Mint Mobile: Chief Marketing Officer Aron North on Small Business Show 237

It's time for small business show 237 here on Wednesday, August 21, 2019. How are you today, Mr. Shannon Jean?

I am very good. Mr. Dave Hamilton. I'm excited to have a guest with us this week from Mint Mobile. This guy's great. Aaron North. He's going to talk about, you know, the marketing and the whole plan behind growing this brand Mint. And he's a weird guest for us.

Right, because, yeah, he is not a small business owner. In fact, he's not a business owner at all. At least not currently. Not that we know of. Maybe he's got some kind of side muscle, but. But we talked to him as part of our onboarding call when Mint came on, you know, on board as a sponsor for the show, and his enthusiasm was fantastic. Like, you and I were texting each other during that. Like, we gotta get this.

We were like, we need to have this guy on the show and talk about branding and marketing. So I think there's some really valuable lessons that he's gonna share, and he's just a great guy to talk to.

So I don't want to tell anyone to skip any of this show, but I will say that to me, the second half of this show had way more like meat per minute than. Than the first half. And.

And mpm. Is that a podcast?

It is now. Yeah.

It is now. Me per minute.

Yep. All right. So, yeah, so we'll let you to it. There's good stuff in. And I. When I say the first half, really, I mean the first kind of third of it.

But.

But it. Trust us. Listen to the whole thing. It's not that long.

Yeah.

And you'll love it. Get something out of it. Y. It's time.

I personally read almost every Reddit post I read. I would say probably 90% of the reviews. I hunt for the negative because I want to know how to make the service better. So as we've grown, our challenges have changed. When we started, it was very much about, is this a viable business? Then it became, how do you start to scale efficiently? And now that we've got some really positive momentum, it's how do you make. How do you make the brand even more broadly appealing so people know it exists? Because, you know, you're going up against four incumbents who are spending, you know, almost a billion dollars a year in advertising. So it's. Each. So it's very, very competitive.

As regular listeners know, we recently signed up Mint Mob to the Small Business show as a sponsor. We were really stoked to have Them because they have a really unique marketing program. We love everything they're doing. So what they don't know is that before those sponsor spots started, we met with Mint Mobile's Chief Marketing Officer, Aaron North. We talked about, you know, what they offer and everything. Dave and I were so impressed with the story of Mint and how it began that we asked Aaron to come on the show today to talk about how Mint got started, how he and his team came up with their unique marketing and their sales methods. Really excited to have you on the show today. Thanks for joining us, Aaron. We really appreciate it.

Thanks for having me, guys.

Yeah. So for our listeners that aren't familiar with Mint Mobile, although more and more are, I was even talking to the guy who was getting my haircut this morning and the guy in the barber's like, oh, I know Mint. I said, hey, we're having their CMO on. So I was name dropping. It was great. Give us some more info, background about the services that Mint offers.

Yeah, it's really easy. So Mint is what they call an mvno, a mobile virtual network operator. And really that's a fancy term for a group that resells wholesale wireless service. So we provide wireless service to Anybody in the US we provide talk, text and 4G LTE data to customers at the lowest price in the market.

That's great. So you guys are part of Ultra Mobile, from what I understand, what was the impetus behind starting Mint and branding that and going out with the, you know, with this marketing campaign.

Yeah, the Ultra story is a great one. So Ultra is both the company name and a brand name. So I joined the company in 2016. Soon after Ultra was awarded the fastest Growing Company in America award by the Inc 5000. So Ultra was number one. Our CEO, David, is the only person ever to take a company to number one twice. So he had done it in the past, he did it with Ultra. And I was brought in to not only work on the Ultra business, but to really tackle the assignment of what is the next massive growth opportunity for the organization and how are we going to get there as part of Ultra? When I got here, Mint was basically a white paper idea and we were formulating an approach. And really what made it really exciting for us is that we wanted to say, you know, if you could start a wireless company today, what would. What decisions would you make that would be different from the services that are currently out there? Why? And then how do you bring that to life? Always keeping the customer as the centerpiece of that equation. Yeah. So when I Got here, we had realized nobody was doing the direct to consumer model for wireless. And it seemed like such an obvious opportunity to me because you're in essence buying wireless on the Internet. So why isn't anybody doing this? And you realize that a lot of the legacy institutional brands in the space have built their businesses on the backbone of stores. And what we were able to do was, and this has never really been done like this before, so there's a lot of learnings. We had to sort of take it on the chin when we started, but, you know, always keeping customer centricity as our, as our primary thought. The basic idea was when we constructed the model of Mint Mobile and the combination of buying online and then also buying in bulk. So that's one of the things that we do different is you don't buy a month of service. You buy three, six or 12 months at a time. And because of those two things, it completely changes the cost model. And your small business owners are always looking for advantages. And by eroding or removing all this cost out of the business, we were faced with the decision of keeping it as profit and having a sort of competitive product or pass the savings on to the consumer and do something incredibly disruptive. And that's the choice I recommended and we made and that's that. That is where we're at. So we are now offering wireless starting at 15 bucks a month to the customer and we are seeing a brand just take off like a rocket ship. It's been really exciting to be part of it.

