Jay d' Souza (3:04)

Lizzy. Thank you so much for having me. Kind of, you know, had your name floating around a little while and I just saw a couple of your, the videos you've done. I guess it's a podcast but it's recorded. So for me, I'm always going to call them videos, it's just what I do. But yeah, super interesting stuff. And I'm, you know, super grateful that you had the wherewithal to reach out because I'm one of those people like we were, you know, just sidebar chatting right before going live here and I'm like, I'm trying to be a better friend of the people and that I care about and it's like one of those things, you know, you get that seed planted, got to reach out and then it doesn't happen and then they reach out to you and it's like I meant to, but super grateful that you actually did. So here we are.

Lizzie Smiley (3:42)

I have been spying on you for over a year now just watching you be such a gentleman. I just, I love the friendly, warm, warm like vibe that you have. Every time you interact with people, it always makes me smile. And I was like, this is a good dude and we need to have a really good summer print on demand conversation. So like, let's do this. I'm so. Oops. I'm so glad it worked out. I know that people are going to really take a lot from this conversation because what do we always hear about everyone's always, one of the biggest complaints is like, oh, summer on Etsy, you are gonna just. Nothing's gonna happen. You're gonna be dead. Brace yourself for impact. And while I like realistic, like, for me, in my sign shop, summer was a slower time. That happened to be great. Cause I had kids home.

Jay d' Souza (4:25)

Yeah.

Lizzie Smiley (4:25)

But since then, I've learned a lot about how, like, it doesn't have to be dead. We can still be making progress. And I'm just like, jay, tell us all about print on demand. What can we do? Like, does it have to be the case that print on demand sellers have a summer slump?

Jay d' Souza (4:39)

Does it have to be the case? No, it never has to be anything. Right. I think it's just about reframing what you're talking about. So, like, the slump for most people and you kind of touched on something in terms of, like, you could still be making progress. The slump for most people is because they attach a monetary element to it, right? I think so. Like, if sales are dipping, the whole world's ending. But it doesn't mean that you can't have that progress. Right. If this is. These are like a. Summer is cyclical. It happens every single year. There are businesses that have not only bad weeks or maybe two months of summer. If you're up north in Canada, where I'm from, you know, you're lucky to get a hot July and August, but other than that, they happen every year. You can predict these slumps. You can work them in. It kills me when I see people, you know, impending doom coming. Like, we had such a great Q1. I wasn't expecting it potentially coming into a summer month. Now I'm, oh, we're gonna. You know, it's gonna be terrible. I hate this. You know, I. I'm gonna try. If I'm sucking at Etsy right now, I'm gonna try Shopify. I'm like, you're not sucking in terms of everything you're doing. You've gotten this far. You're. Maybe your sales are down a little bit, but it happens every year. Use this time to look at some of your existing designs. You're selling digital designs, right? I assume you're making potentially, like, bundles of things at some point. This would be a perfect time to develop a. You know, one of those thoughts in the back of your mind that you had on the back burner of a new series of designs or a new bundle. Right. You've got. You can put on the blinders and just kind of like, cut out the noise and just get to work, think of. And if you're really wanting to make money on it, then think forward for next year. What can you do different this year during this slow time to make sure that you don't actually experience as much of the monetary hit now? Right? So, like, look at what people do every single day. Stop chasing trends that way, right? Trends, esthetically, sure, but not, not like something that is set in the media, for example, that might fizzle out in a month. But, like, what do people do every day, right? Like, people are born every day. Birthdays never die up. People die every day, right? Any kind of, you know, sympathy kind of gift, people's favorite foods, all the evergreen foundations you could do. People walk their dogs every single day. We do every morning, right? Those are the things that are never going to go out of style. The only reason that there might be a dip in traffic is because, like you said, you're out, your kids are home, family time, you know, kids are out of school, that kind of thing, right? But none of it needs to be this, like, impending doom kind of thing. I keep saying that, but it feels like people are just like, got this whole big, you know, sense of like this weight on their chest because the summer sales suck. Changing lanes and going to Shopify now, you're. You're hitting a reset button, right? Like, anything you do that is different. And, you know, it's not a time to pivot. It's a time to, you know, double down on what has been working, reassess, look at your designs, what can you tweak, you know, just get better. You're. You're now a CEO of your business, right? You're not, like, ideally, you're not trying to be a perpetual hobby or craft shop, right? So, like, I don't know, embrace that. You will suck too, in the beginning and embrace slow growth. Like, if you look at my Amazon merch numbers, I'm dropping a video hopefully by the end of the weekend. But the way that it's grown has just been this, like, in the camera going that way, right? It's. I didn't have a hockey stick moment. I didn't have these, these, what do you call it, like, super quick growth or any of this, like, expansion that was just like this tangent that just skyrocketed. It was all solid Evergreen foundation built. And also, I rest at night knowing that I'm not going to fizzle out tomorrow, right? Like, I could take a month off my business and really not see much now. And that's the goal, I think, at the end of the day. So build that foundation and understand that especially to people that are new that might be listening. In what world do you think you're going to be, you know, rich in a month doing something for the first time, right?

Lizzie Smiley (8:24)

Yeah.

Jay d' Souza (8:25)

You, you went to school, you paid for an education, you're applying it to a job. Now you're wearing all the hats. Now you're a marketer. Now you're graphic designing for the first time ever in your entire life. You're, you're trying to do, you know, customer service. All the things, learning new tools to be able to design on top of that, all the things that you had absolute zero experience in. And then all of a sudden, you know, like a month in, you're like, well, this sucks. Or you had a great, you know, March or April, and now May's here, summer's here. Oh, this is terrible. Etsy sucks. You know, Print on demand is debt, right? I could go on for days on this stuff.

Lizzie Smiley (8:56)

But it's, I think, you know, there's part of this is just healthy expectations of you're never going to have. I mean, I don't want to say never. There's some products that literally live for the summer, right? But it's unlikely in print on demand that your summer is going to be bigger than your Q4. When people shopping for the holidays, there's simply just more supply and demand. But like, as someone who's just in the numbers every day of watching the trends and right now, seeing all the summer shirts just take off and the PNGs just take off, I'm like, there's some money to be made here. We don't have to just sit back and be like, well, I guess I'll just wait for back to school. I do think that for brand new people, summer can be great because it's a bit of a. You can start building up for the fall. You can start getting better, developing your skills, especially in design, so that going into, into the fall, you're better than you would be if you waited to start in the fall. That's for sure. Right? Like, but have you ever had, have you ever had a really good summer, like, or better than normal or one of your students?

