- Speaker #0
I think a lot of people don't understand. They think of marketing as just selling things. They just think of it as transactional instead of emotional. And so I think when it comes to marketing, you've got to get into the emotional side of things and not just the transactional side of things. You're watching Marketing Misfits with Norm Farrar and Kevin Kane. Senor or should I say Missouri, Farrar.
- Speaker #1
You know, your Italian is doing awesome.
- Speaker #0
I can't say it in French. I should be able to say a few words in French now because, you know, I was talking to the elevator in Montreal. Every time you get out of the elevator, when we were recently in Montreal, you're like, you said you had got a little chuckle because you're like, Kevin, what the hell? You'd leave the elevator, go to your room, and I'd continue up. And the thing would say a bunch of stuff in French, and I'd just be like, yes, that's right. Yes, merci, merci, merci, how are you doing? And you're like, what the hell are you saying? Welcome to the elevator.
- Speaker #1
Hey, just wait. One day it'll be, what floor are you going on, sir?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, that was interesting in Montreal, though. We were just recently in Montreal together doing some work and having some meetings. And, of course, smoking some cigars until closing down the bar, as usual.
- Speaker #1
Four in the morning.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, three, four in the morning. And then going and grabbing. What was that one night? We smoked until three, and then we went and grabbed fresh bagels. Like, there's this famous bagel.
- Speaker #1
Wood oven.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. Yeah, it's these wood oven bagels. And your son, Hayden, was like, yeah, there's this place that's 24 hours. And it's like in some neighborhood. You go in there, and you can barely walk into the place because there's stacks and stacks of bagels on carts ready to roll out to trucks or something to go to all the local places for breakfast. But go in there, and you get a fresh bagel for like a dollar. It was really cool.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, and they were good, too. And they were warm, so even better. But that just goes to show you, I mean, this place has been around for years. I forget when they opened up. And they're open up 24 hours. You know, people, and when we were in there, we were, I think that was, by the time we got there, it was about 3.30 in the morning. And there were people constantly coming and going.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, there's a bunch of people in there. I mean, yeah, there's a line behind us. And then when we were waiting for the Uber, there's a bunch more people coming in. Yeah, so this was like a destination place. It was cool. It was one of those historical kind of like, you know you've got something when people are going to drive out of the way because this wasn't like in a shopping mall. This wasn't like in a prime location somewhere on a corner where everybody's just getting out of the clubs and passing by. This was like down a residential street almost and kind of just stuck there. You had to make a destination. I mean, it wasn't far away. But you had to actually make it a purposeful destination to go there.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. And we did that with pizza. And we did that with everything else. Even hot dogs. Freaking guy on a skateboard.
- Speaker #0
I know. Freaking we order some Uber Eats and it takes like two hours. And we're looking at the Uber Eats app and it's like the vehicle's barely moving. And we're like, damn, this guy must be on a skateboard or on a bicycle or something. It turns out he's in a car. I don't know what he was doing. He kept making wrong turns. Like you see it on the Uber app, you know, it's like it showed the direction of the little line from where he's at to our place. And then all of a sudden he'd be going off down some other side street and then turning back around. It was good. It was good.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. So Montreal in general, you know, this is, we talk about marketing. And being able to. do this on a regular basis. So I've flown down to Austin, you've flown up here to, and I didn't say down there, up here to Toronto, Montreal, like wherever we can, we try to meet and spend a few hours or days talking about building a business. So you have to do it. And it took us, I remember when we were up here, It took us at least a day just for the branding. We really thought it out and everybody we've showed the branding to our new company is just, wow, this is fantastic. I mean, we nailed it. We nailed how each of our logos, they're very similar to one another. But they're just different enough that you can see what we're doing in each one of the logos.
- Speaker #0
But even when those are, you're like, what the heck is Norm talking about? He's talking about Dragonfish Communications. So Dragonfish Communications is a new company that Norm and I will be formally announcing in January. I think it's January 22nd.
- Speaker #1
You heard it here first.
