569: The #1 Way to Get More Shoppers Without Spending a Dime

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Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. Today, Tony and I are going to discuss perhaps the most important way to generate traffic and repeat customers for your business. And this is a strategy that is often severely underestimated and underutilized. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets are now on sale for Seller Summit 2025 over at sellersummit.com. The Seller Summit,

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is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level advice, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business, entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet.

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I personally hate large events, so the Seller’s Summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past 8 years. If you are an ecommerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller’s Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th.

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Right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. So head on over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show.

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Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job Podcast. Today we’re going to cover one last topic on this marketing series that we’ve been doing, and that is word of mouth marketing. And the reason why I want to talk about this is because I actually think the majority of Bumble Bee Linen’s business is word of mouth, mainly because we get a lot of our business from event and wedding planners today, which make up a significant portion. And what I wanted to stress,

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just to kind of start out with is that one of the questions I get from students who join the classes, do I have to do customer service? In general or themselves? Well, just in general. Interesting. Right? Because in the beginning, they’re like, hey, I’m just a one person thing. Like I can’t answer phone calls and I don’t want to interact with the customer at all. And that’s why people are attracted to Amazon so much, right? Because Amazon does all that stuff.

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But I was just thinking about this other day. It was a YouTube video I was watching about actually talking to the customer. And I was just thinking to myself, I get emails every single day, like a ton of emails every single day from my wife, quit her job. And I try to respond to all of them. And every now and then, this happens at least once or twice a week, someone emails back and goes, oh my God, I can’t believe you responded.

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to my email. I can’t believe there’s actually a real person behind this. I was thinking to myself, man, the bar is really low, right? Yes, it is really low. You can make someone really happy just by responding. Yes. I think to globalize this, if you think about people shopping behavior in general and what people like to do, I think people shop for two reasons.

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consistency or customer experience. Those are the two reasons why people shop at certain stores and do the certain things they do. If you think about Amazon, as a customer on Amazon, the customer experience is actually pretty good. If you need to return something, it’s always really easy if you have a problem with an item. For the most part, Amazon does a good job with customer service. The reason why everyone likes Amazon is because you know exactly what you’re going to get and when you’re going to get it. You place your order.

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within 24, sometimes five hours, it shows up on your front porch, right? But then there’s other people and there’s other shopping experiences that people have where they want to go down to the boutique, right? Like there’s a couple parts in my town that have these little boutique stores and I often wonder how they stay in business, right? Because they sell like a very specific type of thing. You can only go in there if you want beach wear or stuff like that. And they stay in business because they’ve built a relationship.

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with the customer. And I’ve heard people like, so in this one plaza, there’s like stores and restaurants, and we always go to this one restaurant. And I hear people talking about the stores in that, it’s not even a strip mall, it’s like a little shopping village. They love, they know the owner, they talk to them, right? The owner comes out and helps them find something. And so that customer experience, like, yes, could they probably buy that exact same thing on Amazon for probably less? I would say most definitely.

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But do they love that experience, that customer service, that feeling like they’re part of that family? Absolutely, so they make that. So people either shop one way or other, in my opinion. They know what they’re getting and that’s what they do, or they want to feel like they’re part of something else. Yeah, I mean, this is similar to that interview I did with Jerry Kozak, who does the print-on-demand company. He runs a printing company. And a lot of his printing business got destroyed by Ti Mu and Shien, but the bread and butter of his business

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are all the private clients that he actually makes uniforms for and whatnot. They continue to come back to him because he delivers, they have this relationship, even though they could probably find someone in China, I would guess, at a lot cheaper price. Yes, but once you have that relationship, I think it’s really hard to switch even if maybe there’s a better deal somewhere. A perfect example of this is, we own a lot of motorcycles in our house and my son

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uh, hit a pothole in his motorcycle month ago and bent his front wheel frame and he rides a Honda motorcycle. We bought it at a Honda dealership. Um, but instead of taking it to the Honda dealership to get it fixed, where we just, we knew the bike we wanted, we went in and we purchased it. We took it to the Ducati dealership to get it fixed because that’s where our relationship is, right? Those are where we know the guys.

