Luke Jaten: Direct Response Veteran On The Basics of Green

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I couldn't agree more, Jim. That was Jim Gaffigan, famous comedian. I am Brad Costanzo, the not so famous podcast host. I'd much rather have fortune than fame.

And.

And this is bacon wrapped business. Now, if this is your first time finding the show, I welcome you with open arms. Gonna do my best to deliver a sizzling hot show. And I'll use as many cheesy, cheeky bacon metaphors and euphemisms as I can because, well, it's how I entertain myself. And I hope you're entertained along with me. If you guys are here. Back for more, I want to welcome you. It means a lot to me that you listen to the show every single week and leave the five star reviews on itunes. I do read every single one of them and I appreciate it.

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If you haven't had a chance to rate the show, please do so. If you have any questions, remember, you can always reach me@askbradaconrappedbusiness.com whether you want to share your own strategies, business advice, or you have questions, challenges, or you'd like a second opinion on your own marketing or business strategy, just send that email to askbradbaconraftbusiness.com and now let's bring on my guest. Actually, before I do that, let me explain who I'm bringing on. Several years ago, I reached out to a guy that I read a information product that he created. I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Nobody was really teaching this stuff. We became friends, we became mastermind partners together, we share ideas all the time. And I asked him if he would graciously come on the show and share his 30 years of direct marketing knowledge and experience. Tell us what is working, what has worked for him, what he's doing now. And I have no idea where it's going to go. But I know that every time I get on the phone with this guy, I kick myself for not having a recorder this time. I do. So some of this will be for You. And some of this will be for me. It's like I'm letting you eavesdrop into these conversations with some of the people that I go to for advice when I have business and marketing challenges. And every single person that I bring you, I have vetted to be somebody worthy of your time because I do appreciate you spending it with me. Speaking of spending time with me, let see if I can get Luke Jayton on the phone. Give me one second. Without any further ado, Luke Jayton, are you with us?

I am.

Hey, buddy, how you doing? You like my little radio announcer voice there?

That was pretty awesome. So before we get started, let me just ask you a quick question. How long have we known each other now? Like three or four years? Five years?

Yeah. least. I think I want to say it's been maybe three or four. At least three or four years.

Okay. I think that probably it's only been about two or three months ago that I realized that you were not Brad Costanza.

Yeah. You thought it was like, George, right? Costanza.

George on Seinfeld. Costanza. Brad Costanza. No, Costanzo.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I say, man, I plug that O really hard. I go, that's the only thing separating me from the short, fat, bald, neurotic eye on TV's most popular sitcom ever. Like, why couldn't I have been named similar to, like, somebody cool, you know, like a Tom Cruise or. Actually, I don't know if he's cool.

Anymore, But George has moments.

He does have his moments. He's unforgettable. And, you know, it's funny, when I was in. When I was growing up in high school and whatnot, people couldn't remember my name. People couldn't pronounce it. They definitely couldn't spell it. They still have sometimes hard times spelling it, but I think at the end of high school or the beginning of college, dating myself, here is when Seinfeld really came on and came into its own. So I was in college where, you know, your friends and fraternity brothers and everybody else is really unforgiving. And I'll never forget when I was sitting there in my. In my dorm watching the episode where they called George Costanza can't stand ya, Right? And I just. I was looking at my roommate, and he started smiling. I was like, I am never gonna hear the end of that. So to this day, I still get people saying, hey, he can't stand ya. So, yeah, now nobody can forget my name. That's the good news. But, yeah. Dude, I can't believe it.

I grew up with Luke and Lucas, which rhymes with puke and pukeus and mucus and.

Yeah, but it's also like Luke Skywalker, so I don't feel bad for you. It's like.

And Luke Duke, I don't know. That's that cool.

Luke Duke. I don't know.

I got that one a lot.

Him and what was it? Dukes of Hazzard, Dallas. It was Incredible Hulk, Dukes of Hazzard, Dallas and Falcon Crest. That was a Friday night lineup I'll never forget. So anybody who's listening? Luke, you've got a really diverse background when it comes to the world of direct response marketing. And we're going to talk a little bit about what you're doing right now and as you've transitioned. But when I first heard of you, it was somebody was publishing your product on how to, I think was either postcard profits or offline arbitrage or something about how to use direct mail, especially postcards, and other strategies to sell your product, really, no matter what it is. You had some really unique strategies on there. And I think I reached out to you, said how much I liked it. And from then on, we, you know, we started chatting and I still thought it was, you know, really brilliant what you were doing. And you, you do come from. You've been in the world of direct response marketing for how long would you say?

Let's see, since 1988. So going on getting close to 30 years.

Wow, that's fantastic. So you've done a little bit of it all. You were involved before the interwebs was up and writing offers.

Back when you wanted to run an ad, you would write the ad, send it in with a check and wait for the magazine to be published 60 days later, and then wait about a month or so to get response. And so just to do a test took you committing money and waiting 90 days. It was fun.

Wow. Yeah. You talk about how times have changed. It's crazy. I came into the world of direct response and Internet marketing Maybe back in 2007 or 2008, when everything was full swing, and it's changed dramatically since then. So it's hard to imagine the things that you've seen. But throughout it all and up until your most recent venture, which we're going to jump onto, what do you think was your primary, I guess your core competency? Was it copywriting? Was it creating offers? Was it, I mean, a little bit of everything. But was there anything that you really were proud of yourself for being able to make a success?

Yeah, because I don't think I have, like, a unique gift. Like, you know, there are people out there that I admire, their copywriting skills or their ability to put things together. And some of the people I've worked with over the years, they're people that I'm just in awe and sometimes feel like, God, I wish I had that kind of skill. But one of the things that I feel like has been every time I've had a big hit, which has been half a dozen or so times over the course of 20 years or so, it always came down to, I think I have a really great ability to understand customer psychology and understand what the offer and everything is going to look like from the customer's point of view. Before I ever took any copywriting courses or even understood or even knew the term copywriting, I was writing copy. But I was writing it from the standpoint of I know what this customer who is going to buy this thing or not buy this thing that I'm selling, this widget. I know where they're coming from. And I almost do, like, this little meditation and set myself in their shoes and think about, okay, so back then, everything was shipped. So it's like, when this comes in the mail and they open it, are they going to be disappointed? Are they going to be happy? Like, what would I feel like? What would make me feel like this is something I couldn't have? I mean, I couldn't do without? Those are the things that I feel like I was really good at.

