EU246: Lessons Learned in 2021 and a Look Ahead at 2022

eCommerce Uncensored - Email Marketing | Facebook Ads | Social Media Marketing

In this episode the guys reflect on an eye opening year, the work from home life navigation, and how adding employees to the team has benefited their business & lives. A goal for them for the upcoming year is how they are going to instill new processes in 2022 to make their lives & business more structured.

This is a direct transcript. Please forgive any grammar or spelling errors.

Jason: I have always been interested in how people take words on a page and make people buy.

Kevin: I Think I need that I need therapy. I think that would, might be a good step for 2022 email therapy. Yeah,

Jason: me sitting here listening or reading this book may be worth 150, a thousand dollars to

Jen: You’re listening to e-commerce uncensored with Kevin Monell and Jason Caruso.

Kevin: Hey everyone. And thank you for joining us. On another episode of eCommerce Uncensored. My name is Kevin Monell and I’m here with

Jason: Jason Caruso.

Kevin: Happy new year there. Mr. Caruso, happy new year.

Jason: We made it through another year.

Kevin: First, before we get started, I wanted to mention something is the new question. Section of our website. So, and we have a few questions that are coming in. So our website e-commerce on sensor.com has a new link at the top for question and answer, you guys can go in there, fill out a little form, submit your question that you’d like us to answer on the podcast coming up in 2022, we’re going to try to do like a little. A little like snippet, email emails, snippet, a podcast that answer these questions. So head over there, you can submit a question and we’ll do our best to make it a podcast and answer your question. Yeah. And it was a crazy year man. And you know, like, uh, when I. Every year when it’s new years, you’re like, I can’t believe it’s new years already. Like, you feel like the whole year went by so fast, but like, when you look at like some of the individual things you did throughout the year, you’re like, that feels like such a long time ago. Does that feel like that to you? Yeah.

Jason: I mean, I think this, this year has been a little bit crazy though. I mean, you know, I moved this year. You moved this year to last year too. Yeah.

Kevin: I moved. I moved last year. Yeah. You were all over. You were all over the place. I was all over the place.

Jason: Uh, it’s been, uh, a very interesting year, I think, in on another number of fronts, you know,

Kevin: a lot of changes. I mean the vid event, the reason why there’s still the vid, the bids are going to rebound forever. So I hope we realize that at this point, Like, I think about the way we started 20, 21 was like the year we started doing like a whole bunch of interviews. And when I think about the interviews, like starting an episode, I actually almost started at episode episode 199 was one of our first interviews of the year as what that guy jacques. Doesn’t that seem like such a long time ago. We did that. It does like you hate to tell you talked about courses yet. So you guys go back and check out some of these interviews. We met like a ton of really cool people. Um, a lot of great like entrepreneurial type stories. Um, I think we met Ryan McKenzie this year, too. Doesn’t it was that the, before McKenzie. Yeah. All the guys we’ve met, like, and it’s just, um, you know, we learned a lot about shark. Because we had a lot of people who are on shark tank, come on, come on here and tell us their story. And I was same story from everybody. Yeah. And most of them, like, even the people who had deals usually like either fell through or yeah, like the, the, the shark backed out, but it was almost even rare when they even got a deal. So yeah. That was crazy. So that was interesting to hear. Cause I didn’t know that like the backstory on, on all those kinds of things met that and we met that girl, um, Kim Lewis from CRA wait, what, what was that girl’s name that we almost worked with was that this year that we had, um, what was it for? We had her on the podcast. Maybe that was last year. It must’ve been, I don’t remember that, um, that hair product, was it a. There was like a skin print. Anyway, I don’t remember, but we just met a lot of cool people over the last year. So God, you guys should go back and check out some of those, uh, some of those episodes.

Jason: Yeah. We also, um, you know, we’ve been talking about where the podcast is going. In 2022, what our plans are for the podcast. I’m, you know, I I’m a little ashamed to say this, but we don’t really have a new plan for the podcast, even

Kevin: though it would be weird if we had a plan though, Jason, you know that right?

Jason: Yeah, it would be. But I think we have to, I think by now Kevin will be doing this for four years and I don’t, I, you know, we, although we’ve been doing it for a long time, I don’t think we’ve. Found our quote unquote voice just yet. Like, I don’t know that we’ve found exactly what we want this podcast to be just yet. Yeah. Which is an interesting thing. Cause we’ve been doing it for a really long time.

