You have WAY more value than you know - Frank Kern Greatest Hit

What's happening y'all hope everybody's well, uh, thank you so much for joining me. And today is what Tuesday, the something I know it was Tuesday. I'm certain of that 13th. Maybe. I dunno, whatever. It's even Tuesday, maybe it's Wednesday. Ah, I think it's Wednesday. Good God. Anyway, let's get to work. Okay. Try to do these every day.
Share some new insights, some pick it up along the way. And, um, Crazy thing happened on, uh, on clubhouse, uh, yesterday, which is increasingly addicting by the way, um, who knows what will happen with this thing? So many questions around the topic of clubhouse. Is it going to replace this or that or the other?
The answer in my opinion is no, it's not going to replace anything, but it is a pretty good feeder system. For other platforms like somebody sees you on clubhouse, if you're able to help or contribute, then maybe they go check you out on YouTube or listen to your podcast or check out your Instagram or Facebook or whatever.
And it's also a great place to pick up insights about what's going on in the mind of your customer, which we've talked about before. So. Yesterday, I got pinged into a room that was, um, about, uh, totally forgetting the title of it. Now it was called like the future of e-commerce or something like that, you know?
And so it was about people with e-commerce stores, you know, people who sell stuff, right. Like t-shirts and makeup and, and et cetera. And so I'm like, okay, cool. I'll get pinged into this thing and listen. You know, I might learn me something and, uh, the moderators were like, Ridiculously accomplished people, you know?
So there was a dude on there, man. I can't remember his, uh, his company, nice guy too, out of Portland, but, um, he and his, I think it was he and his wife had bootstrapped this particular e-commerce. Brand up and then sold it for like a gazillion dollars, you know, kitchen table, success story. Right. Sold it for like a gazillion dollars.
And now they're like venture capitalists. And then there was this other lady in there who's an angel investor, which means she obviously did something right. To get enough money to be an angel investor. And it was like, I think she had built a brand or something and then sold it. And then there was another lady that had done something like 50 million or something like that in e-commerce like, All of these really, really big e-commerce folks.
And then Eric Huberman always blank on the guy's name. Sorry, Eric. Um, from Hawk media was on there. He manages a lot of, uh, uh, brands, like big e-commerce brands and stuff. And so the conversations going on about, uh, you know, how some e-commerce brands, um, well first I'll share some interesting stats with you, by the way, the consumer I'm doing this from memory, so it could be slightly wrong.
And if it is forgive me, the average consumer spending. On e-com stuff like stuff, you know, like buying toothpaste or t-shirts or whatever. Online went from 13% in 20, 19 to 30, something percent in 2020, which obviously is not a surprise. You know, I had to stay home. Like you couldn't go to wherever you wanted to go.
And even if you wouldn't, you can, you don't want him because he got to wear the stupid mask and it's uncomfortable freaks me out anyway, Fogg's up my glasses if I'm wearing them. Um, so that's not a surprise, right. But interestingly enough, a lot of e-commerce companies were having trouble making ads work and stuff.
So the conversations like going on and on about that, and it was very fascinating to hear like, These big companies, you know, talk about challenges of advertising and all of this sort of stuff. So I'm just sort of soaking it up. And then for whatever reason, they invited me to be a, uh, on the panel. So I'm like, you know, okay.
And so I used my opportunity there to not try to pretend like I knew what I was talking about, but to ask them a question. Okay. And I want to tell you the story behind the question, and this is ultimately leading to the highly likely fact. And of course I can't substantiate this opinion. It really, my strong, a belief that.
What you have up here is more valuable than you might realize. Okay. So that's where I'm going with this whole thing. All right. So I get made the panelist or whatever you call it in this clubhouse room. And, um, so I'm, I'm going to ask you a question, you know, and so the story that perceives the question is this, I deliberately.
Went to the following major. E-commerce like super successful brands and did two things. Number one, I started to check out. And then I left. Okay. This thing, number one thing. Number two is I came back using a different email address and bought something. All right. And so I'm going by memory. I know there's more of them than this, but going by memory, I did it with Huda beauty, the makeup, uh, company.
Um, none of the makeup did anything for this. I still look like myself. I probably should've gotten different toners and, um, Kidding. I got stuff from my wife. Uh, so I did it with Huda beauty. I did it with Kylie, Kylie cosmetics, you know, bought the lip stuff or for all the girls in the family. Um, I did it with goop, the one at the Powell, TRO the company.