Jay d' Souza (9:56)

Well, goes without saying, the summer of 2020 was huge, right? Once the world, you know, we had that captive audience, so things just spiked like crazy because, I mean, my mom learned how to shop online for the first time in her life. Right? Like officially, you know what I mean? So we had like a massive expansion of our. On both Ends of the market, right. Younger people were shopping online, same with an older generation. Entire generation of people got trained on how to, you know, function online. So it was cool that way. But I mean, to your point about, you know, the things that are popular in the summer, like look at, I mean, it's wedding season, right? So any bachelorette type stuff, huge. Anytime you can take something that people do every day or that happen, you know, wedding season, for example, anytime you can couple that with, you know, the, the aesthetics or any kind of trending aesthetic potentially could be huge. As long as though it makes sense for your niche. If you're a niche shop and print on demand, Right. If you're selling downloadable PNGs, I don't know how you operate your shop, but I would imagine it would be more of a general store but with niche sections based on. So you might have your coquette or something in here and then you'll have a ton of that, right. You're treating almost each, each sub niche or subsection as its own shop essentially. But you're just a one stop, right? So it's still organized. You don't have like 50 different shop sections with two or three items in it. You're kind of filling out each one, right? Yes, but yeah, I mean, otherwise there's just so many things that you can build into your process and just get used to not fearing this kind of slump, but, you know, revisit your SEO, revisit the titles and tags, build something that you may be able to help anticipate something a little better so you're not feeling like you're going to be stuck just because summer's here. I don't know. The goal should be to get you to a place where you welcome those kind of lulls or breaks, if that makes sense. Because it's a chance to, you know, action things that have been on the back burner. It's a chance to maybe get a little bit more rest. We've also worked ourselves in a hustle culture where rest is like this reward that we give ourselves when we're on the verge or the cusp of burnout, right? And it's so not true. It's like gas in your tank. Rest is necessary. You can't, you can't drive the car uphill, full throttle all day without, you know, eventually running out of gas. Right. You have to stop, you have to rest. Like think of it that way if you need the mental picture. But it's like people just pride themselves on how hard they grind and hustle and it's. It kills me to watch because, you know, you're. You're just. You're getting that you're toeing the edge of get. Putting yourself in the grave, you know, one day earlier every time you do that. So, I don't know. Loaded. Loaded question for a intro or for a, you know, a start to the.

Lizzie Smiley (12:36)

Podcast, but that's how I always roll there, Jay. That's. That's what we do around here.

Jay d' Souza (12:40)

It's heavy stuff, man.

Lizzie Smiley (12:42)

Well, it is, but, you know, I mean, I'm such a geek for mindset. It's one of my favorite things to study and grow and, and develop and talk about. But I actually think that the kind of person we have to become to weather a business low without second guessing, just immediately pivoting, giving up, running away, blaming is the same skill it's going to take to sustain entrepreneurship. Because spoiler alert, hundreds of thousands of dollars later, we still sometimes have lulls and things like stuff doesn't always hit the way that we expect. We don't have a magic crystal ball that tells us where every single time things are going to hit. I mean, what makes you and me different from maybe the, you know, the average person on the street is that we are going to have the mental discipline to stick with it, to keep going, to keep trying to. To weather it, to stick with it. Like, you have to develop that skill or like, probably Etsy is not the place for you.

Jay d' Souza (13:35)

Yeah, I could not agree more. It's mindset is. Is everything at the end of the day, in whatever you're doing in the relationships you foster. And don't think that your mindset can't be influenced by, you know, the. The people you keep in your company either. Because one of the. Wow, just my mind's exploding with all these ideas now, but it's the same idea. Well, it's because, like, so our mindset was a little bit different. I got tired of the toxicity. I left the corporate workplace to do my own thing. And I ended up, yeah, working like, three times as much as many hours as I did when I was working, but I also was doing it for myself. And I had this goal in mind that I wanted to build something better and not, you know, just continue to make people rich with this, you know, monetary cash ceiling. I wanted more out of life. But then that also led me, you know, in a crazy way, all of a sudden, I started a YouTube channel because people wanted more. They wanted to hear more. I'm like, okay, well, this sounds fun. Totally stepping out of my comfort zone. And that led to getting put on Printify's radar. Eight months later I'm in Latvia, which is headlining their first ever Amplified. And then a month after getting home, we moved down to Belize, which was already kind of in the works, but it was like all this. And if I hadn't just quit that job, none of this would have happened. Right. So it's like the fear of the unknown and it's all the people going back to like the toxicity. It wasn't just that, but it was the people that were all having these closed mindsets around me saying, you're crazy. It's a job with pension and benefits. I'm like, meanwhile I'm like, yeah, but it's killing me. I was self medicating to kind of get through the night because I needed to be able to fall asleep by midnight, which I couldn't because anxiety was too high. But I had to be up at 4 to leave the house at 4:45 because if I didn't I'd be late. You know what I mean? It was just that kind of thing. Yeah, it was 7am to 7pm shifts. Can see your face. Yeah, yeah, it was so it was like 12 hour shifts plus an hour commute each way and it was high octane. It was the data center in at TD Bank. Yeah, it was insane. We had just purchased all the, after the 2008 crash, all the eastern seaboard of the US banks that were kind of going belly up because of the, you know, the 2008 crisis, Canada or Toronto Dominion, TD bank went down and scooped them all up. And we were creating our own job descriptions. But you're consolidating hundreds of millions of dollars at the end of every month and its executives on the call and it was like, oh my God, I can't handle this. Right. You're not allowed to leave your desk. They bring in pizza. Like literally. It was kind of. Yeah, it was crazy. Not first world business practices by any stretch, but I digress on that. But the whole point is that if I had listened to all those people that were, you know, trying to keep me safe, quote unquote, I never would have quit. I would have just kept going. And I'm like, oh my God, the prospect of 20 more years of this before I retire or 25 more year at the, at the time, like that was enough to make me need to change. Because like, nothing worse than being stuck at a place where you feel like it's soul crushing and then just looking at your mortgage of 17 more years to go and then maybe five years after that you're ready for retirement. Like what a crappy place to be, you know, so. But once you put the wheels in motion and with the support of my wife Stacy, I mean she just, you know, all I did was promise her that we're always going to have food in the fridge and a roof over her head and then that was good enough for her. Right. She just knew that I needed to be elsewhere and I was not turning in, I was turning into a not so nice person. Right. And I don't like to be like that. So the fact that you know, she was on board and had the, had her support, we just yeah, packed up, move down here. And then opportunities like you create our own opportunity, right. Like it's opportunities have just become, you know, abound. I, I, I feel like I, you and I wouldn't be talking here. That's sure as hell right. Like if I hadn't gone started this YouTube channel, you know, three, almost three years ago now, like it's nuts. Or quit that job even. So all the things that you think are going to hold you back or all the reasons you're not jumping in are, are the things that are going to hold you back forever. And our minds like just the way our brains work is we always negative impacts kind of have twice the power in terms of effect on our, on our psyches that a positive impact does. That's why like if you have a beautiful week or the best month over month, you know, your all time highest sales day, those victories you feel for some reason our brains just they're short lived. But like you'll remember that one terrible review for the next three months. It's soul crushing and it makes zero sense. It's not impacting your bottom line right to that end when you've had like your best month ever. But yeah, we, those are the things that are, you know, we dwell on and those are the things that hold us back. So I just want to, I'm hoping I inspire at least one of you to take a poop or get off the pot. So they say, you know, but, or get off the fence, you know, just jump in. Right. It's trying to be PG rated here, but yeah, you know what I mean man, there's just so much more to life than making other people rich.