- Speaker #0
That's right. You heard it here first because you're a Misfits listener. We'll be announcing it on a webinar. I can't remember the exact date. It's the 22nd or 25th or something like that. you'll hear us be pushing it soon. But we're announcing it, and it's got six different silos in it. So it's a pretty complicated, complex business that we're doing, and we've been working on this for over a year and got really serious towards the end of July. So it's just much more effective, we find. You know, you hear all this back-to-office stuff and everybody working remote and people complaining about going back to office. But there's something about... working together. So I see why Elon is going to make government workers come back to the office, and if they don't want to, they can take the high road and get out. Or why Apple's doing it, because there is something about that human connection, that human being together, because Norm and I can have meetings on Zoom, but it's just not the same as sitting there, flesh and blood. I smell the aura of... of Norm's beard oil, you know, drifting through the air. You know, it's just not the same as sharing a Coke Zero with somebody.
- Speaker #1
Oreo flavored, by the way.
- Speaker #0
Oreo flavored. That's right, Oreo. Oreo flavored Coke Zero. Can you believe that? Never heard of it before. It's crazy. It's a Canadian thing. But those Canucks, man. But so sitting in person, so we found that it's more effective because there's no distractions. There's no. And it's just different. So I've been to Norm's house. He's come to my house. I went to, we went to Montreal. We met at different places. And we just have these like six to eight hour marathon brainstorming sessions. And we use a plot device to record these. So it makes really complex notes, AI device that actually records everything we say. And it's really, really cool. And then we brainstorm. And so one of the things that we... working on, like Norm just said, was the branding. That was actually more than a day. I think it was two days. We spent a lot of time, probably collectively 30-40 hours between the two of us. Then we've come back to it a few times and made some modifications, but just on the branding side and nailing the message of, you'll see when we announce this, there's six divisions. Each has a one-word name. What does that name mean? How do they tie together? What's the look and the feel? And that's important.
- Speaker #1
Now, a quick word from our sponsor, LaVonta. Hey, Kevin, tell us a little bit about it.
- Speaker #0
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- Speaker #1
So are you ready to elevate your business? Visit get.levanta.io slash misfits. That's get.levanta, L-E-V-A-N-T-A dot I-O slash misfits. And book a call and you'll get up to 20% off Levanta's gold plan today. That's get.levanta.io slash misfits. Yeah, a lot of people, especially if they're e-com sellers, a lot of smaller e-com sellers just getting in the game, they think that they can go to just a graphic artist and, okay, I'm going to pay 50 bucks. or I'll put up a reverse bid in one of the apps, and all of a sudden it comes back. You know what? You'll get some good logo design, but if you really want corporate identity, if you really want that brand to pop, you need some thought behind it. There's a reason why good branding companies, and I'm not talking crazy expensive, Fortune 500, the ones that deal with Fortune 500 companies, but a good quality... branding company will charge anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000 to bring out this. And we did it. And just by... Doing that, I mean, you see the complexities of just for the logo. That's it. Just for the logo and how the brand and the brand story works with each logo. So they all got to talk. They all got to represent something. And when we launch it, people will understand what we're talking about. But the other thing about doing this, maybe a lot of people don't sit down. and think about their marketing. I try to do that, you know, at least once a week, you know, sitting here kind of go, all right, you know, what are we doing? How can we do this better? But once we're, once you're sitting there, we literally have four hour, you know, three to four hour zoom calls. We never achieve what we, we do when we're sitting together. And plus it could be a lot of fun. So, you know, even during our sessions, that's one thing. But going out and having a meal together, meeting like we did in Montreal, my son was able to join another. We met another person that we wanted to partner with. Going out for cigars, experiencing the city. You can't do that over Zoom.
