- Speaker #0
It's really hard for big brands to be successful on TikTok because big brands have a ridiculously difficult time with authenticity. And this is from communications I've had with TikTok directly.
- Speaker #1
You're watching Marketing Misfits with Norm Farrar and Kevin King. Mr. Farrar, my brother from another mother. What's up, man?
- Speaker #2
Hey, Mr. King. How's it going? I feel like we're almost in the same room. It's bizarre.
- Speaker #1
It is. We're just down the hall from each other. And the room looks exactly the same. Who would think that you have two rooms in your house that are decorated exactly the same?
- Speaker #2
Who'd have thunk that?
- Speaker #1
Some people, you know, when they like something, they like something.
- Speaker #2
Hey, you notice...
- Speaker #1
Why you're called a mystery.
- Speaker #2
Exactly. But maybe you've noticed a little bit of raspiness in my voice today.
- Speaker #1
A little bit, yeah. You're a little, it sounds like you've been coughing a little bit or something.
- Speaker #2
I'm not coughing. It's, well, you want to explain where we were at?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, we just rolled back in from Bay, lost wages, at the Paris Casino and lost wages over the weekend prior to recording.
- Speaker #2
Really?
- Speaker #1
I have a cough too because we've been smoking a lot of cigars. I think we did four one day, but pretty much like actually last night was the first night we hadn't smoked a cigar in like eight days straight.
- Speaker #2
And that's only because it was like a hurricane or something here.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, it's something going on outside. Yeah, a hurricane going on outside. But yeah, we were at the Big Smoke, which is Halloween for cigar smokers is what it is. And... and lost wages and they do this every year and they get about there's about 60 or so boosts in this convention center and about 20 or so 25 of them are liquor uh uh companies you know johnny walker and on all the vodka companies and giving out free tastings of liquor and then the other 35 roughly are cigars uh and their cigar represents big cigar companies some are distributors and you you get these little coupon books and you run around and You hand them a coupon and it's just like going trick-or-treating, knock on the door. But in this case, you hand them a coupon and you have a big bag that they've given you and you open up the bag and they drop in a cigar. And then you keep going around and you get 35 cigars each person each day. And so it's a two-day event. So you end up with close to 70 cigars by the end of this thing, which is a lot of cigars. And then they get some food. And where you can go sit down in a big area where people are just smoking and meet another cigar smoker. So it's a pretty cool event. And then afterwards, you know, this thing only runs like three or four hours a night. Then afterwards, people are hanging out at these nice cigar bars around town. So it's cool.
- Speaker #2
Yeah, and there's marketing. There's tons of marketing involved. Even the, it's not sequential. You know, it's not like number one, number two, number three. If you're trying to get all these different booths, it could be one, it could be 32, it could be 23. And a lot of the booths don't even have the numbers up. So you're going to the booth and you're sorting through your tickets and you're trying to rip them out so you're not holding up the line.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, they give you a coupon book that's in order. And every coupon, every page, you know, page one to, say, 35 has a number on it. It has a cigar company that says this is good for one Olivia or one Fuente or whatever. But then you go and then... these booths are in rows around the convention center, but they're not in orders. It doesn't go from booth 1, 2, 3, 4, all the way up. They might be booth 1, and next to us, booth 17. Next to that's booth 31. And then you go to another row, and it's a different assortment. And each row, there's a line of people because there's thousands of people with this. So you've got to actually create a that's marketing to get people to mix it up. And you've got to create a strategy as someone like Norm and I to actually come in and actually conquer this and knock this thing out so we're just not standing in lines all day long and we did by the way we did good norma norm figured it out got map of the layout of the room and mapped it out uh and then we we divided and conquered yeah
- Speaker #2
and by the way uh we got to give a shout out to a new friend of ours Dwayne, he helped us out and we talked about this just two weeks ago on the podcast about customer service and how you can use that as a marketing strategy. This guy was incredible. You want to talk about what this guy did for us?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, so we, this event went over a Friday and Saturday night and we Bought our tickets kind of late, so we weren't able to get the top-level VIP, which allows you to get an extra hour into the event, to go in at 5.30 instead of 6.30 with all the masses. So you kind of get, it's less crowded and you get some more time. But on Saturday night, we had tickets to see the Eagles and the Spear. And the show started at 8.30, and you got to be over there at 7.30, and you need a little bit of time to get over there. It's not too far away, but you need a little bit of time to get over there and get situated with traffic and everything. So we're like, shoot, how are we going to do this? It's 630. Even if we haul last, there's no way we're going to get all of our 70 cigars, our 35 each. So we tried to buy a pass to actually upgrade. We said we'll pay the $100 or $200, whatever it is. And they told us, no, sorry, you can't do that. So Norm had the bright idea of, hey, let's see. What did you say? Norm actually had a bright idea. He's allowed two per year. Two ideas per year. So let's just go ask this guy over here. He looks kind of official in a suit. Goes up and asks this guy. Turns out his name's Dwayne. And Dwayne, he says, hey, Norm explains the situation. And the guy's like, yeah, don't worry. Come tomorrow. And this was on Friday. Come back on Saturday. Come tomorrow. Come see me, and I'll take care of you. So we're like, oh, really? And we thought, you know, he just might be saying that. You never know. So we show up on 530 on Saturday to actually go in an hour early. We find Dwayne, you know, down. taking people in people were asked we're walking through and people like hey where's your tickets like no we're here to see Dwayne we find Dwayne and he's like hey guys um we're wearing smoking jackets everybody no nobody you know forgets Mark's uh I'm not no Mark's forgets uh Norm's beard you know that's uh that's a marketing thing everybody always remembers that plus we had these really nice smoking jackets uh that that we're wearing so people knew we're official so Dwayne's like hey guys come on with come with me come to the front of the line
- Speaker #2
There's like 500 people in line at this point.
- Speaker #1
They took us to the front of the line, like, here you go, just walk on in, gave us the coupon books. And we go in into the show, and we knock this thing out pretty quickly, and we're able to get all of our cigars, grab a quick drink, and then head over to the Eagle Show, which was really cool. We'll talk about that in another episode. But we've got a really cool guest today, too, Norm, as well, on the podcast, right?
- Speaker #2
Yes, we do. Life in the Fast Lane. I just got to say that. I got to say One Eagle Song. I didn't feel like saying Desperado. Life in the Fast Lane. I think that was one of your favorites, by the way. But today, we have a really good friend of ours, Michelle Barnum-Smith, and I'm going to bring her on right now. Hey, there is Michelle.