Oh yeah, that's, that's so cool. So in researching and looking around, I see this Mint Mobile startup kit, which I thought was kind of unique up on Amazon. I don't know if you saw it in other places as well, but what's the story behind this startup kit? And has the kit helped you like to stop problems before they start? And do you continue to promote that kit or do you focus? I also noticed you have this seven day money back test period. Talk about both of those, if you will.

Yeah, it's really interesting because we have what I would call a broadly appealing product. I don't know. I personally don't know anybody without a smartphone or wireless unless they're young. So when you have a product that's broadly appealing, the question becomes how do you get people to get interested in that product? The seven day money back guarantee was something we felt was critical right away. So people weren't nervous about buying a new brand. So we wanted people to have an opportunity to come in to try the service, in essence risk free. So we did that and that was the first innovation. Then over time, what I had realized, and again, I think this is one of the interesting things about not being from a category is you're not bound by sort of category thinking. And you know, I know that when I go to make a considered purchase, like a vehicle or maybe something less considered, like a set of golf clubs, those industries know that this is a big, well planned purchase. And although wireless may not be as expensive as a vehicle, you probably use your wireless service a hundred times more than you'd use your vehicle every day. So I wanted to come up with what I in essence called the wireless test drive. And it just felt to me like that would be a way to get those people who are on the fence about the service a chance to try it at basically no cost. So we sell that product like you said on Amazon, we sell it from our app and it's only a $5 product. And what that does is it gets you 100 minutes of talk, 100 text messages and 100 megs of data. So you can go home, you can try it, you can try it at work, you can try it at school, and then if you like the service, you can. Because you activate via our app, the $5 is automatically credited to your purchase. So whether you like it or hate it, it is in essence risk free because we also offer the seven day money back guarantee on that product as well. So it was really a genesis of breaking barriers and getting customers, you know, thinking of the customer and thinking of what the customer barriers are and then knocking those barriers down.

Yeah, that's killer.

And so, so how, how many of your customers are taking advantage of this trial? I versus the, like the, the, the test kit versus, you know, just trying it out with the seven day trial. Because you've got, now you've got both, right? You're still offering both of them. So which way do customers tend to go?

You know, it's interesting, we do have some retail partnerships, so we have Best Buy as a retail partner and that $5 starter kit is in Best Buy and it does exceptionally well. So I think, you know, you've got to look at your distribution channel. It does incredibly well in Amazon as well, because I think people, you know, if you're not buying direct from us, you're probably a little more apprehensive. And to be able to walk into a Best Buy, see it on the shelf, see it as $5, touch it like there is something to be said about the tactile engagement with the brand. Whereas our core business is online. But we see a lot of people going into it and trying it. We do see because of things like right now we have a buy three, get three promotion, which is rare. We're not a brand that's always doing promotions because we have such a low everyday price. But the offer we have now is when you buy three months, you get three months for free. So in essence, you can get six months of service for 60 bucks. People just make the plunge. Like they go, okay, the seven day money back guarantee is there. I've read or I've seen some of the. I think we're up to almost 14,000 reviews on Facebook and you know, the average score is a 4.8. So, oh my gosh, if this is working for all these folks, it's gonna work for me. And they just take the plunge. But that product has opened up, the starter kit product has really opened up our audience into what I would call the skeptics. And the skeptics are trying it and really enjoying the product and making the switch from there.

