sorts where, you know, if somebody else has a, you know, a golf merchandise type of website, hey, would you mind adding our products to your catalog?
0:44:46 Sure, we could do that.
0:44:52 We could do seamless checkout integrated with your stuff, and then you handle the shipping and fulfillment, almost like a dropshipping relationship with these other stores.
0:44:53 Yep.
0:44:54 No, it’s super smooth.
0:45:01 I mean, we basically, there’s, we get requests, too, sometimes on Karo, where people will be like, hey, I saw these products are available on here.
0:45:02 I’d love to put it on my site.
0:45:07 And we do a little bit of diligence to make sure it’s like a site that’s in line with our brand.
0:45:07 Yeah.
0:45:09 But more often than not, we’re like, yeah, sure.
0:45:14 Like, it doesn’t, it doesn’t really impact us to have it in more places, more backlinks, more exposure.
0:45:16 And we fulfill all the orders ourselves anyway.
0:45:18 So, yeah, it’s a pretty seamless thing.
0:45:22 And like I said, the commission is at, if not cheaper than our customer acquisition.
0:45:24 So, we’re totally fine paying it.
0:45:25 Okay.
0:45:29 Now, at this point, you’re selling thousands of pairs a year.
0:45:36 So, I imagine, you know, the, you know, the Amazon siren or the bell that goes off when an order comes through, like, in the early days.
0:45:40 Like, okay, we got to turn that off and probably no longer shipping out of the garage.
0:45:46 Like, we’ve, you know, outsourced the fulfillment to, well, I imagine you send some into the Amazon warehouse so it can be Prime eligible.
0:45:51 But like, for those Shopify orders, you know, where does, where does that go?
0:45:53 How does that look like logistics-wise?
0:46:04 For the first couple years of this, we were doing it all out of my garage and very quickly realized, not only from a space perspective, but just from time perspective, you know, as we were scaling, it was an hour and then it was two hours.
0:46:07 And then it was sometimes more of that of every night going in there and packing orders.
0:46:08 We got to find a solution.
0:46:11 So, we recently partnered with a third-party logistics company.
0:46:13 They have all of our inventory.
0:46:14 They process all of our shipments.
0:46:16 So far, that’s been going really well.
0:46:18 It’s taken a huge load off of me.
0:46:22 And my wife is also very happy to have all the products out of the garage.
0:46:24 So, that’s been great.
0:46:32 And it’s allowed us to be more scalable because that was truly a bottleneck in our general process of just having to go and actually pack all these orders.
0:46:41 And then, you know, if I’m out of town for more than a couple days, I got to turn Amazon dark because if you don’t ship in a couple days, then, you know, they get you with fees and complaints.
0:46:43 And so, that was always a little bit of a pain.
0:46:49 We actually don’t do anything Fulfillment by Amazon yet, although it’s definitely something that we want to do.
0:46:56 We actually worked with a consultant for Amazon ads early on just to get an idea, lay the land of it.
0:47:12 And he felt pretty confident based on what he was seeing that some of our products could be, you know, like multi-million dollar SKUs in Amazon if we consolidated the most popular sizes, ordered in bulk, and sent them into Amazon and let them do it eligible for Prime, like you said.
0:47:15 So, that’s definitely something that we want to explore down the line.
0:47:19 Is there a scenario where you start to go brick and mortar?
0:47:21 Like you said, that’s where I bought my last glove.
0:47:23 I was like, well, shoot, this one’s got a hole.
0:47:28 Let me run into the pro shop real quick before tea time and just grab, you know, whatever they have in my size.
0:47:32 Is there a pro shop distribution angle down the road?
0:47:35 So, that was actually the initial thought.
0:47:38 Like, I thought the pro shops would be the larger portion of our sales.
0:47:42 We are in a couple pro shops in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
0:47:43 That’s where I’m based.
0:47:48 I’m really just going in, introducing them to the product, and, you know, they were interested enough to take a flyer on us.
0:47:52 I will say it’s very challenging for them for a couple reasons.
0:47:56 One, for each design, you can have upwards of 20 SKUs.
0:48:02 And so, if they wanted to have multiple designs, multiple SKUs, all of a sudden, from an inventory management perspective, it’s a little bit tough.