And that is so important. I mean, you see a lot of people really, or I do. I see a lot of people trying so hard to try to persuade and convince and unfortunately sometimes trick customers into buying things where if. If more people took the time to put themselves in the shoes of what their customer really wants, it, I think it makes it a lot easier. I've been able to do that really well myself, and I think that's led to some of my success, is, you know, put yourself there. What is it that you would respond to, what would you not respond to and have A little bit. A little bit of empathy goes a long way in the world of marketing.

I would say that probably 75%. I'm sitting here thinking about it while you were talking. Probably 75% of my failures, and I've had a lot of them have been when I was basically not following my gut, following the trends, looking at proven paths that other people had taken, or all that kind of shit has usually ended up in failure for me.

Really?

Yeah. And I'm not saying that to say, oh, you should always reinvent the wheel, but you could go with colored spokes or you could just kind of tweak the wheel a little bit. And based on the customer and the market and what your relationship with them is or isn't. But I've always done the worst when I followed the crowd.

That's great. You know, you are. Every time we talk, one of the things I'm very. I love listening to your contrarian viewpoint on a lot of business. I love it because I feel very much the same. And I want to. I want to jump into some of those contrarian aspects in just a moment, but including the one you just said. But in the past, a lot of your marketing, just so that people have kind of a frame of reference, has been information marketing. Right. Whether it's home study courses or information of some sort. Or did you do a lot of product marketing as well?

No, I did a lot of product marketing as well.

Okay.

I always tended to go towards things that had high margin. And so the info product category wasn't one that I really jumped into until like the late 90s, early 2000s. And that might sound like a long time ago, but in terms of the whole scale of things, I've sold alarms, like home alarm systems. I've sold sandwich franchises. I've sold gym memberships. I've sold lots of stuff. Most of it is if you look at alarm systems and gym memberships and things like even franchises, there's a lot of error there. Meaning that there's a lot of. You've got to build the value because there's blue sky, so that we actually have really high margins. In that way, they're similar to info products. But I didn't really get into info products until 99 or so.

See, I learned something new every day.

I always thought that you had to have something. Most of the stuff that I've done that's had big success. Here's another contrarian thing. We didn't even talk about this before. I just never really looked at marketing to niches. One of the mentors that I learned from had a phrase, and it's not very politically correct, but he used to say, niches are for bitches. We want masses. We want market to the masses. I always looked at markets that were big and then go within that market and have a differentiation that still gives you a niche. If you remember, Jeff Paul used to give the example all the time about, you can go in the diet industry or you can go in the diet.

For truckers right, Yep, I remember that.

So you take a big mass market, but then you whittle it down to a little piece of it that you can really speak to. But I never really liked niche marketing because it felt too constrictive and it felt like the people that I saw that had success in it. And this is again, back in the early 90s, Dan Kennedy and Jeff Paul were starting to do their sort of be an expert in, in one arena and sell marketing and info products to people who are accountants or realtors or chiropractors, things like that. When I looked at those niches, I would go, okay, yeah, you can go in there and go really deep in that niche and probably make yourself a great living. But as they've proven and several others have proven over the years, you'll tap that well at some point where, if you go to masses where there's lots of what I call renewal, like a moving crowd. Gary Halbert used to talk about it. Where there's new people coming to the market all the time, it's easier to not have. For me, I didn't want to have to reinvent myself or reinvent my product or make a bigger, more expensive product every quarter to be able to meet my numbers. You can meet your numbers with one core product if you've got a wide. I'd rather go shallow and wide than narrow and deep. That's just a preference. One's not right or wrong. It's just, I like that better.

No, it makes a lot of sense.

It's kind of a lazy way to do it.

Well, you know, it makes a lot of sense. But I believe when you're going with the niches, when you sub niche it down, it becomes easier to potentially create that differentiation and that offer and stand out. And a lot of times that's what we think we have to do if we're creating a product. Cause I'm going to stand out. I'm only going to market to this type of people. That way I can speak their language and I can be very, very specific. The problem is once you dial it in and you've got a great offer, you can easily run out prospects. If you are too dialed in versus what you're doing is just going to find the big stream of prospects and customers and revenue and just saying, look, I'm going to get myself a piece of this as well and never have to go scrambling around trying to find a new.

My biggest thing, the reason that I always thought that that was most attractive and why, and this might not Be the real reason. But why? You know, when. When Dan Kennedy and Jeff Paul were really pushing that envelope, it was so funny because Jeff, for a long time, if you remember, had the book how to make $4,000 a day at your kitchen table in your underwear, and he sold thousands and thousands, probably millions of copies of that book. He was selling it in mass media to a mass market and telling you to do the opposite. I watched what he was doing, not what he was saying.

I think that if more people did that in the world of marketing and business or whatever, they would have much more success. I've noticed that so many times. Watch what they do, not what they say or not necessarily what they say.

Listen to it, but evaluate it. Just don't take it for face value.

Absolutely. You made a shift in your business recently, and I know this is. God, how long has it been about a year or two that you decided to make the shift to your own branded product in the health market, which I'm a big fan of.

Well, when you say decided to, that's why I giggled. I decided to about three years ago. We didn't actually get it launched until this past January, so it's only been. It's been just right at six months.