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Those are the people that we talk to all the time. So even though, you know, was it probably a little more expensive to get it fixed at the Ducati dealership? I would guess, yeah. But it wasn’t worth not having the relationship, right? Because we know if there’s a problem, we know exactly that it will be handled. And I mean, there wasn’t one, obviously. But, you know, you picked we picked relationship over probably cost and maybe convenience. Yeah. I mean, so the real question is, how do you establish these relationships? They kind of have to be done

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You can’t automate it, Yes, you can’t automate it. That is correct. This is funny. I remember my wife, what she does is she actually sends little gifts to our best customers at the end of the year. I remember that first year she started doing that. I was like, what’s the point of this? They’ve purchased like 10 times already. They’re clearly a customer. Why are we – I mean, what’s this going to do?

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But clearly my wife knows about the softer side of things. It’s probably because of that reason that these customers have kept coming back for many, many years now. We’ve had customers buy from us since the beginning. Here’s a tip for that because I love that idea and I think it’s something that every business should be doing for their best clients, is sending them. If it doesn’t have to be around the holidays, that’s the most common time to do it. What I don’t like is when

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If you were to send, and I don’t know what you send, so I might be offending you guys right now, to send them a Bumble Bee Linens coffee mug. To me, They get the hankies that have been returned. No, but I see this with companies all the time. It’s like, think you’re valued customer. Here’s a pin with our logo on it.

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Which is like, no, if you’re truly thanking someone, then you get them what they want. And obviously you don’t know exactly what maybe your top 50 customers want or whatever the number is, but you wanna get them something that’s just nice and appreciative. It should not be something that’s branded with your logo or something that could be used as an advertisement. No one wants a Bumblebee t-shirt, right? Maybe they do. to do that. Yeah.

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But, and so like, you maybe it’s a Christmas ornament with something like commemorating of, know, maybe like, I don’t know, like, you know, I know every year for in Chinese, there’s like an animal, right, with the year. So maybe it’s an ornament with that on it, or maybe it’s a, you know, a Yeti cup that’s just, you know, like in a nice color, right, or with a pretty design. Or maybe it’s something that’s, you know, fun and…

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really shows your appreciation versus like, hey, please walk around with my Bumblebee branded hat on so that everyone knows where you buy your handkerchiefs. So I think that’s a big thing when you, if you decide to do this is you should make sure the gift is like something that you would actually want to receive as well. If you want to go the extra mile, you can stalk this person on social media and find out what they’re interested in. There was this talk that Gary V gave and I thought this was ingenious. It’s very calculated though. What he did is he went through his entire customer list.

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And he found the people that had really large social media presences. Oh, I remember this. Yeah. And then, uh, so one guy really liked Jay Cutler. So he went out and bought, he spent 400 bucks on an autographed framed Jay Cutler Jersey. Yeah. Sent to that guy. And the guy ordered only a hundred bucks worth of stuff, but he had a big Twitter following. think it was. Yeah. And then, you know, a couple of weeks passed and he’s like,

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He clearly already got it, but nothing happened. Then exactly one month later, he got this huge order of wine. It was a referral from the guy that received the J. Cutler jersey. There’s a little Italian place a couple of towns over from me that we stumbled upon one day. It is one of those, you feel like when you walk in, you’re in Italy.

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The owner is originally from Italy through Brazil, you know through like six other countries But you know we went in there the first time we sat we love to sit at the bar So we sit at the bar. We’re talking to the owner of the restaurant, you know, we’re Learning about him learning about where he’s lived learning about where he’s from the town He’s from all this stuff and you know as we’re in there we each have a glass of wine and

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Brian orders a second glass of wine and I was like, I’m good. And then he takes the wine bottle and just like gives me, you know, like maybe a half of a pour more. And he’s like, well, we don’t believe in drinking alone, right? Like so, and you know, doesn’t charge me for it, whatever, right? And you’re just like, wow, okay. Like customer service right there, you know, like, and I didn’t want another, you know, so it wasn’t like he was forcing anything on me. It was just like, hey, here’s a little more. So you’re not sitting there with an empty glass while he has another glass. And then we had,

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just got an appetizer and there was this salt that they had used in this appetizer that was, I don’t know what it was, but it was absolutely the best tasting salt. That’s weird to say, but, and so we asked him about the salt. We got into this whole story about the salt. So as we’re leaving, he brings us out this tiny little jar of salt, right, that was from the appetizer. Have I not recommended that place to everybody I’ve ever met in this town, right? We go all the time.

