← Follow The Yellow Brick Road
Loading summary
Transcript125 lines
- [00:03]
A
Hey guys. Welcome back to Special Ops Podcast where we give real actionable insights to entrepreneurs. Today we're talking about why inflation is eating into your profits faster than ever. And what's your plan to stay afloat during this time? In this episode, we're going to dive deep into the strategies for inflation proofing your business and maintaining profitability despite rising costs. Don't forget to visit our visionary Volt. It's our free resource area@specialopspodcast.com so stick around and learn about seven specific shifts that you can safeguard your margins. Grab our inflation proof business guide in our members area at the end of the episode. So we're going to talk about those seven shifts that you can make. Let's talk about the first way that we can do it. And I know it sounds basic, but understanding how inflation is actually impacting your business. And the bottom line is like, we all know that inflation's out there, but it actually has like real impacts on everything in your business.
- [00:44]
B
Literally every, not just in your business, on everything in the whole world, by.
- [00:48]
A
The way, but specifically your business. What we're talking about. Right. So it, it's cost. Not just on your materials, not just on labor. All those things are going up. But even like energy costs.
- [00:56]
B
Well, let's, let's, let's back up for a minute and just so when we're looking at how inflation is impacting our business, in order to know what we're fighting against, like we need to make buckets.
- [01:07]
A
Okay.
- [01:07]
B
We did not go up on our prices due to inflation as shockwave. Correct?
- [01:12]
A
Yeah.
- [01:12]
B
On any of our services businesses.
- [01:14]
A
True.
- [01:15]
B
We did not go up on any of our pricing. Anyone in the online marketing space that works with us didn't experience their operational labor increase. So they don't need to worry about any of that and how to cut costs there.
- [01:28]
A
Right, right, right.
- [01:29]
B
But if you have a bunch of staff that suddenly couldn't pay rent anymore because they weren't making enough to all of a sudden. Because you know things have changed. Right. Since February of 2020. That since February 2020, I just can't even believe this. Consumer prices have increased 21.2%. Bank rate analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that in 2020. I just want to say it again because it's crazy. In 2020, consumer prices have increased 21.2%. That's well above any historical average in a four year period ever. In fact, for comparison, inflation rose 18.9% in all of the 2010s from 2010 to 2019. 18.9%. In four years we hit 21.2%. The magnitude of that is horrific. And we're going to suffer from that. And so your people are going to suffer from that. And so you've got to pay your people more or you're not going to have quality work. So when we say understanding how inflation impacts your online business, really look at and I mean this like if you have a, have vendors that their prices didn't go up because they were able to figure out how to use certain tools to increase what they could bring in and they didn't need to go up on you, you don't have to worry about that. But cost of good have gone, goods have gone up, raw materials have gone up. And there are ways to look through what we're selling, not just increased prices. And we'll talk about that later. But you really, the very first thing is make a list of what things are impacting your ability to make profits in your business. Because not every single thing is going to be an issue. And some things you'll leave alone and some things you need to get hyper focused on. And that's why you want to understand how inflation is impacting your specific business.
- [03:21]
A
Yeah.
- [03:21]
B
Let's jump to two.
- [03:22]
A
Cool. So the second way is adjusting your price strategy without losing customers. Now that sounds pretty difficult to do actually. Right. Because you've got like if you're going to make changes.
- [03:30]
B
I like difficult.
- [03:32]
A
I know you do. But we split test stuff on funnels all the time. Right. So we're, we're price testing constantly with clients.
- [03:37]
B
You don't just want to run out and increase prices. Okay.
- [03:40]
A
Right.
- [03:40]
B
It's not anyone suggesting here but there are different strategies. Let's go through those strategies. One is small incremental drips of pricing increase. I actually don't suggest this. I think this is a.
- [03:55]
A
Increases.
- [03:55]
B
Yeah, I think it's a bad idea. I, I really do. I think it's a bad idea. I think that when you, when you understand what elements of your business are being affected by inflation, when you take a look at that, then you can go and say, okay, how can I add value and create packages without raising my base pricing that can add to my bottom line. So let's talk about that. If I have a physical product, let's say just because one of the highest searched things today was thermal guns, I don't know why is one of the highest search gadgets today. The things I know anyway, thermal guns is what you're selling. So what can I give people who are buying thermal guns me online. I can give them ebooks of back stretches that you can do every morning that will help increase the, the effects of your thermal gun. I can give you detox drinks that actually will help your spine because it releases inflammation. I'm making this up literally. But I can, I can create packages. And so maybe my thermal gun is $208 with a $4.99 shipping. And then I have six ebooks valued at $240.