Lizzie Smiley (18:28)

Are you a print on demand or digital product Etsy seller who's tight on time or still learning all of the Etsy secrets? I totally remember the days of having no idea what product to create next before I learned how to make those informed decisions so I can really identify with where you're at. I know how stressful and frustrating it can be to just create listing after listing and seeing see little to no results. You wonder what you're doing wrong and just you just want someone to tell you what to create that's actually going to sell. Where are those opportunities? So let me give you a leg up with my weekly trends and opportunities report. You just join my membership and every Monday I'm going to send you an email with a list of exactly what is trending right now with a video tutorial showing you how I found those trends and how to apply them in your shop. We're taking guesswork and time extended extensive time off of your table. I'm also going to send you five print on demand and digital product opportunities that are growing in demand right now, helping new shops make sales and still have very low saturation in the marketplace. So your tight schedule, your newbie status doesn't have to hold you back anymore. I'm going to help you earn while you learn. You can grab my free demo to start and see an example of what the weekly trends and opportunities email looks like right from the show notes. See what you're going to get and I will see you on the inside soon. Okay. So you did you tell me you started in back in 2015. No 2013 on Etsy. But you hit your first six figure year in 2015. So here's what I love about this. There's a couple things that I want to draw out first of all and, and I am never the one coming out being like this is you are going to get rich so fast. Etsy is the answer to everything. Come do this. You're going to be able to and I always say I think people overestimate what they can accomplish in six months and underestimate what they can accomplish in two years. And you are proof of that.

Jay d' Souza (20:14)

That is a perfect analogy.

Lizzie Smiley (20:15)

Right. And then you went on to scale to over 2.5 million in sales. How did that come about? So you start in 2013. Were you already a graphic designer?

Jay d' Souza (20:23)

I was, yeah. Technically a college dropout a year and a half into graphic design program after a year and a half off of high school because I didn't know what the heck I want to do with my life. I didn't even know graphic design existed really. Working at a factory realized that wasn't for me. I've always been, you know, an artist. I draw, write, graffiti, airbrush T shirts, whatever, as a kid in high school, all that stuff. But getting into graphic design eventually after, you know, doing some more research of what I could do with my art. I also come from a family that was like my mom knew I was talented, my dad kind of understood, but at the same time it was like a family of academia, really academics. I was like, what are you, what do you mean you're going to, you can't draw and make money. Like, you know, that does not compute, right. Like it would just didn't register. Like there's no way you need to go get that job and have the pension and the benefits. Like these jobs are few and far between now. Right. That said, I got kind of an opportunity to go work at a place that was full time graphic design. So when I started college, for example, there was like 50,000 qualified people in the Greater Toronto Area and the GTA for about maybe a job market of double that. So 100,000 jobs available, only 50,000 qualified. By the time I was a year and a half into my program, there were, there was a surplus of 200,000 designers apparently, according to some stats. So I was like, well what's it going to be in another year and a half when I'm finally done, right. So I kind of weighed those and I got offered full time work and I learned more in the next six months on that job than I ever probably would have in another year and a half at, in college anyway. So yeah, to answer. Long way to answer your question. I was a graphic designer going into this, worked there for about five or six years and then applied to Canada's number one publisher at the, at the time. And eight a year and eight months later, I was managing the graphics department of Canada's number one publisher. So that was.

Lizzie Smiley (22:14)

Who is it my dad worked for for PIL for a while. Do you know? I was asking what publisher it was because my, my dad was in that business for a while after he retired Yellow Pages. Oh my gosh.

Jay d' Souza (22:24)

Yeah, So I had 144 direct reports. It was absolutely insane.

Lizzie Smiley (22:29)

That was no thank you.

Jay d' Souza (22:30)

Yeah, just the Ontario and Quebec chapter. There was more than that, but I was running the bigger hub and I was like, okay, not, not prepared, but they wanted somebody from the ground up. Right. And we're not talking like you're just the word ads. We're talking like full color ads and things and like brochures and that stuff too. Right. So a background and print graphics. But yeah, I translated perfectly into the Etsy world. And then you know, but giving up the quote unquote unionized safe graphic design job at yellow pages. I went into management throughout. So now I'm not supported by a union. Layoffs eventually came and then I found myself on the chopping block because I was the least tenured out of, you know, search seniority wise and also the youngest. But at the same time all that made me do is just go fire out 200 plus, I think I had of Craigslist and Kijiji, freelance graphic design, all logo ads, that kind of of thing. And then a dude called me up, happened to be in my hometown, called me up asking me to make SVG graphics and AI vector graphics for him for he could use with his vinyl plotter to cut out and print on shirts he was selling on Etsy. So I ended up, he was paying me 15 bucks a design at the time. He wanted to pay 10. I got it to 15 and then I just realizing like, I'm getting paid $15 once for this thing and this dude is selling this stuff over and over and over and over. Right. So quickly shifted that to $3 royalty on every T shirt he sold and a $5 on a hoodie.