Yeah, it's a great way to just kind of eliminate that barrier to entry where, like me in particular, I was like, wow, this sounds so great, but I'm already here. I'm on this big national carrier. My bill is outrageous, but I don't know if this, this will work in my area. So I love that, you know, where they buy the test kit, get the sim, and it just, you know, it's really unique.

And you know what's interesting is that most customers, myself included, I never want to give up my phone number. Right. I've had the same phone number for over 20 years. All my family knows it. It's what, you know, it's hard to remember phone numbers today, but I know it's one that my friends have. And I want, you know, I expect most people want to test it before they commit to it. So the cool thing about the starter kit is we'll give you a phone number for you to try as well. So you try it for a week with a phone number we give you. Most people try it for a couple days and they either love it or still have questions and then reach out to us through customer care. But that's really what we find is a behavior. We'll give you a week. But people want an opportunity just to try it in the places that are most important to them. They do that. And when they see there's no service issues, it's just, I mean, it's great quality, premium wireless, just at an incredible deal. They make the switch right away.

That's great. So, yeah, and one of my questions was going to ask you about the biggest challenge of getting people to switch. And I mean, is that the biggest challenge that you guys face, you know, is getting them to take that. That initial plunge and try the service?

You know, I think our challenges have changed. I mean, the brand is only three years old, so it's still a baby in my mind. But when we started, we had credibility issues. We were a new brand in a space where brands come and go all the time. So there was a lot of pushback on sort of like, is this thing going to be viable? Why would I buy a year when they've only been alive for a month? And that's where we really leaned into our ultra brand. And, you know, we do spend a lot of time talking to the customers, whether it be customer care. I personally read almost every Reddit post I read. I would say probably 90% of the reviews. I hunt for the negative because I want to know how to make the service better. So as we've grown, our challenges have changed. When we started, it was very much about, is this a viable business? Then it became, how do you start to scale efficiently? And now that we've got some really positive momentum, it's, how do you make. How do you make the brand even more broadly appealing so people know it exists because, you know, you're going up against four incumbents who are spending, you know, almost a billion dollars a year in advertising. So it's each. So it's very, very competitive.

Yeah, that's a lot of money to go up against.

It is.

Thank goodness podcasts are around to allow you to really target to your audiences. Right.

I mean, I love podcasts, and I love it because, you know, we got into it about a year and a half ago, and I don't know if we're still the only wireless service provider in the space. I'd imagine some other people are dabbling, but we're the only ones right now, I think doing it with some conviction, if you will.

I'll give you that. Yeah, I think that's fair. We kind of see a big picture of what's going on in the podcast industry, and you're right that there's some others sort of dabbling, but. But you guys are like, you're driving that bus, which is great. It's an untapped market. Right. So you get. You get to. You get to lead it until somebody else comes in with a billion dollars to spend, which, you know, wouldn't be bad for my industry, so I'm okay with it.

Yeah. And I mean, look, your audience is tech savvy. They're not using terrestrial radio, so. Radio from an antenna. They're downloading a podcast. They're on a. They're obviously listening to this either in their cars or in the commute or just casually. But I love how close the customer is to their device with this particular channel. And I love the fact that, you know, look, we buy TV ads. We bought a Super bowl ad this year. Nobody wanted to talk to me. They were just like, send us the check. And the thing I love about podcasts is you have an opportunity to, like, develop a relationship not only with you guys as hosts, but with the audience. And, you know, I hope that over time, the story we tell to your audience is more than just, hey, we're. We're an affordable price, but look at the quality of the product we're putting out there to get people excited.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. All right, well, speaking of sponsors, I do want to take a minute to talk about our sponsors for this episode. And our first sponsor for today is Go co. One of the most pivotal decisions you make when launching a new business is your name and your website URL. But if you're checking availability for your domain name after naming your business, chances are it's already taken. That's what happened to Shannon and I here with the Small Business Show. We knew we wanted to call the show the Small. The Small Business show, but we couldn't find the domain until we checked Go co and found businessshow co. And the best part is co is short. Two characters. That's it. Easy to remember. Plus co has more than 2 million domains registered across the world. People are used to it. We've proven that to you because you're a listener and you know, businessshow co. Plus, there's a better chance of getting the exact domain name you want, just like we did.