0:48:06 Additionally, it’s just not a huge moneymaker for them.
0:48:12 You know, they’re making, you know, five, six, seven, eight bucks a glove after wholesale and all that stuff.
0:48:19 And for them, it’s like, even if they moved a couple hundred a year, it’s just not really making a huge dent in their bottom line.
0:48:27 So, they, you know, while they’re very interested, they want to support, they like it, it is hard from an inventory management and ultimately, like, an effort standpoint.
0:48:34 That being said, I think our gloves have to be in retail, whether that’s in PGA Superstore or Golf Galaxy or whatever it is.
0:48:36 Our products are super visually appealing.
0:48:47 And I think it’s one of those things that people, when they see it, they feel it because there is a part of the design right now that it does look a little gimmicky, could be cheap because that’s how they’ve historically been made.
0:48:54 And so, to demonstrate that ours are actually true premium, you know, grade A, Cabretta leather, a lot of times people might have to feel it.
0:49:02 And that is definitely a potential disconnect right now that we’re trying to, you know, ease over with videos and content and all of that stuff.
0:49:06 But I do think long-term plan would be to eventually get this into retail.
0:49:11 And I think we’re set up from a logistics standpoint and a pricing standpoint to be able to do it eventually.
0:49:16 Do you see where, you know, everything these days is, like, everything is a subscription.
0:49:23 It’s like, do you see, like, golf gloves as a subscription where it’s like, well, every quarter we’ll ship you a new design.
0:49:28 Like, you just punch in your size and, you know, we’ll, almost like a subscription box type of thing.
0:49:31 Yeah, we’ve definitely thought about it and talked about it.
0:49:34 I think we have to have a lot of designs to do it.
0:49:39 And so we’ve been bootstrapping and kind of growing the inventory and the selection slowly.
0:49:47 But, yeah, I do think it’s the kind of thing where you could say, hey, if you buy, you know, five gloves now, we’ll ship one to you every month and you’ll get this amount of savings.
0:49:53 And then, like you said, the recurring revenue model is something that’s always enticed me, not just in a physical goods space, but just in general.
0:49:58 And I do think there is a potential for it, although, you know, wouldn’t want to force it.
0:50:04 I think there are other kind of priorities for us, but it’s definitely an interesting thought that we’ve considered.
0:50:11 Like half of the Shopify stores I get to, that’s like the only option is sign up for this recurring thing.
0:50:12 It’s like, oh, what if I just want to try it?
0:50:15 You know, it just, you know, there didn’t even seem to be an option.
0:50:17 Like, how do I just make a one-time purchase?
0:50:18 And I got to remember how to cancel this thing.
0:50:22 Like, it’s, you know, people have gotten very aggressive with the subscription model.
0:50:25 Maybe that’ll be our new tagline, not a subscription.
0:50:27 Yeah, because it does wear out.
0:50:29 And it’s, you know, kind of a unique thing.
0:50:31 I was just, just spitballing here.
0:50:33 But, Randall, you’re working the day job.
0:50:36 You’re selling thousands of things, thankfully, outsourced fulfillment at this point.
0:50:43 Where does your time go if there is such thing as a day in the life or in a typical week these days?
0:50:45 I’m usually waking up 5.30 or 6.
0:50:52 I usually try and do emails and stuff like that for Chip prior to starting my day job, which I get to work from home.
0:50:54 Luckily, which has made that a lot easier.
0:50:57 I do have more time in the day and can be a little bit more flexible.
0:50:59 And then I’ll work, you know, till 4 or 5.
0:51:02 And then we have two adopted dogs.
0:51:04 And so they require a lot of attention as well.
0:51:04 I’ll take them to the park.
0:51:07 My wife comes home, like to spend time with her.
0:51:11 And then usually maybe an hour or two at night, I’ll go in and do some of the other stuff that we have.
0:51:20 Whether it’s setting up ads or looking at profitability or looking at different reports from our logistics partner or, you know, dealing with customer service or whatever the case is.
0:51:21 So it’s definitely a mix.
0:51:28 But prior to offloading the shipment to our third party logistics company, you know, my whole night was basically pack and order.