- Speaker #0
Hello.
- Speaker #1
Hello. How are you, Michelle?
- Speaker #0
I am excited to be here, guys. Love to hear all of the... adventures that you two are constantly living like where in the world are norm and kevin yeah cigars today yeah that's right that's right you know today let's put the logo up there it's in the marketing mrs slow if you look up in the little logo up above norm's uh there you go my shoulder or behind me you
- Speaker #1
can see uh two dudes smoking cigars so it's uh it's uh that's that's part of uh the culture of the marketing misfits you know yeah that's true that's true dinner last night with uh With Mark and Vanessa, they were asking, where are you at? And we were explaining this to Vanessa Hung. And we were telling her this whole cigar culture and the way this whole thing works. And she was just fascinated by it. She was like, holy cow, I had no idea that there's this whole little cigar culture and these little groups and all this kind of stuff. But, yeah, it's a cool world. Just like being a misfit is a cool world. You probably didn't even know that you're a little misfit, right? Yeah.
- Speaker #0
I do know that I'm a miss that.
- Speaker #1
I know, you know,
- Speaker #0
it's, it's hard for me to fit in anywhere. Cause I stand out. Right. So yes, yes.
- Speaker #1
You didn't always stand out. You were, well, you started in the corporate world, right? Doing corporate marketing and then you had to work your way to try to stand out there.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. But I think about it all the way back from like my childhood. Like I grew up in this rural farming community. I worked on a farm every day of my life, but my parents named me instead of Michelle, they named me Michelle, like the Beatles song. And so even from a very young age, I was always standing out and all of my classmates, and it was one of those small, small towns where you go to school with the same people in kindergarten that you do graduate from high school. It's like all the way through. And so, you know, even, even down to my name, just not fitting in. And, you know, it's like I was set up for this type of life. I'm always having to be reintroducing myself. Actually, it's Michelle. So, yes.
- Speaker #2
So why don't we get into a bit of your background? Tell us a little bit about yourself.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I mean, so I've been working every day of my life since I was four. And I like to say that I have like, I hold all of like the trump cards. So bless my heart, my children are, you know, they might complain about their chores or if they have to weed something, you know, like weed the garden or weed the yard or whatever. I'm like, oh, I must be really hard for you. You know, like I had to weed like miles of fields. And sometimes I'd have to wake, they'd wake, my parents would have to wake us up at like two in the morning to go weed some fields during, during the harvest because a certain plant could only be pulled out of like the beans when the dew had settled on the plants. Otherwise it would shell the beans out and you'd spill the harvest all over the ground. So you have to like wake up and weed by the light of the moon, you know? So I just, sometimes when people are like, you know what? I'm like, hey. I wake up early every day and I'm like, I feel like I have earned the right to sleep in. I wake, I sleep until my body has woken me up. And that, that to me is like true, true life success, which is usually around seven o'clock. So it's not anything crazy, but you know, I've, I've lived multiple lives in my lifetime so far.
- Speaker #1
So what kind of farm was this? So it says, where, and where was this? Which state were you in?
- Speaker #0
So this is Eastern Washington State. So anytime I tell people I'm from Washington, they're all like Seattle, right? And so they think green and beautiful. But I'm from Eastern Washington, which is in the rate what's called the rain shadow of the Cascade Mountains, Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, all that all the volcanoes are part of the Cascade Mountains. And so Eastern Washington, you start driving from Seattle to, to the eastern side of the state or towards Idaho. And all of a sudden, It goes from this green, lush, beautiful environment to just like stark desert and scrubby and just like ugly. And you're like, what happened? The rain shadow happened. So that's where I grew up was Eastern Washington State. And it was a crop farm. So my grandparents, both sets of my grandparents helped settle that kind of region in the 1950s and 60s. And so. We have kind of like a whole family history of crop farming. And I grew peas, beans, corn, hay, alfalfa. Yeah, all the fun stuff.
- Speaker #1
So you did that all the way through high school and then you escaped to college.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So I started college when I was 14. Another thing that made me a misfit. My mom was like super smart and she saw that. She wanted more for her children than like what the local school system could offer. And she had grand plans for all of her children to get out of the small town and go to the big city of Provo, Utah to go to Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. I laugh because it's not a big city, but compared to the rural small town that I grew up in. And so she found she found kind of like that there was a way that we could start college sooner. and therefore graduate with an associate's degree at the same time you graduate from high school and therefore like transfer and kind of be ahead of the game type of a thing. So I left all those high school friends and went to the local college instead and so I graduated at 18 as a junior with like as a junior in college already which is pretty crazy to think about.
- Speaker #1
So you just did two years then at Brigham Young?
- Speaker #0
No, well, yeah, it was about two and a half years. Yeah.
- Speaker #1
Did Ron have to do a service, a two-year service thing as well, or is it just the guys?
- Speaker #0
I personally didn't. Yeah, I'm a Latter-day Saint. So women are not required. It's not part of our kind of like duties, whereas men, it's more of a duty. Women can volunteer to do it, of course. But I didn't feel like that was right for me. I graduated from college. right after I turned 21, which is usually when at that time when women could go and serve missions. And I started a whole like kind of high tech career. And this was August of 2001. And so right then it was like the tech boom, the tech bubble, the dot com bubble thing was going on. And I started as an intern at a big high tech company, August of 2001.
- Speaker #1
And then. Or.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, in Utah. Yeah, Utah, people don't realize, but Utah has a huge tech presence.
- Speaker #1
The city is huge in financial stuff and in a lot, yeah.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, yeah, there's lots of talent in the area. So lots of tech giants, call it Silicon Slopes. But yeah, I graduated from college right before September 11th happened. And then obviously that happened and it just, you know, of course, it like burst the tech bubble and there was lots of layoffs. That's like the story of my career is just riding the various waves of layoffs that are inevitable. when you're working in corporate high-tech marketing,
- Speaker #1
for sure. So you weren't coding, you were doing high-tech marketing.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
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- Speaker #2
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- Speaker #1
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- Speaker #0
yeah that is a good question because it means a lot of different things right when somebody tells me that they're like they do marketing i'm like care to care to go a little bit deeper like what kind of marketing do you who do you do it for where do you do it you know so high tech is different because it's b2b um at its most um basic level so oftentimes though it's enterprise to enterprise so the the big companies, I worked for the fortune 100. So more often than not, they were, they were selling into other fortune 100 companies. So my corporate career was kind of built around partner marketing. And so that was fun for me, because then that let me work with other these other tech giants in doing marketing campaigns with them for them, you know, those types of things. It's very rare that it was business to consumer. it was mostly like, okay, it's lead generation for the sales teams within these huge tech giants. And, and, and trying to make sure the sales teams and business development teams had opportunities to pursue with, with selling the products.