- Speaker #0
No, it's a good mix. It gives you a good focus. But like you said on the branding, though, a lot of people just think a brand is a logo. And those are important, but it goes way beyond that. A brand is a feel. And when it comes to marketing, I think a lot of people get this backwards. I think one of the things that, you know, I've been doing a presentation. I've done it a couple times now, and it's gone over really well. I just recently did it in November at the Southern Seller Fest, which is an Amazon conference that was held in Singapore. And I had people come up afterwards that have seen me present several times, and they're like, Kevin. I just have to say, that was the best presentation I've ever seen you present. That was my favorite presentation. Now, I'm going to be giving a version of that presentation on a webinar December 12th online. But one of the things that I talk about in there is it's about the psychology of marketing. And I think a lot of people don't understand. They think of marketing as just selling things. They just think of it as transactional. instead of emotional. And so I think when it comes to marketing, you've got to get into the emotional side of things and not just the transactional side of things. And that's why you have, when it comes to branding, brandings are emotions. Apple creates a feeling in someone. Why are some people Apple people and some people are Android people? Or why are some people PC and some people Apple? Why do women, some women want a $7,000 Louis Vuitton? purse or why they want an Ernie's bag to be honored, to actually be selected, actually given the right to buy one, not just because you have the money, but you have to actually be selected and chosen to actually buy one. Why does that happen? It's because those brands have built, one, their quality. So it doesn't matter how good your marketing is or how good your branding is. If the product is shit, it's not going to work. It might work briefly. You might work short term. It's not going to work long term, but if you've got a quality product behind it, then it's your job to actually create emotion in your branding and create identity. And that's what I think where a lot of people, they mess up. And just like the name of the company, I mean, Dragonfish Communications. Someone asked me, why the word dragonfish? I mean, what's that mean? Norm, you say it best. What's a dragonfish? Well.
- Speaker #1
Well, there's, and there are two different types of dragonfish. One lives deep in the ocean, but the one I'm talking about starts out as a koi fish, starts out at the bottom of the river and it has to struggle and it gets through and it goes up the river, up the river, up the river to a waterfall. Once it gets to the waterfall, it has the power to get to the top of that waterfall, it becomes a dragon. And that just shows you your strength and resilience. being able to overcome all these obstacles, everything against you, and yet you still are successful. And at the end of it, because of this, you get that much more strength and that power. So that's why we called it Dragonfish.
- Speaker #0
Well, you know what? We should actually make an animation like that and put that on the website. That's actually kind of cool, like a little cool.
- Speaker #1
How about you? Here's the animation. Kevin Jing, getting up the river, you know, just as a little tadpole with your face. And as you go, you start to grow and grow. And then it's Kevin's face as a dragon at the end.
- Speaker #0
Breathing, a life-breathing dragon. That could be cool. That could be cool. Yeah, so marketing, I mean, example, I mean, it's not just a cool-sounding name or something we just picked out of the dictionary. It has meaning to it and has conjecture into what we'll do and as you'll see. But I think an interesting concept, this was first on, I think it was George Mack on My First Million podcast actually came on. George is a British guy. If you don't follow him, I recommend you follow him. He has a good newsletter. I don't know the exact URL. but you can Google it. It's called the Ad Professor or the Professor of Ads. I think it's Ad Professor or Professor of Ads, but Google George Mack Ad Professor. You'll probably find it. And every week he sends out like five or six really good ads he's come across. These could be video ads. It could be a social media ad. It could be still a billboard or something. And he analyzes them, and it's really good. But he came on the first million podcast, my first million podcast. And he talked about an interesting concept that I think, you know, we come from the Amazon world, and what most people, or 99.9% of people teach is go find a product based on these tools like Helium 10 that has an opportunity, and then go source the product and fulfill that opportunity, and fulfill that demand. It may not be the demand, or it may be that someone's not properly filling the demand. You can step in and help fill that demand or fulfill it better. And he's like, no, that's the total wrong approach. That may work in the short term, but the approach you want to do is actually the opposite of that. You actually want to create your advertising before you choose your product. And it's an interesting concept. Actually, his words are advert because that's the British way of saying it. Create the advert before you choose the product. So you find the pain point. You find the problem that somebody has. And. then create the advertising around that. This is, and then fill the, put the product in its place and find the product that actually solves that pain point. I think it's an interesting way of doing it. It's more longterm. And then if you, if you're trying to get out of this, like Amazon fishbowl, just being an Amazon seller and create a true brand, I think that's something that you've got to do. And I think that's something that a lot of people don't do. Because people, if you're like, what is the pain point? My product doesn't have a pain point. Or my idea of something to sell doesn't have a pain point. That's a problem. You need to find something where there's a pain point and then reverse that. What would the ad be that would make me get my attention? Not necessarily sell the product right away, but would get my attention. And then your product comes in and solves that pain point. And that's where I think there's some massive opportunity. And that's where true branding comes in. It forces you to think in a totally different way.