0:51:32 So anything outside of that feels like I have a ton of free time now.
0:51:36 But, you know, I love to play golf, like to spend time with my family, my wife and two dogs.
0:51:38 And that usually takes up any free time I’ve got left.
0:51:39 Yeah, love it.
0:51:44 It feels like a burden off of the shoulders to let somebody else handle that stuff.
0:51:46 Well, this is really cool.
0:51:53 I know we’re coming into our fourth golf season with some big goals to try and double or triple revenue from last year.
0:51:54 But what’s next for you?
0:51:56 What’s on the horizon for Chip Golf?
0:51:58 Yeah, it’s continuing to roll out new designs.
0:52:01 We have some really exciting designs that we’re going to be rolling out this year.
0:52:03 So definitely stay tuned.
0:52:07 We’ve got one that’s going to be looking like it’s going to be all green, similar to the master’s jacket.
0:52:09 We’ve got one that’s like all red.
0:52:14 It’s supposed to mimic sort of like a boxing glove, really just trying to be as artistic and different as possible.
0:52:16 And then we’ve got a few other designs.
0:52:19 We’re also thinking about rolling out just like a generic white one.
0:52:23 Granted, it kind of goes against everything that I’ve just talked about, but there is a demand for it.
0:52:29 And so I think you talk about average order value and potentially getting more customers offering something like that is certainly a value.
0:52:32 So from the product standpoint, there’s that.
0:52:34 We also want to continue to improve our scalability.
0:52:42 So that comes with like the 3PL, continuing to perfect our ads and ultimately make this a business that hopefully one day can replace my day job.
0:52:49 I mean, I’ve been very transparent about that where, you know, I would love to be able to run this as a full-time thing.
0:52:50 As soon as I can pay the bills with it, I will.
0:52:54 But it is, you know, still definitely a labor of love right now.
0:52:57 And, you know, we’ll continue to try and strive towards that end goal.
0:53:04 And that’s fairly common in any physical product business where once you do find some product market fit
0:53:10 and you’re making some sales, like, okay, well, now we need more inventory and we need to make a bigger order and a bigger order.
0:53:18 This is kind of that natural progression sometimes for years before you really start to draw a salary from it or take any money off the table.
0:53:20 It always goes back into growth.
0:53:21 I think that’s really common.
0:53:21 Yeah.
0:53:26 And we’ve done, too, another thing that I neglected to mention was we do a lot of custom glove orders.
0:53:28 So different companies will reach out.
0:53:29 Brands will reach out.
0:53:29 Oh, okay.
0:53:31 And we do like collabs.
0:53:40 Yeah, it’s a whole new revenue stream for us that’s actually really nice because it’s sort of bulk up front and it’s only a one-order deal and it usually is great.
0:53:43 So we’ve worked with, you know, private equity companies that take their clients out golfing.
0:53:47 They want to have, like, a fun giveaway that’s completely customized to them.
0:54:03 We’ve worked with other golf apparel brands that, you know, they just want, like, if you were to go to any website for, like, a glove manufacturer and you wanted a custom glove, the only thing they’re really willing to customize are, like, the logos on, like, the Velcro latch and that’s about it.
0:54:09 You know, we will do custom pattern, custom packaging, colored wrist stripes, whatever you want.
0:54:10 We’ll pretty much do it.
0:54:14 And so we’ve had some brands that are wanting to sell their gloves on their site.
0:54:22 And so we’ve been making, you know, gloves for them almost as, like, a manufacturer for them, which has been fun because we do love the creativity of it.
0:54:28 That’s sort of the fun part of this whole thing is getting to see a design come to life and be completely different than anything that’s out there.
0:54:33 And a lot of these brands bring some really cool ideas to the table and it’s fun to execute on those for them.
0:54:34 I think that is really cool.
0:54:37 And that’s to your point about increasing average order value.
0:54:48 Well, how can you figure out how to make this a B2B business where people are going to order 100 of these for, you know, their company team building event or something?
0:54:50 Like, I think that makes a lot of sense.
0:54:51 I think that’s really kind of a cool angle.
0:54:52 I hadn’t thought about that.
0:54:55 ChipGolfCo.com.
0:54:56 Chip with two Ps.