Kevin: What five years? Almost. Yeah, I think this coming June, I think we started, or may, it’ll be five years that we’ve done this.

Jason: So it’s definitely something that we’ve been thinking about. You know, what, what’s 20, 22 going to look like for the podcast. What’s the direction we’re going to go on. Cause to be, to be very honest, Kevin, I mean, you, you know, it’s, it’s hard to come up with topics, uh, in such a narrow niche, right? Like e-commerce right. So it’s getting a little challenging with, in terms of like topics. So, I mean, if anybody has any topics that they’d like to talk about, you know, shoot me an email, Jason, at e-commerce insensitive.com and we’ll happy to it. We’ll be happy to talk to them. Talk about them. We, we, you know, this year was interesting. I mean, even with our own business, we, our revenue dropped, but our profitability went, went well.

Kevin: Yeah. And so that’s, uh, the recurring revenue model that we had really kind of paid off this year, honestly, because we did it, we did have, uh, it was, you know, we talked a lot about how we built it over the first year or so, and how it grew so fast. If you think about it, like that was based off of like new customers and bringing in new customers, was it got more and more difficult, you know, to do so. Thank God for the recurring revenue model that we have. Because we would have re we really would have struggled, but you know, it just goes to show like, it’s like, we talked about it yesterday, Jason, and you’re like, it’d be nice to have, you know, one of these things, you know, all these gurus talk about, you know, you see them on Facebook, they talk about all this passive income and, you know, having things automated so you can just, you know, earn money and it’s just, you start to realize more and more that that’s just. Not possible. Cause you gotta,. You gotta always be evolving. You gotta always be changing your ads. You always gotta be like looking at your messaging, you know, doing different things. Yeah. I mean, it’s,
Jason: it’s, it’s interesting because someone said a long time ago, I heard somewhere. I don’t remember what it said, but it said, you know, like, um, real estate is really the only true passive income, like, so like you buy a house and you. You really don’t do anything from there. The money just keeps coming in. Right? Like you don’t have to do anything. I mean, maybe there’s like you fix a toilet or a, like a sink or something, but for the most part, once you get somebody in there, you know, they’re working to pay you. Yeah. But then

Kevin: they also, if you, like, if you do it right, you know, if you have enough money, you’re making enough money, you just ha you hire companies to just handle all the management of all the properties. So even if there’s problems with sinks and things like that, Yeah. And

Jason: I I’ve been thinking a lot about that. Like a lot about kind of getting income properties, where number one, you can leave them to your kids. You know, it, if you own a few different income properties, you know, that that money will always be coming in. Now it’s obviously a lot harder than it sounds because you have to get the right unit in the right location. You got to get people who actually pay. From what I’ve been sort of researching it really, your first property is like the most risky your first and second. Like when you have like a lot of them, a lot of income properties, even if, even if like you lose 20%. Your, uh, rents. You’re still okay. Because the numbers just add up enough. Um, but I’ve really been thinking about that because, you know, we’ve been grinding, I’ve been grinding. I feel like in this business since, since I was 26 years old and I’m 45 next month and you know, we’ve done a lot of things. We’ve been successful in a lot of like in a few things, you know, I, I ain’t. Feeling like, I love some sort of passive income where if something went south, if one of our businesses started not doing that, you know, doing well, it was just there. It was just coming in all the time. Even if it was like only two or three or $4,000 a month, it’s still some security. And the truth is like, our agency has almost been like that for us in our business endeavors. Right. Like our agency has always been like, Just like the money that comes in automatically sorta speak. We have to work for it. But yeah, the point is, um, you know, I ended up point is I really would love to have some income that was just coming in without me having to like, think about it

Kevin: An email or, and the way our minds work. I know you don’t think mine always works this way, but it’s like when you don’t have that kind of backbone or that security, it’s like really hard to do the next thing. ’cause you gotta like, just get up and do it. You just got to push yourself to do it. It might not return anything in a, in a, in a long time, but if you really want to do something that you’re passionate about, we talked to, we’ve been talking about this for the last couple of days. It’s like trying to find something that we’re yeah. You said like the agency is my thing, right? Is that the thing that I’ve always had, but it’s like, is it a passion of mine? I don’t think so. Like, it’s something that I’ve just had to do to survive, to make a living. I’d love to be able to find that one thing. That’s just like. And even I was going to tell you, like, even like in investing, like I told you, I started investing in cryptocurrency and things like that. Even that like, it takes work. You gotta look at it all the time. You got to keep your eyes on it. If you don’t, I don’t know. I’m still trying to find that thing, man.