I can't believe it. So, yeah, your product, which I am a huge fan. I was lucky enough to get one of those early samples. It's called Basic Greens. It's a powdered greens drink. So people are used to hearing about the importance of getting your vegetables or juicing especially. I know I have a client and a good friend who's really big in the market of teaching people how to get the most out of actually juicing their vegetables, et cetera. And I was a big fan of that. But I was also not a big fan of all of the work it took to do it. But I never really thought that. I didn't really like the taste of greens powders and I didn't really. Never a big fan. You sent me yours and I was hooked. It was amazing. So if anybody out there, I'm giving you a real heartfelt plug. Basic Greens is amazing. Amazing. Good tasting supplement for health, vitality and all that stuff. But, you know, this being a business show, I really kind of want to dive into the, you know, the development of this business because here you are, you've got a lot of great experience, understand direct marketing, understand these niches. You are, you know, what are you, big CrossFit guy? I always see your.

Yeah, I do CrossFit now. The last two years, I'm not a cultist, though.

That's good.

That says everybody has to do it, but I really enjoy it.

Right, but you're a really active guy. Health is really important to you. And I know that offline. When you and I were talking, you said that, you know, you kind of wanted to do something that you felt, you know, sell something you really felt passionate about. And this was something that you enjoy health and something that you wanted to sell that you would put in your own body. But take us into that a little bit. Just the. From the decision to act, or I guess I should say this, the commitment to do it, to the launch of your own really widely accepted supplement now.

Well, here's the thing. It was really scary, and I'm not afraid to admit that it was scary. Even after doing direct response for as long as I have, it's scary to go. I'd stayed in genre info products across one or two sort of. I even hate saying the word niche, but I'll just go ahead and say across one or two niches. That had sort of become my safety blanket, basically, because I knew how to do it. I knew the customers, I knew what they needed to hear, what kind of products they wanted to buy. And that to me was a really, really easy market to operate in, unfortunately. And it was very lucrative. But unfortunately, it wasn't very satisfying for me. And a big part of why it isn't satisfying. I've talked with lots and lots of other people that have been in the same position, and it's just that there's a certain amount of turnoff to having 90% of your customers not doing anything with what they get.

Exactly.

The failure rates are super high. No matter how great a quality of product is, the FTC is always on your back. Because even if you show testimonials that are real testimonials, they want to say, well, not everybody's going to be able to do that, so you can't say that. There's just so many different things that make it a bummer and a downer. That for me, for a long time, the good outweighed that. The good meaning the customers that did get results. The fact that I was making great money, the fact that I had a pretty decent lifestyle, those were the positives. And. And at some point, the positives started to fade and the negatives overtook it. And that happened almost five years ago. And then I fought it for a couple of years just going, no, just get over it. Don't be a pussy. Like all of the rationalization the self talk around making yourself feel okay. Finally just I couldn't do it anymore. And I said, okay, I really want to be doing something different. If I say I have this direct response skill set and this ability which I haven't used outside of the infoWorld since the 90s. Put your money where your mouth is. My wife was a really big proponent of. She would challenge me because I would make statements and she'd say, well, yeah, why don't you prove it? Do it.

That's great.

You're an instigator. And so I knew I wanted to go into the health and supplement world. I'd been doing consulting for quite a few supplement companies over the last two or three years and had been involved in that industry in the mid-90s, working for a big company and doing sales to doctors for them. And so I knew the markups and I knew a lot of the manufacturers and I knew for formulators and all that kind of stuff. So I thought, you know, let's go into that. But I didn't want to sell another. I didn't want to sell something that I wouldn't take. I didn't want to sell something that I had to rationalize that it worked because, oh, got this one little blind study here that's, you know, double blind study that says, you know, either in these lab rats or these nine humans subjects that this product actually does what you're saying. I didn't want to have to deal with all of that stuff. And so that that really thinned out. And again, I'm not saying anything against any companies that do that stuff. I consult with a lot of companies that sell stuff that I wouldn't necessarily want to sell. Doesn't necessarily. It doesn't mean that it's a bad product. It just doesn't fit my criteria.

Right.

Well.

And again, like Dr. Oz is right now is going through a lot of that where he made a lot of claims. Then a lot of companies popped up to take advantage of the, you know, of all the, what I want to say, all the claims that he made and they created products around this and then there was a big fervor and now he's in Congress and just, you know, just a lot of mess. So I can see why that's not something you wanted to chase because to.

Me, that felt like just another flavor of what I'd already been doing in the info product space. I didn't just like trading one product for another. So I wanted something. I sat down and made a list of criteria that it would have to have. And so once I took the things I didn't want to sell and then made a list of criteria, it really thinned out the field. There wasn't a whole lot of things that were left on that list that could work. And so I looked at selling whey protein which the reasoning behind that is you don't quote, have to sell it, you just have to brand it and make it available. Make it available and it wouldn't be a giant leap to sell. But margins are super low. It's one of those products that at least in my opinion works really great as an upsell or secondary product in the supplement world it doesn't work a leader because the margins are just tiny. So to acquire a customer is going to be difficult to do either at a break even or a slight profit on the front end.

Yeah, I can see it making a better back end product.

I was also looking at one of the lists. One of the criteria was it would have to be something that I would want to take on a daily basis. I had not ever stuck with anything that was in a pill or capsule form for more than two months, ever. I've been around health and nutrition for a long, long time. It's very attractive to want to go sell something that's in that format because the margins are much higher than they are with powdered or liquid or those kinds of products. Then I'll try to wrap this up so that this part in case it's boring. But the bottom line is not to me. Somewhere around that time my wife and I watched the film Fat Sick and Yearly dad and got on the juicing cake. I just literally went out and bought the expensive juicer and just went gung ho. And probably by about the third day, I loved the taste of it. I loved the way it made me feel, all that stuff. By about the third day I was like, that's a lot of.

I'm tired of cutting vegetables, cleaning them.

Well, no, it wasn't just the cutting vegetables because there was two of us who were splitting up some of the duties. But somebody has to go buy it. Oh yeah, you know, you gotta go shop for it. You can't keep enough for a week and you're go bad.

You know, it's like, yeah, inventory management is one of the hardest parts of juicing.