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You know, it’s like, just from that first interaction, right? He could have just served us, given us the food, been friendly, right? And it would have been like, yeah, it was a great experience. We’ll probably go back at some point. But like, we make it a point to drive to go to this place because the experience, and every time we walk in, same thing, walks up, shakes your hand. And it’s like, does this cost him anything, really? Like, other than a couple seconds of his time? No, but.

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Like I post about it on social media, not because I love it, right? And I want other people and he treats everybody that way, right? Like we’re not special in that like somehow he thinks, you we have a Twitter following, he’s gonna do this. Like he treats all the customers this way. And I think honestly, if you’re not doing that in your business, whether it’s digitally or in person, like you’re missing out on this huge opportunity to create like your most loyal customers for not a lot of money.

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It’s not just loyal customers, it’s really a brand. And I’ve been thinking about this a lot because we’re at a crossroads right now. I think Google’s gonna be dead in five years. And it just so happens that Google is about 25 % of my business right now for Bumblebee. And I’ve been like racking my brains trying to figure things out. I don’t know if you guys have been using Perplexity. Perplexity is an AI search engine that’s…

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Really pretty good. I mean, it’s got tiny market share. Have you used it? Very, very sparingly, but I’m about to jump on the bandwagon. Yeah. So basically it gives you an AI answer and then it gives you links. But what they recently added was shopping and it’s not just shopping. It’s literally a button where if you click on it, you instantly check out. Cause I guess perplexity has your information. So it’s like one click checkout on Amazon, except it’s through AI.

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And I was trying to figure out how this could possibly work, but I think they had this deal with ShopPay. think almost every Shopify store can use ShopPay, And so they already have the customer’s information as part of that. So when they click on the button, it automatically places the order on that e-commerce store. so I was just thinking, hey, is that the future? How do I show up on AI Search? And I think more and more

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important now is getting your brand out there. And I guess all the SEO efforts that I’ve made over the years contribute to this. But I think where most of the signals are coming from, honestly, today are social media. Do you have that brand presence? And so I was just thinking to myself, I’ve been dragging my feet on social media for so many years because it’s something that you have to do every day. But our friend Jim, he does it.

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Yeah, it’s really just a mindset thing. Yes. Yeah. And it worked when I was on TikTok and I, you know, did it every single day and I grew to one hundred and twenty thousand subs YouTube. I was very consistent once a week. And now, you know, that’s been growing like gangbusters. It’s really just this frame of mind. mean, this is where the world’s going. You think about word of mouth, right? How many TikToks have you watched? know this happens in our house a lot. My wife will see a TikTok for this restaurant. Yep.

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And she’d be like, hey, let’s try that place. Because this person said that it was pretty good and showed us pictures of her enjoying the food. That’s where the world is going. That’s where it is, I think, today already. Anyway, that’s my little soapbox thing. I’m trying to hit myself into admitting to this. It’s hard, right? Because especially, OK, so.

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I think, let’s just use Gary Vee, right? He’s actually a great example of someone who’s constantly building that social currency, right? He’s making, he’s always on social media. I always see TikToks of him, Reels, whatever the platform, he’s there, right? Sort of building that with, as himself, right, as the brand. But that’s kind of easy for him, right? Because he’s talking about stuff that like he’s doing every day. Like, have you seen those ones of him where he’s going to the garage sale and he’s buying like the bucket of hot.

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Hot Wheels cars and you know, like that’s all stuff he does. It’s in his business. Like for you and Bumblebee and for a lot of people, right? Like you’re not a wedding planner. You’re not really a hanky user. You know, so like. Do you cry on occasion? only during the NBA playoffs. So once a year is not going to be enough for this marketing. But like for most people, being able to create content around their brand isn’t just like their normal everyday life.

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They’re not just getting up. I feel like Gary V, most of his content is just based on his everyday actions. It’s pretty simple to have a camera follow you around. It’s not pretty simple, but in the social media world, that’s not as difficult as you sell linens. You’re not a linen person, so then how do you get over the mental hurdle and figure out how to make that content?

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to sort of bridge that gap that’s definitely not, I would say, in your wheelhouse. Well, here’s the thing. I think you can create content about anything and not even mention your business. People will find your link in bio. There’s this girl from Vancouver, her strawberry milk mob. All she does is she shares dating advice and stuff like that. Her videos aren’t flashy. She literally just picks up her phone and does stuff. But she has 2.2 million followers.