Lizzie Smiley (23:55)

So good job.

Jay d' Souza (23:57)

Yeah, well, it made me more vested too because now I'm making banger designs that I know he's going to be able to perpetually sell ideally. And we went big time evergreen here. Like I didn't, you know, some Halloween, some Christmas, but mostly evergreen because like that's where the money is ultimately. You know, you have your peaks seasonally, but you're going to have deep, dark cavernous valleys in between. Right. So wanted to keep that money coming steady. And then, you know, a year later, that was 2012 and a year later I opened up my own shop because I'm like, what am I doing? So he ended up fulfilling for me at that point. And that was literally my first kick at print on demand at this point because I literally now can work anywhere on the planet. I'm just creating designs, uploading them and then, you know, I'm sending him all the orders. A little more manual on sending him the orders because he didn't have access to my actual shop. But you know, you can connect to Ship Station, there's means, right. Third party apps. So yeah, that was kind of it. And then a year after that, two years after that, that was the, the first six figure year, I hit just over 100k in, in revenue and I was just kind of, I guess there was that hockey stick moment then, but it didn't it also didn't last, right. It was like some really good stuff. And then there was a ton of market saturation back then and people say it's saturated now. Like imagine thinking this 10 years ago, right? Like people are just getting into the game. Like it was a lot easier back then, but you just, you know, you, you build it, test your metal and you build kind of this resilience and the thicker skin and you just get hungrier. And competition in that end now, 10 years later, I know, is a beautiful thing. It's a good thing. We need it because it keeps us hungry, it keeps us chasing, you know, that proverbial carrot. But you can take bites of it as it goes, right? It's not just this thing you can never attain. But yeah, it's, it's been a long journey and it's been so fulfilling at the same time that again, literally 10 years now since that first 100k year and what, 12 and a half years into Etsy now or Print on demand. I don't understand when people say that they can't make money online. It's not just the Etsy thing. Maybe that's not your cup of tea, but there's a endless amount, there's an endless amount of possible ways to make money online and do something, even part time. A couple of members in my membership, for example, like one, one of them, Carla, she military vet, she's in and out of, she's retired now but you know, mom of two youngins in and out of, you know, medical kind of situations like getting, getting taken care of or looked after. She built a digital download business ultimately on two hours a day. That was her window. Yes, that's, that's all the time she had. And she maximized every minute of it, right. She would just block it out, put on the headphones, sorry guys, you know, mommy time or whatever it was, even if it was like the two hours after the kids were in bed, before she went to bed, that was it. So like when I hear stories like that and then I hear people who spend four hours a day on YouTube and never actually take any action and like, you know, just consuming content, all the content in the world isn't going to get you any sales if you don't actually take action and list something you can't sell, what you haven't put up in your shop, right? All the ideas coming in is like drinking from a fire hose. It just, you know, it's just too much. It's overwhelm and that's the Other thing, I think people need to put on the blinder so they could just get to work.

Lizzie Smiley (27:05)

So, so many things I could say. I think sometimes the, the. I love that there's the abundance of information because all of us are going to reach different people and that's ideal. But I think as a consumer, it can almost become an. It can become counterproductive because we sometimes then don't know. This is why I always say I don't care who you pick. Almost everyone in our space, our colleagues are. They're incredible. There are very few bad actors. There's no one person who knows it all or has the only right answer. So sorry to anyone on YouTube who has said the. To the alternative. No, we're all awesome for the most part. Pick who you resonate with and listen to them because then you're just going to hear what, you're going to have a specific path to follow. Whether it's Jay, whether it's me, whether it's Heather, whether it's Cassie, I don't care. Pick somebody. Print on demand. Not. I'm not print on a man. You're going to want to talk to me about digital products or handmade products. But the other thing I wanted to say is the reason I agree with you about, it's great that there's lots of competition and this is what I think. Etsy sellers, sometimes, you know, we're new to entrepreneurship so we don't necessarily have a business mindset. We have more of a creative mindset. But the great thing about there being lots of competition is it means that it pulls more customers to Etsy. So if Etsy didn't constantly have new stuff that we're competing with, shoppers wouldn't come back as often because it's stale. It's the same stuff over and over again. And what I, what has been amazing and eye opening to me, I'm. I'm a pretty positive person. So to me, I've never been off put by any, any talk of saturation. I'm just like, nah, you, if you got to innovate Anyway, that's business 101 again. We can't have, we can't have artist mindset alone. We also have to have business mindset. If you don't innovate, you die, period. In any, in any. In your job, if you don't continue to get better, if you're in a normal job, someone is going to surpass you, someone's going to come take your spot. You, you have to stay. You've got to Switch that mindset. But there are so many new trends happening all the time. Not the, like, you said the flash in the pan like, and I did. I, like, I'm going to raise my hand. I totally took advantage. Advantage of that suspect claims thing that came and went for one millisecond off of. And I did make a lot of sales off of that. But short term, right then it's going to fizzle out. But the trends change so often and there are so many of them and there are so many applications of them. And I know you and I, you, you, you are really smart about going after evergreen stuff. I tend to focus a lot on going on bringing the trends to some of the micro niches and then working volume. Because. Because the difference between you and me is you came to the game with graphic design skills. I'm still mediocre at best at graphic design, but the reason I can make good money and hack it is because I go after volume. I'm willing to fail a lot. And I'm trend combining like it's my job and I'm just learning about, like, how the details really matter. I've always understood, like, emotional connection. That mockup's gotta be. We talk about this in my transponding membership all the time. And I'm always telling them, buy this, mock up this converts like this will convert almost anything. You know, like the ones that are just so, so good. But the details of the design and paying attention to just like the weight of your fonts and then where you're putting the supporting elements and all the things that you can do in your sleep, man, I've had to take the slower road with that. And actually, Jay, could we talk about design for a minute? Like, what are some of the major things that you find, like, new Etsy sellers need to learn about design? Because this is your sweet spot. This is what you teach in your membership is all about design. Which is why I'm like, I got to partner up with this guy. So what are the things that these new Etsy sellers are really needing to learn that you like to support them with?

Jay d' Souza (30:26)

Well, the first thing I got to say is, like, to anybody listening, it's not just because I was a graphic designer that I am still stood the test of time or what have you. I think hustle will outwin easily talent every single time. Right?

