- Speaker #0
We, at one point, through the strategy that we kind of employed, I had the number one selling gel pens on Amazon. I mean, we're selling a container every couple of weeks.
- Speaker #1
So you had affinity for gambling. You're telling me about this fascinating new thing you're doing, where you're going into the casino and playing a slot machine, and your business partner, your buddy, is filming this and just live streaming it out. I was like, okay, I don't get it. And you're like, yeah, you don't get it because this is crazy. And you started telling me all this stuff about it. I'm like... Holy cow. Can you tell us what this new thing is you're doing? And I'm fascinated by the marketing side of it and the psychology side of it and how you guys are going to monetize this. And like you said, build the community and everything off of this. And I think it's pretty cool.
- Speaker #2
You're watching Marketing Misfits with Norm Farrar and Kevin King.
- Speaker #1
What's up, Norm? How you doing, man?
- Speaker #3
I'm good. Oh, it sounds like or feels like we've just been doing podcast after podcast after podcast today.
- Speaker #1
I know. Some days it's that way. Just like our listeners who listen to podcast after podcast after podcast when they're driving in the car. And is that you right now listening? You're driving in the car, you're working out, you're doing something, you listen to two or three or four a day. We love you if that's the case. Keep doing it because there's a lot of really good ones.
- Speaker #3
And you know what? If you're not interested or you... Not interested. What am I saying? If you listen to the long-form version of Marketing Misfits podcast, you can always head over to YouTube. We've got a new channel over there for three minutes and under clips, and that's called Marketing Misfits Clips. So give it a listen if you don't have time for the full one-hour version.
- Speaker #1
Our guest today is someone that I've known for a while. And when I was telling you... Before, when I was out in Vegas, a lot of times he and I would get together for a lunch or dinner or something. And super smart guy who was in the Amazon space for many years, exited a couple of different companies there and has now moved on and doing some other things. But he also had his own podcast with a partner called Ecom Crew at one point, and he's moved on from that. But he's doing some cool stuff. Last time I was out there, he was telling me about this little project that he's doing. And I'm excited to see where that's at and how he's monetizing that and it's uh out of the box kind of marketing and but it's actually something that i think a lot of people don't think about that actually there's a there's a huge audience in market for so i think it's gonna be interesting uh who knows what rabbit hole we're gonna go down today but uh i know we're gonna get some uh some good uh some good entertainment and some good nuggets out of this all right so let's bring in our guest mr mike jackness there he is hello everyone how you doing mike
- Speaker #0
Well, man, I got a lot of pressure. I got to provide entertainment and nuggets now.
- Speaker #1
That's right. You told me you're going to get up and dance. Okay.
- Speaker #0
Is this video being recorded? That's white people dancing for you.
- Speaker #1
White people. You know, I ran in Vegas at one of the day clubs.
- Speaker #0
Well, I might just watch when I'm there.
- Speaker #1
No,
- Speaker #0
I don't. I don't. I don't do the twerking. I just watch the twerking.
- Speaker #3
I've seen Kevin do twerking. Yeah. Pretty impressive.
- Speaker #0
That's why you have to wear glasses now. You slip them. Yeah.
- Speaker #1
Exactly. He has a button on his side and they darken so you don't have to see it anymore. Fair enough. Exactly. But see, he's got control. He's got the button so he can just get rid of me anytime he wants.
- Speaker #3
There are some people that I wish I could do that with him. He's in the penalty box.
- Speaker #0
Okay. Bye. See you later.
- Speaker #1
So, Mike, for those listening here, you know, we all know each other from the Amazon world. This is not an Amazon podcast. It's more of a marketing podcast. But just fill them in a little bit about who you are and your background. You've done a lot in the affiliate world for a while. And then you moved into Amazon. Then you exited that. And you're doing some other cool stuff we'll talk about. So just give us a little back story. The worst part.
- Speaker #0
part about getting this old is when people ask this question, the answer gets longer and longer and longer. It's brutal now, right? So the short version of it, like since I quit my job in 2004, I did get into affiliate marketing. I was doing online poker affiliate marketing for like seven or eight years, did incredibly well with that, right place at the right time, kind of got into something that I had a personal interest and passion in. But It was just not an industry that was really made for me and my personality. The types of people that kind of hung around there weren't the types of characters that I like hanging around with. I did make some friends there and still keep in touch with a couple of people, but that was the exception and not the norm. Versus something like e-commerce where I just felt like I was everyone's friend all the time because it just seemed like a bunch of really great people in general. There's obviously the exception there. There's some people you run into that aren't the best. Yeah, I was doing affiliate marketing and then got out of the online poker affiliate marketing space and was doing other affiliate marketing. And at the time, this felt like, man, like Google's going to do something about this. You know, in some way, they're going to start squashing these affiliate sites like bugs. We're not really truly providing value necessarily. It's like you're rating the best poker run based on who pays you the most money kind of thing. Or, you know, it isn't really necessarily immense amounts of value, even though like. some of the stuff that we did in the affiliate world did kind of provide that value. I was, you know, rating WordPress themes or online degrees or online storage or other treadmills based on, you know, a lot of it was based on who paid the most. And I was out on this hike. I remember like having this conversation with myself thinking I needed to get into something that's going to provide more value and have more stability long-term, less reliance on Google and decide to turn. treadmill.com which was one of our affiliate sites into an e-commerce site and then we got into e-commerce that's how we got into e-commerce i knew nothing about shopping carts or how to take payments i had done none of that stuff this was in 2012 yeah 2012 i think i ran treadmill.com for a couple years sold a bunch of fitness equipment did not enjoy drop shipping it was just again didn't have a personality fit for me it was i was Not in control of the actual shipping process of the stuff being in inventory of it arriving correctly on time, not broken, you know, et cetera. Most of the people that bought stuff were unhappy for, you know, they were right. And I didn't care for that. And so then we got on the private label and that's kind of started when I ran into Kevin, started buying stuff from China, selling stuff on Amazon. Did that for the next 10 years until we got out of it last year. And now we're on to something new, which we'll talk about here shortly.
- Speaker #1
You developed one of your private label brands. I remember you talked about it was color, like adult coloring books that you developed. And you talked about that and kind of even did a couple of podcasts about the exit process. And then I think when you you've told me when you exit that, you're like, OK, I'm done with this Amazon thing. But something the call, the sirens lured you back in and you ended up doing another one. And the next thing you know, right.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. Well, I mean, we owned, I think, five brands at the time we sold Colorate. So that was just one that got jettisoned at the time. And it wasn't quite time to sell the other ones yet. I mean, I don't know. So we were still running the other ones. And yes, then I had more time on my hands, which is a dangerous thing for an entrepreneur. And Bill and Andrew and I bought another business. So I got sucked back into it even further in Amazon. And we sold that business. It's been almost two years now. Um, and yeah, then at that point I was like, okay, now I'm really at the end and I'm going to work on selling these things off. And it did take some time, but we sold the last Amazon business almost exactly a year ago today. That's kind of weird. Uh, we're talking about this right now, but we got rid of the last Amazon business and at the beginning of August of 2024.