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and she also runs a swimwear brand, which she never talks about. But I’m sure that it gets tons and tons of sales because that’s her link in the bio. Yes, but she’s also talking about like dating. she, mean, at she’s talking to her target. You got to talk to your target demographic. Correct. But the content, doesn’t have to be about the product. You don’t have to talk about crying all the time. Although I just had a brilliant idea. I had a brilliant idea for your channel.

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One of our favorite things you and I to watch is sad fans. Fans that when their team loses and they’re crying, when the winning touchdown is scored, when the buzzer beater baskets. You could just do something with sad fans and hankies and then you could still do what you love, sad fans and mix in hankies. Looks like someone needs a hanky.

18:26
I think would that work on women though? Yeah, that’d be guys, right? Maybe I don’t know. I’ve seen sad women fans like 90 95 % of our customers are women. Yes, they are. And they’re also they skew older also. Yes. In the demographic because hankies and towels and whatnot. Yes. Anyway, the point I wanted to make is you can just write content about anything and then just kind of insert your little call to action in there.

18:54
It doesn’t even have to have anything to do with it. But over time, you know, people remember that or be associated with it. So what are you going to talk about for Bumblebee?

19:07
Okay, so I’m going to do all the simple stuff like the day-to-day, right? Even though I’m not there every day. I figured I’ll just go in. is what I think happens every day. Jen’s going to love this. Well, I can talk about all the cool stuff. I’m involved in a lot of the cool stuff. A lot of people do embroider funny things on the Hankies. I was thinking about just setting up a camera in front of the embroider machine. I think I told you to do this five years ago.

19:36
Well, yeah, I mean, I’m not going to set up the camera or have it run all day, but I just have it like if there’s something funny that’s being stitched, I’ll just film it and then I’ll comment on it. Yeah. Or something like that. But the other thing I thought was interesting, this is a channel that I would watch is a lot of people are just kind of interested about what it’s like to run the business. Right. And I’ve actually been in there a lot lately because I’m the only one who knows how to use the printer right now. So I’ve been in there a lot.

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lately because in preparation for the holiday season. So I can get, there’s a lot of unexpected things that happen daily. It’s kind like your family, right? You have seven kids, something happens every day. Something happens every day at Bumblebee too. And it’d just be interesting to document that stuff, the good and the bad.

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I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free.

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just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

21:09
I’m actually interested in this because I not sure I’m 100 % on board with just putting any content out there to build customers, but I’m curious to see if it works. I feel like it’s got to have some sort of connection with your potential audience. Now, I do think how to run the business. Then there’s also this other factor because it’s social media.

21:38
This is where it tricky because I actually love to watch the videos of things being bottled in a manufacturing facility or how people screen print things or all the making of stuff. I love those types of videos online. I also love the watch me work type of behind the scenes, packing orders, mainly probably because we’re both in this business. I’m always curious to see how these things work.

22:08
But I do think like some of these brands that have gotten really big doing these types of things, then you do spill over into your audience, right? Because you get to the point. So perfect example of this are, we keep talking about AJ and Big Justice, but I’m in bed the other night and it’s like probably 11, 1130 and my two, you know, young adult boys are in the kitchen making some sort of snack, right? And I hear them like get food out of the microwave and then I hear one of them go.

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I’m bringing the boom. They’re not on social media a ton. They’re on it, but they’re not huge consumers of social media. I’m in bed and I yell from my bed, do you know AJ and Big Justice? They yell back, we love the Rizzler.

23:03
But like, I just think about like, you they started out as the Costco guys, right? And like talking about stuff in Costco. They have transcended, like everybody knows about them, right? So I think you get to a point on social media and this is what makes social media so cool, right? You get to the point where you’ve transcended all age demographics, all the traditional like buckets, right? Like anybody who’s on social media, I feel like has now heard of them.

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in some capacity, right? Because they’ve gone on TV, they’ve gone to sporting events. So I think social media can do that for your brand, right? It can get you to the point where you transcend all demographics and it doesn’t matter what you started talking about. You have a big enough following to drive business. It’s not easy to get there. I I was thinking about this in the context of AI search, right? Yeah. Like if you do a search for Bumblebee linens or whatever, like my name kind of comes up with it.