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Your.

Your family, sometimes your friends, sometimes the people around you that say, oh, that business will never succeed. Right. And you have to put on that, that, you know, optimistic helmet. Right. And just drive forward anyway because you know it's going to work. But there is value in this hunt for the negative because as you said, you're not looking for it for any other reason than to find what you can do to make your business work better for your customers. And I think that's a really valuable thing that you said there.

Yeah. And look, I'll be straight with you. It's so important to me. That's why I do it personally. I have a team who will do it as well. But it's just that. That big of an idea where if the customer, if you get enough voices telling you the same thing, you probably should pay attention to that. And listen, you know, we are listening to the customer. We are doing things to make the service better all the time. One of them hotspot. So we provide hotspot for free. A customer pointed out to us, look, it's my data, I bought it. Why should I have to pay to use it a different way? Like that's, that's a really good question.

Yeah, I don't know anybody that can come up with an answer for that. And, and yet why is it that you are one of the few companies that just offers that as table stakes? So yeah, there you go.

Yeah. And I mean it's funny. And I love engaging in Reddit. I do it under the handle Official MIP Fox. I'm one of several. So it's not just me, but I do like to get in there because I can now have a back and forth. I find that sometimes just reviews are a little bit one sided in the conversation. But in Reddit our customer base is very active. They're telling us where we can be better. And we are. And we are. We love the two way dialogue. So. And it's not just me, it's myself, it's other key members of our leadership team. And of course I have a team dedicated to making sure that, you know, people who do have issues are getting them resolved as quickly as possible.

Yeah, that's great. And I want to talk about, you mentioned, you know, the reviews and I, they really did stand out to me because there's just thousands and thousands of great reviews online. And you know, I know you're in the marketing side, but we always say, you know, here every business is the customer service business. Right. And you've talked a lot about that. I mean, what kind of customer service requirements do you guys have in the back end to keep everybody, you know, the vast majority of people happy and to make this thing work?

Well, the first thing I'd tell you is you've got to understand how important customer service is. And at our business in particular, we're an online direct to consumer brand. So customer service may be the single only time you talk to a human associated with the brand. We've done everything we can to make the brand as easy to use from a self service standpoint as possible. But inevitably you're going to have a question or potentially you have an issue. So we want customer service to be incredible. I work hand in hand with the customer care team. I was actually just in a meeting with them earlier and the thing that I have always told them from the start is You've got to hire Nice or you've got to hire Compassion. A lot of our systems are very strict, so once you learn it once, it's easy to replicate that. So if you're bringing your phone number to Mint, there is a specific process you have to follow to execute that. Once you know that process, you can talk pretty much everybody through it. But if you don't have compassion and you're not nice to people, man, a customer who's already having a frustration is about to have a bad day. And I don't want to be the centerpiece of that. I don't want to be the instigator for that. We also view care as, you know, if you're calling care, we probably have already let you down somehow because we couldn't provide a self service solution. Now that's very unique to our brand. But when you approach it with that mindset, you start looking for a certain type of talent. And that talent is really just someone who's compassionate and cares and wants to help. And that's where we start. And that's our primary set of customer care, which is calling in. We also have other things for people who do want automated and it's a chatbot, right? So we've got an AI tool on our website and that's customer care as well. And what we've tried to do there is just because it's an automated machine is add some of that mint Fox personality to it so it just doesn't feel as inorganic as it is. And then of course, we're active in all social media and you have to hire a different type of person who's going to be doing customer care and social media because that customer is typically a little bit punchier. So I think you have to really up the compassion component because it's easy to pile it on in social media. And look, those are folks who are coming out publicly and they need help asap. So we want to make sure we're getting them what they need. And we've done things like, of course we support them if they hit us up on Facebook or Instagram or any of those. But we've also set up dedicated channels like MIT Mobile Cares on Facebook, just so that way if, if, if it's really heavy and they need a lot of help, we can get them a dedicated agent who's going to make sure you probably take it out of online and get on a phone and talk to customer through whatever issue they're having. But customer care is incredibly important to us. And I Think, you know, for me, I'm not a customer care expert, but I'm a big user of it. You know, when I have to call in for a credit card or a bank or an airline, I know what I like, and I like to replicate off of sort of the Southwest or the Zappos model, because I feel like those are the brands that are doing except exceptional in customer care. And I've got to give a huge shout out to our customer care team. I mean, I think you see, people are much more likely to post a negative experience than they are a positive. But I see the metrics, and we're. We're satisfying. We call first call. Resolution is a metric we measure against, and we're solving over 95% of people's issues on a first call basis, and that's exceptional. So I've got to give them all the credit in the world for doing such a great job driving resolution.