- Speaker #1
And what made you decide to get out of Amazon? You've told me that you kind of saw some writing on the wall and stuff. what what What's the reason that you decided to move on? Was it some of the writing on the wall? Was it just bored, ready for the next challenge of your life? Or what was the reason?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I mean, I think it was writing on the wall when I talked to you in 2019. It was a harsh reality by the time we actually started selling this stuff off, right? I don't know. I come from a generation of realism and not complaining. blaming other people for my problems or whatever it might be. And I just had this harsh reality of like, this journey has come to an end, whether I like it or not, whether it's unfair or not, or any of these types of things, like no one cares about any of that. And I felt like it was never going to be any better than it is right now. And it was already getting much worse at that point. Now, remember, I had the perspective of like getting started on Amazon in 2015, when like margins were really, really juicy. And you could sell like a bag of horse manure and make good money on, you know, doing it versus where things are today. The walls have kind of closed in from every direction. You know, Amazon has really put the screws on in terms of fees. And now there's tariffs to deal with. And you have manufacturers themselves in China who have come privy to the fact that, hey, wait, we can cut out this other party and just sell directly. You know, when we first got started on Amazon, my thought was like, oh, well, I can cut out these wholesalers and become a direct-to-seller brand and take their margin and drink their milkshake. And I think manufacturers in China have now... come to that same conclusion. And the international community is really piled into Amazon and they don't have to play by the same rules as an American. You know, I got to have business insurance for like some knucklehead that tries to sue me for some weird thing. And I'm not going to cheat on tariffs. I'm not going to take a chance of having the government come after me 10, 15 years now for not paying the proper amounts of tariffs. And I can't do black hat stuff. I got one Amazon account. I can't spin new Amazon accounts up late. like chiclets or pez dispensers, like Amazon sellers do, or foreign sellers do. And that's just like the kind of the tip of the iceberg. And so, you know, it just, our profit margins had dropped from like 30% net net profit after paying my, even myself a salary to barely eking out like low single digits. And it was just like, okay, well, at what point is this going to turn negative? At what point is the risk worth the reward? At what point do I... just go do something else. Now, does that mean like I think e-commerce is dead or that it's a terrible like niche to get into? Not necessarily. I thought long and hard about what e-commerce brand I would start next that would kind of get around these problems. But the reality was that that's a multi-year process and a big risk that I just didn't want to take at that time. And quite frankly, I'm really enjoying what I'm doing now a lot more. And I'm at a point in my life where My newborn priority is to reduce my stress. Like I, you know, I think that I always talk about this analogy of stress or running a business being kind of like radiation poisoning. If you're exposed to some low-grade radiation for a little bit, it doesn't bother you. Not going to make you sick, not going to hurt you, but you keep on getting exposed to this radiation over a period of time and it starts to like make you sick and stress has a way of doing that. And running a seven-figure, eight-figure e-commerce business is stressful. There's a lot of moving parts. It's hard to have the right amount of inventory at all times. It's hard to deal with a SKU getting shut down on Amazon or a state coming out for you for taxes or whatever kind of crap that's just constantly happening and not be affected by it. I deal with any one thing with no problem, but over a period of time, it's losing sleep and just not feeling as good and a whole bunch of other things. And it just felt like it was time for me. And that's kind of the story.
- Speaker #3
So I've got actually a comment and a question. Sellers from Amazon, they're starting to get some e-commerce sites, go on to Shopify. And you talked about tax. What a lot of people don't realize is they've got to start paying tax. Outside of that, Amazon or it could be Walmart. But outside of Amazon, you don't own the customer. But when you're on Shopify and you're doing some major numbers, you got to think about tax.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #3
And if you're selling over in Europe, I remember we have an agency and one of our beauty brands that I was representing, and I warned him about this, is the VAT tax. He got this one brand, a million dollar request from the government that he had to pay this VAT tax. So this is things people are not thinking about and it'll catch up and bite them in the end. But here's my question. You had declining profit margin and it's just Amazon. Now you're looking at a buyer, you're presenting it, or they might've come to you and they do their due diligence and they see this possible bell curve. What incentive was there for them to buy your business?
- Speaker #0
Oh, we sold it at a low multiple. I mean, it was, yeah. And I was incredibly transparent. Like I will never, you know, put money before my reputation and just, you know, feeling good about myself. I'm doing the right thing. I mean, I told the guy straight up and he was like, why are you selling this business? All the things I just told you and a whole lot more, you know, was in at the time, you know, last year when I made this decision was coming leading up to the election to me. And I don't like being in a politics on a podcast. So please. I'm just trying to be agnostic and talk about just being pragmatic about the situation. Don't freak out out there, people. This is just what my thoughts were. But to me, it felt like Trump was going to win. The way the election landscape was looking, and this is what I wanted or didn't want. I'm just trying to tell you what my thoughts were at the time. It looked like he had a very good shot at winning. The first debate with Biden went poorly. They put Kamala in. It just didn't look like there was a path. for the Democrats to win. And I thought that Trump would win, or he was more likely to win at least. And the biggest concern I had at that point was dealing with potential tariff issues round two. Because like we went through it the first time and I knew how disruptive it was the first time. And I was just like, that could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. And I just, not only the business, but myself. Like again, from a stress standpoint, like I feel so bad now for, because I still have lots and lots of friends in e-commerce. And this has been incredibly disruptive. And I was kind of in fear of that happening again. So like it was August of last year. election was coming up in November, and I was incredibly transparent with the guy who bought it. So if he listens to this, it's not like he's going to have any revelations from what I'm saying. He's like, look, I'm concerned about that and all the other things that we just talked about. And I just prefer to be done. This feels like this is a good opportunity to be done. And unfortunately, the tariff stuff has happened. And it's been significantly more disruptive than it was the first time around because it's been like, it's on again, it's off again, on again. I'll forget. It reminds me of that scene out of Wayne's World where they're playing hockey in the streets like, game on, game off, game on, game off. You know, I feel really bad for people that are having to go through that. And, you know, it's just another curveball that you've had to deal with over the last decade of being in e-commerce.
- Speaker #3
So with your account, with your Amazon account. Because you come from that affiliate world or you know how to drive traffic, did you do anything different that helped your account from maybe an affiliate point? Or what did you do to drive the traffic over to your site?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, we have the most success with that during owning Colorate because it was a kind of a brand that was ripe for that. You know, it depends on what you're selling. You know, the last brand that we sold was Ice Wraps. It was actually the first private label brand that I got into. I owned it for. 10 years from uh 2004 to 2004 or 2014 to 2024. you know that wasn't really the best brand to be doing that type of growth marketing with with color it it worked incredibly well because you know we can give away something of value to people that cost us little so you know like free drawings or sample pages or do facebook lives or you know these types of things and it was also at a time where you know, Facebook was just up and coming. So we did a lot of like, give us your email address and we'll give you, we'll send you some free drawings or give us, make like a low friction transaction. I love like these micro transaction, trying to upsell them, put them into a funnel of concepts. And so that worked incredibly well for us. So the concept was, we're going to send you some free drawings, just pay the shipping and handling. Right after they make that purchase, I used Ezra, my buddy, Ezra Firestone's one-click upsell app. You try to get them to buy something else. If they didn't buy it then, hopefully when the thing arrived physically at their house and they saw how much different this product was and better than what they had been using elsewhere, you know, emails were coming. I was a big fan of Klaviyo, still a big fan of email marketing. Get them into a funnel. And once we get someone to like their third purchase, we had them for life kind of thing. We can get them to buy anything that we came out with, any email we sent out, generated money. and so our thing was like And it's a snowball. And so as we got more and more people into this funnel and more and more people were buying, we could spend more money on marketing up front to get more people into the funnel.