Jason: Yeah. I mean, I, I I’m, you know, I don’t think real real estate is my thing. I just like. You know, I see a lot of friends of mine who own a lot of real estate and they’re very wealthy and they literally play golf probably four or five times a week. And it doesn’t really matter cause they just still collect their half a million dollars.

Kevin: That’s still, it takes patients. I’m sure like your, your friends, like, it wasn’t like that it being, they grinded, they hustled. I mean, I feel like I, I’ve not really, but like, we’ve touched on a little bit. Like we, we sublet one of our pieces of artifice and I’m like, I don’t want to be a landlord man. Like when, when she calls me and she’s like, I got this problem, like. I’m just subletting it to you. Like there’s nothing I can do. And it kind of put me in a tough spot. So even at the beginning of investing and things like that, you’re always going to get,

Jason: well, it’s funny, you said that because one of the guys was telling me about, and this guy is very, very, very wealthy. Now he’s has like 600 units that he owns or something. Um, he was telling me that like in the beginning, like they, they were going broke. Like you’d buy a house. And like, his wife would be like, what are you doing? We don’t have the money. He’s like, no, no, no, trust me. Trust me. You know? And so. In the beginning, they were, you know, cause you know, to buy income property, you have to put down 20%. Like you have to like you can’t, there’s no way around it. Like you have to put 20% down. So you got to have that capital to do that. And when you’re just starting, you know, A lot of times you don’t like maybe you put your last 20,000 into a house.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure. So, yeah. I mean, we’re not a real estate podcasts.

Jason: No, but I mean, it’s just, it’s just kinda talking about the new year and like what some of the goals we have and what we’re looking to

Kevin: do, obviously it’s funny, you said that yesterday, you said to me, he’s like, I’m not big into resolutions, like, cause they only last and I’m sitting here like trying to write down the resolutions and I can’t. Nail them down. I have none. I have none up to this point. I think it’s kind of a healthy thing to do, but, and that’s a healthy thing to write them down what you’re going to do for this upcoming year. But like, I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up. I really don’t know. Yeah.

Jason: And I think that’s, that’s, you know, part of the thing with me is like, you know, I’ve been thinking about a golf product for a very long time and I just haven’t been able to start it. And it’s, it’s not because of. I don’t have the time or I can’t, it’s just like to start a new thing. It’s just so hard, you know,

Kevin: because you know, the payoff is not going to come immediately. Yeah. The pads are going to come.

Jason: All right. And, uh, I also know that, uh, you know, there’s going to be investment. You’re gonna have to put money into it. And I don’t know, man, you know, it’s a, it’s a funny thing. It’s a funny thing to think of. Uh, starting a business because it’s not only is it scary, but it’s, uh, there’s no real guarantee that it’s going to work. No,

Kevin: but I thought 20, 21 for you is not to speak for you, but was kind of eye-opening with the copywriting stuff you’ve done over this last year and learned and, you know, test it on a few different things. And that has actually really been paying off. And it is, I think really opened your eyes to the, to the area of copywriting. Yeah. You know,