- [05:10]
A
Right.
- [05:11]
B
I put those ebooks on Amazon for that cost because that doesn't cost me anything. And when people look it up, they can see it. And, and by the way, you will get a couple hits. But then I make this package and I add a $17 bump for something that cost me money one time.
- [05:28]
A
Right. And you can get it over and over and over again.
- [05:30]
B
Right. And there's any business can do that. So like literally a services business, perhaps we do an audit every month at the end of the month that you, you create a chat bot to do that gives someone, you know, if you're doing customer service, we have a customer service business. We're going to audit your calls and we're going to give you metrics for your marketing on what you can split test next month so that you can increase your, so that you can decrease your refunds. Here's the number one reason why people are refunding. You can, you can fix this in your marketing with expectations. It can create valuable insights and you can do that in just about any, in any business. And so you just literally create bumps, order bumps. And then you have an email list, you have a bunch of people that bought a product from you. Right. Why aren't you offering them low ticket stuff all the time?
- [06:24]
A
Yeah, well, and we even, we've even talked about in different examples of like adding elements of customer loyalty into your programs. Right. So if you have customers who are buying products regularly, you, you talk about a company, I forget the name of the product that you have a subscription to.
- [06:40]
B
Right, right, right, right. I know you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. It was a couple years ago, I had a subscription service to some supplements. The first thing that they did was they offered me not coaching, but like we have all of this vault. Like we have a vault, the visionaries vault. We have this vault of products that we can, you know, we. Not products, but advice basically. And so then it was a couple weeks later like, hey, for $7 more a month and I'm already paying 69. So for $7 more a month, we'll send you an ebook guide. It came with like I have blood sugar problems, so it came with like a shopping list and recipes and nothing that took more than five minutes from someone who probably was in college, but it put together for me and made my life convenient, so why not? So anything you had. Right, right, right. So they got an extra seven bucks out of me and I got an extra hour of time instead of looking for low carb recipes that taste good. And here we are.
- [07:41]
A
Let's move on because we got a lot to cover here. So I wanted to talk about like how to improve overall efficiency and protect the margins.
- [07:48]
B
Absolutely, absolutely. So we are in a. What a time to be alive. We are very fortunate. What a time to be alive. We are so fortunate that this whole thing started during the pandemic. What holding the whole inflation. I mean inflation, inflation started long before that. But it came noticeable during the pandemic. And the. What was also fortunate is right about the time that it really became like noticeable, I started coming out.
- [08:16]
A
Right.
- [08:16]
B
I was already out.
- [08:18]
A
But nobody was using it.
- [08:19]
B
We have, we have clients that have been talking about it for years. Yeah, but it wasn't, it was difficult to use. Nobody's really using it in the way that they are today. And, and now like mind pal, dude, like this thing is crazy. We got six autonomous agents doing jobs for people. So, so many people are afraid to use the tools that are out there and you're either going to lose them and learn them and die. And if you're chat GPT in your emails. This is not what I'm talking about.
- [08:44]
A
I guess better than not, but there's so.
- [08:46]
B
That's not what I'm talking about. It's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about empowering your teams with AI so you can get three people out of one. Now I am not talking about working people to death, right. I'm talking about the opposite. I'm talking about making their job so easy that they're pushing, you know, pushing the buttons. People pushing buttons are being paid well, but they're capable of producing the work of three people because you have invested in them and teaching them how to use AI, how to use robotics, how to use automations. And when you can literally go through, you go through all your SOPs and you go through everything. What can be automated? Question one.
- [09:20]
A
Why are we still doing this manually?
- [09:22]
B
What can be automated? Question one, Question two. What are we doing here manually that AI could write for us, could create for us, could design for us. AI doesn't connect things.
- [09:33]
A
The robotics.