23:56
depending on how you phrase the thing. So if you have a big platform or social media presence, I think that’s gonna make it much more likely for you to actually show up. whatever, mean, AI search is still new, so however it’s gonna be, but it’s gonna be based on what’s already out there. And how much do you think it matters, because I was thinking about this today too, how much do you think it matters if like, not only are you out there on social media, but maybe you go on a podcast to talk specifically about Bumblebee?

24:26
or you go as a guest on someone else’s YouTube to talk about specifically Bumblebee, your name in relation to Bumblebee? I don’t know the answer to that question with podcasts. But you know what I’m saying? So I’m building my own website, just my personal website. And I was trying to think of all the things where I’ve spoken and podcasts I’ve been on and things like that. And I, of course, have not kept a great record of this. So I just Googled myself.

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to see what came up. like podcasts came up, speaking stuff came up, like all of that came up in the, I think I Googled my name with like e-commerce. And so I wonder how much that will play in, right? If you’re out there sort of like on all the multi-channels, right? Not just doing social media, but doing podcasts or YouTube, things like that. Well, here’s a presentation I’m going to give to profitable audience, probably in a week or so.

25:18
But I made one little change to my blog that links all my press mentions and everything. And my traffic doubled in one day. That’s crazy. And it’s still been on a steady climb because now Google knows that I’m associated with the content. It didn’t make that correlation before. Yeah. So I think it’s very important, especially in this age of AI just spitting out spam, like people putting up sites and whatnot. Right. like the emphasis is going to be on who the actual author is.

25:48
Yeah. And the more that you’re out there, the more presence you’ll have, I’m sure, on AI search going forward as well. Yeah, that was sort of my initial hypothesis on this. Obviously, we don’t really have anything to, except for your traffic doubling. mean, obviously, that’s a nice… It’s funny. It happened because I made the change and I’m like, things don’t usually happen this fast. So I emailed Jeff. was like, were there any Google updates or anything that happened? He’s like, oh, no, no, it’s been stable for a while. Yeah.

26:16
I was like, I’ll show you my change. Do you actually think that this is what did it? He looked at it he was like, huh, yes, I think this is what did it because all of a sudden my knowledge panel on Google shows all these things. It couldn’t have been just a coincidence, right? No, think, It makes sense, right? This is good and bad news for people, I think, overall because

26:43
I know a profitable audience, especially when we do webinars where we’re talking to a lot of people who aren’t in the course and maybe are thinking about starting to build content either around a brand they already have or starting a new brand. The question we always get asked is, can I do this anonymously? Right? Yeah. And that’s one of the reasons why people love Amazon, because you can do things basically anonymously on Amazon.

27:08
You can sell whatever you want under whatever brand name. No one will ever have to know you’re associated with it really. mean people can dive deep and find you, but that’s not, you know, it’s not the same. But I really think, it’s funny, I feel like we’re almost coming full circle because like when I was building my blog back in 2008, it was all about getting yourself out there, right? What events was I at? What magazine would I submit a paragraph to? What blogs were I commenting on? Who was I associating with, right?

27:38
in the blog space. then know, then I mean, SEO was still taking over at that point, but like, know, everyone, most people became very SEO focused. It became just like very much this process based, you know, content creation. You didn’t have to go to anything. You didn’t have to put yourself out there. And now it’s sort of flipped back to where I think putting yourself out there is actually very helpful. Here’s the struggle. And we’ve seen this happen to members of our class. Like we get them hyped about

28:08
making short form and then they post their first thing and it gets like five views. Right? Yes. And, and what I found at least with social media on Tik Tok is that, uh, you know, you could post like 20 things, but eventually you’ll get one thing that gets, let’s say a few thousand views. And then that means like, if all the rest of your videos are getting like a hundred or less, and all of sudden you get like a 2000 view video or a 4,000 view video, that means you’re onto something there. Yeah.