Jason: copywriting has been something that I’ve always been interested in. Like I’ve always been interested in how people take words on a page and make people buy. And, you know, it’s interesting because I was just looking at this sales page yesterday, this, this golf sales page. I see this guy has ads all over the place. And I finally click the ad and he basically did everything that Russell Brunson teaches you. Right. Everything. The sales pay. I mean, he he’s a click font. You could tell everything was built on click funnels. And like, even like the headlines, you know how to do this without spending hours at the range, you know, he had all the elements of, of ClickFunnels, but as I’m reading it, I’m saying to myself, there’s no way this thing is converting. As well as it could be because the copywriting on the, or the copy, the sales copy on the page, it’s just not there. You know, it’s like, there’s a little bit of it. And then like, it talks a lot about the product, whereas like in all the copywriting books that I’m reading it, it actually tells you the complete opposite, you know, uh, you want to talk about their dreams, their hopes, what the product’s going to do for them. And this has been like a really big, big, uh eye-opener like you said, and it’s been a really awesome experience to learn this stuff. And, uh, what’s even, what’s even crazier as I’m sitting here telling you about this, this copywriting stuff is that we literally have the power to learn anything. We want, like at our fingertips, you just buy a book on it. And I found that you can’t just buy a book, you have to buy like several books because they all like have their, their different ways. And I’ll be honest with you, man. Like I read this copywriting secrets and I thought it was an amazing resource. It’s really what I learned. A lot of copywriting from however, I bought this other book from this other guy named Ray Edwards, who was another famous or big, big name copywriter. And he teaches stuff very similar, but he says it in a way that makes more sense to me, even though the copywriting secrets book was really awesome. And you know, you can make a lot of money just with that book, just hearing. Ray Edwards it’s the book is called how to write, copy that sells, you know, just hearing it a different way. Just made it a little bit more easy for me to digest and understand, because it was just, it was just set in another way. Um,

Kevin: resignated. Well, that just resonated with me more. That’s all, it’s funny to copywriting kind of evolved for me too. I mean, I didn’t, I didn’t learn like you did. I didn’t read books. I didn’t do all this thing, but you’ve kind of just by talking to you, having conversations with you, it kind of bleeds over and I start to learn some of the stuff that you’re learning. And it’s funny how it’s like one of those things where you don’t notice it until you learn it. Right? So now, like every website we go to, or every landing page we go to be like, oh my God, that’s. That they learn from this, or this is the exact structure, like you just said, like the guy put the structure in place, but his copywriting wasn’t great. But it’s there in like everything though. It’s not just like written text on a landing page. It’s like commercials you’re see. Or like, whatever, it may be, infomercials, stuff like that, that come up in commercials. They use that same structure, these big brands that are apple, you know, they’re all using the same kind of psychology behind everything.

Jason: You know, one of the. You know, I’ve been doing this. Like I said, since I was 26 years old, so 26, 36 46 would be 20 years. So I’m like going on 19 years doing this. And one thing that I w I, I found utterly amazing. Was they both of these books, they say that the biggest misconception about writing sales copy is that the writer believes it is their job to convince people to buy what they’re selling. He said that is that they both said that’s the wrong way to look at it. He’s like what you’re trying to do. Is sell people, your product that already solves a problem that they’re having. See, we tend to look at it like, oh my God, I have to be this amazing copywriter and convince people and persuade them and like, make them want something that they don’t need when really it’s the complete opposite. It is putting your product in front of people who have a problem already. Who want a solution? You just have to convince them that your product is going to solve their problem.

Jason: And that was like a mind fuck for me. Cause like, I always felt like I had to like be this like wordsmith and like be this, like, you know, this guy who was like makes people buy something that they don’t want, but they don’t need, but it’s really the.

Kevin: And if you do go into it, thinking like that, it does like kind of simplify the process when you, when you’re not trying to get events, somebody that they need something, just convince them that you’re the best product for their problem. Right. It doesn’t it make it easier. Like if you start out with that thought process.

Jason: Yeah. Now that doesn’t make it easier. I think I should. I forgot to put my light on Kevin. Um, not, not that only makes it easier, but it also makes it a little. Less stressful when writing the copy, because you don’t have to think as much about being cute. You have to think more about how to solve their pain points and then kind of some of their objections, uh, you know, you have to kind of take their objections and actually turn them into solutions or turn them, you know, so it’s a. Yeah, man. It’s, it’s, it’s a world that like, I’ve been so interested in because I’ve always felt like you can have the best funnel. You can have the best product. I mean, shit. I can have a product that guarantees that you make a million dollars in a week. And if I can’t convince you or I can’t write sales copy that talks to you and solves your problem, then that, that product doesn’t matter how good it is. It’s not going to do anything. Yeah.