- [09:33]
B
But yeah, it's not. We're not on robotics yet. We're on AI. Stop getting ahead of yourself. Okay, okay, so AI. So, and then, and then what robotics can we put in place? But if you go into mindpal, for those of you who don't know what mindpal is, I can create a copywriter that will write the copy. I can create a graphic designer that will create the. The images. The images. I can create a tech guy that builds the whole thing. I can create a quality control agent that goes through and QCs the whole thing. And then I can have a project manager that makes sure all of it works well and then pushes it to go live. And I didn't do anything. On the other hand, I can have a copywriter write a blog post. A graphic designer design images, a fact checker go and make sure that the copywriter got all the facts of my blog post correctly. And then turn the blog, and then turn the blog post into a newsletter. And then a delivery agent that goes and puts it out to my ESP and publishes it. And 500 of them while I'm sleeping. So there's no reason not to take your operations and make them efficient and effective because they're AI Robotics supercharged.
- [10:48]
A
And then the fourth way is optimizing supply chain.
- [10:51]
B
Sure. So one of the things that, that I love is create a. A bidding war.
- [10:58]
A
Okay.
- [10:59]
B
For your business. I mean, seriously, supply chain is a tricky thing that if you're not an operator, you just think that the price is the price. So depending on what you're creating, we'll talk about supplements just because I know it so well.
- [11:13]
A
Sure, sure.
- [11:13]
B
Okay. Can I shop my own Ross?
- [11:15]
A
You could.
- [11:16]
B
You asked your manufacturer, can I shop my own Ross? Oh, no, no. We have shopping for you. Okay. I'm going to need to look for another manufacturer. Can I shop my own Rogers? You can. There are brokers who work similar to you do merchant accounts. You get commissions from the banks, not the people you serve.
- [11:30]
A
Right.
- [11:30]
B
Same thing. There are brokers out there that can go get your raw ingredients for you cheaper. Your manufacturer is still going to test them. There's, you know what I mean? Like, they're going to come in and they're still going to test them. So you're still going to have quality products and you're just going to get a broker to go to 10 different places. And, and here's what they do, by the way. They bring them all to one central place and they let like, who's Got the cheapest price today. And they can all see each other's prices and they're bidding for the.
- [11:57]
A
Bidding down the.
- [11:57]
B
Right, yeah, right, right. So you can absolutely negotiate your, you know, your supply chain costs. Additionally, just to throw this in here is fulfillment. You can also negotiate your fulfillment costs. And. And one of the things that we did for one of our clients is they were on a three to five day. We to a five to seven day. Zero customer issues, right? Zero customer issues. $1.44 per package that went out. And they were doing. They were doing a thousand orders a day over the course of a year. So really just dive into that and look at that. And then I guess we can move on to number five, which is going to be the one I'm going to spend the most time.
- [12:37]
A
So number five is focusing on your marketing, on value and quality. And I think a great example of this is Campbell Soup. We've talked about this a lot, but. But they actually epitomize a lot of great strategies on how to shift this. And so I think it would be fun to talk in.
- [12:53]
B
I love Campbell's Soup. I talk about Campbell's Soup all the time. I started geeking out over them during the pandemic is when I started studying them. And what I was studying was companies during great tragedy, worldwide tragedy that did well. And so Campbell Soup three times during the Great Depression, I think 29 to 39 during 2008 to 2011 and in 2020 to 2021, Campbell Soup increased their stockholder value each time. Each time. And here's what they did. Camel Soup saw that the whole world was freaking out and they were scared. This is the first time they did this is during the Great Depression. True story. They had no idea. Nobody knew who they were. Tiny. Tiny. What they did is they became the official meal. I'm reading this off because I want to make sure I get it right. They became the official meal for those in desperate days, largely because Campbell's was the first soup company able to produce a condensed tomato soup that did not separate in the can. So they, they. What they did was they went out and they figured out they're not the best. By the way, there are lots of other soups that are back then too. They're far better in taste, but they're created a condensed soup which is what the market needed because now I get to add water to this thing and feed twice the people. Their number one thing that they went for, the thing that they spent the most money on was advertising, marketing. They Became a household name. All they wanted to do is get their name out there. And so they went and they doubled down, and they doubled down and they doubled down, and their advertising cost tripled while everyone else cut back. And Campbell's Soup, I think the depression lasted 10 years. I think it was 29 to 39 and really hit hard in the. In about 33. So they come out of this thing as the only household name for soups, as the only people, the only soup company that anybody knew. Nuts, Nuts, Nuts, Nuts, Nuts. Again, market crashes in 2008. We go through a recession to 2011, and Campbell's Soup says, let's do it again. We know what to do. We know. Yeah, we know what to do. We were starting to lose our luster, right, from all of, you know, the marketing that we did then in the 1960s, I think Andy Warhol made them a household name through fine art. Right. He became Campbell Soup was already a household name, but he kept it going for them. And now it was starting to kind of. Right, right. People are starting to be more aware of preservatives and, oh, look at that housing market crash. Let's do it again. And so they doubled down again and they spent more money again. And then during the pandemic, they did it again. Oh, you're sick. Everybody's sick. Have some soup. Campbell's Soup. Campbell's Soup makes you feel better. And so they have been a giant. A giant for nearly a century. A household name for nearly a century. Nearly a century worth of human beings have regularly consumed their product name. A product that's happened with.