- Speaker #1
Hey, Norm, you'll love this, man. I talked to a seller the other day doing 50K a month. But when I asked them what their actual profit was, they just kind of stared at me.
- Speaker #3
Are you serious? That's kind of like driving blindfolded.
- Speaker #1
Exactly, man. I told them, you got to check out Sellerboard. This cool profit tool that's built just for Amazon sellers. It tracks everything like fees, PPC, refunds, promos, even changing COGS using FIFO.
- Speaker #3
Aha, but does it do FBM shipping costs too?
- Speaker #1
Sure does. That way you can keep your quarter four chaos totally under control and know your numbers because not only does it do that, but it makes your PPC bids, it forecasts inventory, it sends review requests, and even helps you get reimbursements from Amazon.
- Speaker #3
Now that's like having a CFO in your back pocket.
- Speaker #1
You know what? It's just $15 a month. But you got to go to sellerboard.com forward slash misfits. Sellerboard.com forward slash misfits. If you do that, they'll even throw in a free two-month trial.
- Speaker #3
So you want me to say go to sellerboard.com misfits and get your number straight before your accountant loses it?
- Speaker #1
Exactly.
- Speaker #3
All right.
- Speaker #0
We could lose money on those first transactions to then make it back on the second and third transaction, hopefully the 10th transaction. And it just felt like it was getting easier and easier as time went by, which is a fun place to be in business.
- Speaker #1
So owning the customer was always a key part of you, building that list, building that email, because you understood the value of that coming from that affiliate world.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, absolutely. And it was always a tug of war, like giving up some of those sales to Amazon where you don't own the customer. But my thought there was, you know, Amazon. is the number one e-commerce platform. Like more transactions are happening there than any place else. It was the number one search engine as well. And that ecosystem is detached and separate from that other ecosystem where you're selling on Shopify, getting Facebook traffic, ads, et cetera. And so my thought was like, I'm never going to get these Amazon sales if I don't, you know, cross pollinate in some way. And so we, at one point through... The strategy that we kind of employed, I had the number one selling gel pens on Amazon, which is a redogulist niche in space. I mean, we're selling a container every couple of weeks of gel pens at our peak. By taking our email list and saying, hey, look, our new set of gel pens is available over here on Amazon. Some people that already had a prime account or trust Amazon more, but whatever reason, would go buy there. And the people that were anti-Amazon or felt it more convenient or perceived that it was better for us as a company because we make more money, we're buying it from Shopify. So when you take this holistic approach of I'm looking at my overall sales and wherever they come from, they come from, it allowed me to kind of detach from like, okay, I'm giving Amazon this customer and I can't market to them directly in the same way that I could or would if the sale came from Shopify. It was a rising tide. It was raising all ships kind of thing. And again, we had the number one bestseller badge for gel pens, which was a hell of an achievement. We also had at one point the number one selling coloring book on Amazon, which was another big niche. And so I don't know. Would I do things differently if I can go back and do it? It's easier to play an arm show quarterback, but I still think that it's a pretty sound strategy.
- Speaker #3
So I think with your emails and gathering those emails and building the list, not only do you have the list of a captivated audience, but you're also building a community. Now, did you do anything to expand that community to create just a bunch of loyal fans or raging fans?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I mean, the weekly Facebook lives like did that more than anything. You're just being in front of the camera every week. interacting with people, responding to their comments, went a long, long way to doing that. And my favorite part is like when you get to a point where those fans are then attacking haters, so you don't have to do it yourself, because there's always a hater somewhere in the comments. And we were running, we spent seven figures on Facebook ads, so you can think about the amount of traffic we were driving, the amount of comments that that was generating. And every now and then there'd be some hater that would, you know, coming after us for whatever reason. My favorite one was we cut off a scammer from, what they were doing was like getting our package and we had a no questions asked refund policy. And I still will scam behind that. And yeah, because I'm not worried about the one person who's going to scam you. I'm worried about all the people that are not going to take advantage of it, but buy because you have a very liberal return policy. And so our return policy was, you can send it back for any reason within 30 days. It doesn't matter. We don't care. So what they were doing... uh, was ordering something, waiting 29 days, like reordering the other thing. And like, then cutting open the box, swapping out the, the, the new thing, putting the old thing and taping the box back up and sending it back. Um, and then expecting like a refund. Um, but they were using the, uh, return shipping, like refusing the package, uh, as the return shipping. So they had to, so they had to pay the shipping. Well, this is mail fraud. And so after like the third time I told him, and I called the inspector. the local postmaster general and i think they got arrested actually so at least they knocked on their door i know they admit on the postmaster knocked on their door but uh you know i think that and and they came and attacked us in the comments and our fans were like no no no no no like these guys that's not how they operate because they were like oh they won't return my money and they're trying to like you know not not stand behind their return policy and uh you know the commenters like the scent on them and just like attack them in the oblivion and You don't have to say anything. That's a really good feeling. And so, yeah, I think that if you can generate that. you know, it can go a long way. And that's certainly with the thing that we're doing now, that is a part of our, like written on paper or part of our business plan to work on building community, getting loyal fans and really building a tribe. And then, you know, from there, you know, traffic eyeballs, fans, community, you have that, like there's always ways to make money. It doesn't matter the platform or what year it is or what's trendy or whatever, you know, fans, like Kevin, I mean, I don't know you as well, Norm. I've met you a few times. Yeah. But, you know, I know Kevin a lot better. And I just see the way that people congregate around him and just like get this like, oh, it's like girls meeting the Beatles in the 60s, that kind of like thing. Right. And, you know, that's something that you have to work hard at. Like, it isn't like they just immediately fell in love with him the second they met on. He's like providing tons of value over a long period of time. Maybe they did. You know, maybe I underestimate his boyish charm. but you know, it's just something you build over a long period of time of providing value and like helping people and like being there and giving people ideas to start their businesses. And they make a bunch of money off of it or get a dream because of it. And they, they become big fans and will then buy training and courses and attend seminars or go to these, uh, these summits and stuff. No questions asked, but that takes a lot of work. You know, people perceive it as an overnight success, but it sure as hell isn't. We're trying to regenerate that kind of magic in a totally different world.