Absolutely. So it was like two or three times a week you're going to buy this stuff, then you bring it home, then you got to cut it and you got to get ready and everything and somebody it's like, heads or tails? Who's going to clean the juicer now? All of that. It was a big deal. Probably about three weeks in, we both looked at each other and were bummed out. And I remember the first day that we were both like, you want a juice today? I'm like, you know what? Here's how it first started, the decline. I don't know about how they are near you, but the Whole Foods out here has a juice. Juice bar. Juice bar in there. And you can go in there and literally pick what you want in it. Way easier what you've done at home, right?

Yeah, way easier. I was guilty of that, too. I had one, like, three blocks from my house, and I would walk there all the time, and I'd leave my juicer sitting on my counter.

Yep. Obviously more expensive because they're preparing it for you, but not. It wasn't radical. Like, it was worth the extra money to not have to do the work. Then I was showing up at Whole Foods every day, and then it's like, well, man, am I supposed to be doing this two or three times a day? I'm going to Whole Foods three times a day, right?

Yeah.

Cause you can't really buy it and then put it in the fridge. It goes bad, you know, like, you're not supposed to have it for more than, what, 24 hours or something like that. I don't know.

Yeah, something like that. Or it oxidizes.

From there. I said, I don't mind juicing once in a while, and I really like the idea of juicing, but I need to have something that gives me the same benefit or at least close to the same benefit without having to do all this work and effort and the expense and all that. I knew about that. There were a lot of different Green Strength products on the market. There's dozens and dozens of them. And I went out and bought one at Trader Joe's and brought it home, and I just about spit it out. When I took one swallow. I couldn't stomach it. It was disgusting tasting. And I was like, man, so the only way to drink this stuff is to make it in a smoothie. And if I got to make it in a smoothie, I might as well juice. And what's the point? It didn't save me anything. Then I was like, well, that's probably just that brand. Well, over the next week or two, we tried, between the two of us, two dozen different brands. And every one of them tasted either really horrible, like lawn clippings on the bottom of lawnmower. Or there were like two or three that the taste was okay, that was almost passable, but they had this sort of metallic aftertaste that I just didn't like at all. It was like I couldn't see myself. I could gag it down, but I couldn't enjoy it. And that was, oh, hey, maybe there's a marketing opportunity here. What if we could formulate something that actually tasted good? And we started down that path and it took a long time, it took almost a year going through different formulators until we found the formulation that we've got. The formulation that we've got. You can tell me if you're the same way. It's better than drinking iced tea. It's not something I go, oh, God, I gotta drink my greens. It's more like, oh, God, cool, I get some greens.

Oh, no. It's amazing.

It tastes good.

Yeah, no, it's amazing. And one of the things I liked about it is that you said it's all, I mean, the name, basic greens. It's the basic stuff. You don't put a lot of other things in there that wouldn't be healthy. It's a whole food. You could drink 10 of these a day and you're going to be fine.

No synthetic vitamins, no added minerals, just with some fruits and vegetables. Anyway, that's how it was born. And that was the process to start finding the formulation. Once we started finding the formulation, during that whole period of time thinking about, how do you want to do the marketing, all this kind of stuff, one of the things that I wanted sort of as a challenge, and this is something that we're still working on, is I didn't want to do only a direct response company. I've always wanted to have a product that could do stuff that do direct response, but it also would fit for doing image or content type advertising, because that turns me on. Have you ever watched the documentary Art and Copy?

Yeah, I have. That's amazing. I think I saw you talk about it on Facebook and I watched it and I loved it.

Anybody who listened to this that cares about advertising or marketing at all would really be entertained by the movie, if not love it. I say if not love it because it goes against a lot of direct response type stuff. But I think that in the world of marketing, there's always been sort of this back and forth and this battle between direct response is better or image is better. I think that as social really starts to evolve, they're kind of melding into one. You need to have direct response techniques. And sales flow and all that stuff in place. But if you're ignoring the other stuff and still going with ugly pages and not caring about design, not caring about what the product looks like and all that kind of stuff, I think that you're missing out. And as we go forward, it's going to continue to be that way.

Yeah, things have changed. Design absolutely matters right now. I mean, substance still matters, in my opinion, more than style. But if you've only got one.

You.

Are going to be rolled by your competition. Because a lot of folks out there are realizing that both of them matter probably now more than ever, especially with so much competition and other options in the market. So what was. When you. How long did it take you to actually start up? When you said, fine, I'm doing this, and then you really launched it? What was the. Because, you know, there's probably people out there who've thought about, I'd love to have my own supplement.

It took us a lot longer than it should have. I hate to use the word should. It took us a lot longer than it could have. And the biggest reason for that was once we had the formulation in place and we knew we were going to launch it and we incorporated the business and started going, it was probably a good 10 months, nine or 10 months before we actually put the product on sale. And a big part of the reason for that was during this period of time launching a supplement product, unless you're doing a private label product where you can get just a little bit of something and not have to make a big commitment, it's fairly capital intensive. I mean, it's a lot more so than info marketing. You've got to put up some money to get inventory ready and all that kind of stuff. I knew that the way that we were launching it wasn't going to be a business that we could pull money out of right away. And that was a new thing for me too. I've always launched businesses that we could pull money out of in 30 days or less. And so this was also kind of a. It's almost like being on a diet. We're starting this business and we're just going to let the money roll over in the business and keep growing. And so knowing that, I've also kept doing consulting all this time. In fact, I'm still doing consulting and plan to through the end of this year. It looks like by January we'll be at a point where the business is at a level that we can actually start living on the income because we'll have gotten it to a point where there's enough in there that it's turning over on itself. That makes any sense.

It does. But Luke, that's not get rich quick and easy like everybody wants. I mean, I'm a little disappointed that you didn't just, you know, click a few buttons and, you know, have cash against that.