- [16:05]
A
There's probably a handful of products that. That has happened with. So.
- [16:09]
B
And I'm talking about. I'm talking about over the long term, nationwide, not. Not little mom and pop places that have been around for 100 years. I'm talking about nationwide household names that if you went to Asia, if you went to Europe, still be recognized. Still be recognized 100 years later.
- [16:27]
A
Right.
- [16:27]
B
I'm not telling you to go spend all of your money on advertising. What I'm saying is don't freak out and have that. The place that you save money. That's not the place to save your money. That's not the place to save your money. That's the place to spend your money wisely. I'm going to talk about that for about two seconds, but I'm going to talk about it a lot in our free guide.
- [16:48]
A
Okay?
- [16:48]
B
So if you check out our website and pull the free guide, I'll really explain this. Well, your Marketing dollars. So many people think that they know how to measure their marketing dollars, and a lot of people think that they understand where they should spend it and how they should spend it. They think they understand the data because they think they understand split tests. Split tests aren't the only thing. So, number one, all of your traffic, not your traffic sources, all of your traffic should be monitored. The data should be monitored separately.
- [17:18]
A
Okay.
- [17:19]
B
Okay. And then we're going to look at aov, because that's important.
- [17:24]
A
By traffic source.
- [17:25]
B
By traffic. No.
- [17:26]
A
Okay.
- [17:27]
B
No, no, no, no. Not just by traffic source. So not just by Facebook. By campaign.
- [17:33]
A
Okay.
- [17:34]
B
So not just by affiliate, but by campaign. I want to go crazy granular. Everybody looks at it per campaign. Everybody's rolling their eyes at me. What people don't do is follow it over six months on cltv, right? I want to know over six months, including all of that get sent in or out, all CPAs, everything that customer that came in from that affiliate on that, not just a traffic source, that affiliate on that traffic source or my organic or whatever, even my emails, even my subject lines, everything has this massive data set of tracking. What did I make the most money on? And even though I may have killed that ad a long time ago, when I see six months later, if it's like ranking really high, let's go recreate 25 of those and then let's see which one wins. And then let's take that and recreate 25 of those. Now on the other side, I got an affiliate, Travis, from California, who's been sending my offer forever. And I've been sending him a CPA because in 2020, his CPA that I negotiated with him came from a massive amount of quantity and really great traffic. That paid really well on the back end for me. Yeah, if I paid attention to his ltv, probably I did that off a gut response over. Over quality, quantity. But if I track this and I'm like, man, like this guy, I'm giving him. I give Everybody else a $50 CPA, I'm giving him a $60 CPA. His quantity has dropped a bit, but his quality has really dropped. Some of these customers, yeah, this might not be worth it. If I killed Travis. If Travis was bringing me 100 orders a day but costing me two bucks over the six months LTV, because I wasn't paying attention. Because I only paid it when I brought Travis on and we were scaling, just that alone can save you a bunch of money. And not enough people do that. Additionally, they. They will negotiate CPAs on previous offers and relationship. So one of my offers you may have been able to convert really well, and the other one maybe not.
- [19:39]
A
Yeah, not so much.
- [19:40]
B
And. And all of your traffic sources are going to be like that. We. We used to promote on Newsmax all the time. I can't get anything really to convert while there other people can. I'm not saying Newsmax sucks, but my offers just don't work there anymore.
- [19:54]
A
Yeah.
- [19:54]
B
And so you really got to assess that. So really spending time on your marketing and knowing where to spend your money on your marketing, knowing your C. CL tv, not just per affiliate, not just per traffic source, but per affiliate, per traffic source, per campaign. Because maybe that one affiliate has one campaign that's really killing you in refunds and chargebacks. And if you killed that, you'd be super profitable.