- Speaker #1
So if you're a smaller seller and you can't find a pain point, you got a problem. You've got to really think that through. But one of the easiest things you can do, if you want to find a pain point, go to your competitors and look at their negative reviews and see what people are complaining about. Now spin that. And you can, just by doing that, You understand the pain points. How can you build out a campaign based on that pain point? I'm going to give you an example. So just before the podcast started, I remember a couple of campaigns back when I was in school that people were talking about. And the one, this was crazy. Just think about it. There's no Russian products in the marketplace at the time. You're introducing something, a vodka, which nobody's heard about. And it's called Smirnoff. So when Smirnoff first came in, now, you know, there's tons of vodka. But this is brand new. You know, people weren't drinking vodka. They had to get people to understand or try vodka. The ad agency came up with a great campaign. And the pain point was back in the day, and I think Mad Men covered this, that people would go out, they drink for lunch. but they might have meetings or they didn't want to show people that they were drinking. So there was a problem. That was the pain point. Well, the agency came up with Smirnoff, the drink that leaves you breathless and because it doesn't have an odor. And all of a sudden, that one campaign, and I think it was back in the 50s or 60s, blew up. And now you can see where that's at. And the other one that... is really interesting. I remember I'm studying this back in the day, was the Marlboro Man. Everybody thinks that, you know, the Marlboro man has been around forever and hasn't. Cigarettes back earlier on never had a filter. Those filters, you know, it was very feminine. And they were having a hard time selling those to men because the men, like, you think about it, it was the old backwoods, the cowboy, you know, riding the horse with that unfiltered. They're actually called stogies. It's not a cigar, but the backwoods, you know, unfiltered cigarette. And what did they do? Instead of having the stogie or the backwoods, they created the Marlboro Man and made it acceptable for men to smoke filtered cigarettes. It's so cool.
- Speaker #0
Another one's like Listerine. You know, Listerine, the mouthwash. I mean, you're talking about. The vodka that doesn't give you a bad breath, but a lot of people that have bad breath, I've sat next to a guy on an airplane, I had really bad breath one time. It needed to give me some Listerine, but Listerine has been around for 100 years, maybe a little bit more, but I think it was invented by a guy named Albert Lasker, and Albert was having trouble selling it and getting people to buy it. So one of the things that he did is, as our buddy Steve Simonson actually said at the Market Master's Think Tank, If you don't have a name for something, just make it up. And that's what he did. So he made up the name halitosis. Halitosis now is in the dictionary meaning bad breath, basically. I don't know what the exact definition is in Webster's, but something along the lines of bad breath. That word was completely made up by him, and he started putting that in the marketing saying, do you have halitosis? And people are like, ooh, that sounds scary. That sounds like some sort of disease. I don't want to have that. And he's like, well, this medical sounding name is going to scare people into buying my Listerine to clean their mouth and not have bad breath. And as a result of that, that problem, and he created a name for the problem, it drove millions and millions of dollars in sales. I mean, you also have another, and you can do this also when you have pain points in imagery. I mean, I don't know if you, we travel a lot. I was just adding up on the airplane yesterday when I was coming back. from my last trip how many trips i took in 2024 i think it's 47 flights 48 flights something like that that's what i what i came up with that's not necessarily trips but you know one way each way so that's 20 something odd trips um on airplanes and there's a lot more in cars uh but on airplanes something like that and i was i was sitting there thinking like in the airport you know you go in sometimes in the airport and you got your baby and the baby's got a nature calls and the baby you need to change the diaper well in the old days when you there was really no place to go do that you just have to go kind of make do so a company came out with these boards you've probably seen them norma and the airports that they I use them oh did you use them they fold up against the wall oh yeah I figured you uh hey well who do you change who changes your adult diaper your adult diapers that's why I use them that's it
- Speaker #1
I just crawl up there.
- Speaker #0
You just get somebody that comes through. Yeah. The next guy. I hold out a 20. You just turn around. Hey, you're the winner. Come over.
- Speaker #1
Come on over.