I did it with, um, Harry's razors. I did it with all birds, the shoe company. I did it with, um, vori, which is a men's wear company, um, which really good, like sitting around duping off clothes, by the way. Awesome. All these brands are awesome. Um, and I did it with a, another one. I mentioned Allbirds. I did it with, uh, black rifle coffee company.
Okay. So all of these companies, I pretended I was going to buy something and then left and then bought stuff. Right. And the reason I did it is I wanted to see, I wanted these guys do it. You know, because they're making a bunch of money and good for them. I'm glad they're making a bunch of money. So I'm like, what are we going to learn here?
And I went through their sales process and everything, and here's what did not happen at all? Number one, no cart abandoned sequence from anybody. So it wasn't like, Hey, you started to check out, go back and check out and you'll get a discount. Like no deadline time or like nothing. Oh, snake river farms was the other one's bugging me.
Okay. They sell steak and stuff. Really good too. So none of that stuff, right? Absolutely. No cart abandonment, but the even more shocking thing. All right. Was that none of them email me with anything, the degree of regularity. In fact, most of them don't email me at all offering to sell me more stuff. And so you're in marketing, right?
Like in you're in business, you know, the hardest sale to make the hardest possible sale to make is like the first one, you know, to get a customer for the first time and the easiest sale to make. Right. It's my stream breaking. I don't know. I hope not. Um, the easiest sale to make is to someone who's already bought your stuff.
So never got a follow up stuff from goop. Never got it from Huda beauty. Um, have yet to get it from black rifle coffee company, who I've ordered from twice. Great coffee, by the way. Um, I think the only people never got it from Harry's razors. The only companies that have sent me follow-up emails have been snake river farms, all birds and vori.
All right. And that's the clothing line. Okay. And so here's, what's really interesting. They're all generic, like new product announcement stuff. Right. Like, you know, Allbirds will say, Hey, we have new tree runners or whatever, you know, they're good shoes, by the way. All right. Or snake river farms will be like, Hey, there's a special going on for father's day or Christmas or whatever.
And so it's not like consistent and Valoria will be like, Hey, you know, there's a new shirt out or something like that. Here's, what's really interesting. Okay. All three of those companies are companies that I have repeatedly bought in front. So not only am I a buyer, right. But I'm a buyer of like a lot of style, like, so I bought for all birds, like the shoes I bought three pairs, four, five, five pairs for me this over six months, five pairs of myself, one pair from a man, Roland, Frasier.
Okay. Hyper buyer, like dream customer with a Warri then bought like. Eight of the same. T-shirt, you know, I, I do change clothes, by the way, I just bought eight shirts that are black, like four pairs of pants, you know, and like nothing and snake river farms. We buy from them all the time and we especially buy a lot of stuff because I'll cook these Tomahawk steaks.
It's a really good from them, but a lot of times they'll take it out of the freezer. And then I don't feel like cooking it because it takes an hour and a half to grill and the dang thing will end up going bad and I have to buy another one. I'm a hyper buyer. I never get. Follow up emails from these guys.
So now back to the clubhouse discussion, all right. So I'm on there and I'm like, and you know, a lot of the discussion is how can he commerce brands make more money? So I, I, my guys, you know, I'm not really an expert in e-com, so to speak the selling of, you know, toothpastes and widgets and razors and stuff.
But I have a question and the question might lead to the answer here. And so I asked him, uh, I told them the same story I told you, and I said, Is it like frowned upon or something and e-commerce not to send up emails to your customers and try to get them to buy more stuff with any degree of regularity.
Is it frowned upon to have an abandoned cart sequence and all of that kind of stuff? And, um, all of the folks who were like super wealthy, I'm assuming like they did really, really well. And I'm happy for them. None of them said anything. And the one dude who answered me was Eric Huberman who owns a marketing agency called Hawk media, really successful, really good agency, by the way, if you have a lot of money to spend on marketing, you might want to retain them.
Um, and he was like, he tried to and he's like, yeah, dude, they just don't know. A huge part of our work that we do for clients is installing exactly what you sent for them. And I was just like a bull ammo. And so here's, what's crazy. Okay. So Eric and I had that little dialogue, like 35 seconds and that was it.
And then the conversation did not go to like. Uh, you know, well, how, how, how could we do this? How what's the, what are the best practices or whatever is sort of going to like, what kind of software do you like and just random stuff. And so here's the thing. All of these brands I talked about make like of noxious amounts of money, right.