- [20:18]
A
Right.
- [20:18]
B
You really need to know that.
- [20:19]
A
Right. But you don't know unless you're looking in and diving into that to analyze it.
- [20:23]
B
Correct.
- [20:23]
A
Okay. Okay.
- [20:24]
B
So we can move on. But Campbell soup. Campbell Soup, man, like, they need to. Like I'd read any book about them. They. What a phenomenal company. What a brilliant company.
- [20:34]
A
Yeah. So this next way is cutting unnecessary.
- [20:36]
B
But Disney. Disney is the one. The other one that's been around 100. I couldn't remember the one that's been around. There was one that's been around for that long and has been a household name for the same amount of time. And it was Disney. God. Sorry.
- [20:48]
A
Yeah. But the six way is cutting unnecessary costs while keeping quality.
- [20:51]
B
Right.
- [20:52]
A
You know, what are some of the ways that we can trim some of those expenses without sacrificing the quality of the product or satisfaction.
- [20:58]
B
Perfect. The first thing that you can do is download your monthly statement.
- [21:02]
A
Okay.
- [21:02]
B
Pull everything. Pull everything that you pay for.
- [21:05]
A
Bank and credit card statement. Just look at those. What you're spending money on, wherever you.
- [21:08]
B
Spend money, whatever you're looking at. So pull that. Take a look at it. Bet you got a whole bunch of subscriptions that you don't need. Bet you get a whole bunch of nonsense that you're paying for. Employees that had subscriptions that have been long gone. Oh my gosh. Every time I go through someone's email that has, you know, a reasonable amount of employees on staff, they end up. They end up having a couple hundred bucks a month and emails and. No, that was what I was going to say. You don't fuck me. Stop finishing my sentences, God damn it. So Slack Google ClickUp, you pay a subscription every month for those people. That's what I Just said time doctor. No, it's not. Yeah, no, it's not what you said. You said they have softwares. That's not what I said. They have their email address that's inactive. You kept it active for a certain amount of time and forgotten. You got 40 people on there. You've got slack, you've got 40 people on there. And then, and then you've got software and you've got tools and you've got all kinds of. We were paying chat GPT for one of our previous employees for like the past year and no idea that it was my card hooked up to his chat GPT because it just said chat GBT and no one questioned it. So then I went, 1, 2, 3. But that's.
- [22:18]
A
Why do we have that many?
- [22:19]
B
Why do we have so many? So first things first. Your own internal stuff. How many people are you using? Can they be guests? Your ClickUp? ClickUp can cost a lot of money to have people in there. Some of our client staff need to be in our ClickUp. We have to have channels in there with them or dashboards in there with them. You can add them as a guest and not pay anything. Same for Slack. You can add them as a guest. They can just be a one channel and not pay anything. So really take time to assess those things because depending on big your company is, that can be a major win. And then when we go to software and tools, am I paying for tools for employees that have been gone? That's number one. Number two, soccer likes to use descript. Jay likes to use X tool that does the same exact thing. We're paying 40 bucks. Each has three seats. Hey, guys, you need to pick one. Like I'm sorry, but you need to pick one. They both do the same exact thing. But what else does it do? Oh, Emma has captions. Captions does all of that. Let's get rid of the two of those and just do captions. Captions is 600 bucks a month. And so you really get to sit down and not just say, who's using this? That's the biggest. Everybody sends out the spreadsheet and says, who's using this?
- [23:25]
A
Everybody.
- [23:26]
B
Right? What are you using tool for? What does the tool do? And we use soccer for that in our business. What is everything this tool can do? What is every tool that we have that we're utilizing? What tools can we get rid of that we can now save? Another thing that you can do when you're looking at this is we're using an instance and then instance we're using a white label GHL that Perry Vulture sells called Springboard. Springboard has a calendly. I can't even name it all like chl. It's all kinds of, it's all kinds of stuff and it's far and all like it replaced tons of our stuff. You know, a very small fee every month when we use that. It was a pain because our team was like, I don't want to transfer. I don't want to move everything. This doesn't make sense. But it took about a month, month to migrate and then everybody's there. 5,400 bucks a month in savings. Oh yeah, 5,400 bucks a month in savings. So you can find stuff like that to really go through and, and, and save some cash. We talked about supply chain, we talked about employees, but the average company pays 8, $200 per employee per year on software and tools because they're not maximizing and they already have what they already have. And so you really, it's really, a really, really good way. I would never get rid of ClickUp. I would never get rid of ClickUp. ClickUp keeps our company moving forward. We also had something called Notion. Notion may be a great tool, but we were using it for one thing that ClickUp could technically do, but this one thing it could do a little bit faster. This is a conversation. How much time does it save having it in here versus and click up. 15, 20 minutes a day. Oh, a month. Put it in ClickUp.