Lizzie Smiley (30:41)

Wow.

Jay d' Souza (30:41)

Don't sell yourself short when you're saying you're willing to make mistakes that we are like, that's why we're still around. Right. But the difference is how we handle those mistakes and how we handle those trials and tribulations, right? We learn from them. We don't get down on ourselves and then quit, right? That's every, every business think of the first person who ever created anything ever, right? So like whatever business, the first one to do the, I don't know, the first one to invent AI image generator, for example, something more kind of our term. Or the first person who created a kind of hiking shoe that fit that purpose, right? They had nobody to look to for experience on any of it. If you're the first of ever, but they innovate, you learn, you fail. You learn, you fail, you make mistakes, you figure out what works ultimately and how to build that best hiking shoe that'll last longer than the rest, right? It gets you. Having made mistakes sets you miles ahead because you have so much more knowledge to, to glean and, and like an encyclopedia of what not to do, right? That sets you up for how to be better at everything in life. If you just had, you know, only wins and a status quo and no challenges, then you're also never going to shine. Your peak becomes now, you know, the flat line, right? And there's no. The only way you can measure success is against failure. Otherwise it's just all flat ultimately, right? But yeah, learning the major things, like for people, I just wanted to make sure that people know that you don't have to be a graphic designer. That's the whole point of my membership ultimately is like to teach people how to make designs that will sell like full stop, right? You need to know the difference between readability and legibility, right? So, you know, legibility is literally being able to digest words as they are written, what they mean. The readability is how fast you can glean what something says ultimately and how quickly you can digest that. You know, the meaning behind it or what it's what it says when it's crossing your feed. So like, ultimately, we're trying to interrupt everybody scrolling, right? I'm doing this hand signal there for those of you only listening. But we're scrolling our feeds and you have to make a design that jumps off that page or stands out of the search results. And then you also have to be able to, you know, complement that design with the presentation. Like we were talking about this a little earlier. And it's like people, I think, put too much stock into SEO. You can put all the ad dollars behind your SEO on the planet, but at the end of the day, if the design looks like a pile of poop, it's never going to sell. Conversely, if the design is awesome, your SEO sucks, even the mockup might suck. But if that design is awesome and it crosses the right set of eyes, they're going to buy it. Right? You know what I mean? It's just because the design hit the mark.

Lizzie Smiley (33:11)

Emotional connection.

Jay d' Souza (33:12)

Yeah. And that's it. And the goal is to, you know, resonate emotionally at the end of the day, always. But in design, when it comes, like, I think people undervalue typography. That is huge. I've always been able to sell words on shirts. You know, a single solitary word done in the right font with maybe, you know, a period at the end or different kind of punctuation that instead of just a plain word on a shirt, you can evoke so much, you know, emotional resonance there. That it's like, I got a. One of my typography trainings is kind of funny, but it's one of those memes that was like, I'll see you later. And it was written in, like, a nice red font. Looked like somebody used a felt marker with a heart on the end. I'll see you later. A note left on a counter or something, right? For maybe your partner or whatever when you're going to work. I'll see you later. I'll see you later tonight. Right below it, it's written the exact same, but it looks like it's written in scratched blood. I'll see you later. No heart. Right. Those are two very different, emotional, emotionally resonating, you know, feelings you're going to get when you read it like that. Right. You're either going to think, oh, tonight's gonna be great. You know, love. You get to see the love of your life, or you're thinking, somebody's gonna be waiting around the door when you get home in your driveway with a knife. Right. You know what I mean? So it's like down to simple things like that. Just digesting and choosing the right fonts, understanding, you know, contrast. And not just the contrast I'm talking about in terms of, like, black versus white or, you know, colors that jump off a page. I'm talking about contrast in font. So using a nice bold font with maybe, you know, pairing a font with a nice kind of simple, easy script. The idea is to have enough contrast there so you can have word weighting ultimately, so that, you know, your top line maybe is the meat and potatoes of your design, but then the. That script at the bottom is potentially the, you know, that emotional, heartstring, tugging element. Right. It's it's giving you that more of that organic vibe to it. Right. A handwritten kind of script under some big block of words and stuff. Right. And those are the kind of things that are going to a get the message across because it's nice and bold and high contrast visually. But also the way it reads is what is going to tug at those heartstrings. At the end of the day, it's all the details that way and like you don't have to know all of it, but you should at least know some of it because I think everybody's just AI, AI, AI. If you don't know, just because AI created it doesn't mean it's a good design. Right? Don't forget that AI learned everything it did from. Right Other people's designs. It learn from humans. So we are not perfect, we are far from it. All it did was take the highest performing ones of those and then try to, you know, make that make sense. But just because AI created it doesn't mean it's a good design. So you need to at least be able to know what makes a good design and understand it. Only then can you pick out what creates a successful listing versus what doesn't. And if you spend all the ad money on the planet to boost or advertise a listing that you know the design is garbage on, you're not only going to tank your shop because the conversion rate is going to go, you know, way down, but you're also paying for this ad now. So you're paying for every click for people to go click on your listing and then conversely not convert. Telling Etsy's algorithm to absolutely stop showing you in search results for those search terms that you just now paid 60 cents or a dollar even for somebody to click. So you're like double edged sword. You're paying to tank your shop on purpose because your design sucks. So get a handle on it, you know. And that's where I can help, right?

Lizzie Smiley (36:34)

Yeah. How do you teach that, Jay? Like so to me sometimes it feels like something that's more caught than taught. But I'm. You're the expert at that. How do you teach that? I developing that.