- Speaker #1
What did you learn then in that corporate world doing that marketing that you've been able to actually apply to what you're doing now? If anything?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, you know what, actually, actually, it's It's laid the groundwork for understanding how corporate works. And I focus on TikTok shop now. And when TikTok shop first opened in the United States, I knew they were going to have a partner program because that's what big tech does. And so I immediately tracked down their partner program so that I could join. And I was one of their very first partners ever. I literally got on the phone. and track down the person over partnerships in New York City. And I still have a relationship with her to this day. Last week when we were in Innovate, I had some meetings with that team last week. So yeah, being able to navigate kind of the political landscape that is. corporate is one of the big kind of takeaways. It's not necessarily like the marketing and how to as much as it is that every layer in corporate, everybody who is working in corporate has kind of like their roles and responsibilities and the thing the ways that they are measured, right? Like they have the things that they are motivated to do. So if you can figure out what motivates them and give them what they want, they will get you what you want. Does that make sense? So figuring out how to navigate political landscapes is a huge one. Lead generation, understanding lead generation is always important, especially in the business world. I have a business to business. business. I sell to other businesses. And so understanding how lead generation works and CRMs and those types of things all kind of play into that. The actual tactics, so much has changed. Marketing is one of those worlds that changes constantly, right? And the tools are always changing. So even if I was using Salesforce originally, and I remember when LinkedIn came out and was a thing. Like I was one of the first people to join LinkedIn because I wanted to stay in contact with all of these corporate friends of mine that were constantly like getting hired and let go and laid off and all of these things. So staying in contact. So even though like marketing tools might come on, they've changed so drastically from, you know, their, their point of origination.
- Speaker #2
Are you finding that the marketing tools or just strategies that you're using now have just been become full circle?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I feel like I'm in a full circle moment, for sure. Yeah.
- Speaker #2
One of the things I should mention, by the way, Michelle, it's not that Kevin doesn't like what you're saying. He's got his reactions on. So if you see the thumbs down, it's not that he disagrees.
- Speaker #0
Oh, my God. Is it that?
- Speaker #1
Did something pop on the screen? Yeah.
- Speaker #2
A thumbs down right in the middle. What? A really great thing.
- Speaker #1
How does it do that? Was it AI listening or something?
- Speaker #2
No, you got reaction settings set somewhere. I didn't do anything.
- Speaker #1
I don't know.
- Speaker #2
Do this.
- Speaker #1
Oh, it did.
- Speaker #2
Oh. No, it didn't go. Well,
- Speaker #1
it did like this.
- Speaker #2
I don't know. But all of a sudden, Michelle was talking about this. Oh, there we go.
- Speaker #1
Oh, sorry about that. Yeah, I don't know what happened. I don't know. I must have moved in a certain way that
- Speaker #2
I have to apologize.
- Speaker #1
Speaking of tools, you know,
- Speaker #2
it was a great it was a great, you know, thing.
- Speaker #1
So what led you to get out of the corporate world and get into I know we'll talk about the TikTok shop, but I know you did your Manichat specialist before that. And so you've been on the side of things. But what what led you to get out? And did you go straight into Manichat or were you selling some e-commerce stuff for a while?
- Speaker #0
No.
- Speaker #1
Talk us through that.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So in 2012, I finally got married and much to a big bearded man. So every time I see Norm, I just feel like I'm looking at my future.
- Speaker #2
And how's that for you?
- Speaker #0
um yeah so I met and married my husband Mark and he was not bearded the whole time we were dating I will just say that and then he did a little switcheroo after we got married and you know it makes him happy and so therefore it's fine but there's someday I would like to see his face our daughters have never seen his face I haven't seen his face since we got married you know like someday maybe I keep threatening him if his hobbies kill him, like he's a hunter, he bikes, he fishes, all these things. I'm like, if you die from one of your hobbies, I'll shave you. I will shave you. And so at your funeral, everybody can see your real face.
- Speaker #1
These AI apps that will actually do it for you on TikTok.
- Speaker #0
Oh, that's funny. That's funny. Yeah. So, oh, anyway. So what urged me to get to kind of start my own thing? So. So in one of my experiences in corporate life was seeing women, um, who wanted that mom life, you know, who, and, and the, and the options were limited, you know, it was like working mom was an oxymoron, you know? Um, so if, if, uh, if a man left work early to go to his soccer, his friend, his son's soccer game, he was a good dad. If a woman left early, is she really committed to her career? you know, these were the conversations that I was exposed to. I saw women who had these, you know, very generous maternity benefits, you know, basically be back in the office two weeks after giving birth because of the political, the politics involved, you know, and I didn't want that. I wanted more flexibility. I wanted more options. And, and the only options at that point were to, to quit, you know, to be a mom full time. And I also knew that I was deep enough in my career and had racked up, you know, 12, 13 years of corporate pedigree to walk away from that was a very expensive choice, you know, because everything in corporate is all kind of seniority oriented. How many years have you been doing this? Like, how far up the ladder? Do you have a senior manager role, a director level role, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And so. to take time away to have a family and then to expect to come back, that's not an option. That was an option. And so I was like, you know, I want more control. I want more flexibility. I want to be able to have my babies and use my brain too. And in, you know, with a work setting, obviously use your, use your brain quite a bit as parent. And so that's why I, I kind of, I took some time and I stepped away at that point before I had kids. um to to kind of like put together what i was going to do and that's when i kind of like created uh my first kind of marketing agency my main business which i called your marketing therapy uh because i found that i was really good at marketing strategy like i can i can talk marketing strategy and really help people identify um opportunities for their businesses very quickly in fact i turned it into a uh a dating coaching business at the same time you because I found that what helped me get married at the ancient age for my religion of 32, I might as well be like dead and buried in the ground to get married that late, but were my marketing skills. I had this round the world business trip where I was doing focus groups in China and London and Frankfurt and Amsterdam and doing all of these things. And the very last end of that kind of tour, around the world tour, was Paris. And I was in Paris on my birthday. And my birthday is in May. So it was spring in Paris, right? It's very beautiful, cherry blossoms, and just all of this thing. And I was there alone. And I was just like, I'm in the most romantic city in the world alone on my birthday. this sucks you know and i kind of had this like pity party moment and i had this spiritual kind of realization um or just like i heard a voice and it said michelle you have the tools you know what to do you need to get married and i was like i don't what are you talking i've been trying i've been dating i like it's not like i've been sitting at home wasting away you know i tried and it i but i realized at the end of that at the end of that tour that how I had been every step along the way we had been, you know, talking to people in different cultures and different languages and different, you know, you know, life experiences and doing these focus groups. And what came back down to it every single time was branding, targeting and advertising. And those, those were the things that, that mattered the most. And those were the things as a single woman. that I could control. I could control branding, targeting, and advertising. I could control my own personal brand, who I was, what values I represented, how I positioned the product, right? How I looked, how I felt about how I looked, right? And then I could identify my target audience, what I was looking for and how that translated then into advertising. Was I actually advertising in the places to find that target market? And I had to have kind of some tough tough discussions with myself about that and it resulted in me meeting my husband and so then for a couple years in addition to having like a marketing business where i was helping businesses with their marketing strategies i was also helping single people with their marketing strategies as well in in their branding targeting advertising and i'm happy to say i had some successful i had some successful sellers I don't have any babies named after me, which I'm a little offended. I mean, Michelle makes a really great middle name at the very least. But no, like it definitely worked for some people. But yeah, it was kind of a wild ride initially. But no, I did not start off as the queen of many chat or TikTok shop. I had some detours along the way, which any good entrepreneur does, right? It's all about the pivot. It's all about figuring out what works and exploring all the avenues to be able to, you know. extend your reach.