- [25:17]
A
Right? Just deal. Just.
- [25:18]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's certain, somewhere else. There are certain times that I don't want to save time and I want to use employee time because it's much more effective. But that's going to take you sitting down, being strategic, really. Sitting with someone who doesn't have any stake in this fight.
- [25:34]
A
Right.
- [25:34]
B
Who understands how tool work, tools work and sitting and taking the time with your team. And a lot of people don't want, oh, I'm already so behind. Why would I pay everybody to sit on a call with me? Think 82 80, 480, 280, 400 a year per employee if you could save half of that.
- [25:51]
A
This is basically also like known as zero based budgeting or zero cost budgeting. So instead of saying, well, here's what we're spending on this software, it's like, no, our budget is zero. So if you're going to justify us spending additional money on whatever the software is, justify it. Like, why do we have to use this and we can't use anything else and, and so basically going through that process helps you identify exactly where you're wasting money on things that maybe there's another solution already in. In.
- [26:16]
B
Right.
- [26:17]
A
The tool stack that you have.
- [26:18]
B
The last one is a great one.
- [26:20]
A
Number seven. So building long term customer loyalty through engagement. I love this.
- [26:24]
B
Yeah, me too. Me too. Because the best way you can increase your profits is keeping your customers coming back. And that's because you have no cost to acquire.
- [26:33]
A
You've already got them.
- [26:34]
B
So imagine if you had a little bit of cost every single time they came back. I'm going to talk about. Do we talk about. I love those.
- [26:41]
A
Great example.
- [26:41]
B
I love. Does. I love the company. Jack, I want you to come on the show. He's the CEO of do's. He lives here in Austin too. He's absolutely brilliant. What he. I'm going to say what he pulled on me. When he pulled on me. The first thing that happened was I watched this little video and this little video told me about how great it was going to be when I started using Dose. And it was going to be great because, you know, I went off Adderall. I've been on fricking some form of ADHD med most of my life. And this was just going to be great. I was going to be focused. And. And I got, you know, all these advertisements that clicked a little too many times and I got.
- [27:17]
A
That never happens.
- [27:18]
B
Right? I know, I know. And so I got all these advertisements, more advertisements. And then finally I see this box and it's being unveiled. It's like this awesome box. This coffee is 28 bucks because it was a little bit off. And so I ordered the starter box. And so I open up the box and there's a frother. Really nice frother. And there's a bag of Dose coffee and there's a bunch of freaking paper that was crumpled up. Look, nice library. The little like, you know, little slips of. Yeah, yeah. Like, kind of like confetti, but not. And. And then there's this card and it's like, thank you so much for ordering doughs. And here's a QR code for your friends. And. And then you open the card and it's like, would you like to get another gift next month? Sign up. Don't ever run out of doughs. Sign up and we'll give you another gift next month. So next month comes and I get a glass and it's a total piece of crap. It's like this little. Just. It's just. But it's got mushrooms all over it. It says doughs.
- [28:18]
A
It's spreading. Yeah.
- [28:20]
B
Can't put it in the dishwasher, so I never use it. But it was awesome. I got a dough's mushroom cup. Great. This glass cup. If I ever want to drink out of it and want to clean it by hand, maybe I'll pull it out of the cabinet. This is wonderful. But it's there and it's wonderful. Well, Now I pay 30 bucks because I, you know, I only saved two bucks first time, but whatever, who cares? 30 bucks. But 30 bucks lasts about five, six days for me because I drink and then coffee. I drink a lot of coffee. I drink a lot of mushroom coffee. I go on their website and I order more. And so they notice that every month I keep ordering more and they're like, hey, do you want to just go on subscription for three of them? But also every month they send me this little gift. The next month I got a Tumblr. The next month I got a sticker that I pretty sure I just have in a pantry drawer, drawer somewhere. But I just love the little gifts. Can't use any of them.
- [29:05]
A
You know what it is? And every time it's something.