- Speaker #1
In this totally different world, you said earlier you're an affiliate in the poker world. So you've always had an affinity for do you gamble yourself? You have an affinity for gambling. So I know you told me you moved from Vegas and then you moved back to Vegas. It drew you back. And now when I last saw you earlier this year. You're telling me about this fascinating new thing you're doing where you're going into the casino and playing a slot machine and your business partner, your buddy is filming this and just live streaming it out. I was like, OK, I don't get it. Yeah, you don't get it because this is crazy. And you started telling me all this stuff about it. I'm like, OK, so this is like Twitch for people. I just want to see people pull a slot machine or living vicariously through you or whatever. So can you tell us? what this new thing is you're doing and i'm fascinated by the marketing side of and the psychology side of and how you guys are going to monetize this and like you said build the community and everything off of this and i think it's pretty cool yeah so i mean in january of this year so we're recording this 2025 so january
- Speaker #0
9th we we launched actually uh today's our birthday we're recording this on our birthday of the our six month birthday of the channel because we started recording on the 8th and our first video went up on the 9th one so that's pretty cool Um, yeah, we started a YouTube channel just documenting, uh, kind of almost exactly what you said. It was, it's me and my buddy Ryan, who I've known for 20 years. Uh, we sit in front of, uh, a slot machine, play it every day and just kind of be us. Hopefully we win. Most of the times we lose it's gambling. Let's not, you know, pull the wool over anybody's eyes. I mean, like it's, it's gambling for sure. Um, but my thought was from, from day one, it was like, okay, the first video is going to suck. It always does. Right. It's just terrible. But I'm like, let's just get started and let's put the work in and we'll put something up every single day. So we record and put up a long form 30 to 60 minute YouTube video plus four to seven shorts every single day. And we've done it every single day. Seven days a week. It's actually seven days a week. Like we're there every day. I was already there today. Got my shirt on still. We're going back this afternoon. I'm going to go do a double session today. It's a long story. But like some days we go get extra content. Um, and my thought was, Hey, this is a crowded space. Like there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of other people that do the exact same thing. There's already some very established people that have a million subscribers. Like how the hell are we going to compete with that? And my thought was like, we're just going to be ourselves. Like we are characters. Like I'm doing something and he's doing something that you, you mentioned earlier, we're both passionate about. I mean, I probably could have got, uh, been better in life if I was more passionate on investing Thank you, Emily. or something else, but we both love to gamble. We don't gamble ever the rent money or do anything crazy. This is always like between friends, we bet a dollar on everything. It's just something to like, and we love to gamble. We'll go out drinking, play some games. Neither one of us have a gambling con. We do it for fun. It's just something that's entertaining. We both love poker, which in theory is plus CV. You should win money at long-term, and I have. But we just love being in a casino. Gambling. I love the environment. the characters, the whole thing. And so, yeah, we just started a channel. My thought was, over time, like, well, he will get better on camera because I already have been doing stuff on camera for 10 years. I knew I needed to get better doing that, but I was already coming in, let's say, at a five or where I need to be out of 10. He was coming in at a zero. So, like, we've both come up now. I'm like, people want to watch us just to watch us, even if they don't like gambling is my hope. You know, just our banter, it's almost like a... podcast, two guys just chit-chatting kind of thing. And that's really like, it started to really click in the last 60 days. Like we finally have kind of achieved what we're looking for there. Like the amount of comments that come through, the amount of people that come looking for us and they can see that we're buying our merchandise already. You can see it in the subscriber growth and the video growth. Like we were on that following on that parabolic growth trajectory. We hit 10,000 subscribers just before our six month. anniversary of running the channel. We're on a trajectory to probably hit 100K by the end of the year. Certainly we'll be at 50K. In the world of YouTube, it's the top fraction of 1%. Most people don't ever get there. We did it in six months. So I'm incredibly proud of what we've done. And I have a pep in my step that I haven't had in 20 years because I love doing this. We recorded a video today that I had so much fun and enjoyment doing. that I can't even get to tell you. And like, I know, I already know what's going to do incredibly well. Cause it's like, it just checks all the boxes and yeah. I mean, until it isn't fun anymore, I'm looking forward to doing this for the foreseeable future.
- Speaker #1
So walk me through this. So, so it's how the cameras on a tripod and you and your buddy are sitting there at a slot machine in a real casino that you've gotten permission from.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
It's always the same casino or the same slot machines, or do you rotate around and then you're just sitting there hitting the buttons and maybe calling out what you got or saying, oh, damn it, or, oh, getting excited. And then you comment to each other, hey, what'd you have for lunch? Or what do you think about this or that? And it's basically that's what it is.
- Speaker #0
Pretty close. I mean, a few things to add there. Like, that's exactly how it was to start with. And one of the things that I just realized as we're talking about, like, building community relationships, et cetera, it's like our faces have to be on this thing. Like, we originally started with just the camera on the machine. and so a few months into it where we really started to see that the the growth started to happen. We added two more cameras, two front facing cameras, one on me and one on him. So we have all three views in the YouTube screen now. So we're building this relationship through the camera with people. They see what we look like. They see our expressions on our face. That really, really helps, I think, build personal connection. Most people weren't doing that. There were a couple of people in this space that were doing that. And then, yeah, we got permission from our local casino that I can walk to, like literally right down the street. So that's the only place we record to start with. When you have zero subscribers, it's tough to get anybody to give you permission. So like the fact that they let us do it, I'm very, very grateful for them. We've since gotten permission from all MGM properties, which is kind of incredible because they're a big master corporation. Rio, El Cortez allows us to film there, several other places on Fremont Street. And then all the station casinos properties. And on top of it, the local casino here at Green Valley Ranch allows us to film table games. So we added that in, which is what the real interest I have and passion I have is. So we film a bunch of blackjack and craps and baccarat and roulette.
- Speaker #2
They allow you to film that?
- Speaker #0
Yeah,
- Speaker #1
we got permission to do that. Is it just the two of you at a baccarat table or is there some other normal guests there that you have to get releases from?
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So their rule is, and very... understandable role is it has to be just us at the table. So if there's any other guests there, we cannot film them. We cannot film any of the dealers, the pit bosses. We have to keep everyone else off camera. And if someone wants to sit down, we just get up and leave, which happens from time to time. But we go over there first thing in the morning when it's not busy. Oftentimes we'll walk up to, we walked up to the cops table to play today and they were like, oh man, you're the first person that's like walked up here in four hours. Like they were just like, the guy was like falling asleep at the table. I'm like, I'll play with you just to like. entertain me for a minute and they they all love us because we tip really well we're i mean kevin knows me i'm very play and generous by nature so like um you know and a lot of people that come into casinos are a little bit curmudgeon and not very happy because you know they're gambling at eight o'clock in the morning you're probably i don't know there's some cast of characters around that you know aren't the best but um they they seem to really like us there they're all rooting for us to do well uh it's become really fun like we got a hand pay today And they're just so happy for us because, again, we tip well. We're in there giving everyone a high five every day and saying hi, asking how they're doing. So they're always rooting for us. And it's just a ton of fun. I mean, like I said, it's been a lot of fun. It's hard to sleep through the night because I want to get up and look at the stats nonstop. It's in that stage right now.