- Speaker #2
You know, it's pretty interesting that you're talking about your personal brand. You've gone out there and you're marketing yourself, you know, in the dating scene. And I was at an event and there was a face reader there. He worked with companies for jury selection. And he was telling me different, like I had my face red, same with a whole bunch of other people. And They were talking about the way your eyebrows are just natural. This is all natural. Not that you can go and groom them or do it. If you do that.
- Speaker #0
And I asked him if I decided that I didn't like my eyebrows the way they are and I got them some other way, that's gearing towards how your personality is going to shift naturally, which was really bizarre. But one thing he said to me, and I never, never even thought about it. He just said for my mustache, he says, you should grow. You should grow it about an eighth of an inch to a quarter inch longer. And people will. respect you that much more. You'll be that much more of an authority. And I went, what? And sure enough, I looked it up. And that's part of this facial recognition thing. Like I could trim up the beard. And with beards, there's all sorts of different ways. So I'm talking about marketing here. Yeah. Oh, you know, your own personal brand. And if I wanted to, I can have a clean cut, I can have a goatee. I did have the Yosemite Sam one time when I burnt hamburgers and it kind of went up here but it comes down to how you want to position yourself and the way you want to look so let's say kevin he you know maybe wants to grow hair he can i can't for the most part you know or if he wanted to have a mustache coming across here it was so shocked that by doing just something simple to your face or to uh maybe your posture it also reflects your personality and how other people how you want other people to see you oh that's so interesting and i bet especially for jury selection oh oh yeah you know because you also have like the micro expression exactly side of things too where i have one of those faces where i'm it
- Speaker #1
talks whether i'm speaking or not if i think you're an idiot my face says my face says it so sometimes it's not very helpful
- Speaker #2
uh but yeah micro expression reading is super critical it goes beyond that though that's also you can judge people in negotiations based on their facial uh features there's a guy at a go high level that actually did a whole talk on that and he showed all these examples one of them was in my newsletter a couple weeks ago uh but how if your eyebrows are high or if they're curved or if they're flat it means different things about your personality and these might not be deliberate things that you're doing but it actually reveals a lot about how you answer stuff and how you will respond to being pitched to. And he went through this whole thing about how to do this on Zoom calls and actually get better results. And he showed some case studies stuff. It was really, really interesting. So like you said, though, marketing, I mean, people eat with their eyes first and first impressions do matter. And some people say, always say, well, I don't care what people think. I don't care. You know, I'm going to address how I want. And that's OK. But you got to understand you're that's part of your branding um as as well um and i think like you're talking about on facial hair for a man that's one of probably one of the only ways that a man can really change himself maybe grow his hair longer or shorter but women do it all the time with between makeup and lashes and the way they the way they dress whether it's heels or flats or whatever how much mid midriff they're showing or not showing um uh how their hairstyle is, whether it's up in a bun, it's in a ponytail, it's all, I mean, women have a lot more flexibility, I think, on personal branding than men do. Yeah. Would you agree with that?
- Speaker #1
Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Like, women, as women, we can constantly reinvent ourselves physically, you know, it's kind of the nature of, I don't know, I think some women don't care, you know, and that's, and that's fine. I'm, there are things that I'm interested in exploring and there are other things that I'm not, you know, and, but you're right. As like my husband, he walks into a room, he's six two, he's got this big bushy beard. Plus he has a lot of hair on his head and men just like watch him. He's alpha without even trying to be alpha, you know, they're just, they're like, they roll over and show them, show them, show them their, yeah. Cause it's just like, he is. He's obviously very, he's got all this hair, therefore he's the king, you know? It's funny, it's always funny to watch.
- Speaker #2
I think men do it like that more for power, to be like, like you said, the alpha male, the, you know, walk in and, but I think women do personal branding more for other women. Oh,
- Speaker #1
for sure.
- Speaker #2
And men, women are always dressing and doing things to actually impress other women first and guys second. Women always dress to impress other women. and we talked about that in vegas kev yeah and that's a lot of people a lot of guys don't understand that
- Speaker #1
then they don't realize that and they don't understand that that women uh their brand is more important to another woman than it is to another guy and what's interesting is my husband is very much an introvert and so when he walks into a room he would i think he thinks that by growing such a luscious beard as men tell him um that he's hiding but he's actually like it actually makes him stand out he's he's obvious he's way more obvious you know And, but you're right, Kevin, like women, women definitely, there's a little bit of that kind of, whether we want to admit it or not, kind of that pecking order mentality of like, you know, where do, where do I fall? Where do I, you know, am I the prettiest one in the room? You know, like that kind of a thing. Am I dressed the best or whatever? I try to think of like what, what motivates me when, when I'm choosing. what to wear what's especially hard for me you know is really stressful is like I I work from home most most of the time like I'm here in my basement and and on Zoom calls and so I'll dress nice from like the waist up right and then the waist down it's just yoga pants you know it's just something comfy and
- Speaker #2
but then when I need to go wear pants Norm doesn't wear pants I don't want to know no sorry I told him he sit in my chair in my office today he wears pants yeah
- Speaker #1
Oh, thanks for that.