Jay d' Souza (36:43)

I like everything else. It's practice, right? It's, it's getting, doing it over and over until it starts to become second nature. You look at any martial art or anything like that, you know, they have katas and karate. It's those things that you do until it becomes muscle memory, right? You learn to look for the things or to do the things that without thinking of them at the end of the day, like now, you know you're going to do this and do this or have that script go up at the end if it's handwritten because we don't write perfectly straight horizontally. If we're handwriting something or hand printing something. Right. It always goes off on a little bit. So I always tell people to go up to the top, right. When you're doing it even slightly, give it that human element, that emotional element. Those are the things that you're going to start to do without thinking about. Right. That's, that's the goal is to get you doing the right things that become second nature. And I, you know, I've been told I have a knack for being able to break down some complex ideas on how to resonate artistically and emotionally into tangible, actionable items. And then of course, we'll always give homework. Right. So putting you, putting everything into practice. Yeah. I don't know. Built a awesome little community and seeing the wins has been incredible. So I almost get a little emotional when we talk about it because again, I just want, I do, I want. I never thought I'd have a membership like what, you know what I mean? Above and beyond. And this is only a year old now, but being able to get people from zero to making sales or from 100 sales to a thousand sales in a month has been so huge or people that are, you know, some are hockey sticking, it's pretty incredible to see. But at the end of the day it's more about the community and the willingness to learn. So I can only help you if you want to be helped. Right. And to your point, everybody resonates with everybody differently. So yeah, I would only ask you guys, you don't have to follow me or follow Lizzy, but pick or both of us pick one or two people out there in, you know, Etsy land or print on demand land or digital download land and stick with their, their M.O. and their process and their system for at least a year, even six months. But at least a year. At least you're going to cross all four quarters of the year. You'll have a real good grasp what potentially a real business could look like for you. But you're not going to a resonate with everybody. You might not like the sound of my voice. You might, you might like the look of Lizzie, literally looking at her better than me. Right. It could just be the simple things like that. The idea is to not follow so many because our methods. Lizzy and I were talking about this earlier. There's no wrong way to do this. It's just a matter of which one you pick and stick. Our methods might totally conflict. And now you're going to be kind of caught in between the two. You can't take a little bit of A, a little bit of B. Sometimes you can, but if you have, like, C, D, E, and F all mixed in there, you're going to be in the same spot a year from now, spinning your wheels in the same rut, and you're never going to move ahead. Right. So let's try to find somebody that you can a, handle their voice. Right. Because I can talk for days. So. Yeah. But thankfully now there's like all these YouTube synopsis generators that you can get now. So you can just go any of my videos that are long, you can just click that summarize video and get the key points. And then you need to know if it's worth.

Lizzie Smiley (39:46)

You do not have an aggravating voice at all, sir. You need to stop it. But I mean, so great. Because we need a design. We needed you. We need a design membership. Because just watching a course is different than, you know, you really validated me, Jay, because I've always said, like, you've got to build if you want to get good at design. I've had to go the slow way, right? Really slow. And. And. And, dude, I was an art student for two years.

Jay d' Souza (40:08)

Oh, wow. I had no idea.

Lizzie Smiley (40:10)

I know. It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing that I just.

Jay d' Souza (40:13)

I'm not saying I had no idea because of your artwork. I have no. I just had no idea, period.

Lizzie Smiley (40:17)

Yeah, I started in interior design, and I always say in the art classes, what we had to do is sit there and recreate the greats. Not to put our name on it and say it was our idea or sell it, but because the practice, the repetition. So I tell everyone, build. If you want to design, well, build your brain cash. Spend half the time looking, see, studying, taking in the details of things that are best sellers. Not to go copy them, but to build your brain cache of like, okay, these fonts go great. Develop. That's how you develop the eye. You have to. So I was so excited. But we need you taking us through the repetition of just like art school, of sitting there and, okay, now go create it. Now go and put them together. Figure out how to tilt that font a little. That's a little too tilted because I've noticed this is. I'm in. I'm still learning. Right. I've noticed the Biggest thing I'm correcting for myself right now is the tiny details. I can get stuff to sell, I can follow the trends. I'm paying more and more attention to those finishing details of like, where does that star element supporting element need to go? Exactly. That font. I need to like tilt that ever so slightly. Or like, gosh, what if I did an outline on this instead of a full. You know, just the little details that take it from good to great, from converting to bestseller. Like, that's the stuff that we need you to teach us and that I love that you're, I love that you're doing that.

Jay d' Souza (41:31)

And that's the thing I actually talk about in one of my, that same Amazon Merch video that is going to be coming out. It was mostly about that. But I do a lot of my research even for Amazon on Etsy because Etsy's ahead of the game that way in terms of design. A lot of people don't, oh yeah, Amazon is like North America and Etsy is like the UK in terms of fashion.

Lizzie Smiley (41:51)

Okay, yeah.

Jay d' Souza (41:52)

You know what I mean? Like, yes, you have the New Yorks and the, you know, whatever. But ultimately you want to be the Milan, right. You want to be two or three years ahead. They've always been stylistically ahead of us in art and fashion by, and I'm saying us as North America in general by two or three years, sometimes even four or five. Right. Trends don't hit here until it, you know, that gap is shortening a little bit. I'd say more like two to three years now. But Etsy is that to Amazon. If you have a good selling design on Amazon, it's no wonder it's probably not going to sell on Etsy. Like I hear that all the time, people that are feel restricted or not having great sales on Amazon Merch, for example, they go listed on Etsy. Why isn't it listing? Why isn't it selling? Well, it's because it's not completely two different shoppers. Right. First. But also I've been able to, you know, see a, let's say a five year bestseller on Etsy, for example, starts to kind of wane a bit. I can go take that design as Evergreen Design, put it on Amazon. I'll get three years out of it. I'll get a bestseller badge in a few months way.

Lizzie Smiley (42:53)

Oh my gosh.

Jay d' Souza (42:54)

So if you're doing both, and I implore you to do both, you know, I would never, you know, say have all your eggs in one basket. But also pay attention to where the money's coming from, so focus there, right? Because the money will come from wherever you're working the hardest. But if you can get Etsy sales, you can get Amazon merch sales. If you can get Amazon merch sales, don't necessarily expect that that will translate over to Etsy. It's a hard reality to, you know, to digest, but it's a real one.