- Speaker #2
I'm curious. So we know that my phone's ringing and it's spam. But going to play the slots or anything, it's always odds are to the house. You're playing with your own money.
- Speaker #0
Yep.
- Speaker #2
So typically, on average, you'd lose.
- Speaker #0
Yes, we do. For sure. That's very clear. Yeah.
- Speaker #2
Okay. And how are you getting, how are you monetizing this? You're going in with your own money. You're losing your own money. Are you making it back from views on YouTube? Do you have sponsorship?
- Speaker #0
Norm, you're forgetting about the valuable player points that we earn.
- Speaker #2
Oh, yes. Yes.
- Speaker #0
The 12 cents that we get back on the... on the free wow i forgot he gets a free meal he needs a free hamburger lunch no it's it's an investment like i mean we kind of laid out a business plan i mean we're so far out of schedule that it's kind of silly at this point because i i thought it would take us about two years to get to where we are right now and we've done it in six months but um you know we're we're right at the point where just based on youtube revenue alone We're pretty much covering our gambling losses, which is pretty cool. Actually, if the last couple of days go out, the next 30 days, we'll be covering our gambling losses and then some. And then we obviously have expenses of editing and other things that we do to just run the channel. But for right now, the only income that we have, period, is from YouTube.
- Speaker #2
Now, a quick word from our sponsor, LaVonta. Hey, Kevin, tell us a little bit about it.
- Speaker #1
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- Speaker #2
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- Speaker #0
Like we aren't exercising or utilizing what's going to, I think eventually be our income streams, which will be merchandise. We do get, we do sell some shirts. We do make a, we're basically selling them for cost right now, just to get our stuff out there. We'll have sponsorships for sure. Like I know the other big guys have sponsorships that are very lucrative. There'll be affiliate opportunities in there, whether it's gambling affiliate stuff or just selling protein bars or something that you might have embedded in the show or traveling or maybe, you know, with a local agency here that helps put together Vegas trips or something for people coming from out of town. There's a lot of opportunities once you're 100,000 plus subscribers that are tough to kind of put together until you're that size. but Again, we're on that trajectory. I know what that looks like because I've been in that space for 20 plus years. And it's just a matter of time before the revenue far surpasses the losses and then supports us make a living out of it. And my biggest goal right now is to get my buddy. He still has a full time job dealing poker. And I want him to be able to quit his job. So we can see, I think we're going to be able to do it this year. I think by the end of the year, he's going to be able to quit his job. This will support that and a whole bunch more, which is pretty incredible in year one. Like we thought it would be three years before he quit his job. I think, you know, as long as we stay on the same trajectory, we'll get to that mission. So all year long.
- Speaker #1
While we're through how YouTube pays for this, for those listening, like how you said you're almost like breaking even and starting to be positive now. So if you get 10,000 subscribers, not all of them are showing up on every. video so it's not like 10 000 people are watching each time but so are you getting like it's I don't know, does YouTube pay like 12 cents per thousand views or 15 cents? Or is that how you're monetizing? And then people are going back and watching past ones. So you're making a little bit of extra change off of those too. Or how, walk me through the process of how that works.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. Yeah. So you make zero dollars for having subscribers. That equals nothing on YouTube. It's all about watch time. So you get paid for watch time. And they use RPM. You know, it's basically how much you make per thousand views on YouTube. And there's shorts and then there's long form videos. Like the shorts are pennies per thousand views. I mean, it's basically nothing. They did just release an update and said that they're going to start paying as much per hour view viewed. Not necessarily number of views, but consumption time viewed as long form on shorts. I haven't seen that quite yet, but they just announced it and we'll see if it comes to fruition. You know, I probably shouldn't be discussing this, but it's you and whatever. We're getting $15-ish per thousand views is our RPM. Way above what I thought it would be. When we walked into this, I thought it would be $4. I was kind of just judging from other things that we had done on YouTube. We had an e-commerce channel. We had a hobby channel. We had that five-minute pitch thing that we did. So, like, I had a few different... data points. I thought it would be on the low, low end of this. We're actually way above what I thought it would be. Like, I mean, $15 to me is, uh, is incredible. So I think a lot of that is because we have a very long video and people are consuming on average 18 minutes, but that's our average view time on a video. It's incredibly high. Like, I mean, I think it's one of the reasons why we've been so successful and YouTube continuing to promote our videos.
- Speaker #1
Is this live?
- Speaker #0
No, it's all recorded in there. you know up there it's just a regular video you know it's not live it's recorded it's not like we haven't done any uh streaming or live yet it's all we post the video so the video was like from the day before from a week before you or or something but we're about to leave behind we post we have so are you doing the editing or you have some philippines guys in the philippines i was doing it to start with and i had a higher we have two full-time editors right now but it's just the volume of stuff we're posting is so incredible and taking those three camera angles and getting the audio all synced and you should watch one of the videos we put the production value is really high well what's the channel it's all about desert degens because we're degenerates who live in the deserts all right okay i'm gonna check it out right now all we're talking about the production value is is like kevin you've known me for a long time like i was talking to ryan i was like look my goal is to create the best channel on the internet on this subject matter It's going to take us time. It's like, I don't know exactly what that's going to look like yet. As long as we get like a little bit better every day. And that's not to take away anything from, there's some really great content creators out there that still do a much better job than we do. But my goal is to be the best, right? And so we don't ever like rest on our laurels. Like every day we're trying to like make things slightly better. We added, like I said, we added the other cameras at one point. hire a professional editor that's way more talented than i am like transitions and stuff and he has like little captions on stuff and we're about to add like this mascot to our thing that's going to like be a third party kind of like talking to us and like trolling us a little bit and we have like little movie clips and like little tiny stuff that like no one else does like we see most people in a casino like taking their camera holding it like this in front of their face not saying a word and that's their content like they hold it up to the machine they don't have their face it's like they're holding it. To their face, facing the machine, barely ever talking. My thing was to make this something that people would want to watch. Again, whether they're into slots or not, because it's just entertainment on top of the gaming part. And so, like I said, we're getting there. And now you see the comments. It's actually phenomenal. Dozens of comments on every video about how they love our humor, our banter, our style of play. We don't do a lot of the... Oh, that was close or shoot. We're like, need a bonus. Or, you know, cause that's all we did was him and hall about like the machine not paying out for 28 to 30 minutes. Now it's like two minutes of 30 minutes. We're doing that. And the rest of the time we're like talking about our friend, just being in town, the pool party that we had, or a concert that we went to reading comments from a guest, giving away something, just razzing on each other and being like, dude, like, like, you know, you're, you got a hat on and it's like keeping, you know, Your brains are like about to fall out if you don't think it was something, you know, whatever, like supercoppers at each other. It's fine because like that's what we do anyway. Like we just make fun of each other.