- [29:06]
B
No, I can see online, if I bother to, if I bother to log in, I can see it. But I just know that I'm going to get a gift every month. They're going to send me something every single month. And whenever I buy extra stuff, they're going to let me know. But also, oh, this is the other thing. This is the other thing. So my husband, who does not like being left out, doesn't drink coffee. And so they start sending samples of their other products.
- [29:27]
A
Oh, yeah, Perfect.
- [29:28]
B
So right. Perfect for them. This is how they got me. So. And Gabe's a consumer. So Gabe's an absolute consumer. So they send these little packets of their Matcha that you can make in the morning. And so, oh, now he's gonna get three bags a month of matcha. That's 30 bucks a pop. And he gets a gift every month too. Guess what? It's the same gift. He's just on a two month backlog. He knows he can't use any of it. He still loves it because he gave him gifts. And then what do they send him? Coconut creamer. Which almost killed me, by the way. They sent him coconut creamer. And now he's got a subscription for three freaking bags of Matcha and one bag of coconut cream with collagen because it's going to help his wrinkles and, and it makes him feel refreshed. Like, these people are brilliant. They're absolutely brilliant. We'll never leave, right?
- [30:11]
A
Because I keep doing something every single.
- [30:14]
B
Long term customer loyalty. That's so that's one example. I do want to give, like, a couple more of what you can do, because it's one example for a physical product, but a great way to build customer loyalty. I can do so many things now. I can have a guy send you, Travis, a video of me, Emma, saying, hey, hey, Travis. Thank you so much for your order. It's me, Emma Rainbow. Is all you got to do. It's me, Emma Rainbow. I wrote wave. I hope you love it after you implement it in your business. Hit me back, let me know how it was. I really want to know.
- [30:44]
A
And it's personalized.
- [30:45]
B
And it's personalized. And then my customer service team can make that with a script because Travis called and all they're going to do is fill in the thing, Right? So then Travis goes to my Facebook because I told him to. And I like in. In the video. Embedded in the video is a link to the Facebook group. I've said this before on podcasts. Fricking go start a Facebook group. If you have an offer product, have a Facebook group for that product, for the people who bought that product. Travis is going to go in there and he's going to be like, hey, I got your video implemented your wave. Freaking amazing. My team and I are all doing great. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. My team's going to go make another video. Hey, Travis, I'm so glad to hear that. That's super awesome. Number one, Travis just gave me a testimonial. Number two, I'm going to hit Travis with an offer. Ready? Hey, Travis. Thank you. That's so freaking great. I'm so glad. Here's my leadership guide. Three easy steps to build rapport with your team. Just for reaching out and letting me know how it. What is Travis gonna do? Follow Emma Rainbow. Right? So there's. There's a ton of different ways to do this. A ton of different ways. If you sell a supplement, send a video. Remember Adam Pivko came on, like, forever ago, and we talked to him and he had bought a product and the owner. It was a email from the owner, obviously from customer service that was like, hey, Adam, I couldn't believe it when I saw you. I know. It was so great. You ordered my product. And when I saw your name come through for Shipp, I went ahead and upgraded you to the fastest shipping available. It'll be there in two days. I'm so excited for you to try my product. Thank you so much for buying it. That man didn't send that email, so. But what a brilliant marketing strategy. So there are all sorts of little ways that you can think through, help.
- [32:31]
A
Your customers feel seen and heard and connected with your brand and with your products. Yeah.
- [32:36]
B
Feel seen and heard and connected with your products. That's such. That's a great way to end this.
- [32:40]
A
Yeah.
- [32:41]
B
So just to recap the the ways, number one, understand how inflation is affecting your online business to adjust your pricing strategy without losing customers. Number three, improve your operational efficiency and profit margins. Number four, optimize supply chain costs. Number five, focus on marketing. Just be freaking Campbell's. Just become Campbells. Just become gambles.
- [33:09]
A
Yeah.
- [33:10]
B
Cut unnecessary costs while keeping quality is number six. Build long term customer loyalty through engagement is number seven.
- [33:17]
A
Yeah. So look, we don't want you guys to let inflation hurt your profits, so make sure you grab our free resource. It's in the members area at our visionary vault. It's got a full guide to shift your operations and marketing strategies in a way that'll work in inflationary environments. And we can't wait to catch you guys next week. So make sure if you got anything of value out of this, go to specialopspodcast.com click like and subscribe and we will catch you next time.