I've done that before. I've had lots of. But here's the thing. Every business that I've done that with before has had a one year at best life cycle. And I was finally ready to have something that was going to be built for the long term. It was very difficult, very difficult mentally and psychologically. Even with all the business experience that I've gone through over the years to make the commitment of putting up all this money for this business up front, knowing that we weren't going to pull any money out of it for a long time. Because in my mind I'm fighting, I'm going, no, I could just put out another info product and turn over money in a month and be moving. But the problem is I've been doing that for three years and wasn't any further ahead. Now this is more like an investment, like an annuity. I'm treating it like something that's going to be around for 20 years, not oh my God, I hope we make it seven months.

And it's so true. A lot of the people, I mean this, I'm assuming this used to be your life. Mine to a degree. And a lot of the folks that we know and a lot of our colleagues who are kind of in the direct response world is a very promotion based. It's a very promotion based world. And it's always like, you know, on from one promotion to the other, what can I sell? What can I sell here, what can I sell there? And very few people in that world tend to look at business building. It's almost like I don't know if I made this word up, but I kind of like it. I never heard it. But a commercenary which, you know, just going from one promotion to the other and that's kind of cool that you've transitioned out of that said, look, I want to build a brand. I want to build a real business. By the way, I just had this thought.

I don't.

I recommended this on Facebook, but there's a book I just recently read. It's called Get Big Fast and Do More good by Ido Leffler and Lance Kalish. I think it is. And it's all about these, these two best friends who back in, I think 2006, started a. Started a brand called yes to Carrots. You ever heard of that? Yes to Carrots?

No.

Okay, so they are the second. From what I understand, at least they are the second largest natural beauty brand next to Burt's Bees. And they started in 2006. And their story is amazing. And the entire book, number one, it's about product marketing and brand building. You, you specifically would absolutely love it because they talked about everything from the trade shows they did to how they. Their very first distribution. Their very first client for distribution was Walgreens. And it lists. And it's funny, by the way, it is one of the funniest books I've read a business book because it's written almost like a. If you and I were business partners, you'd write a ch. Chapter or a paragraph and then I would come in and it'd be like, brad, okay, what, you know, what Luke really meant to say was, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

That's awesome.

But the ups, the downs. But also, it's a crazy story. But it also goes to show that if you've got a good passionate, a good passion for your brand and building that, that there are some really, really cool things you can do, especially when it comes to retail and customer loyalty. But get big fast and do more good. Highly recommend it to anybody listening but you for sure.

All right, I'm on it.

So. And speaking about business stuff, we. I alluded to this a little bit earlier and you brought up a couple good points in here as well. But one of the things I've always respected about you is you do go against the grain. You mentioned that whenever, whenever you've kind of seen somebody pitching one thing and then doing the next, and you never followed a. You never really followed or just a proven blueprint that you kind of always.

Oh, no, no, no, I did. Those were my failures.

Those were your failures, exactly. But that's what a lot of people are out there doing, whether they're buying info products and home study courses about do it just like this, don't deviate and you'll have a success. Sometimes that is true for a percentage of people, but not really. There's a lot more to it. And you've got quite a few opinions about business that go against the common held grain and actually against a lot of the stuff that you hear a lot of gurus, experts and success authors talk about. I know we've talked about hard work. For instance, what's your view on hard work? Is it the most Important thing.

There's a big difference. And this is where I think a lot of people get confused. In my mind, there's a big, big difference between hard work and lots of work. Lots of people are out there bragging about how much they're working. And I don't look at that and admire it. I look at it and feel sorry for them. Like, well, dude, then you're doing it wrong. There's a difference between hard work versus lots of work. Do the work that needs to get done, whether it's hard or easy or not. But I see so many people just filling their time with busyness. And it seems to be almost like a badge of honor when you ask somebody, so how you been? Oh, it's been busy. And then they list out 40 things that they've done. And, you know, when I hear that, you know, I mean, I'm gonna be polite and not say anything, but in my mind I'm going, man, that sucks to be you. I would not want that.

No, no. And I, I've been guilty of that all my life. Like I remember reading about in, in Tim Ferriss, the Four Hour Work Week, he actually had a paragraph or chapter on something about this. How if we give enough time, we will find work to do in order to fill that time, as opposed to having highly focused, productive periods. And I found myself very, very guilty of that. The one part I struggle with, I'm a big fan of the whole Pareto principle in 80 20. You know, focus on the 20% input that gives you the 80% of the output. And there's another book recommendation by Perry Marshall, amazing 8020 sales and marketing. You know, as important as that is, the one part I struggle with personally is that 80 20, finding that 20% of the big revenue generating things is important. But then there's the other truism that the devil's in the details. And I always struggle with that. Like, how do you work on the biggest, most important things and then take care of all the little T's and I's that need crossing and dotting? And that's just a personal thing that I struggle with constantly, that balance. But I think you're.

There's no better way to understand your business than, especially when a business is new, than having to wear all the hats. And some people complain about it, some people brag about it. This is a little bit off subject, but it sparked something that I was.

Thinking, no such thing.

I'm still taking all of our customer service calls. All of them.

That's so smart. I tell people to do that all the time.

Yeah.

Especially in the beginning. Especially in the beginning when we get.

To the point where we hire our first customer service person, which is coming here pretty quick, I will know everything that they would have that they'll be up against because I've taken it. And I understand the customer psychology when they call because their shipments late. I know the customer psychology when they call because they want to cancel or they call because they want to increase their monthly auto ship order to two bottles instead of one. I know the psychology that's going on for all of them because I take the time to ask and find out, hey, where did you find out about us and all of that kind of stuff. When I teach people direct response, you know this from going through an MMA postcard course. If they're using the phone at all in that process for order taking, which if you're not, if you've got an online business at all and you don't have a phone number on your website, shame on you. You're losing income and you're losing valuable insight from your customers. In most cases, even if you sell a digital product, your conversion rate can go up as high as 20, 25% just by adding the phone number. And that doesn't mean that everybody's gonna call. It means that they feel like they can and they don't feel like you're hiding behind something. But the ones that do call, the insight that you can get from that is invaluable. Invaluable.