Yeah, that's awesome. And I know, you know, we know how hard it is to get those reviews and to have, you know, thousands upon thousands of them like that. It is a testament to how good you're taking care of people. So that was another reason we wanted to have you on today. So you've mentioned the Fox a couple times, and I want to talk about that for a minute. I'm a big fan of the F word. I think you guys are, too. You know, in this case, the F is for Fox. So tell us about coming up with the Fox for Mint Mobile and using the word Fox in place of the other F word that, you know, to get people's attention and to be kind of on the edge.

Well, tell you, I mean, this is something that our designer, our creative director, told me about after she had designed the mint Fox character, was that the mint Fox character is made up of all mint leaves. So if you were to, in Photoshop, deconstruct all the layers, you would see that that character itself is nothing but mint leagues, which I thought was kind of cool. So just to give you a little bit of icon background or. Yeah, the. The F word was very interesting. So this was a topic of hot debate. Right? You've got a young brand that's about to go out into the marketplace and try and make a name for itself. Do you want to say the F word? And, you know, I felt very strongly that as a brand competing against those in a marketplace that are spending, you know, four, five billion dollars a year in marketing and advertising, we needed something that would cut through. So the use of effing or foxing or fox. You know, because we always. We go with the. When we deliver it in writing, it's capital F, asterisk, exclamation point. And then in parentheses near it, we'll put. We said foxing. We felt like we really needed that to really drive home, hey, we're something different. We're disruptive. Stop for a second and pay attention to us. And it worked. And I tell you, it also worked in hate mail. So I took a ton of abuse and a lot of beating for that. People just don't like it. We're very selective in how we do our advertising, so we're not ever. We're never in a place where we're advertising to kids, particularly with that message, because I have a son myself and he's very young, and I'd be disappointed in a brand that behave that way. But we typically exist in ecosystems that we can manage because they're digital and we know we're getting young adults or adults. And that has really been helpful to us. And I'll tell you, I think it helps add some personality and edge to a brand that's behaving as a disruptor. And I don't think you'd ever see any of the big boys come out with communications that bring the F word into it. It's a little bit of me in there too. I'm a fan of the word. I'm trying real hard not to use it on this podcast, but.

No, I think it's great.

We understand your struggle. Yeah, there you go.

It's powerful word. I love it. And I was impressed the minute I saw it on the, you know, the kind of care kit you sent us to learn more about the brand. My kids laughed about it. We all, everybody in my family, we all talked about.

Your. Your teenage kids laugh about it. Just, just to put it.

Teenage kids. Yeah, yeah. College age kids that, you know, and I sat there and we talked about branding. I mean, one of my, you know, companies, we use the donkey, you know, and ours was, you know, saving your. And then we'd always have a picture of a, you know, a donkey or an ass, you know, in there. And, and I love the concept. You guys have pushed it, and I think it's, it's. You're right, it does cut through a lot of the chaff, if you will, to, to get your name out there.

I think, I think we use it when needed. Right. Because if that was all you did, you'd be sort of like an Andrew Dice Clay. And I think it May lose some of its punch, but when used strategically, it can help you cut through. So that's sort of been our approach, and I like it. I don't see it changing anytime soon. Even though we are getting more. More and more popular, I think it's one of the things that makes the brand special.

Yeah, that's cool. So we're big fans of mistakes here on the Small business show, since they teach us so much, probably because I've made so many, especially when we look back on them. What would you say your best mistake is? One that stuck with you, taught you a valuable lesson as a marketer?