Kevin: Uh, we also, we also talked about having my notes here. Jason, we talked, we got kind of over the last, like three months or so we started talking about like relationships. Quite a bit, like we had a, we had a doctor on actually talk about like living, you know, having a marriage and entrepreneurship, and we’ve even had a conversation about like having how to make a partnership work. And, um, even how to like have a family in entrepreneurship, like us being home, like is something that I never thought I would have to do or want to do or want to do. Like if I’m in a, it’s another thing it’s like, The, for the first half, over the beginning of 2020, we were in the office. Like things were totally different. It seems like a lifetime ago, but like being home with your family, with your kids, your kids home or virtual school, what kind of challenges those are? Um, so we had a couple episodes on that that I thought were pretty cool and navigate. This whole relationship at home and with partners, look, look at all the rate, look at all the relationships we have, that we have to manage Jason while trying to build these businesses. You and I, our wives, our kids, our other partners. It’s like, it’s a job in itself.

Jason: Yeah. And I think, uh, what’s been challenging for me is that, um, you know, Like for, for instance, if I, like, I run to home Depot during the day, like this morning, I went to home Depot to buy these white boards, right. That we had in our office. And thank you for paying for half of them, but, um,

Kevin: worry,

Jason: go, go. You should go get them to for your, your older $17 each the four by eight or 10 or whatever. Anyway. So we were sitting on the couch this morning and basically the way it works in my house is like I have my eight year old has to go to school by seven 30. So I’m home by like, I leave at like seven, 15, sorry. He has to be in school by seven 40 I’m home by 7 45. Cause the school is right around the corner. And so we’ll typically ultimately get home and then we’ll sit on the couch or in the kitchen feeding the baby. Cause I have a 23 month old. And so Jessica, during that time, we’ll like to jump in the shower. Cause she doesn’t really have time during the day when the baby is up. And she has to kind of like plan her day around his nap and yada yada yada. So the way it works in the morning, I get to the point I promise. Um, so we’re sitting around and I’m like, Hey, so you’re going to go shower. It was like five to nine. And, um, She, she was like, well, you didn’t seem like you were in a rush to get in your office. She’s like, so I kind of just took my time. I’m like, well, you know, it’s five to nine. I like to be at my desk by nine. Um, and then immediately, so she goes, okay, don’t worry about it. I’ll take a shower later, five minutes later, I come to my office and I come and sit down and I’m like, all right. Um, we’re trying, I’m trying to, we’re trying to create this new product. At least I am. And. I’m like, I’m like, damn man, it would really be nice to have these white boards on my wall. So close my computer. I walk outside. She’s like, where are you going? I said, well, I’m going to get these, these white boards for my wall. She’s like, well, I thought you had to work at night. So the moral of the story is I’m struggling with, um, the fact that I’m home. The fact that we can make our own schedules. And then when I do something outside of quote-unquote work, it means I’m free. Right.

Kevin: So, well, that’s not, what’s going to get whiteboards for your office is not work.

Jason: Exactly. So like that’s the part I’m struggling with is like I’m working from home and if I’m not in my office, it means I’m facing. So if I’m out of the office, it means I can do other things like watch the baby or do other things.
Jason: And if I say no and then go to home Depot, it’s a problem. That’s hilarious. I go, I go through the same stuff. It’s like, my wife needs help putting the ornaments away. I’m like, I gotta, I gotta tell you. Can’t do shit.

Kevin: It’s just funny, man. And I, I, I, we, I think I messaged you a couple of weeks ago or a month or so ago. I don’t know how frigging long ago it was, but it’s like, I don’t know how I would do it any other way. Being not having a nine to five job. I don’t know how I commend people who are listening that have nine to five jobs that are able to navigate. We have to navigate it a different way, but like this morning, I’m like I had these plans to like get up early. I had some stuff to do for client. I wanted to get on with you, do a podcast, knock it out. Then we had a meeting with. But, you know what? My kids had his late opening, which told we liked just to wipe it. My, and my wife, my wife is sick. Shit. My wife has COVID right now. She’s not feeling well, so it’s not like she’s going to be running around. So I have to help out. It’s like, I just don’t know how people do it. Especially with the COVID situation, the kids at home. Like, I just don’t know how they figured that out. I just know how it works.