I so often see, and I was guilty of this when I built my first business, which was thinking of customer support as, okay, I just need to find somebody. I think I was paying somebody like $5 an hour to take my customer phone calls and I looked at it as a necessity. Okay, you gotta have this to take care of your customers who are bitching and complaining. And man, I could not have been more wrong. But I learned that the hard way. I mean, customer support Zappos is a perfect example of this. They put so much emphasis on customer support and USD. These are the people paying your bills.

Yeah, but for Zappos, it's their usp.

Absolutely.

That makes a difference between them and another mail order company online selling everything under the sun like Amazon or anybody else. That is their usp. That's how they grew up. Customer service, period.

Yep. And in my opinion, customer support people should be as skilled, if not more slightly different skill sets than your, your out front salespeople. Because, yeah, I mean, you need to.

Have salespeople the biggest thing with customer service people is to hire. Like you can get them trained to the skill level because that the skills that they need are not difficult but they have one thing that they need is absolutely necessary. And it's almost like you're born with it or you don't get it. And that is they have a great attitude.

Attitude and empathy. Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah. It's so important and I forget who said it, but I love it. I'll give credit eventually because I've said this several times on the show but it's never been harder to get a customer to buy from you the first time. But it's never been easier to get them to buy over and over again just because of all the touch points and all the various ways that you can serve your customers versus in the past. But it's not easy if you neglect that aspect and you neglect that channel. So that I think that's really admirable that you're taking all the service calls and you're finding out, you know Tom Collins. Yeah. So I just. Tom was the last guest on my show and he just said, he goes, one of the magic phrases that I use or that I tell my clients and customers to use is have somebody who's really good and you know, great attitude and empathetic, call your customers, if not the business owner and just ask them two questions. What do you wish I did? What do you wish we did more of and what do you wish we did better? And he goes, they will tell you number one, how to improve your business and number two, what to sell them next. And I thought that was just so logical and genius.

Absolutely.

So what about when it. Because we're talking about bringing people on. What about just outsourcing? You know, there's a big versus hiring people in house. I've got a very big opinion about this. I haven't shared it with a lot of people. But what's your take on it?

I think that it's really popular and in vogue right now and has been for a while, probably ever since Tim Ferriss book came out to say that you should outsource everything. Outsource everything except for the very high level stuff. There obviously are people that can run their business that way. I've never been able to do it. Every time I've jumped on that bandwagon and tried to do it, I've had just disappointment after disappointment after disappointment. Wasted more time than I quote was going to save by having somebody do it because I had to burn through three or four different people back and forth over a week and still didn't get what I wanted. One of the areas for me that's like that is web design and coding. I taught myself how to do HTML and CSS back in the 90s. The only reason I did it then was because back then it cost you $6,000 to have somebody code a three page website. And it was like I taught myself how to do it. Over the years, my wife has been one of the biggest ones that said, why are you still sitting there doing that? Why don't you have that outsourced? And every single time I have, I've been disappointed. I end up feeling like it's going to take me longer to explain exactly what I want than it is to just go ahead and code it. I know for some people that don't have that as a skill set, that's not the case and it would be daunting to come up with that. Maybe that might not be the best example, but I think that outsourcing just to get something out of your.

List.

Of duties that you have to take care of or watch over is foolish. You're still going to have to watch over it, probably even more because you're not there. Right with it.

Right. Well. And I believe that the time you save and I do, I outsource, I out task and I have in house help as well. So a little bit of both. So I mean, although I think out tasking is a lot easier than out. So the difference being I've got a small little project, I need you to just go, hey, design this banner or code me this one page or do something of that nature. Of course, of those things I usually have a tremendous amount of experience either from trying it and failing myself or trying it and succeeding. At least I know what to expect. I know how to identify quality versus crap and I think that's super duper important. If you're just getting started in something and you think I'm just going to outsource everything and everybody's going to magically deliver the best of, you know, the best work product. Sorely mistaken. And unfortunately you learn that the hard way.

And there are certain things that are, you know, like when I work, I do, like I said before, I do a lot of consulting have been for the last two or three years. And when I work with clients, one of the hardest things, things to get across and to get done for them is the copywriting part of it. Copywriting is like the third most important thing.

What are the first two?

First One is market, audience list, whatever you want to call it, offer. And the second one's the offer. And third would be copy. And that's not like a distant third. They're all really, really close to each other. But copy would be the third thing.

Well, and the copy gets easier. If you've got a pretty good market and your offer really serves the market, the copy gets a lot easier. A lot of people try to take the copywriting first before they.

Yeah, and some people try to, you know, mask problems with their market and their offer by having good copy. And good copy can't overcome that in most cases.

Are you saying that you can't. Lipstick on a pig.

But here's the problem is a lot of clients that have, like, some of that other stuff lined up, they either want to skimp on copywriting, like, well, who's the cheapest copywriter? I'm like, ugh, man, that's like saying, who's the cheapest mechanic for my Ferrari? They're going to fuck it up. I'm sorry, you're not going to do that. You don't want to go with the cheapest. And then I think another mistake that people make around copy is not just digging in and learning it. It might take you a year or two years, and you might not be able to use it on this project you're working on today. But the sooner you start learning it, the better off you're going to be. Because even if you always outsource it, you'll know what you're outsourcing. You'll know how to decipher whether what they gave you back is something decent or not.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I can't imagine it's one of the most important skills. I think if you're in the business of persuading people to buy things, you don't have to be the persuader, but you have to understand what's good and bad, persuasion and what, you know, what makes you look poorly. Because if you're outsourcing and you're just hiring a copywriter to come sell your stuff, they're never going to do it with the same gusto that you could. They may have more skill in writing it, but you have to be able to recognize it. You know, when it comes to. Out the back to the topic of outsourcing and hiring, you may save time by not by hiring somebody to not do it, but you need to not think of it as, oh, that's time that I just get back to myself. You should put that same amount of Time that you're saving from doing it into finding the right person, screening, filtering, training them to do what you're doing, as opposed to just saying, oh, I don't have to do that now because I hired somebody to do it, because that's usually when I find that I have the biggest failures when it comes to that.