- Speaker #2
We'll put down the pens if we need to below that, you know, don't worry. Down one of those pee pads like from the dog.
- Speaker #1
Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. But when I go to actual events, I tell people I'm either like a mom at home in yoga pants or I'm on a stage somewhere. Right. And that's like, and sometimes it stresses me out with my wardrobe because I'm like, oh gosh, what do I want to wear that people haven't seen me wear? you know, cause I'm usually have like my stage outfit. Do I want to wear the same thing every single time? No. You know? So then it becomes this like, all right, what do I need to wear so that I can stand out this time? You know, because as a, and, and also this is, this is a point of unfairness, I think is that men can, for the most part show up, they could look homeless if they want to and, and be up on a stage and have so much credibility. And I see this in the tech space, especially. you know, these, these startups, these startup founders and people who look like they just rolled out of bed. Right. But a woman, if she were to pull that and like, you know, walk on stage, most of the time people don't take her seriously. You have a few, you have a few people here and there where, you know, they might show up that way and it surprises you when they open their mouth and they're like these brilliant people. But for the most part, people expect to listen to women who are presenting themselves, you know.
- Speaker #2
Men that are disheveled with their hair, like Sam Altman, the guy that went to jail, the crypto stuff, he's got this hair, never probably combs his hair. They're expected to be nerds. And that's a sign of being smart and nerdy. Right. Women are not expected to be nerds. And that's why this whole movement to STEM and all this kind of stuff to try to get women more involved in the tech space, which I'm sure you being in the tech space and in tech marketing, well, marketing is heavily women. And most. business especially corporate world it's a predominantly i'll graduate the degree in marketing from tech say now that's 70 women but when you get into the tech side it's the opposite it's 90 dudes yeah and 10 women so you have that blend there so how is that and it's very rare that you meet a woman in on the tech side who doesn't look like a dude yeah there's a lot exactly um there's a lot that and that's not a disparaging remark or anything it's just a fact that was the facts
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Many high tech companies. That is just the truth of it.
- Speaker #2
So you're spending time coding and having fun with what they're doing and not take it, you know, not going through reading Vogue magazine and staying on the latest trends and all that kind of stuff. That's one of the reasons for that. I mean, there's other reasons that we don't want to go into, but there's there's. But, yeah, it's interesting.
- Speaker #1
It is. It is. Yeah, for sure. But, yeah, I mean, when it comes down to personal branding. you know, I think at the end of the day, you need to look a certain way that makes you feel comfortable. And because when you're comfortable, then you're confident. Now, now, like for me, if I were to try to look a certain way, that is not that I'm not comfortable with, that is not who I am as a person, then you would also you would feel that you would sense that in my presentation, not not just on a stage, but also in my interactions with others, you know, in in a networking environment. So I think, you know, if we were to wrap that thought in a pretty bow, it'd be like from a marketing perspective and taking responsibility for your personal brand, you know, understand what you are. comfortable with and comfortable how you want to present yourself and discovering that will help with your confidence in how you present yourself to others.
- Speaker #0
Now, a quick word from our sponsor, LaVonta. Hey, Kevin, tell us a little bit about it.
- Speaker #2
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- Speaker #0
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- Speaker #2
What about you both are parents? Both. This is a question to both of you. You're both parents. A lot of the younger generation now, the kids are like they want to stand out when it comes to personal branding. Like, I don't want to be just another guy. So I'm going to paint half of my head red and half of my head black. And I'm going to wear these big earrings in my ears. I'm going to do all this just because I'm just being myself is what they say. I'm just being me. But that's that's personal branding. What what do you think is leading to that? And I'm the way they are, because sometimes. You look at them and I will judge that person. I'll see somebody that looks like that. Then you hear them speak and like, this person is not what I expected. You know, because of their way smarter, their way, their vocal or something. It's not what you expect. It's there's branding actually creates an initial initial expectation and picture. And sometimes there's a mismatch there.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, for sure. So I actually think it's not about branding. I think it's something deeper. I think it's Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
- Speaker #2
which is also like something i first learned about in my marketing classes so full circle but when if we if we're looking there we go i didn't do that i didn't do anything i'm just holding my hands like this i don't know what that is kevin
- Speaker #1
disagrees um you guys are familiar with my are you guys familiar yeah yeah yeah so so i feel like we are you know the the basic level of, I'm looking at the, I'm looking at the pyramid right now. The very basic level is physiological needs, breathing, food, water, shelter, clothing, sleep. So we live in a society where our basic needs for the majority of the population are met. We are not in the great depression where people are just trying to survive, right? We're not like I was raised in not only with depression era grandparents, and then people who literally, you know, carved. like carved farmland out of a desert you know they're pioneer i have pioneer stock in me basically um uh you have physiological physiological needs then safety and security then love and belonging then self-esteem then self-actualization that's the that's the pyramid i think we're so far removed from physiological needs being met safety and security being met and for the most part I think a lot of depression, anxiety and things that are happening, the kind of epidemic that we're experiencing in the world around anxiety, depression, you know, those kinds of things is because we've lost that sense of connection. Social media has replaced traditional ways of human connection. But people are trying to find new ways to define purpose. And instead of that purpose being going out and working the fields or or doing hunting wild beasts or doing whatever you had to do to survive. And. and have security that day um we're trying to find purpose and meaning in our lives and sometimes that displays itself in trying different hairstyles and you know gauging our ears and you know doing all these flamboyant things to try to stand out to try to find personal meaning you know and and have this kind of self-esteem and and be like i'm unique there he goes again
- Speaker #0
Stop it, Kevin. Michelle's got some great points.
- Speaker #1
This is an important message.
- Speaker #2
This is an important message. Flip that thing.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, it's so funny. There's some setting in your Apple.
- Speaker #2
There's probably something setting it somewhere. Sorry about that.
- Speaker #1
No, you're fine. You're fine. It's funny. So anyway, I think that that is really kind of a critical point as a society that we're at, is that so many of those... those basic needs are being met that on a daily basis, people don't have to think about survival. They don't have to think about where their next meal is coming from, where they're going to sleep that night, who, you know, if they're loved, if they have connection and purpose, you know, in the form of family or friends. So I think people are trying to find ways to define themselves and to, you know, figure out what their life purpose is. And therefore it looks like different. things.