Jason: And, uh, I just try to say, like, forget that I’m here from like, you know, nine. Eight 30 to whatever. I just, it just sucks when like, you know, like if we have like a light day or something, like what I played golf, what was it last week? Someday? Yeah. Whatever day it was. Right. And she’s like, well, how do you have time to play golf? And you’re telling me you’re so busy. I’m like, well, I just plan around it. She goes, okay, well, I’m getting my nails done Thursday plan around it. I’m like, no, that I can’t plan around it. She’s like, I don’t understand. It’s you know, it’s um, and not that she’s wrong, she’s not wrong, but it is funny

Kevin: how a logical the way she’s thinking for sure. I’m like, are you writing these things down? Because I need to start writing some shit down to like, they come back to these things. Yeah. They pull them out of nowhere. Yeah. I’m working on trying to get a co a couch into my office so I can lay down during the day without leaving my office. And nobody knows. Yeah.

Jason: That’s the, that’s the trick. Like you can’t like you can’t like leave your office and go lay down because then that means you’re not really busy, but if you bring a couch in here

Kevin: and take a nap, I can bring my laptop over on the couch. Just set it up just in case somebody’s doing shit.

Jason: Yeah. I mean, um, you know, it’s interesting cause our businesses have changed so much, you know, you said to me the other day, Yeah. Like all of our employees are like up to speed on how to do the work. And I’m like, I’m having trouble finding things that like to do.

Kevin: I’m like, huh? Yeah. I’ve been fortunate enough to find some really good people. That’s another thing in 2021 that came up, we found some really good people that, you know, weren’t low. We went outside the box, which I never was comfortable with because we’re all remote. And we found some really, really good people, Christie and the design side was the first one to come on and she’s been wonderful. She works her ass off and Trinity, she’s a bulldog. She’s always pushing everyone to get their shit done. So she’s great. Yo,

Jason: we got Jen. I mean, we have a lot of people right now who really are making the trade off though with that cap is like we make less money. The, um, the good part about it is we have

Kevin: more time, more time to develop big picture stuff, which is always something that I’ve struggled with, that you’ve pushed me to do. And it’s really helped. So we can start planning more things. Our job, our job is to keep our job is to keep them going. Yeah. And then it allows

Jason: me to take off on Thursday so my wife can get her nails done. Yeah, exactly. No, no, that works. I mean, but it’s, it is,

Kevin: it is a struggle, man. He wanted to hire someone to just like make doctor’s appointments and shit for you. You really want to get out of everything.

Jason: Well, cause you know, if you, if, if you don’t have an assistant, you’re the assistant.

Kevin: My wife kind of acts as my assistant though. Okay. Well, I don’t have to pay her. She’s. No,

Jason: no, you do have to pay actually it’s more than what everybody else

Kevin: I could start to stop dealing with the other stuff.

Jason:Well, I just told you, I was telling Jessica, you know, like I w I would even, so like, my wife goes to pick up Jason. She leaves at like 1 30, 1 45. She doesn’t get back til three o’clock because the school that my son goes to is over crowded. There’s 2000 people, kids in there L his elementary school. Wow. Because everybody’s moving down here K to

Kevin: five, K to five?

Jason: Yeah. Oh, um, so she’s gone from one 30 or 1 45 till three. And I have to watch the baby. He usually sleeps till about two. You know, that’s a big chunk in the middle of the day that she’s not here. And I’m like, I’ve been thinking lately, like we try to get him on the bus, but there’s no room. Like we can’t even get to get on the bus. Um, cause there’s no, there’s no drivers. They can’t find the chief, like whatever. So I have like been really seriously thinking about, do I hire some sort of like nanny type person to be here? During the day so that like, if she wants to go run errands, she can go run. I don’t have to watch the like, watch him. And it’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just,

Kevin: you know, big chunk because the stuff that you’re doing lately, you have to sit down and do it and do

Jason: it. And, uh, the writing side of it. But I think the trickier part Kev is like, um, I think business it’s, you know, the more and more that I learn about it. It’s, it’s, it’s a lot of it is about focus and momentum. And when you stop for that long, during the day, it’s hard to get refocused and it’s hard to continue the momentum. Like we get on phone calls at nine o’clock in the morning, and it’s the worst possible thing we can do because it just EFS up the entire day when you’re on a call from nine to 1130. And then like lunch is like a 12 and you’re like, you’re starting to get hungry. And it’s just hard to get back into the flow when you’ve been brain F for hour and a half or two hours on a freaking.