0:54:58 Use promo code HUSTLE for 15% off your order.
0:54:59 Randall, this has been awesome.
0:55:06 I’m inspired by this and, you know, we’ll definitely grab a pair for my next round.
0:55:11 It’s kind of, you know, frozen tundra out there at this point, but we’re going to be thawing out soon.
0:55:12 We’ll be hitting the links.
0:55:16 Let’s wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side Hustle Nation.
0:55:17 Find joy in the struggle.
0:55:20 When you are starting out, there’s going to be a lot of them.
0:55:23 And I think it can be very discouraging to a lot of people.
0:55:33 If you don’t find joy in the long hours and the mistakes and you lean into it as sort of just part of the process, building a brand, a product is going to be stressful.
0:55:41 I read a quote one time that entrepreneurs are the only people crazy enough to work more than 40 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week.
0:55:42 And that is very true.
0:55:49 You need to be willing to put in the hours, but, you know, the labor of love and hopefully you’re working in an industry or a product that you’re passionate about.
0:55:52 And that passion will carry you through the hard times.
0:55:54 And it’s very easy to get discouraged.
0:56:00 It’s one of the main reasons why I love having a co-founder where it feels like, you know, every time that I may be like, hey, this isn’t going to work.
0:56:02 He’s like, no, this is definitely going to work.
0:56:03 And then vice versa.
0:56:05 And it sort of keeps the boat afloat.
0:56:09 But, yeah, maintain positivity and find joy in the struggle would be my main piece of advice.
0:56:10 Find joy in the struggle.
0:56:11 That’s great.
0:56:11 Yeah.
0:56:17 The entrepreneur is somebody who, you know, is willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week.
0:56:24 The line that came up, this was probably last year on the show, I was like, I don’t make any money while I’m working, so I can make money while I’m not working.
0:56:28 It was like this, you know, chasing this, you know, passive or time leveraged income.
0:56:30 It’s like, oh, there’s something, there’s something to that.
0:56:33 We’ll, you know, figure out a more concise way to say that.
0:56:34 But it’s been awesome.
0:56:35 Again, chipgolfco.com.
0:56:37 We’ll link that up in the show notes.
0:56:40 A couple of takeaways for me before we wrap.
0:56:44 Number one is this idea of finding that white space.
0:56:55 You know, every market on the surface is going to feel saturated, but when you’re in it, you might notice these like little, little areas where you can kind of carve a toehold for yourself.
0:57:00 You kind of wedge yourself in there with something that is unique and differentiated in some way.
0:57:03 I think that these gloves have done a good job of that.
0:57:08 And then what we talked about was, on the one hand, you know, creating demand.
0:57:13 That’s the social content, the viral content, the social media ads, the impulse buy type of stuff where it’s like,
0:57:15 Oh, that’s a unique gift idea.
0:57:16 I’ll go ahead and buy one.
0:57:27 And then also pairing that with the filling demand on these different search platforms, the Amazon, the Etsy’s, the TikTok shops, to a certain extent, where it’s like, okay, I’m in the market for a new golf club.
0:57:28 Anyways, I’m looking for it.
0:57:31 And if I happen upon this, oh, that’s a unique design.
0:57:32 Let me go ahead and buy that.
0:57:36 So trying to balance both of those on the marketing front, I think is really interesting.
0:57:46 Your listener bonus for this episode, if you are excited about e-com, is my list of 25 e-commerce niche ideas to get your creative juices flowing.
0:57:49 You can download that for free at the show notes for this episode.
0:57:52 Just follow the show notes link in the episode description.
0:57:59 And if you like this one and you’re wondering what to listen to next, I might recommend number 649.
0:58:04 That was the sunglasses episode with Mike Ettenberg from Frontline Optics.
0:58:09 Kind of a similar direct-to-consumer sunglasses brand in his case, targeting first responders.
0:58:12 But big thanks to Randall for sharing his insight.
0:58:15 Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone.
0:58:21 As always, you can hit up SideHustleNation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
0:58:24 And thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show.
0:58:25 That’s it for me.
0:58:26 Thank you so much for tuning in.
0:58:29 Until next time, let’s go out there and make something happen.
0:58:31 And I’ll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show.