Yep.

Speaking of, you know, we talked a little bit about this, but there's a. There's a big maxim in the market about just, you know, just get it out there. You know, one of my favorite books, by the way, is Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson. And it's got a lot of tremendous advice, but I think a lot of people that I've seen take that way too much to heart and they put out kind of crappy product. What's your take on that versus getting something out quick or getting something good out quick?

I think that that subject or that's one of my pet peeves, but I think that that subject is one of those ones where balance really comes into play because the extremes on either side are horrible. Being a perfectionist to the point where you don't put something out for three years, that's obviously detrimental. But being a person subscribes to minimum viable product, and you spend more time crafting a marketing message than you do delivering or putting together a product that people are going to like. I think that's horrible, too. There's nothing worse than going through a sales process and being really excited about getting something based on what was sold and then getting it and being radically disappointed in what was delivered. I think that there's too many people that are willing to rationalize the, okay, it doesn't have to be perfect. Let's get it out there. I agree it doesn't have to be perfect, but it needs to be damn good.

Yeah, the whole first impression, you don't get a second chance. You better make a good first impression. It doesn't have to be a perfect first impression, but it better be a good one because you may not get a chance to make a second one. What has been in the past year or so that you've really been focusing all of the time on basic greens? What's one thing you would have done differently if you could have?

I mean, it's a detail. It's not necessarily something that would really carry over to everybody? Well, maybe it would. I mean, you could maybe find a lesson in this. The biggest thing is I did not ask about packaging options when we first got started. I just assumed that the one option that I was looking at was sort of the only option. And I wish I had dug a little deeper because we've gone. We're in the process of moving to single serving packets as opposed to a tub for a whole lot of reasons, but primarily getting a lot of requests from customers to make it portable, make it travel.

That's good.

There's a whole bunch of really good reasons why we're moving to it. One of them is it makes the word spreads more. There's all kinds of really good reasons. But when we went to do it, when people first started requesting that, I was very sort of like close minded. No, no, it's going to cost way more. Blah, blah, blah. Well, I finally just broke down and called our manufacturer, which I should have done a long time ago and had them quote it. They came back and it's actually like right at the same. It's within 50 cents a unit.

Oh, wow.

You know, for monthly supply, doing it this way versus doing it the other way. And so the lesson there is don't assume, you know.

Yeah, exactly. I can see how. Now are you going to. Are you going to go solely with the single serving packets like so that you'll get a box of single serving packets and versus the, I guess like the little miniature tub that you sell now? Yeah, okay. No, that's great.

Won't need to be refrigerated after opening. I give you a list of benefits for it. But my first thing was I like scooping it out of the thing because I'm always at home when I take. But I started using the packets myself to kind of like be the guinea pig. And you know what, once I started using them, I don't even like using it out of the tub anymore.

Right. I used to used to work at home when you sent me that stuff and I loved it. I go to an office now, about 10 miles to an office and if I had a little packet, I'd throw it in my briefcase every single day and that'd be fantastic. One of the last questions I've got about the entire business and I don't want to get too. I guess the word would be personal or intruding on this, but if what as far as a budget, because I don't want to ask you specifically what did you spend to launch this, but I guarantee there are people out there who are thinking about this is something I'd love to do or I've had a dream to. I've even thought about it in the past too. You are definitely not. I mean you did not go the route of, hey, I'm just going to go private label somebody else's stuff and do this on the cheap just to have something to sell. You've created your own product in order.

To which you can. And there's nothing wrong with doing that. I do consultant clients who do that all the time.

Correct. And I'm definitely not saying there's anything wrong with that. I understand the economics of that business model a little bit better. You can start really small, etc. But when it comes time to formulating your own product, you're working with manufacturers and suppliers and all of this other stuff. What should somebody typically budget realistically to say, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right? I mean, 100,000, 50,000. Is there kind of an idea?

I can give you a range. The range is pretty big and the range has a lot to do with how quickly you want to scale the thing. That's been different about being in this business than any other business I've been in, even when we were shipping physical products before the Internet is I never had the lead time that you have with the health product, especially when it's your own formulation. Most manufacturers, until you're at a level where you're doing 50,000 units a month, their turnaround time, the lead time, meaning the time from when you place an order for product to when it shows up in your warehouse, can be anywhere from four to 12 weeks.

Oh, wow, that is a long time.

What that means is you've got to plan. Okay, how much do we plan to sell over the next three months? And at what point during those three months do we place an order for the next round? Because it's going to take three months to get here. There's a lot of sort of inventory management stuff that doesn't come into play if you're doing private label. Private label stuff. Most of the manufacturers are running their private label products weekly. And so most of those products you can get turned around in a week or two. When we were selling audio products before the Internet, I used to sell CD products and things like that. I had a CD company local to me that we could place an order for 1,000 units today and go pick it up the day after tomorrow. So I never had to worry about inventory. So that's like a whole new thing that I'm learning and I'm learning from people who've already done it. And it's funny because I have a friend who's at a much higher level. He's been in business out three years and their business is doing very well. And I called him and I asked him, dude, so how do you plan? And he's like, well, you know, it's all kind of play it by ear and you're going to screw up sometimes. He said, there's been twice in our three year history where we ran out of inventory and had nothing for six weeks. It sucks. I'm like, ugh, don't want to have that happen. So that's an issue. You asked me about the budget. So that part like knowing how much you want to start with, if you've already got a ready made list, let's say that you're in the health industry already and you're selling an ebook, you know, on cut abs or whatever. If you've already got sort of a market in place, you can pretty much guess, you can get a pretty good guess based on how they respond to new offers that you put out there, what you're going to need. So for somebody like that, it's a little bit easier if you're starting from brand new scratch with a custom formulation. Minimum you're going to need is somewhere around 25 to 30,000. And it depends again what ingredients, what type of product and then probably a maximum of, you know, 75 to 100.