- Speaker #2
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. Bro talk. It's bro talk. But like we've had to make it PG because like we can't curse on YouTube without getting demonetized and a bunch of other stuff. So we had to like get rid of the like nasty bro talk, the real bro talk and like figure out a way to reinvent our bro talk to be PG. And the vast majority of people watching are older women. They don't want to be hearing that crap. So we got to be careful. uh and gear it towards our our core audience but they they love us like they they absolutely love us and we love them like that's been like we got to meet so many people now and it's just it's cool because we know they're watching for the entertainment you know it's like we watch all these other channels but now we like watch yours more than any because yours is the most entertaining like i that fuels me to want to go do more of that and we got some other ideas that we're working on Do you think these women are watching or...
- Speaker #1
Or using it as like background noise when they're taking care of their baby or they're doing something around the house or in the office or whatever.
- Speaker #0
Most of the women are watching us or their kids are long gone. Like they're older, older women. You know, a lot of times they're widowed. You know, one of our fans that comes in, unfortunately, lost her husband recently. We've asked them this question because I'm just curious. And we have a lot of men that watch too. Don't get me wrong. But the number one answer that we get. is they love playing. They have a budget. They can't play all the time because they have a budget. So they watch us to either get ideas or to feel like they're also playing. They want to kind of feel like they're playing with us and that they wish they had more money to be actually playing the slot machines at that time. But the best they can do is watch, which is interesting. And they seem to, again, the average consumption time, it might mean... I'm happy if they turn it on in the background. That's good for us. I'm going to just run however they consume it. But it does seem like based on like the first few times that this happened, it blew my mind because people would come up to us, oh, we watch your channel. And I would be like, yeah, okay, whatever. They just see the cameras there and they got us confused for someone else that they watch. But then they would start telling us like intimate details about like every video that they had watched. I'm like, these guys are not only watching, but like they're really consuming and hanging on every word that we're saying. which is really freaking cool. Now it puts a lot of pressure on us to continue to do a better and better job. But like I said, for right now, at least, it's been a ton of fun.
- Speaker #2
So you can't go over to TikTok right now, I'm assuming. They don't allow any form of gambling?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, it's been kind of contentious. We're posting there. All of our videos, we're getting Insta banned. I'm still in a mastermind that I've been in for almost 10 years with some really good friends in e-commerce. So we still talk once a month. And I mentioned that and he's like, I see stuff on there all the time, like all these gambling videos. And so I just kind of consistently posted on there. And all of a sudden they were like allowing every one of our videos to be on there. They were doing really, really well. And now we're back in this, like they're denying and they put strikes on our account situation. So it seems like they're kind of anti-gambling on TikTok. YouTube, however, has put out a bulletin in March of this year. explicitly allowing it. You just cannot promote online gambling.
- Speaker #2
And what about producing ads? Can you run ads on your channel?
- Speaker #0
Well, yeah, on YouTube, yeah, we run. I mean, it's the YouTube algorithm runs the ad.
- Speaker #2
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
We could embed our own like reading a script ad if someone paid us directly. We just could, we cannot promote online gambling. Like that's the one thing we can't, we can't promote.
- Speaker #2
It's pretty loose.
- Speaker #0
It seems to be pretty loose. And it's been pretty lucrative as well. Like I said, the CPMs are quite high. And we're getting views. I mean, like all of our videos now we're getting thousands of views. Like this time two months ago, we were lucky to be getting a couple hundred views per video. It's starting to really, you know, like I said, you get that parabolic move. And I think we recorded our first 100,000-view video today. I'm pretty sure we nailed it. Like I'm very excited to release this video.
- Speaker #1
I'm looking here. A lot of the videos are like 1,000, 500, 5,000. So it says you've put out 704 videos. So it's a numbers game, basically. I mean, by putting up, that's more than one a day. If you started January this year,
- Speaker #0
that's... Oh, yeah. So we put up six, seven videos a day. We put up one long form and like four to seven shorts.
- Speaker #1
So it's a numbers game and it starts after... It's that same old thing that when you do a podcast or... You do a newsletter, people say, just stick with it. Most people give up. It's a numbers game. And after someone just, you know what? This is actually perfect. Remember, Norm, what I told you last week that we need to do with ours, that you've got to post every single day for, what did I tell you? Someone told me, it was a really smart person said, you got to post on YouTube for 180 days every single day and then the magic starts. I mean, it's basically exactly what you just said. It's half a year and you just said like, hey, we're finally turning the corner. So maybe it's not exactly 180, but it's that consistency and it builds that little cycle in the algorithm. Like, okay, these guys are serious. They're serious content producers. Let's, uh, that, that, that's. So that validates, Norm, what basically we just heard.
- Speaker #0
It was about the 150 to 160. If you sort by latest video in long form, you'll see all of a sudden every video gets more than 1,000 views.
- Speaker #1
What you asked for now, I just did it by popular, 45,000, 32,000,
- Speaker #0
28. But those are all recent.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, two weeks ago. Those are. Four days ago. Two weeks. Yeah. So you just turned, yeah, just a couple of weeks ago, you put in this corner. Eight days ago. Yeah. All your top ones are like in the last two weeks.
- Speaker #2
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- Speaker #0
And the hardest thing about I do for work in the last six months is to sit here and talk to you two for an hour. There we go. Well,
- Speaker #1
we appreciate that. We appreciate that. But I think this is a cool marketing thing, a cool thing for people that are out there that, like, I don't have a lot of money to get in e-commerce or I don't have a lot of money to start this. My dream is to have my own clothing line or whatever it may be, makeup line or something. But, hey, I need to get something going and build a community, build an audience. And then if that's their dream is to have their own clothing line, maybe, you know, if that was y'all's dream, at some point you're going to be able to leverage a community you've built here into, hey, buy our gambling clothing line or something. And then everybody's going to be walking down the strip wearing a D-Gen shirt, shirts, D-Gen shoes and whatever.
- Speaker #0
A guy in this space did a similar podcast after he was already much more popular. and he disclosed that he was... they were doing 3,000 orders a day for merchandise.
- Speaker #1
Off of a, wow. Again, it was similar to what you're doing.
- Speaker #0
Correct. Yeah. So, I mean, that's kind of like our goal. Like, I mean, I'd be happy with hundreds a day, you know, whatever it might be. But I see that as being like a huge revenue center for us. That's why we did it so early. You know, we already have the store. We already sell, you know, like an average of like one a day or something. It's not, it's not huge. But the fact that anyone buys it at all blows my mind. And it's, it's just there to like.