Lizzie Smiley (43:26)

Are you brand new to Etsy, about to get started, or struggling a bit to find your groove? What I'm about to say is just for you, okay? I can completely relate to where you're at because I think I can help you achieve success faster. When I first started my Etsy shop, it was not one of those success stories that we hear, you know, on the big YouTube channels, even on this podcast where I, I just had crazy success and it took off right away. I all but failed for my first six months, just like a lot of new sellers. And so it's very relatable. And the issue for me was I didn't understand demand for one, I didn't understand SEO. I was way too broad in my search terms and I didn't know how to position my product so that customers just couldn't help but click add to cart. And so once I learned those things, I went from making about $25 a month in sales to to $6,000 a month and up. And in the holidays, I would even have $13,000 months, like at my shop's peak. And the thing about me, if you've been here for a minute, you already know this. I'm a terrible gatekeeper, okay? When I figure something out, when I crack a code, when I get excited, I cannot help but tell everybody who wants to listen. It's like either my, my best asset or my toxic trait. I can't decide. But I put everything that you need to know to fill that beginner knowledge gap into a low ticket, just under three hours beginner course that I have called Six figure secrets to getting started on Etsy. In it, I'm teaching you how to find what's in demand for your niche, how to find and use trends, how to start your shop. If you're worried about that part, SEO strategy to find the micro niches where the opportunity is, how to understand the Etsy algorithm and a ton more. The whole thing is bite sized videos, not long form, just small bite sized videos. Zero fluff and to the point. You could get the course today, go through the less than three hours over the next couple days, launch your shop this weekend and have sales coming in as soon as Sunday. So let's get you the few missing pieces of the Etsy success puzzle. Those little tweaks you need to make so you can start making the sales that you deserve. Because I have never been more convinced that there is room at this table on Etsy for everyone. And the opportunity is so ripe right now. I am in the numbers in the data every day and my mind just keeps expanding on the possibilities. Okay, so, so as a special treat, use the code save50 to save $50 on the six figure secrets course today. That's $50 off with a coupon. Save 50. And by all means DM me or shoot me an email when those sales start popping because I want to celebrate with you. You know what? I would love to have you back just to do a fully dedicated Amazon merch chat. Would you be up for that?

Jay d' Souza (45:56)

Absolutely. Sure.

Lizzie Smiley (45:58)

That would be so cool. I played with that for a little bit. I got so, because I started on Etsy, I got so frustrated I couldn't use my own mock ups over there. I don't know if that's changed that. I was just, I mean, and it, it's so frustrating because I, you know what I did, My best sellers on Etsy and Print on Demand were like really sassy one liners like right here on the shirt. And so you couldn't see it on their, on their, you know, the way that they do their mock ups, you couldn't see it. It drove me crazy. But see, listen to me whining about stupid stuff.

Jay d' Souza (46:22)

But still, this is also what I'll say. Like one of the recipes for Amazon Merch is fill the design box if at all possible. So a one liner on a shirt is different but you want to, it's a really big box. And like whatever you can do because Amazon's got. You're looking at what, 60 million potential listings. I think on Etsy I think Amazon has 600 million. I could be wrong. I have to double check those numbers. Ridiculous.

Lizzie Smiley (46:44)

That's how many listings there are. Oh, that's how many there are to compete with. I thought that was how many you could have in your shop. Like what?

Jay d' Souza (46:49)

Oh no, no, no, no. How many are on each respective marketplace. But I mean you need to stand out and for that to happen it's got to be big. And like really people don't leave reviews because the print was too big. Even Print on Demand, like we even printed for ourselves through Covid, we had to pivot. So we renovated, you know, have to be climate Controlled. But we brought in a conveyor dryer. Brother GTX printers. Yeah, we. Yeah, you have done a lot of things. So we printed. We had our own DTG print shop for you know, two and a half years or whatever and then the world opened up and then we sold everything and decided if we're going to get stuck somewhere, let's go somewhere with palm trees and a beach ultimately. But.

Lizzie Smiley (47:23)

Amen brother.

Jay d' Souza (47:24)

Yes, right. No more seven months. Seven months of winter anyway, you know. No, that's the kind of thing. So the small designs, ultimately as a printer you prefer that because it's way cheaper on the ink cost. The white underbase on a dark shirt is like let's say a print costs $4. $3 of that would probably be white ink cost. The CMYK colors would probably be maybe 40 cents Canadian. So I don't know, about 25 cents US and then the pre treat and everything else would factor in for the other 50 cents to make up that dollar. But the white ink is the most expensive. So you ultimately want to print on light colored shirts so you don't have to use the white ink under, under base as a printer. But what sells is you know, dark color shirts. Black is number one as always. Right.

Lizzie Smiley (48:10)

Comfort colors, pepper for the win.

Jay d' Souza (48:12)

Yeah, Any darks. You got it. But that's the thing. So like you bigger is better because you got to interrupt the feed.

Lizzie Smiley (48:18)

Yeah, okay. Yeah, we got to do an entire chat about that. Tell us how can, how can anyone listening who would really like to strengthen their design skills get that help work with you in the membership which P.S. guys, I just joined yesterday because I want to just get better and better. How can they join that? I think you had, you had a special offer for them.

Jay d' Souza (48:36)

Special offer for your listeners. Yeah. So it's. Lizzie's got a link to share with you all. You're going to get 45% off right now. It's 67 bucks a month. You're gonna get 45% off. Which I think puts it around the 37 marker. Yeah, I mean for less than 10 bucks a week it's a no brainer. And that was the whole M.O. behind this. Right. I wanted to make it honestly monetarily feasible and accessible for everybody. But at the same time the value is ridiculous. I want to be able to over deliver every time and that's why we're reopening again towards the end of June. But this link that Lizzie has for you is I think should let me know if it doesn't work. But it should Be good year round. So regardless.

Lizzie Smiley (49:13)

No way.

Jay d' Souza (49:14)