28:37
and you should examine what you did in that video and just make more of it. Yeah. And that’s how you get better. You can’t ex I would go in expecting nothing in the beginning. And the same has been true with my YouTube channel, right? Like I pretty much know what’s going to do well now. And whenever something doesn’t do well, I kind of go in knowing that it’s not going to do well because it’s content that I actually want to create. Yes. And not what I Yeah. Yeah. It’s the struggle that I have an internal struggle. So

29:07
Well, and I actually remember we talked about this a couple of weeks ago in office hours when I was referencing our friend Andy, who was, you know, he’s in the growth stage of his YouTube channel. I think he’s over 30,000 subscribers right now. But he said one of his biggest learning takeaways from the past couple of years was he’s got to make content that the algorithm likes. Right. And, know, he he’s very into like charitable causes. But, you know, the more every time he makes a video on it, it flops in.

29:36
I’ve watched a lot of his stuff and his charitable videos aren’t better or worse than some of his videos about paying off your mortgage early, right? They’re the same, just the algorithm is telling him people want more content about paying off your mortgage. It’s actually taken me probably three years to figure out how to phrase teaching content into something that the masses will actually want.

30:02
It is probably the hardest thing that I, and I still make mistakes, but it’s like the hardest thing to do. Yeah. Well, here’s the thing too. I was working on my site this morning, so I was having all sorts of marketing thoughts because this is basically a newer endeavor. I was thinking, when I’m on YouTube, I watch a lot of big creators, right? I try to watch a lot of different things just because

30:29
We teach YouTube, so I want to feel like I understand what many verticals are doing, not just the ones that I actually want. I don’t want to just watch NBA highlights on YouTube. But there are a lot of people out there creating really good content on YouTube that’s teaching because I’m thinking about for our introverts, right? People who are like, I know Logan Paul. Which one’s fighting Mike Tyson this weekend or soon? Is that Logan or Jake Paul? I don’t know the difference between the two. Yeah, I always get a mix up too. Anyway.

30:57
Not everybody’s a Paul brother, right? There are a lot of introverted person people. I think about our friend Rob Berger. We talk about him a lot, like just turning the camera on, making the financial videos. But there are a lot of people out there that I follow or that I watch their content that are doing like purely teaching videos. Like here’s how you do this segmentation in Klaviyo or here’s how you do something in Shopify or here’s an idea for XYZ, right? Purely content. They have maybe 5,000 subscribers, right? So they’re not huge channels.

31:27
But yet you can tell from the views on the videos and the interaction on those videos that that’s driving their business, right? Because they usually have a service-based business or something on top of that. Maybe they sell a Shopify plugin, whatever. It doesn’t really matter. I think you can build content and put yourself out there in a very niche capacity where, like obviously we talk about wanting to get thousands and hundreds of thousands of views on pieces of content. And I think that’s obviously that’s great. And who doesn’t love that?

31:56
all of us, right? But I think you can create something that’s lucrative and that will support you as a full-time job if you find the right audience and you get into that niche and you’re driving it to a very specific product or service. I mean, there’s tons of people on YouTube like that. There’s this one guy I follow who teaches Facebook ads, and he’s got a tiny channel. It’s like 4,000. But I bet he gets almost all of his clients through that channel.

32:26
It’s niche, but the people who watch his videos. Yeah. Yeah. So you can go niche or go broad. Like I was always taught, because I had a YouTube consultant for a while and I’m a member of a bunch of mastermind groups. I was taught that going broad and funneling down will almost always yield you more customers than the niche method overall in the grand scheme of things. you can make a living off of just the ads also.

32:55
So I’ve tried to adopt that philosophy. Which I don’t think either one is right or wrong. I think you can do both. But for people who are like, don’t want to fight Mike Tyson, it is possible to do this in a very niche capacity and not feel like you’re going to be… I mean, we were joking right before we started recording that you have a video up right now on YouTube about the tariffs. And I was reading through some of the comments and…

33:23
Like I know stuff pretty much rolls off your back and like you don’t get offended by a lot of things. But you know, I think someone who maybe just put that video up because they were really into like tariffs and they hadn’t made a lot of YouTube videos, if they would be receiving some of it, you know, there was a lot of like, this is far too simplistic. You don’t know what you’re talking about. know, like stuff like we’re like, OK, whatever, dude. But, you know, I think people can get their feelings hurt, right, about stuff. so I think for people who are like, I just don’t want to like

33:51
be susceptible to that sort of thing. You don’t have to be. You can do this in a niche capacity or you can go broad or like as our friend Christina, she’s starting her pet social media for her pet product and she had a video basically go viral and she’s like, wait, no, I don’t want this, right? So anyway, I think…

34:14
But you have to put yourself out there. That’s the hard part for a lot of people. I actually don’t, aside from like all the strategies that we talk about all the time of like how to get over it, I really don’t know how people can get over it other than just doing it. Right? Like there’s not like a magic potion to all of a sudden wanting to be on video or make content like that. I mean, I’m thinking about all my priorities right now for getting top of funnel business to Bumblebee. And, you know, once upon a time that was search.