- Speaker #1
continue to snowball more and more people show up in public with with the merchandise on uh and i think it just see you have a newsletter here too when i click on uh desertdjens.com it goes to a newsletter sign up are you actually just collecting leads right now are you actually doing a true newsletter yeah i mean because like you and i know like i mean email is so important uh
- Speaker #0
just we are a little bit overwhelmed it sounds easy It sounds like I'm not doing any work, but it actually is quite a bit. getting all this content up. And I'm just trying to like, I've gotten much better at like, realizing I can't do everything. Like if there's 100 things that need to get done for this business. What's the most important thing to focus on right now? Is it really the email or the look at that website or whatever? There's something there. Some people that type it in don't fall into a black hole. We have some roles and stuff up there for one of our promotions. If you go to that URL, it's there. But it's mostly for shop.desertdjones.com is where the Shopify store is, which is on a Shopify domain. It's just kind of there. Now, can it look better? And should I build it out? Should I be sending out an email every day? Yeah. And we're going to do that. But we're just trying to like keep up with the editing and getting the videos out and making those as good as we possibly can. And we feel like we can like breathe a little bit from that because we are trying to hire one more person right now. Then those will be like the next steps. And certainly, you know, my hope is that, yeah, we're doing a lot of stuff with email. And then we can promote online gambling in those emails, right? Because it's not on YouTube. And those CPAs are three to five. I mean, no,
- Speaker #1
this is... No, actually, in the newsletter, as you know, I'm big in the newsletter business and I've done a lot of research. The biggest opportunities are in the quote unquote banned topics, you know, smoking, sex, gambling. And so if you build a list here and you're doing it right, you're not you're not ready to commit to that. You're doing what's moving the needle, but you're capturing the leads as you go. So you're not going to start from zero. And then when you do that, I think this that could blow this up or you do an affiliate. It's almost like wrapping your entire 20 years into one where you can go back to the affiliate stuff, make money off the affiliates, and then have other people come in, advertisers and sponsors, that want to reach this audience. And then you have the product side, which you are a well-versed in fulfillment and products. So it's almost like wrapping all of your past experiences and talents around a passion that's fun.
- Speaker #0
I mean, no. Getting old sucks, man. Like getting out of beds, like I hear Rice Krispies every morning and this, that, and the other. But, you know, it feels like a cheat code for business. Because like you said, it's taken 20 years with the knowledge and laser focusing in on this one thing right now. And yeah, I see huge opportunities on the email part. Like I, as I start to talk about it, I get even more excited. And we've already, we've been talking like, what is going to be the hook that gets people to like to the site to sign up? Because we're gonna be taking them from from a YouTube video, trying to get them to sign up for our email. We're like, what's the lead magnet here? In color, it was the free pages. And for our tactical site, we had this prepping guide. For e-com crew, it was like, how to get started on Amazon. We've been talking about lots of things, ideas, or maybe multiple ideas to get people over there. And then once we started building out that email list, I think, yeah, it's another whole revenue center. It's called Merchandise Revenue Center Sponsorships. A couple of the big guys do cruises. You pay them for the cruise. They rent out the whole damn boat, and they're making probably a million dollars a cruise or something. There's all kinds of opportunities in this space, and I'm just trying to take it one step at a time and not get ahead of our skis. I mean, we just hit 10,000 subscribers. We're not in a million, but I think we can get there. I think we're going to be in a million a couple of years from now. And when we're there, that's when, again, parabolically, like. Not only does the views go up, but all the other things. It opens up all the other gates. And yet with the previous experience, I feel like it is kind of a cheat code.
- Speaker #1
Are you doing these shirts print-on-demand?
- Speaker #0
It's all print-on-demand right now. We will warehouse them when it makes sense. We know a few people in that space that have already actually talked about doing them for us and doing the fulfillment where they'll stock it and they make the shirts. But we've got to be at a volume where it makes sense to do that. And then we'll just be making better margins at that point. It's really a margin game. But yeah, it's all print on demand right now. And it just, again, I've been trying to like focus on the things that's going to move the needle as much as it can right now. Like, and I might be wrong about that. Ultimately, like you got to make the best decision you can at the time. But for right now, for me, that's like producing the best quality content. So that's got us in the casino for several hours a day and me like working back and forth. for a lot longer than I'll need to in the future with an editor to tweak all the little details that I care about. But every time I tell him something, he gets it, and I don't have to tell him again. And we're getting close. We're close to where I want the final product to be.
- Speaker #1
And Norm, he's got a shop store, so I'm looking here at the mugs and hats. So he could get Google Business Pro funnel, right?
- Speaker #2
Yeah. That's all. And hopefully you've got the Google Knowledge Panel.
- Speaker #0
I have a set up with Google Shopping and Google Business Profile. The last thing you just mentioned, I'm not sure what that is.
- Speaker #1
Oh, yeah. We could talk later. Oh, boy. It gives you, it puts you as an authority. It's Google's vetted from your profile to your brand to your company. You can vet each one of them. And when it does that, it'll put together a panel. So when somebody is either searching your brand or your name, it'll come up in a panel format and it just gives you a huge amount of credibility and a lot more exposure. And then Google business profile. I know that like the back of my hand and that's awesome as well. Just putting out content. So if you're putting out content, why not put it out there too?
- Speaker #0
What was the thing you call a Google panel?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, Google Knowledge Panel. And then that might take a few minutes, and it takes anywhere from one to five days to get approved. Okay. But what you really want to focus on is the Google Knowledge Graph. And because you had the podcast and because of the people that you know, that should explode.
- Speaker #0
Okay. I will definitely go play around with that.
- Speaker #1
And you know, uh, You would have loved working with my dad.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Back at the facility we had in Auburn, Maine, the back wall had all slot machines.
- Speaker #0
Oh, that's cool.
- Speaker #1
And we cleaned a lot of the, what he came up with was, it was a waffle. They used to go in and clean each of these casino machines. So, yeah, we were licensed to all these different casinos to go and clean them. So the main company in Japan sent over a bunch of slot machines for us to practice with.
- Speaker #2
I heard practice makes perfect on slot machines. I heard that. I heard practice makes perfect.
- Speaker #1
Practice makes perfect. Yeah.
- Speaker #0
That's what the casino tells you. Keep on trying.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
The lot are easily fixed. Practice makes perfect. Oh, man.
- Speaker #2
That's awesome, man. It's really cool and different. I like it.
- Speaker #0
It's definitely different.
- Speaker #2
It's cool to pull back the curtain a little bit and see how these different models are working. And like you said, some people are crushing it in this space. It's like Twitch for gamblers.
- Speaker #0
The top guy in the space, several of them, there's several people making seven figures a month. A month. Profit.
- Speaker #2
And are these guys all mostly in Vegas? Are they at different places around the world?
- Speaker #0
They're in Vegas.
- Speaker #2
And now the casinos are allowed to sponsor this, I guess.
- Speaker #0
They can't. One of the guys is sponsored by an online brand. I don't really want to get too much into it because I'm not sure what I should and shouldn't say or whatever on the show. But I don't want to mention the name. But it's one of these companies that you see commercials or hear commercials for all the time. I mean, they do... like fantasy football and other sports betting and they now have uh casino online casino google i believe like i said they can't promote online gambling you can't promote uh unapproved online gambling so some of these brands that they have approved this is one of them but it's not approved in nevada so like these guys travel to a different state multiple times a month to like make content for that, a state where it is allowed. Because Nevada is really... controlling about gambling and you know obviously there's a lot of money being made here and the land-based casino is how the whole thing like kind of cornered so like none of the fantasy football stuff's allowed here or none of the online gaming stuff's allowed here because they've lobbied to to kind of but it's just a matter of time and so i see a lot of opportunity longer term with all that like when online gaming is approved in nevada and we can and hopefully we'll be big enough to be able to be in a good spot to to get affiliate deals for that And it'll be an approved site for Google. I think all that's going to kind of come together at a really good time for us. It seems like we're on the right path for that, which I'm very excited about.