Kevin: Yeah. One of the things I really want to do in 2022 is kind of focus on some, you know, you know, production, not production, like being productive, you know, like I feel like so many of the things are just like a waste of time and, uh, I’m not focused on one thing. Like you’re all these people like that they checked their, they checked their email for 30 minutes in the morning and they don’t check it until the following morning. Like things like that, like things that structure your day a little bit more like I’m looking at my desktop. Uh, and I have Chrome open and I have probably 35 tabs. ’cause I’m always like, so jumping around from one thing and I leave a tab open. So I don’t forget that I did it before. And then at the end of the day, I’m like, I got all these tabs up and why did I open this tab? I can’t remember. I haven’t, you sent me that landing page. That’s like 30 tabs deep. Like I’m going to come. I’m going to come back to that. I have like 15 Klayvio flows open at the same time. We just have to

Jason: make, you have to make them pins those. So they’re not so big.

Kevin: I know, but like, I just have to be more organized. I have to like focus on things and not move around and not get distracted. I think it’s so important to like, have that kind of thing in your life. Well, other things you just get little things done and then nothing gets done.

Jason: Yeah. And like the interesting thing is that, um, you know, I hear this a lot from people they’re like. You know, when you focus on getting one thing done for the day, you actually complete more projects because you’re not dilly-dallying it. And you’re like, you’re actually just doing that product project. And then just like, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs. That’d be like, look, I have this one thing on my list today. I’m doing that. And then I’m done, right? Because just getting that done. Is more than what would happen if you had 10 things you’re trying to multitask on. Cause you’re not gonna get any of them though.

Kevin: Yeah. And then getting rid of some of those, those, um, distractions. Now we have slack. We have Monday, we have email, we have my text messaging up all the time. Right. You’re better at that than me. Like you can shut it down. Like I just can’t. Well, like I tried to do that over a knee. I did, we, you know, we did that over new year’s Eve because there are some things that were going on, but like, it drove me frigging nuts. Like inside my head, I was just like, what’s happening without me knowing about it.

Jason: Well, it was funny cause we spoke on Thursday or Friday and we’re like, okay, slack notifications are going off until next year I turned them off. Yeah. Yeah, you did, but you had to go back in there. Well,

Kevin: I did after the new year, this is the New York game on Monday.

Jason: I took, turned everything off until

Kevin: Monday. I had to even like delete the. App off my phone because I know if it was there I would be chatting. I would just like, look at it and check it because I just can’t because I have, I think I need therapy. I think that would, might be a good step for 20, 22 email therapy. Yeah. Just like I just can’t and nothing is going to happen. No, no mean dude. Yeah, dude. It’s a real thing. It is a real

Jason: thing, dude, for sure. And uh, I think. Yeah, I think, I think one of my biggest things for 2022 is to come up with a brand that you and I own exclusively. Um, that we can control. Cause right now, a lot of our relationships, we do the marketing and our partners do the, uh, the content side of it. Um, and you know, it’s fine. It works out fine. It’s just that we don’t really have control over anything. It’s kind of like we have to wait for our partners to get us stuff, and we’re kind of like regurgitating the same things over and over. Uh, when everybody gets. So I really want to get, I really want to get to a point where we have our own thing that we are in control of. And yeah, we, you know, we are in control of fast forward the agency, but, uh, you know, I’m, I’m talking about like a

Kevin: product, so yeah, I think we have like a pretty unique partnership that you don’t get very often. I think that we both feel like. We can we talk, you know, on a regular basis, like there’s no secrets among, amongst either of us and we can rely on each other, you know, if you’re going to do something, if you say you’re gonna do something, you’re going to do it. And I’m the same way. And if you don’t like, I feel like I can call you up and say like, what. Like let’s work this out. Let’s have an argument real quick and let it get past it. We can yell at each other for a little bit. And then by the end of the day, it’ll be done and you’ll tell me how I don’t do anything for fast

Jason: forward. You know, what do you do for the agency? And then

Kevin: I’ll tell you, you know, you’ll tell me how you feel. And we had that a couple of weeks ago and you know, I, I never totally knew that whether the way you felt the way when you told me you felt that way. And you know, I respect. And we just got to navigate around it and we’re willing to do that with each other. So we’re fortunate. Yeah.