Yeah, I don't think you have to wait. I just tweaked that this morning. So you should be able to get in using Lizzie's link ASAP. Otherwise everybody else has to wait till June 23rd when we actually open the doors. And the reason for the opening and closing is because I want to make sure we continue to over deliver. Right? So it's not like, you know, I think we're at just under 200 people right now, but I don't want to necessarily grow from 200 to 1000 overnight because, I don't know, I want to make sure I can deliver the value right at the end of the day. I want to make sure that people get the win. So it's that kind of thing. But above and beyond everything, the community alone, we have co working calls too, which is awesome. So you can just, they're kind of ongoing. You can just pop in, have a chat. It's like having a co worker. Because let's be real, right? This solopreneurship journey we're on can get friggin lonely pretty quickly. So it's nice at any time of day because we have people from, you know, different parts of the world. You can potentially go in there and have somebody to just bounce ideas off of or have a conversation. And I think the most beautiful thing about it, apart from the sense of community, because it's probably number one. The second thing is we trust each other in a world where, you know, everybody is so proprietary, nobody wants to show their shops, nobody wants to show their designs, blah, blah, blah, news flash, if your design sucks, you're not making sales, nobody's copying your crap. Right, let's start. Stop there, right? Because why would I copy your designer, steal your design if you're not making any sales, Right. End of the day. But we've built a community and I pride myself, if not on any, anything else, but on this one thing, is that we built a community of trust where people will share their designs. And ultimately one of the calls every month, it's actually tomorrow's call, it's a hot seat. Designs, we call them. You submit your designs, we go over it live on a call, I will deconstruct it, make it better, whatever I got to do to your design. And because you guys know the rules on Etsy, because you've got a hand in creating the design, you can take that design now and go sell it, right? So it's like you're literally getting me hands on your design. I don't know if I could provide any other value beyond the mindset stuff than actually turning your design into something that you could possibly sell. At least give it a way better shot. So, yeah, I don't know. I'm excited for all of it. The more I talk about it, the more I realize how much value is in there. And it just. It's only grown to be this way. It's only a year old, but. It's a year old two days ago, actually. But only grown to be this awesome because of the community in it, the people in it. Right. We've had a couple people say, I thought I, you know, I thought it'd be a one month to come. Somebody. This morning. I thought I'd be there for a month, but honestly, I'm. I've been here months now because the community is just amazing. And for the sideline lurkers, you know, it's a place where you can feel safe asking questions and not feel like you're gonna get ostracized in some Facebook group with people just, you know, laugh. Emoji in your question. You know what I mean? Like, it's.

Lizzie Smiley (51:51)

I made a nice addictive community too. Oh, I hate the meanness. This is why I have really strong rules on my. You're. But your Facebook group is pretty friendly, isn't it?

Jay d' Souza (52:00)

Yeah, I don't have a tolerance for any of that crap, so I'll. You'll get booted. Yeah. So I. That said. Yeah, nice segue. Or circle back there. But got the YouTube channel at Jay's Way works. Got. Obviously my membership and my Facebook group is. I guess Lizzie's got the links to all of that down there, but we can leave that. It's Etsy Print on Demand, and I think I named it to. Yeah, it's. If you search Etsy Print on Demand, you'll see the orange group there, big X on it. Etsy and Amazon merch. Ultimately, it's 20,000 members or so. Totally free. Come join, Come say hi. But ultimately, it'd be great if you can get out of your own way and want to get better at design, because I think the biggest hurdle, again, is design, and people don't want to. And this kills me. Sorry, I'm. I'm adding a little bit more here. But people will go first and foremost into all these print on demand groups and say, I'm not making sales. I know my design is good. I know my SEO is good, and I don't know why I'm not making sales. Well, you Just now set a precedent that you are already telling people that you believe that your design is good. So no one's going to comment on your design because they're afraid of hurting your feelings or because you're already not allowing people to. You know, you're. You're showing that you're not willing to take that Critique. Right? So nine times out of 10, I look at those, and I guarantee you it's the design, right? So it's like, you know, you need to get out of your own way.

Lizzie Smiley (53:17)

That way people don't realize it's the biggest issue with things not converting for print on demand and digital products. It's. It's. And it's hard to tell people, you know, I get it, but.

Jay d' Souza (53:27)

So tell yourself then, right? Just get out of your own way. Be honest with yourself, and don't take my word for it or Lizzie's word for it. But, like, pull up your listing and search results. I've said this like a hundred times now, but pull up your listing and search results and go show somebody, maybe two listings. Even if you're in the same niche, ideally for whatever keywords you want to rank for, make sure your listing shows up in those search results. Go show somebody in your house. Doesn't matter who. Old, young, more perspectives, the better. Don't tell them which listing is yours, and ask them to pick their top three or four listings on that first results page. If yours are not in the top three, if you're not in at least the top five, you got to go back to the drawing board. If you're not in the top three, you may not make many sales. Unfortunately, it's. And that's the easiest way to be. You know, get an objective opinion, I think. Right.

Lizzie Smiley (54:10)

Okay. We should do that as a call. And everyone's got to bring like a. That would be. I'm not mean. You have to do it, but how fun would that be to have like a. Like a zoom call? And everyone's got to bring. It's got their design in it, but it's got some others. And then the group ranks the designs on there, and then they can get the feedback without it being super personal. Oh, I love that idea. Jay, you're a genius.

Jay d' Souza (54:30)

So smart. You don't even have to. Yeah. If you want to leverage, like the hive mind on a podcast like this, then do that. Screenshot it all. Screenshot the top. What you think is the top 10 best selling and put yours in the middle. And if you can't immediately see a difference, you should be able to yourself if you're being completely objective with yourself. But if you can't and don't understand why, then, you know, submit it. That'd be awesome.

Lizzie Smiley (54:52)

Years ago, I used to say in the sign business that print out, like, the first page of search results, use Canva and put your picture in one of them and then the same thing. Either ask someone else or look at yourself and see does your thumbnail jump out? It was more of a thumbnail training on that one. Does yours stick out? Trying to compare visually, but I love how you just said that. That's such a healthy way to get. I'm geeking out. I'm done. Jay, this has been a joy. I love you. I love your approach. I'm so excited we have this resource I can point people to because design is the biggest issue I see every single day, and it's. It's a tricky one. So you're handling fine jewels, my friend. Thank you for your time and your willingness to share.

Jay d' Souza (55:32)

Thank you so much for having me. Again, super grateful that you even reached out. I think long overdue. Just by, you know, our brief chats, we've had, you know, yesterday and today. I think this was really long overdue. So thank you so much. I hope if again, everybody out there, if you're on the fence about stuff, a take action. Again, you can't sell it if it's not listed. So please just, you know, take Lizzie's advice on that end too, and it echoes mine. Don't listen to everybody anymore. Pick one or two that you resonate with and just get started because you know, a year from now, you're going to wish you did.

Lizzie Smiley (56:06)

Yeah, perfect mic drop. All right, guys, thanks for hanging out with us. We've had the best hour with you. Hope you took away some good gems. Until next week. Go make something awesome. I love you guys. And that's a wrap on this episode of how to sell your stuff on Etsy. Thanks so much for hanging out with me today. If you're looking for more resources, head on over to howtosellyourstuff.com where you'll find podcast, show notes, all the links from today's episode, the blog, courses, coaching, and more. If this episode was helpful to you, awesome. The greatest compliment I can receive from you is a rate, review and subscribe on this podcast. Not only will it allow us to connect again on a future episode, it lets me know I'm providing you with value and helps other people find this content more easily. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your support. Have a great day and see you next time.