- Speaker #2
What happens if YouTube decides, you know what, we're not going to allow gambling anymore?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, it's scary, dude. We've had it happen before. That's how I ended up here or ended up in e-commerce. I actually made a decision to start another channel in a completely different space. just because of this. I don't want to do it because I've been very happy focusing on one thing. And I'm at a point where I really realized the trauma of trying to chase T-Rabbits. But I feel like I kind of have no choice. I do not want to be in a spot where if two years from now that happens, I'm starting over from ground zero with nothing. And so we're going to be doing a very similar concept, but in a different niche that isn't gambling, starting probably in August or at least September.
- Speaker #1
Why not? Like right now, you're a one-legged stool. Like Kevin said, what happens if you get shut down?
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
Wow. You've got the content. Why don't you just take the content and put it onto a different channel as well?
- Speaker #0
Oh, it's everywhere. I mean, we have Facebook. It's on. But YouTube is really the only long form content platform. There really isn't any like you could Twitch like we could certainly do that. It is allowed there. But that's live streaming. We'd have to be there. And it's not edited and as highly produced as what we're doing now. I mean, we could produce something I think that would be good. But yeah, the, the, you know, Instagram and Facebook, they're, they're short platforms. TikTok doesn't allow it. So we're, I mean, it was doing incredibly well there. But they're, they're not, they're not allowing it. I'm hopeful that YouTube is going to continue to allow it. I mean, they've come out with a bulletin. I was really worried about it at the beginning, but then they, they, I saw this email come through. I was like, I'm about to have a heart attack. They're, they're, they're squashing this, but they defined exactly what it is that they're allowing and not allowing. It seemed crazy before, so I know what I'm saying, but it seems crazy to me that they would stop it. But yes, it is a concern to the point where we are going to have another YouTube channel totally outside of Yambling, about something else that I enjoy just as much. And we're at a point now where the workload is starting to diminish a little bit on this. And I think I can create, I'm getting good at like, how can I create the content? put in a spot, train an editor and have, my goal is to be at a point where my camera time is the only effort I have to put into this and someone else is taking care of everything else. But we're going to start working on building our subscriber base, getting our videos up for this other, other niche in a way that, that doesn't stress me out and gets us at least gets us started just in case, if in any point in the future we get slam dunked on, we have a backup stream of income.
- Speaker #2
Hey, Kevin King and Norm Farrar here. If you've been enjoying this episode of Marketing Misfits, thanks for listening this far. Continue listening. We've got some more valuable stuff coming up. Be sure to hit that subscribe button if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast player, or if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify, make sure you subscribe to our channel because you don't want to miss a single episode of the Marketing Misfits. Have you subscribed yet, Norm?
- Speaker #1
Well, this is an old guy alert. Should I subscribe to my own podcast?
- Speaker #2
Yeah, but what if you forget to show up one time? It's just me on here. You're not going to know what I say.
- Speaker #1
I'll buy you a beard and you can sit in my chair too. And we'll just, you can go back and forth with one another. Yikes. But that being said, don't forget to subscribe, share it. Oh, and if you really like this content, somewhere up there, there's a banner. Click on it and you'll go to another episode of the Marketing Misfits.
- Speaker #3
Make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like Norm.
- Speaker #1
Oh, well, we are at the top of the hour. And at the top of the hour, I always ask our guests if they know a misfit.
- Speaker #0
Hmm. I know lots of misfits in the gambling space, but probably not one that's fit for this. I think all the other people we all know mutually. So awesome.
- Speaker #2
So if people want to follow you guys, it's DesertDGens on YouTube or DesertDGens.com. Is there anything else if anybody wants to reach out or to follow you or any other place they should check out?
- Speaker #0
Nope. I didn't come in here to promote anything. So I appreciate the plug on that. But most people watching this probably don't care about slots. No,
- Speaker #2
but people on here are going to watch it to reverse engineer what you're doing. Hey, how can we do something like this for our brand?
- Speaker #0
Hey, Sheldon. I am always happy to help. I am an abundance mentality individual. There are trillions of views per month to be had on YouTube. I am not going to ever have them all. And so I'm just going to go be me. There's going to be people that absolutely hate and never want to watch it. And that's totally fine. They can go watch your thing. And you can go be the other views. And we're just going to be us. And the people that enjoy us and want to watch our thing will be the ones. Those will be the views that we get. I think that that's an important point of view to have.
- Speaker #2
Oh, we should. You can come on mic and sharing. This has been great. yes be good and i'm gonna remove you but don't go away okay i won't go anywhere oh how do i oh you gotta hit that button oh i did that you can't remove it here we go oh yeah i see it now norm i see it the wheels spinning your head man if i could just do a cigar smoking channel right you sit there and i actually sit there and on my back porch and smoke a cigar and talk about it and show my little AI tool that tracks them and researches them, then I'd be in heaven. I don't need all this dragonfish or all this other stuff. I can just be sitting there, me and my Coke Zero in Dallas.
- Speaker #1
Me, my Coke Zero in Dallas. That sounds good. You know what was kind of scary? I was listening to Mike, and then you asked a question, and you said, when I pulled back the curtain, and I sat there and I went, I remember the time. Kevin pulled back the curtain, and it was freaking scary. And that wasn't anything to do with marketing. It was just...
- Speaker #2
Yeah, that was traumatic for you. I remember you had to see a counselor for a while after that.
- Speaker #1
I did. I did. I almost went blind.
- Speaker #2
It's temporary. But, hey, the podcast is not temporary. This podcast is every single Tuesday. We're trying to be like Mike, but we're doing it once a week. We're not doing it several times a day. But we got to up our game. We are doing... some stuff on YouTube and TikTok. What are we doing there, Norm?
- Speaker #1
You got it. So we have two channels on YouTube. One is for long form and that's Marketing Misfits Podcast. And the second one is for the shorts and it's Marketing Misfits Clips. And there are three minute and under videos. We've also got the TikTok channel going and that's Marketing Misfits. And that one's going really well.
- Speaker #2
And we haven't met the band yet, right? You said... I haven't used enough meth.
- Speaker #1
No, no, that's YouTube. I gotta keep in the game.
- Speaker #2
I'm trying to. I got some soap here. I don't know, some guy in Canada made it and I just rub it in my mouth every time I say a bad word. And drop a quarter in the jar. The jar's not going up anymore. I don't know what's going on. But I know what's going on for you guys listening is you should be Listening to the Misfits podcast by subscribing to this channel, by hitting that like button, by leaving us a comment. Or if you liked what Mike said and you know someone that might enjoy this, be sure to forward this episode to them because I'm sure they will appreciate it. And introduce them to the Marketing Misfits. You know, we're here every Tuesday, Norm. I guess I'll see you again next week with another incredible guest. Or maybe it'll just be us two talking. Who knows?
- Speaker #1
Who knows what the day will bring. But all right, everybody,
- Speaker #4
we'll see you next Tuesday.