Okay. You know what's interesting is when you compare that to a lot of the, I guess mainstream businesses you can start, whether it's buying a franchise or whether it's doing a lot of other stuff that is still pretty darn cheap when you think about it for, you know, for most people out there who could potentially.

Absolutely. And listen, if you were brand, like if I was brand new, direct to direct response and you know, this was going to be the first thing that I went into, I would probably lean and I try to steer customers who, clients I work with who are kind of coming into it new, I try to steer them towards a private label product. Because you can get a private label nutrition product started for a couple grand.

Yeah. And it's a great way to learn the ins, the outs, a little bit of inventory management, a little bit about how to sell it. I highly recommend that too. And if I were to go that route, I don't have any immediate plans too. That's definitely the way I would start. But it's really fascinating for the fact that you didn't do that. I think you probably have in the past, but that you just said, hey, I'm gonna build my own brand, my own product, something long term that I can stand behind. And it's quality, dude. We, myself, everybody I know really, really likes it. I use it with my NZT still.

Yes, nzt, the good stuff.

Mark's supposed to be on the show as well. You were talking about. We won't go into that, but you were talking about there's not many supplements out there that you've ever taken for longer than two months. That's probably the only supplement I've ever taken in my life for a long time. But we'll get into that in a future show. This has been great, man. I love getting inside your brain and hearing some of the strategies that you're using that you've used. You've done a little bit of. A little bit of everything. You are definitely a definition of a direct marketing. I don't want to use the word guru because it's so thrown around, but you've seen a little bit of everything.

How about direct response veteran?

Ooh, I like that.

Veteran implies that there's some time, some age, some wisdom. But I'm not always right. The guru has to always be right.

Right? That is a great, that is a great point. I hate using the word guru. Maybe it's because I'm so inundated with a lot of gurus or some of my best friends, and it just starts to kind of wane on the effectiveness of the, you know, the word. But man, I really, I really appreciate you being on the show. You, you brought some, you wrapped some bacon around this episode, baby.

Oh, good. That was, I was gonna ask is, did we get, did we get wrapped in bacon?

Are you, are you gonna have bacon wrapped greens? Are you gonna put some bacon bits inside the powdered greens?

I'm not sure that that would sell really well.

It might not.

I mean, you could drink your greens and have some bacon in front of you and maybe have a slice of bacon with your greens.

Yep, that might be good. Maybe it's a balance, right? I'm having my bacon, having my greens. It's getting a little bit of everything. Hey, so I want to leave it with two quick things. If somebody wants to get some basic greens, where do they go? Where do they get it?

They go to basicgreens.com at the top of the. Oh, this is really cool. At the top of the page there is a, you know, up in the menu area there is a little button or a little link you can click for free sample or you can just go to basicgreens.com freesample and we don't make People commit to it up front. No credit card, nothing. We'll ship you out a free sample so you can taste it before you buy it.

That's awesome. If you're listening to this, go get it. It's amazing. It does not taste like grass clippings. Like you said, you'll drink this all day long. Honestly, the only things I drink at home right now is water. I don't drink milk, I don't drink soda, I don't drink anything else but water. And then water with basic greens. Those are literally the only liquids that I consume. So highly recommend it. Get the sample if you want. Otherwise, screw the sample. You're going to want a lot more. You probably make a bigger order. You also mentioned, I don't know if this is something you actively look for, but you did mention that sometimes you consult with or have clients. If there is anybody listening to this who is either in that business already and wants your advice or anything else. Do you offer consulting services to folks?

I do. It's one of those things that I'm usually only working with two or three at a time. Most times people get on a waiting list and usually the wait is only about 30 to 60 days until I have an opening. But the best way to contact me on that is just to send me an email. Luke L U K E Jadyn J a t e nmail.com Basically, I have two paths. If somebody is already in the supplement business and needs or wants help with any of their channels of marketing. Because a lot of times I'll help people who've already got one channel successfully set up and they want to. They understand Google adwords and now they want to be on Facebook or they understand that now they want a direct mail follow up campaign for their customers. Whatever. Some people I can help, some people I can't. We can talk about that. The other way is recently I've probably worked with a dozen or so people in the last five or six months who already had successful direct response experience. They weren't beginner brand new people, but they had no experience in the supplement world and wanted to get started. If that's the case, you can shoot me an email and I've got a course and there's no sales page for it or anything, but there's a course that I did back in October on setting up the supplement business from scratch and that would be the place to start. It's 99 bucks. It's no big deal.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah.

I didn't even know you had that.

How about that?

That's awesome. Well, Luke, thank you very much for joining us. Anybody else, if you enjoyed this show, do a couple things right now. Here's your homework. Go get a sample at least of basic greens. Go to itunes, leave a review of the show if you haven't done so yet. That is the best way to pay me back for reaching out to Luke and getting somebody who's very, very busy building his own business and empire on the phone for a full hour.

I'm not busy doing that. I'm busy doing family stuff.

I thought you were busy working. Hard, hard, man. Hard, hard working.

That's a focused like two, three hours a day. The rest of the time I'm spending time skateboarding with my son.

Well, another reason to pay attention to the stuff you're doing, Go to your site and if you're, you know, it's the fact that you're able to do that is fantastic. It's kind of the dream of most entrepreneurs. But yeah, one of the ways to pay me back is leave a review on itunes and share this. Share the show with your if you have friends, if you have colleagues, say those words. Hey, man. If you listen to this bacon wrap business show, it's kind of crazy, but fun and always full of good guests and advice. That's what encourages me to bring these to you even more. If you have your own strategy, if you have your own business that you think is working really well for you, you'd like to share it, send an email to askbradaconratbusiness.com Share it with me. Maybe I'll invite you to be a guest on the show. Or if you'd like a second opinion on your own business marketing strategy. If you've got a question about entrepreneurship, business marketing, copywriting, you name it Once more, ask bradaconwrappedbusiness.com look forward to the next episode with you. And until then, if you got a problem, wrap it in bacon. See you, Luke.

See ya, Sam.