- Speaker #2
Thus the evolution of social media and TikTok. TikTok started as musically for music lovers, like a music channel. And I remember Gary Vanderchuck talking about it seven, eight years ago, like everybody should invest in musically. This is going to be the next big thing. And then musically pivoted, they got bought by ByteDance and they pivoted into TikTok and took that audience and leveraged them into TikTok. And TikTok. Now it's become commercialized and that's what you're helping with on the TikTok shop. But before the commercialization, it was this place to stand out and to identify and to find your common ground. And the algorithm was so good at watching people that it could actually find those exact things that made you either feel special or feel like you're wanted and loved and those satisfy those needs or find the audience where you could find that and identify with them. And that's what really blew up TikTok. And that's evolved now into one of the hottest new e-commerce platforms for selling and a whole bunch of other stuff and upsetting governments and upsetting parents and everything else. So, I mean, we've never seen anything like it with TikTok. I mean, you had Facebook, you had Instagram, all big social media, LinkedIn, all the other Snapchat. Some have come and gone. Some have gone out of business like Vine and those. But then you have TikTok that's just becoming this beast. Especially in certain countries like Indonesia and the U.S. and China. And China goes by a different name, doesn't go by TikTok. But what do you think is contributing to this massive popularity of TikTok?
- Speaker #1
Yeah. In a word, authenticity. So what makes TikTok so different from every other social media platform, the only one that's closest to it is Snapchat. But... from an authenticity standpoint because you think about you think about the comparison between instagram and tick tock and instagram prior to that was this kind of curated experience the creators that you followed were there to inspire you um at best or shame you at worst because you're like my house is a mess it doesn't look like this you know this person's house and you know all those types of things so the kind of content that was on Instagram was very, it felt very curated. It felt very, you know, like unachievable, you know? And what was different about TikTok and where it really kind of exploded was during COVID when we're all locked inside of our houses, we need something to entertain us, but also to feel connected to other people because we're so isolated, right? And people could just be themselves. It wasn't this curated experience. It wasn't this inauthentic experience. It was like, yeah, you're right. I haven't showered today, but I'm still here. And I'm still here to like talk about my day or what I'm thinking about, or I'm just going to make some spaghetti out of a jar. And with some dry pasta, I'm not going to like try to wow you with making pasta from scratch. You know, I'm not just here to inspire you. I'm just here to be a human. And it really just like fire is taken off. So much so that it's really hard for big brands to be successful on TikTok because big brands have a ridiculously difficult time with authenticity. And this is from communications I've had with TikTok directly because they're like, we have tried so often to recruit the Procter & Gamble's. And um the hasbros and the nikes and you know these big brands and what we find is that they are unwilling to pull you know they're so corporate they have so much corporate red tape they have a pr team they have the legal team they have you know the million marketing teams um to like control every aspect of how the brand is represented they're not going to just turn their brand over to a bunch of unwashed creators to represent product and and showcase how you know how something works or or whatever like they want to have that they want to control every aspect of how their brand is represented and so they don't do well on tick tock because they can't relinquish that control but isn't a brand that's fundamental isn't that a big i agree with you by the way i don't care what the thing says here up or down but i agree with you um but
- Speaker #2
Um, isn't that a fundamental thing of branding though? A brand is a lot of people think a brand is a logo or a name. That's where a lot of people, it's way beyond that. It's how, it's how something makes me, you feel, it's how you identify. Uh, it's, it's, that's a brand. And so I would think these brands would want authenticity. Like this is, but I think they're afraid of the negative side of that, where it's like, I don't like this brand because of X, Y, Z, and they want to control that. But the authenticity side is that you want. to show people in real life using real things and not, I would think, but that's a hard hurdle for a corporate world to overcome because of the controlling of the legal issues and everything else that comes along with it.
- Speaker #0
That's old school too. You know, the, you know, they're just not representing, they're not on point with the brand. So they're afraid to let go. And you just see it all the time. You see it. And even,
- Speaker #2
even. Is that an age thing? Is that an age thing? Because. The C-suites, 50 and 60-year-olds that don't understand what the 20 and 30-year-olds are doing?
- Speaker #1
I don't think so. There's too many decision makers. There's too much red tape. So those corporations are just massive. And so for something to eventually get seen, it has to pass through so many hands and so many sign-offs. So they're not agile. They're not agile at all. And, and. especially with TikTok and TikTok shop.
- Speaker #2
They should be. Look at, they should take what just happened with Chili's, the restaurant chain, the Chili's restaurant chain. I don't know, depending on where you're listening to this, Chili's is a casual upscale, not upscale, but mid-scale casual restaurant in the United States that serves all kinds of really bad food that's bad for you. I mean, the food, some people love the food that's bad.
- Speaker #1
The chicken crispers and the cake.
- Speaker #2
Fried foods and, you know, and it's high calorie, but people love it. And, you know, but just recently in the last few weeks, a woman on TikTok actually took the, I think it's their cheese, one of their cheese things, their mozzarella cheese stick deals. And in this video that just pulling it out of her mouth and the cheese falling over and just talking about how delicious it was. Sales at Chili's nationwide in the United States the following week went up 40% because of that one video. 40. percent look it up you can google this uh amazing story it's an amazing story and now chili's is doubling down on it and they're like how can we repeat this and they're exact same thing they don't understand they're trying to create some sort of slick commercial or try to get someone else to do it it's like no just go with authenticity but 40 that's the power of tiktok and this is this chain with hundreds of maybe even i don't know how many restaurants hundreds for sure maybe even into the thousands and 40 40 percent their stock is up you Because of one woman who wasn't hired by the company, who just did this on her own, and it just went viral. And people were like, I got to go get me some of those. That looks freaking awesome.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. If I were Chili's right now, I would have like a go post your poll. Like create a hashtag that's relevant to the moment. Post your poll. Because it's the cheese poll, you know, kind of a thing. And you could even have like a promo code that you ran and just said, hey, Tuesdays, TikTok Tuesdays. you know, like come in and post your poll, you know, kind of a thing. And like even host TikTok lives. Like there's so many things that like Chili's could leverage, you know, outside of like, Oh, we got to hire a marketing agency to, you know, like do a focus group, you know, very, very traditional. Be like more responsive in the moment to it.
- Speaker #0
Have that day's noticed. Have you guys noticed the TV commercials that are just, some of them are okay, but most of them, these large companies, franchise companies are trying to come off like they're using influencers, like a TikTok feel, are just missing it. And it's like, oh my.