- Speaker #0
Come on down. You're the next man up. No, but so they invented these boards that, you know, it gets the wall and you just kind of fold it down. It makes this nice little raised platform where you can put your baby. Chains a diaper, and it makes it a nice, clean, comfortable situation. Well, they were marketing those to airport managers, people that, you know, airport facility managers or whatever. And they were showing a picture of this thing against the wall, a really nice, pretty picture of it against the wall. And the next picture would be a happy family with a mom and a dad smiling, holding the baby, just this really comforting, you know, typical, like, feel-good type of picture. And they just weren't selling these things. They sold like $800,000 worth of them or something in a year. And this just people should be buying this more. This is such a good product. We're getting rave reviews. But these airport people weren't buying it. So what do they do is they change the advertising because in advertising, there's a two second rule. If you can get someone's attention in two seconds, not stop the scroll. People always say, well, you are on TikTok shop or YouTube or whatever. If people are scrolling, you want to have something there, you know, shaking your hands or some sort of jolt or a bolt of lightning comes. So they, whoa, what's that? And they stop. I'm not talking about that kind of two-second thing. I'm talking about in two seconds, you see the ad or you see the video. And you know within two seconds, that's for me. And now a word from one of our sponsors, one of Norm and I's favorite tools, Stack Influence.
- Speaker #1
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- Speaker #0
That's right, Dorm. Sign up today at stackinfluence.com. Or click the link in the video below and mention Misfits, that's right, Misfits, M-I-S-F-I-T-S, to get 10% off your first campaign. Head over to StackInfluence.com right now. If you can accomplish that, then you've mastered your marketing. And so what these guys did is they're like, what can we do that's a two-second message? And two seconds, boom. You know exactly that you have to buy this product. So what they did is they took the baby. They threw it on a dirty, they found the dirtiest toilet that they could find in an airport. It's a dirty stall. Toilet paper on the ground. Someone pissed and missed the toilet. Just, you know, all kinds of stuff. And the only space to change the baby's diapers was on the ground. So you see a woman bent over with her baby on the ground in this nasty, dirty stall. And then, you know, I forget the exact tagline. There's a tagline on there. They did that. It started running that ads to all the airport directors and basically don't let this be your customers in your airport sold $800 million or some crazy number. Like it wouldn't wait, maybe not quite a, I think over time, $800 million over, over time of these things. That's really good marketing where you're tying into that emotional appeal and you're, you're, you don't have to have a five part email series or 10 different ads or a 30 second commercial that gives a, you do it that quickly. And if you can get to that point on your products or on your problem solution that people are having a problem, and then you're the solution, that's where you have marketing gold.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. A hundred percent agree. If you can, if again, it's that pain point, right? If you could bring it out that, you know, who wants, who wants to change your baby on a dirty airport floor when you can have this. And you know, this, this, it, it, I love talking about this stuff. This is, you know, stuff from my, man, from 20, 30, 40 years ago that I learned, but it was, it was really cool back then. It's still cool now, like just leveraging the germs on the floor. Well, when I was growing up, way, way back in the day, dinosaurs, but germs, it, yes, it was an issue, but nothing like today. Nothing at all. And one of our family businesses is involved with PPE. And we know that washing your hands or scrubbing your hands too often, it doesn't do that. You could be causing yourself an injustice. You could actually be breaking down your immunity system and you can get sicker because you're doing it too often. And it's interesting because we talked about that in our family. But my wife... at the time was a registered nurse and she was talking about that seeing people do this but that was an evolution because even back further in the 60s and the 70s we weren't really concerned that much about germs there might have been a few people but hi nobody was and then there was this uh product called lysol and what did they do they made you afraid a fear of germs and they came out with a term called germ-free and a saying about that 99.9%, you know, it'll kill 99% of germs. And all of a sudden people are, you know, we got to get Lysol, we got to get Lysol, you know, to kill these germs. And it was just something they needed. Like Lysol was a no-name household cleaner. Do you know what they did before this?
- Speaker #0
No.