Jason: I think, um, we’re finding out that partnerships are, are, um, definitely challenging if you don’t have people that are on the same sort of, and it’s listen, it’s, it’s, it’s a point of contention with us too, cause you’ve always been stuck to your computer and I’ve always been trying to find ways to get away from my computer. Right. And you’ve always felt like. When you sit at your computer for 15 hours a day, that meant you were working really hard and that’s just kind of a world you came from, right? Like hourly work is like, the more you sat in front of your computer, the more money you made. And then, you know, we started like exploring other things. Like, no, like we don’t really necessarily have to be standing at a computer all day. Um, But we can still make money because we’re doing other things like we’re managing other parts of the business. Like we just had something in our, in our, um, wildlife photography business, like our writers, weren’t getting us, um, their articles on time and the journal would go out like late every single issue. And then we just put something in place where we were like, look, if you get your article in on time, we’ll give you an extra $200. So it’s been motivating people. I mean, we’ve only done. We’ve only had one. Uh, issue since we’ve made, since we’ve done that. But what we’re hearing from our team is like, it’s been a, a really, really empowering, and it’s a really, really a helpful thing for them. So like those kinds of things, although it’s not us sitting at a computer doing something it’s definitely going to make the business better. It’s going to move it forward. It’s going to get the, you know, that’s just an example. Just the point that like, Sitting at a computer isn’t necessarily the only productive thing that you can do for your business.

Kevin: What’s a, it’s the, it’s that mindset thing that that’s going to look beyond that initial couple hundred bucks. Like that was the thing where our team would be like, are you sure you want to do that? Like, do you want to pay a couple hundred bucks, but listen, like, do you understand that that 200 bucks could pay for itself 10 X for by people staying on board or. From getting the issues out on time or signing up new people because this person said they get their issues out on time. Every time you got to think about it like that, the money comes back around in other ways, all right. Or people

Jason: get pissed off that the issues aren’t coming out when they’re supposed to come out for this. And for instance, if, if our fall issue comes out in the winter, that doesn’t do anybody any good. Right. And that’s kind of something we’ve, we’ve struggled with where like our. Issue would come out in the wintertime. So there, you know, there are a lot of ways to, I think be productive. I think there’s a lot of ways. And I think that’s something that you and I have always gone through is we’re like, you’ve always said, like, if I, you know, um, you, if you equated sitting at a computer. Working hard where at the, at the end of the day, it’s not always about that. I mean, you know, me sitting here listening or reading this book may be worth $150,000 to us. So like, for me, I’ve always felt like if I’m continuing learning, continually learning how to make us money, it’s just as valuable as sitting by a pewter doing a marketing campaign or an email campaign or something like that. Like I think you’re starting to come around and you’re starting to. I think, see the light at the end of the tunnel, the other side. Um, but yeah, I mean, I think, uh, going back to your original point, I think it’s tricky to have, you know, to have partners and the right partners and, you know, it’s definitely something that we want to be relaxed. We want to rely on ourselves a little bit more instead of our future being in other people’s hands. And so that’s, I think a big push in 2022 is for us to start creating our own. Without, uh, quote unquote, you know, content people like, yeah. We will be the content people.

Kevin: Yeah, exactly. I love it. I look forward to it. Yeah. I hope you guys enjoyed that. Just our, uh, you know, our year reviews on review and us just chatting a conversation offline. So

Jason: I think have, I think other people go through this and I think, you know, episodes like this, or just like. Hey, look, we’re going through the same shit you’re going through. Even if we come on here telling everybody how successful we are, because obviously, you know, that’s part of this is, uh, you know, being an authority, you kind of have to tell people how good you are, how great you are, but we struggle with the same things that everybody else

Kevin: struggles with. So yeah, on the surface, all these people out there, they just look so. I got it all worked out and just kind of come on here and be honest with you guys. Since we don’t have it all worked out, we don’t have it all figured out by any means. So anyway, guys hit that subscribe button to hear all the new stuff that’s coming out in 2022. And I’ll go back if you’re new to the podcast and you haven’t listened to some of our old podcasts, the beginning of the year, we have like a bunch of interviews with some cool people. So definitely check those out. Uh, and that’s it. Thank you guys so much for listening as always, you can check us out at eCommerceUncensored.com. We’ll talk to you guys real soon

Jason: later.

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