All they would have to do. And like anybody watching this or listening to this, or whatever would know the fundamental basics of how to create what I'm about to tell them, to create. All they would have to do to dramatically raise revenue is have number one, a countdown sequence for people who start to check out.
And don't incidentally, the majority of people who start to buy stuff in an online shopping environment, leave they do is called abandoning the cart. Right? So that's thing. Number one, like no brainer. It would take like an hour to do that. Drastic increase in revenue from doing that it's free money than costume.
Anything. Can't can't possibly hurt. The second thing that anybody participating in this conversation, listening, whatever. The second thing that anyone could do would be to regularly and like programmatically. And by that, I mean, you know, automate the process, like build out a follow-up sequence. That's like if a dude buys a pair of shoes, And you know that the dang like Allbirds, for example, I'll wear mine out.
You know, they last like three months or something. I wear them all the time and you know, I mean, they're not bad shoes, but I need to replace them about every night fricking email, the dude, every 90 days ago, he was tying to get a new pair of shoes. Right. Black rifle, coffee company. Okay. Has to know how often, uh, a single individual, how long it takes them to go through a one pound bag of ground coffee.
Why not program the thing? Hey, you're probably running out of coffee. You want to re up, you know, mindless. Okay. All of that stuff could be automated. And you may, anybody, we could build this for these companies in minutes. I think the hardest part of the job, if you did it for a lot of money for them would be to figure out.
How to make it look like it was hard for you to do so you can justify a high fee. You'd be like, okay, this is gonna be very difficult to can take a lot of research. I'm probably gonna need to get back with you in about 10 days when this is all done. And then, you know, you go and spend an hour and build it, right?
So the way this directly correlates to you is that when I'm talking to people that know what they're doing, right. And have been doing it for a long time and have been studying or participating in a certain area or certain topic for a long time, they forget that it has become their like area of expertise and assume that other people.
No, what they know, because it's so common to them. You know, it was like, if you have you speak one language, it's your first language. You're going to assume that someone else who speaks at it might maybe even as their third or second language or whatever knows about that language, just as well as you do, but they just don't.
And that doesn't mean they're dumb and they're bad. It's like, you know, experts are experts for a reason. And so the stuff that you're forgetting and taking for granted probably. And I can't substantiate this because I don't know what every single person participating in, what we're doing right now has to offer, but probably you're forgetting stuff.
That's valuable. Like you're so far ahead of your audience in terms of what you're able to contribute, that the things that you're thinking aren't worth mentioning that are given to them, or like game changer case in point being. Gosh, guys, maybe you put in an abandoned cart sequence, you know, maybe you should email your customers and ask them, Hey, did you like the shirt?
Maybe you want another one. We got them in red, you know, crazy idea. Right? So real-world case study for you right there. I see it all the time. Guilty of it, myself. By the way, totally guilty of it. Myself, not ivory tower, you know what I mean? Nobody makes dumb mistakes as good as me. I'm the champion and world champion dumb assumptions and do a dumb thing.
So I've done this a zillion times and I, I would assume. That you might be doing the same thing. And if you are, you're so lucky because that means that you've got a library of stuff you can help people with. So if you go back and you start thinking, like, what am I, what do I assume people know that might not be helping them?
Or that, that, what am I assuming that they know that they probably don't know rather that if I shared it with them, it could really, really be helpful and just make a list of it and start sharing it with your marketplace. You'll probably. Go over really, really well and doing that, you will help them using the oldest trick in the book, the old demonstrate you can help people by helping people.
And, uh, the more people you help, the bigger your brand gets and the better life is that you ended up selling more stuff because they already know you like you and trust you. You want to learn how to do that. Systematically beautiful segue into a pitch by the way, uh, go to, uh, I think it's on the screen there.
letslaunchyourbrand.com as a free. Five day challenge. It starts on Friday. The 15th. Is that right? You're the 15th of January. Okay. So we're coming up on what, two days? I'm pretty sure today's Wednesday. So it starts on Friday, the 15th of, uh, of January. And I hope to see you there, there is zero cost.
For registration, um, and zero cost to participate. So it's pretty good. I'll help you find the stuff that, uh, this most valuable to your marketplace. And I hope you get it out there to them as a means of building your brand based on Goodwill and being helpful, being cool. All right. It's time for me to go.
I gotta do me some work. Y'all take it easy.