- Speaker #2
Yeah. What I miss is that Chick-fil-A actually is trying to do that. They run a lot of ads during sporting events, and they have two people sitting on a couch, and one of them is a customer. And one of them is someone that works at the restaurant. They're telling some story like, yep, I've been passing through the drive-thru every year, and I always take care of Miss Sue because she always likes extra salt with her fries or whatever. And then I'll have some sort of little voiceover of a real person. And I think they're totally missing the mark. And they're trying to make that authenticity, but I think they're completely missing the mark on that. And I think that's a case study. So I want you to look at it and go, this is what not to do. But they keep running them, so they must think they're working. Or maybe there's some... KPI that says they're working, but I just don't see it compared to this Chili's one.
- Speaker #0
The opinions shared on this podcast are solely of...
- Speaker #1
I was going to say, I love Chick-fil-A. I don't care what they do.
- Speaker #2
I love Chick-fil-A too, but I think they're missing the mark on their advertising.
- Speaker #1
I'm a mom with a minivan and Chick-fil-A is life for my family. Yeah, for sure. No, it's true. It's very difficult to stage. authentic content.
- Speaker #2
That's what this is, is staged.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah.
- Speaker #0
I'm curious.
- Speaker #2
Scripted and staged.
- Speaker #0
How do you do it, Michelle?
- Speaker #2
How do you do it? As a misfit, thinking outside the box, is it throwing, just getting 100 creators, like, here you go, here's our product, make something, go for it. And then you hope one of them actually does something cool that works and goes viral? Or what's the process to actually do this?
- Speaker #1
For a corporate or for just a regular old business?
- Speaker #2
Either or both.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. So the-
- Speaker #2
there's less, there's less, uh, overhead obstacles. So,
- Speaker #1
and this is what I tell this. That's why my focus isn't on big brands. My focus is on, you know, expand your brand to TikTok shop for, for, you know, Amazon sellers for DTC sellers, you know, people who are, who are, you know, already in the marketplaces and having success there and want to grow beyond maybe the channels that they're currently selling on. So. And most of them don't understand the social side. They don't understand the creator side. And a lot of them get paralyzed from starting on the platform because they think that they have to be the face of the brand. And they don't want to be. They don't want to be content creators. They don't want to have to hire a team of content creators to create branded content. And I say that is the opportunity of TikTok because TikTok is full of creators who... don't own brands and want to be the face of your brand you know and it's an opportunity for you to um to test different creators to find out who's right for your brand um what i think where i think most uh uh sellers some kind of some key mistakes that sellers make straight out the gate is marrying before they date meaning like they commit they're like oh i'm gonna hire a brand ambassador straight out the gate and this person is responsible for creating content for my brand and i'm like no no no you need a date before you get married you need to like see who's right for your brand who creates good content converting content has the right audience that's responsive to um to various offers because it might not be who you expect and oftentimes the let's say the matchmaking institutions that are out there to introduce you to other creators are are presenting what we call vanity metrics, how many followers they have, you know, what they're like, their average views, you know, things, things that aren't actually associated with the end of the day, this making money, right? And that can be fabricated. Anybody can buy followers, you know, anybody can join a follower train, you know, to, to, um, you know, inflate, inflate their followers. There's a lot of that going on right now because So many creators are having success on the platform and it's generating a whole, you know, kind of generation of what I call UGC creators who are just like hopping on the bandwagon and just trying to grow their followers to, to qualify, to, to be able to come, you know, get TikTok shot samples and produce content.
- Speaker #2
What's the difference between a creator and an influencer? Cause we're more in a, that's where I think a lot of people get stumbled too. It's like you hear those two words interchangeably, but they're two different things.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. So,
- Speaker #2
Can you explain for the audience the difference between an influencer and a creator?
- Speaker #1
Well, for me, there's a difference between an influencer, a creator, and an affiliate. So a creator, let's start with creators because there is a difference. A creator is somebody who creates content for the sole purpose of creating content. So if we think of on TikTok, if we just think on TikTok creators, we've got Keith Lee, who is, you know, he's a creator. He's TikTok famous for food reviews. So the purpose, the intent behind his content is entertainment and knowledge building. You know, his purpose as a creator is bringing awareness to these small restaurants in these various cities to help them with their marketing, you know, kind of the thing. But how he monetizes.
- Speaker #0
is through video views and engagement. And TikTok rewards those types of creators because they want people following them, people watching their content. It's kind of like episodes in a TV show, right? So just like Netflix is going to pick up some shows that people are really invested in and want to watch more seasons of, not to tell, not that I watched this, but like secret lives of Mormon housewives. You know, that's Hulu's latest, you know, addiction. And they just started season two recording because everybody loves it. So creators are all about the content. Influencers have an intent for you to purchase. So influencers are those typical, are typically trying to get you to buy a product of some sort. And that's why they're called influencers. Oh, they made me buy it. So-and-so made me buy it. TikTok made me buy it. TikTok itself is an influencing platform, right? And then you have affiliates. And affiliates is where I feel like we've come full circle where you take influencers and you apply accountability and like kind of a joint venture partnership to it. And when I win, you win kind of a relationship. Influencers, it's always been kind of this like, oh, could I work with you? I'll pay you $5,000 a post, you know, that type of a thing. And then you wonder, did anything happen from that? Did anything actually like occur affiliates? And what the beauty of with TikTok shop is that the loops are closed, the reporting and the attribution is all is all there. So when somebody posts, you can see the exact, you know, results of those sales. And that's powerful for that relationship. So back to the dating before you get married, you know, analogy, you date a lot of affiliates, and then the cream rises to the top. And those people, either on a monthly, quarterly, you know, or, you know, I wouldn't go annual, but I'd do it more short term. Those become your brand ambassadors who you can then pay to create content for you on an ongoing basis or where you have more campaigns or products that you launch with them, et cetera, et cetera.
- Speaker #1
I know with your company, one of the things that you do, though, is you take a much more analytical approach to the creators and affiliates, especially because when we were at the think tank, we were sitting there with somebody. at the market masters think thing we were sitting there with somebody uh that has a product and you're like on the computer like looking at the stats on tiktok and you're going oh my gosh you need to do a video about this particular thing because it's uh i'm making this up but 30 30,000 searches a month or views a month or whatever but there's only 18 videos that that satisfy this and so that's what a lot of people aren't doing they're not using the data and combined with the creativity to actually find what they can actually do so they're just throwing stuff against the wall and hoping something sticks when there's not a much better way to do this. And that's what you teach, right? And what you do.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, that's part of it. Yeah, for sure. I'm all about quantity, quantity first, and, you know, swiping, swiping right on a lot of potential suitors. And then when it comes to the sample request portion, getting really kind of particular on who you're going to, you know, develop a, you know, send that sample out to and develop a relationship with. You know, I definitely have kind of like a process that I've outlined because what I see a lot happen is that people are just like, you know, working with affiliates very willy nilly and not being not approaching it from that branding, targeting, advertising kind of methodology and being specific on, well, who has my target audience? Those are the creators that I want to work with and testing those relationships.