- Speaker #1
They were a feminine hygiene product. Now they turn that around and they just do household cleaning.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, that, that, I mean. That's a perfect example of using something that, you know, the ingredient, I don't know what the exact ingredient is in Lysol, but that same ingredient is in probably 50 other cleaners. But they picked out the one thing that tells the message succinctly, kills 99.9% of germs, and used that. And that became, I don't know if they trademarked that or not. They probably did. And used that. And that's... That's solving a problem. People are afraid of germs. You see, the problem is people sell products, and you don't want to sell products. You want to solve problems. So you've got to change your mentality, whether that's products or services. This just doesn't go for someone selling a garlic press on Amazon. This goes for someone selling a cooking. If you're a chef and you're selling cooking services, you don't want to say, I'm the best chef. I have a lot of them. So many people get caught on the benefits, I mean the features and not the benefits. I'm the best chef. I've got an extensive menu. I can cook whatever you want. I'll come to your house and I'll do all that. Those are all great. Those are all great features of what you do. But what is the benefit? So you want to emphasize the benefit is stop spending three hours a night in your kitchen cooking and cleaning. Spend those three hours instead with your loved ones, doing whatever. I don't know, something to that effect. That's the problem. If someone's like, I have no time to spend with my family, well, that's my services. I make time for you. And maybe if you came up, I'm just brainstorming here out loud. I haven't even thought this through, but the chef comes up with some sort of line that says something around time. I'm a time creator. Or something a time creator a lovemaker or something like Something like that savor the difference I don't know some sort of line like that that says it all and you can create an image around that And you gotta get creative and the beauty now of this is in the past You would have to pound the wood and get into meet with some other people have a huge brainstorming session now You can put this kind of stuff in the chat GPT And it can spit out ideas left and right. And I know there's some GPTs. I give one out in my presentation that you type in this kind of stuff, and it gives you 20 brainstormed ideas back in seconds. And that's the beauty of some of these new tools and where we're at in society now is you don't have to spend the $5,000 to $25,000, like you said, for a branding package or what you would have to spend on this kind of package for that. You can use these tools to help you get them.
- Speaker #1
narrow down and get ideas really fast and bounce off and and take it down all kinds of rabbit holes yeah and you know that imagery de beers you know we talked about that this in montreal for a bit but a diamond is forever that was one of their first logos what is what does that what's the imagery be you know behind that diamonds are a symbol of love right that's it diamonds love they didn't used to be diamonds did not used to be
- Speaker #0
Back in the late 1800s, diamonds were just another metal. Yep. And they were not a symbol of love. But De Beers, like you said, which is a big mining company in South Africa, was like, we need to sell more diamonds. And so they started a campaign for diamond. This needs to be, I forget the exact wording, but it basically became you need to buy a gift. This is an engagement and a wedding gift. First it was a wedding ring. You should show that diamonds are forever. uh, by sticking this diamond on, on her, her finger when you get married. And they're like, this works so well, what else can we do? Oh, when you get engaged, you should do the same thing again.
- Speaker #1
Diamonds are a girl's best friend.
- Speaker #0
Diamonds are a girl's best friend. And so they, they, that's how actually diamonds, diamonds are actually not worth what you pay for them. That's one of the lessons that I learned in my divorce is diamonds are one of the biggest rip offs in the world. Um, you know, they say they're rare. They say they're this, they say they're that. And they may be, but what I found is that, you know, engagement ring I paid $14,000 for, and I thought I was getting a deal because I negotiated and did this and that, is actually really only worth about a thousand bucks. The markup in diamonds and diamond jewelry is ridiculous. I used to spend a lot of money.
- Speaker #1
A thousand bucks is what you got for it, right?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, a thousand bucks is what I, the value, when I thought. I had over $100,000 worth of jewelry that I bought for my ex-wife. We used to joke about, well, that's our rainy day fund. We have no money, at least we have this jewelry that we can sell. Because they lead you to believe that diamonds actually hold their value. And they don't at all. They absolutely don't. Maybe if it's got a sentimental value because you passed it down from your great-grandmother, okay, it holds a value in your mind or in the family's mind. Or if it's a Super Bowl ring that Joe Namath wore or Peyton Manning wore, it has a perceived value because of them. But a typical piece of jewelry is worthless. You're better off buying fake diamonds and lab-grown diamonds. If a girl wants a big diamond and wants a big piece of jewelry, just buy the fake stuff. Because nobody can tell the difference, not a single person, unless they get it under a microscope. And nobody's going to take in your hand. I don't know the last time someone took your Connie's hand, Norm, and put it under a microscope. Let me see your diamond.