34:44
I think today it has to be social media. Yeah, which is like, can’t believe you’re saying that. I don’t want it to be that. I really don’t want it to be that. I mean, what else is there right now? And it’s ads. Yeah. Google ads are so powerful. I mean, like five years ago, we would be laughing at ourselves for recording this podcast. And, know, I talk about blogging and it’s still probably it still probably has like, you know, three, four years left. But I.

35:14
I mean, the writing’s on the wall. I think for the traditional way that Google is doing search and ads. And especially like the underhanded things that they’re doing too, which is the topic of one of my YouTube videos too. That should do well. The dark side of Google. You know how I’ve kind of hated and avoided social media, and I’m still avoiding it. I’m fighting it. But I’m just trying to think, like, how are you going to get more business?

35:43
I do think that just the old-fashioned word of mouth, obviously social media is very powerful for word of mouth. Just the stuff that you were talking about and let’s try this restaurant, let’s do this. I’ve gone to cities before because I saw them on social media. Oh, yes, I’ve gone to places in Europe because I was like, we got to go to this, the place is cool, let’s stop.

36:10
So I think that the amount of power in that is crazy, right? It’s at a level that I don’t think our 2008 brains could have comprehended. But I also think the old fashioned, once you get a customer, so you’ve worked really hard to get the customer, whether it’s from social media, an ad, Google search, whatever it is, you want to make sure that they then become, you want your customers to be creating the social media content about you. Right.

36:38
which is probably a whole other podcast on customer experience. But I think that that’s the next step in this, right? You create the experience and then they create an experience for someone else with your products. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, actually. I was thinking about as part of the checkout process, asking for someone’s Instagram handle. And then I don’t know how intrusive, I’m almost positive Jen’s going to be absolutely against this. Probably.

37:05
But you know, tagging them in some way, thanking them or whatever, or like, hey, your your hankies turned out great or something like that. Yeah, because

37:16
Back to the analogy that we started with was whenever I reply to an email, people are like, oh my God, thank you so much for replying. I feel like people are starved for attention and comments on their social media platforms. I don’t get that many comments on my posts for Instagram because that’s not my thing, but when I do get one, I appreciate it. I think people will appreciate the attention. I think people will also appreciate the positive attention because so much of social media can be negative.

37:46
And so to just see positive interaction with them involved in it, I think is very powerful and leaves a really good impression about the brand. Or don’t even tag the person. Once you have their social media handle, just go on their account and make a comment on something. Yeah. It’s a lot of work. It is a lot of work, but you can start out doing it. But once you have the SOPs, you can have someone do it. Correct. Yes. There’s definitely parts of this that can be outsourced.

38:14
It’s not like you’re writing a novel, right? You’re just making a comment like, oh, cool. You your children are so cute. I want to eat them. No, but like I remember so I used to rent all my clothes from rent the runway. We talked about that a lot. But I remember like when I would post an outfit that I like really liked, right, that I was like maybe at a conference and whatever. And I had a dress on that I had rented. I would always post and tag them. And I would love it when they reshared it to their stories.

38:44
Not because I wanted, I didn’t want to gain followers. I was doing it because I genuinely thought the outfit was cute. But I remember just the feeling that I would get of them reposting it, it felt good. It just felt good inside for them to be like, hey, we appreciate you, we’re sharing this too. And obviously it’s brand building for them for sure. But I don’t know, there’s just something about it. Even for us who probably are very cynical about social media in general,

39:13
I know why they’re reposting this, I’m not dumb, but it still felt good. For the regular customer who doesn’t live in social media, who doesn’t do this as a business, I think the impact that that has is really powerful. The other thing that I think is really powerful and probably a whole other thing is a handwritten note in an order. What do you do, Sanaki? Yes. Has these handwriting machines, you literally put in a pen.