- Speaker #1
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 #2
Well, this is an old guy alert. Should I subscribe to my own podcast?
- Speaker #1
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 #2
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. 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 #1
Make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like Norm.
- Speaker #2
So we're down to a couple of minutes before we have to end the podcast. This flew by, by the way. I got a question, and that's about getting people more involved. We discussed this a little earlier on, but a lot of sellers, a ton of sellers. are not getting involved for one reason or another. Do you have any quick action steps that those people that are sitting on the fence, what can they do to help them get onto TikTok?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I mean, it's a good question because there are barriers to entry. Currently, international sellers are not allowed to sell on TikTok shops. So that's a barrier. There's also business registration difficulties that happen. documentation and there's more, you know, bots than humans to be able to review people's issues. That being said, back to understanding how corporate works, because I saw these issues happening, I developed a system to be able to connect sellers to the right people inside of TikTok shop who actually are motivated to get new merchants on the platform. And I'm like, hello, we have a free resource right now. It's, you know, the business development managers at TikTok shop. This is what they are tasked to do. And they're organized by category. You know, let me help you. Let me broker an intro so that you guys can get connected and get this free resource. Like when was the last time you had like a human being that you could talk to Amazon when you had an issue? Like, oh my goodness, like, let's take advantage of this. So to the people who are fence setters, especially right now, I'm like, guys. How many times do you as Amazon sellers be like, Oh, I heard back in the day you had all this stuff and, and man, good old days. And I'm like, it's the good old days right now on TikTok shop. We have access to things that I know are going to go away. I know we're going to go away, take advantage of it right now. Get it while it's, get it while it's hot, get it while we have access to humans, you know, where, where there's, you know, this, there's not this like huge influx of, of products and sellers on the platform. Get, get while the getting's good, you know, kind of a thing. So I can share a link with you guys where people can, you know, submit a form and I can broker that introduction. I can matchmake for you with business development managers. If you're if you're new to the platform, if you're getting started.
- Speaker #2
Hopefully it's swiping right.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, swipe right on Michelle.
- Speaker #2
Kev, you got any other questions? We got nothing.
- Speaker #1
No, I got plenty. I mean, we'll keep talking for about another five hours. I'll bring you back on. Yeah, we'll have to bring you back on because we can go into the weeds on some of this stuff. Pretty cool. Absolutely. But I think we talked about some really interesting stuff. I think everybody hopefully listening is going to enjoy this. I think they will. But if they want to find out more about you, how do they do that? What's the website they go to?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, my website is ttshopsellers.com. You can learn all about our TikTok shop offerings there. I have a course. I have a community. I do one-on-one consulting and we do have an agency, but we're full for Q4. So don't ask. We're, we're plenty busy, but I think the biggest thing honestly is, you know, feel free to also feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm there too. And there's just, there's so much, there's so much information out there and, and I, I really try to protect people and, and create focus. So that you focus on like the steps that are relevant to you and where you're at in your business. Because otherwise, if you're learning strategies from all over, your business might not be ready to execute those things and might not work for you. So I really try to focus actions and make it really actionable for where you're at in your business.
- Speaker #1
If you want to hear more on Michelle too and go deeper on her TikTok stuff and more even specific, especially for e-commerce, be sure to check out Lunch with Norm. the November 6th edition of Lunch with Norm. You can find that on all these social media channels, all the podcast channels, YouTube, where Michelle and Norm are talking totally different than what we talked about today, as well as the AM PM podcast from, I don't know which episode it was. It's been a couple of months now, I think.
- Speaker #0
You can do that one again, because all those strategies are like out of date now.
- Speaker #1
That's true. We need to update that, but you still can listen. There's some fundamental stuff that's actually good in there. But you can go check out. AM PM podcast and type in Michelle Barnum Smith and find her episode there. And we'll have to do a new one. Like you, like you said, suit Michelle, really appreciate you coming on today.
- Speaker #0
Thanks guys for having me.
- Speaker #2
Hold it a second.
- Speaker #1
That's right.
- Speaker #2
We always have one last question for our guests. And this is going over to you, Michelle. Do you happen to know any misfits?
- Speaker #0
I do. I mean, just like we talked about, there's so many really brilliant marketers on TikTok. And I actually met one on my flight home from New York City back to Utah. I recognized him because I follow him on Instagram and TikTok. He's a huge TikTok influencer. His name is Phil's My Pharmacist. And he is a small town. pharmacist he owns a farmer's pharmacy in logan utah which is just a small small town and he has he is the number one influencer and affiliate on tiktok shop in the health category i think he's just so brilliant and he's such a nice guy even better i totally i totally fangirled him in jfk i was like oh my gosh and he's like let's work together and i'm like
- Speaker #2
you know i'm a huge fan of him awesome great super so we are going to be removing you for just a couple seconds uh we'll put you in the green room i guess we'll call it and uh thank you so much for yeah
- Speaker #0
and kevin one of these we'll do it we'll do it we'll do it now now that you're actually trying to do it yeah oh that was good all right
- Speaker #2
Michelle, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, and we will see you later.
- Speaker #0
Bye.
- Speaker #2
Now I got one thing to do. There.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, that was good. We could keep talking for quite some time, but people just have to go listen to more marketing. If you liked that talk with Michelle, you just got to hit that subscribe button down there. Or better yet, forward this episode to a friend. Just hit that forward link. Hey, little note. You got to check this out. This was really fascinating with Michelle. She knows a lot of cool stuff, a lot of cool stories. Or you can always, you know, if you get lost along the way, you can always go to marketingmisfits.com. I smoked a cigar since then.
- Speaker #2
It's co.
- Speaker #1
It's co.
- Speaker #2
Marketingmisfits.com.
- Speaker #1
You'd think by now I'd figure this out, but I can't remember if it's.com or.co. but hey look it was just your birthday the other day you're getting up there i know i'm getting a little all time or whatever how do you say that uh but yeah so but okay marketingmyths.co to check us out again check us out on youtube if you're listening to the audio version of this so you can see those random uh thumbs up and thumbs downs that were popping up on the screen when michelle was talking they were totally unrelated to what she was saying and somehow we'll have a ghost over here but uh thanks everybody appreciate it man
- Speaker #2
All right. We'll see everybody later.
- Speaker #1
See you again next week on Tuesday.