- Speaker #1
They do that quite often.
- Speaker #0
They're just checking on you. That's your reference check.
- Speaker #1
Yes.
- Speaker #0
Nobody does that. So it doesn't, don't spend, don't waste your money. Do not waste your money. And so I went to when I got divorced, I tried to sell the stuff. And you can take it to pawn shops. You know you're not going to get much there. You could list it on eBay. And I probably could have gotten more money if I would have listed it on eBay and just waited it out until the right person came along.
- Speaker #1
What about an Ausha?
- Speaker #0
And so what I did is I actually went to the biggest jewelry Ausha place in the world that actually supplies all the dealers. And that's where all my research, they said, this is where you're going to get the best value. There's a company called The RealReal, which takes only name brand stuff. So anything that was Louis Vuitton or Versace or Valentina, I sent to them because I got value because of the brand associated with it. So if someone was willing to pay more for this ring that's worth $100 just because it had a V on it for Versace, they'd pay $400 for it. So I got what I could there. Still nothing close to what I paid. But then the rest of it is just a no-name diamond or whatever from the local Diamonds Direct jewelry store somewhere. Those I put up onto this Ausha where it goes on this worldwide Ausha. This guy was all excited. I sent him pictures of everything. And they just don't go for any money. But that just goes to show you marketing. It's marketing. The diamond has a perceived value. It is a quality product. When you get a diamond, you know, depending on the four Cs. There's four Cs to a diamond. And depending... So it's quality. It has a perceived value. It has an emotional connection. It does everything right. But at the end of the day, it's just a rock. And you're paying crazy price. And so I did this with the real, real. I sold a bunch of stuff. And then I went to this Ausha place and sold what I could. At the end of the day, I might have got $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 for all of this.
- Speaker #1
For $100,000.
- Speaker #0
For over $100,000 worth of stuff. And then... I had some oddball stuff. It's like just random, wasn't name brand. It wasn't something that could go to this Ausha place. So I took that into a local jeweler here in Austin where I'd done a bunch of, she'd done stuff for us in the past, like fix your watch and, you know, fix a bracelet when it broke and that kind of stuff. I took it into her because I knew she bought stuff. And she's the owner of the company. And I said, what can you give me? So she's weighing it, putting it on the scale. This one's silver. This one's this. This one's that. All right, I'll give you $900 for this. bag of just random stuff i'm like all right that's worth i'm never going to use this stuff again we'll never use this stuff again give me the 900 bucks i said what are you going to turn around and sell this for she said i'll double my money so i'll get 1800 on on the market for her i'm like so this stuff really has it's insanely marked up she said oh yeah and she started to explain to me like the whole way the whole system works and how the diamond stores and and the mall work and like the whole thing. I'm like, holy freaking cow, I'm in the wrong business. But the point of this whole long story is to show you it's marketing. And what Norm brought up with De Beers, it's marketing. People will perceive the value to how you market to them. Presidential elections, there's just this same podcast. You can't tell, one of my favorite podcasts is My First Million. Just a couple weeks ago, I was listening to an episode. I was on the plane, I think, and they had some marketing guy that does political campaign marketing. Come on. And he was talking about the 2016 election primarily because the 2020 had just finished or was about to finish. I can't remember when they recorded it. Maybe it hadn't quite finished. But so they were talking about the 2016 election and like, look, it's all marketing. Everything is freaking marketing. Yeah, they're getting bitter and as and but it's all marketing and creating emotional connection. Look at how many people despise Trump. And they're like, I'm moving out of the country because of this. I'm moving to Canada. I just saw an article today, literally today, it says Canada is bracing for the influx of Americans that are leaving the United States because of Trump. You look at Ellen DeGeneres who said, I'm going to some little cottage in England and I'm never coming back to stepping foot in the United States again. That's an emotional connection, but a lot of that is because of marketing. And Trump, like him or hate him, he's got some personality flaws. He's got some issues, but he does a good job on some of the things. And some of that he does on purpose. I've been saying this since 2015 when he first came on the scene politically. Some of his craziness. is negotiating and it's marketing and he's doing it on purpose some of it i mean some of these you know he may be able to lose have a few loose marbles here and there but and the same thing goes for the other side then what they're doing and so it's basically it becomes who can out market the other person not necessarily who has the biggest budget you look at uh harris i think she raised a lot more money than trump especially you know when she took over from biden money was pouring in and it That team didn't do it well, but this podcast episode, the guy talks about that. He talks about the marketing and how at the end of the campaigns, a lot of these marketing people were relieved because they're like, man, I don't have to do all this crazy stuff anymore. That was hard out-marketing the other people. It's marketing. A lot of people don't realize that they think it's personal or even political. It's marketing. 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 #0
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. 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 #0
make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like Norm.