39:43
and it writes it in your handwriting. I think that works too, but I think that all those things are really impactful. In fact, just got a new phone this weekend, which I’m not like, as you and I know, I’m not like a huge technology person, but I needed a phone. I reluctantly got a new phone and I forgot that the Apple experience is all about the Apple experience.

40:13
I went online, picked my phone out, and then I had the choice of having it delivered or I could have it picked up. I could pick it up at the Apple Store like that day. So I was like, my mind will just go get it. I don’t want to wait till Tuesday or whatever because it was coming up on the weekend. was like, that way if there’s any problems when I try to transfer my phone over, which of course there will be, I have the weekend where I’m not missing important stuff. So I go to the Apple Store. Have you been to an Apple Store lately? I have, actually. OK.

40:39
I don’t ever, you know, I never go out. like I was like, what is this mall thing in a parking lot and all this stuff? Right. So I walk into the Apple Store and it is, I mean, the mall is actually decently busy because I think the holidays are coming up. like the Apple Store is packed. Always. Yeah. Always. And I’ve never not been in an Apple Store that’s packed. So I walk in and it’s packed and I was like, oh, like I’m immediately irritated that I didn’t have the ship to my house. Right. But then I quickly realized that the Apple Store staffs like Chick-fil-A.

41:08
So for every person in the store, there’s an Apple employee basically, every customer. And they’ve got their red shirts on, I think. so I just walk up to the nearest red shirt and I’m like, hi, I have an order pickup. And the girl’s like, is this a repair or a new purchase? And her friendly Apple voice. And I was like, new purchase. And so she points me to the guy next to her who’s also standing there. Because there’s far more employees than they need.

41:33
in the store and he whips out his little scanner thing and scans my barcode and then walks me to the back of the store where we wait excitedly for the new purchase, right? So I’m standing there and you know me, I’m like, I just wanna get the phone and get out of this mall. Like I’m literally having anxiety. And he’s like, are you just so excited about this new phone? But as the whole day, as a marketer, I’m like, I know what you’re doing, you know? And I was like.

41:59
I’m really like, no, dude, my other phone is broken. I just need a phone. And I was like, yeah. And he’s like, I hope you know about the amazing camera features on the iPhone 16.

42:11
And of course I’m like, of course I don’t know about the amazing camera features. I just got the phone that I like the color of, you know? And so he whips out, you know, the same phone that I bought, it’s not mine. And he’s like showing me as we’re waiting, like he’s like, and then there’s this and then there’s, so immediately, right? Like he’s warming me up to the product. Like in his mind, getting me very, very excited about all these new camera features that I’m gonna be getting. And then, you know, within three minutes, a guy from the back appears.

42:40
with the white box with the white bag that they open up, put the box in the bag in front of me, which I’m like, I’ll just take the box, dude. I don’t care. But once again, as a customer experience, 10 out of 10. And then, of course, when you open up an Apple product, their box is open slowly on purpose. There’s all these. It’s everything about that product is designed for the customer experience. And when you peel off the, everything about it is all, it’s an aesthetic.

43:09
And as I was going through that whole thing, I’m like, this is why Apple can sell less superior products for more money and have the most crazy loyal following in the world. They’re at the Chick-fil-A level of loyalty. And it’s like, your products aren’t even that great all the time. But yet you’ve created this whole experience that everyone’s bought into and it works.

43:37
And then iPhone users shame other people into using iPhones and like, you know, there’s whole subculture, right? And so when you can get to that level as a business, I think you’ve done something right without marketing, right? That word of mouth. It’s like, people aren’t buying Apple phones because they have good commercials. They do, but like they’re buying them because they’ve been shamed in the group text for three years and now they’re like, they don’t want to be the green bubble. So, you know, it’s just fascinating, but.

44:05
If the big companies know it works, then the little companies need to start doing it too. If you’re going into this thinking to yourself, I don’t want to talk to anyone ever. Do any customer service or I don’t want to show my face. I think you’re to have to going forward.

44:28
Hope you enjoyed this episode. Word of mouth is still one of the biggest drivers of my business, especially when it comes to wedding and event planners. For more information and resources, go to mywifequitherjob.com slash episode 569. Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event.

44:59
go to SellersSummit.com. And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to my wife, QuitHerJob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.