- Speaker #1
So I guess, you know, this episode, in case you haven't heard, it's about marketing. And we're down to about the last minute or so, Kev. There's one thing, by the way, that I learned today. The thing that stands out. Like it could be a billboard in Times Square is that you're a bit of a prick. You know why?
- Speaker #0
Why?
- Speaker #1
Because why the hell would you go to a pawn shop when you could have just said, hey, Norm, I got all this Louis Vuitton, blah, blah, blah, blah. What would Kanye have done if I came home and said, here's this ring for you? I bought it. It looks like it's a $100,000 ring, you know? And Kevin gave it to me for 500 bucks. Well, maybe six.
- Speaker #0
I didn't want to wish any ill will on you, you know, because some people put like little stones around the house to have good vibes and have good mojo. So I didn't want to wish any ill will on Connie because, you know, who knows what's in those jewelry could have been haunted.
- Speaker #1
I did that at your house and I put my toenail clippings all around.
- Speaker #0
That's what that was. Yeah, yeah. I thought the dog was shedding its tail.
- Speaker #1
That was my toenail clipping.
- Speaker #0
That was you. Oh, my God.
- Speaker #1
Juju, or whatever you call it.
- Speaker #0
Oh, man.
- Speaker #1
All right. We're at the end of this show. Kevin, why don't you wrap her up?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, so I hope you got something from this. This is a little bit shorter than we normally do, but we just... We just... You know, sometimes we just like to talk about things. I could talk about this stuff all day long. I love talking about marketing, so does Norm. And hopefully you do too because you listened to this whole episode to this point. So that means you like to listen to marketing too. If that's the case, you need to make sure you hit that subscribe button, either whether you're watching this on YouTube or whether you're listening to this on Apple or Spotify or one of the other big podcast platforms out there. Make sure you hit that subscribe button. Also, share this with a... a friend if you like this episode just forward to them hey you gotta check this out um that that's always great and you can leave us a review too if you want to go and put something in the comments and send ah Norm, I would really like to see one of your toenails too. Please send me one. You can write that or you can just say hey. They're on the RealReal,
- Speaker #1
by the way.
- Speaker #0
Oh, they're on the RealReal because they have little Vs on the end of them. Exactly. Little Versace Vs on them so they're actually worth something because of branding and marketing. But no, or you can go to marketingmisfits.com. It's.co, right? Yeah,
- Speaker #1
exactly..co.
- Speaker #0
Co marketing misfits. Co check out me and Norman times square. Uh, and if I tell you what, the first person that can actually check out that picture, whether you find it on social media or you find it on marketing, misfits. Co screenshot it, send us a, send us a message to, uh, uh, in at, uh, was it in a marketing misfits. Co and a DFCI, uh, in a marketing misfits. Co. And tell us the name of the cigars. What's the brand of cigars that Norm and I are holding? And we'll send you a free gift.
- Speaker #1
There we go.
- Speaker #0
The first person that actually does that and emails in at marketingmisfits.co, not.com,.co, and says, here's a screenshot of the picture of Kevin and Norm on Times Square with the Marketing Misfits billboard behind us. And you correctly tell us the name of the cigar that we're both holding in our hand. You'll win a prize.
- Speaker #1
That sounds fair.
- Speaker #0
Perfect. And until then, if you're like, ah, that's too much work, I don't care. I just want to listen to you guys. Check us out again next Tuesday. We'll be back with another episode then.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. And if you're a misfit or you know a misfit, make sure you reach out. We'd always like knowing these misfits that are out there.
- Speaker #0
That's all we got for you this week.
- Speaker #1
All right, everybody. See you later.