Well, I'll tell you, I have a philosophy. If my team ends up listening to this podcast, they're gonna start rolling their eyes right now because I tell the team and I tell them this weekly, we need to be failing more. We're not failing enough. And the premise for that is that I like to fail all the time, but I like to fail within a certain guardrails, and I like to fail cheap. I like to fail fast, and I like to fail smart. So if you can fail doing all those things, you're going to be better at your business. You don't want to make catastrophic mistakes. I think the biggest mistake we've made with the brand was when we were getting going and we. We had a. You know, we have a killer proposition, 15 bucks a month. And we decided to run a holiday promo a few years back. And we grew so fast, so quick. It was everybody as a customer service rep, everybody is going into the warehouse to help pack sim kits and send them to customers every. It was insane. It was an amazing moment and a scary moment because, you know, the big mistake there is, we didn't have good enough planning or foresight to see what would happen in. In the marketplace. And the performance was astronomical. And through the roof. It was. It was so exciting. But then that excitement quickly went to fear because it was like, we have to be able to service these people in a way they would expect their current carrier or better than their current carrier. So, I mean, the failure there was, I guess, a lack of vision or planning on my part to see how much potential was out there. But I'm going to sort of give myself a little bit of a pass because the brand was. Was a few months. It was six months old at the time, and it really just took off like crazy.

That's great. That's a good lesson. So again, looking at some background for this interview here, I see that your background in marketing and content Management, you did as well for crazy popular Mexican food chain. And how did you transition from that marketing content space to mobile? And did your skills translate quickly or did you have to relearn things to be successful and where you're at now?

Yeah, I mean, for me, a couple of things about me. One, I only like to work on things that I'm passionate about. And I made a mistake early in my career and worked on a large pet food dog food brand. It was just so boring to me that I couldn't really commit to it. And when I was at that large Mexican chain, it was, look, I love Mexican food, but it's hard to be passionate about 99 cent burritos. But at the same time we were passionate about it. That's our time of the day. Yeah, totally. You get to fourth meal or fifth meal or the party after the party and all of a sudden your passion is through the roof. Right. But for me, we took. My passion in that sense was about rebuilding the brand. So I got there when the brand was in a little bit of trouble and it was not me exclusively. It was a ginormous team that turned that puppy around and really made it sort of like one of the hottest brands in the space. And that was so fulfilling and rewarding. And I loved working on all the communications and all the things we were doing at the time that really set that brand apart from basically everybody in the fast food space. And it's cool to see the other brands catch up and I like to see where that other brand is doing things that are totally different now, like licensing a hotel or things like that. It's just cool. So, yeah, when I came over here, like I said before, I have no wireless experience at all except for being a user. But you know, the consumers are very similar in that they are, you know, consumers who are looking for good value. They're not necessarily consumers who have value based on need, but consumers who just want a good value. They want a good product, they want it fast, they want it easy. And I really consider myself a student of consumer behavior. So I love to understand why people buy. And that was one that was a real big challenge here because I had never done it before and nobody in wireless had really sold online before. So that to me was my passion point was figuring out how to do it, how to do it right and how to, you know, I wouldn't say we're the disruptor in the category yet, but that's our dream, is to really make people rethink the way they get wireless. And think about not going to a store. So that's where, you know, you think about it from that lens. And everything I learned from the Bell or from, you know, over a decade at various marketing and advertising agencies, you really start to tune in on what makes customers or consumers ticket and then building a product that makes people happy. So, or a service, in my case now, a service that makes people happy. That's really what I learned from all those places and that's what I took here.

That's great. So we've got thousands of small business owners listening to this episode and we are always thinking of marketing. How do we get our, you know, how do we get our name out there? What's the best way to spend our money? This kind of thing. What would you say if you could offer one piece of advice to these small business owners? What could you leave them with today?

So I have a philosophy here of test, learn, optimize and scale. And we do it all the time. It goes into my sort of like, it's okay to fail approach. And if you take the, if you like it or hate it, it's seems to be working for us. So we always test everything we learn, we tweak and we grow. And we do that enough times, you can start to make big bets. So for us, our big bet this year was we bought a Super bowl spot. And we had only been on TV since May. So we were in, we launched broadcast in May of what was last year, 2018. And by February, we were in the super bowl advertising a 30 second spot in the Super Bowl. And it was funny because, you know, some people here, they know me, I don't care much for Las Vegas because I'm not a good gambler. And they go, but you're taking such a big gamble with this. How can, how can, you know a two dollar blackjack table make you anxious when you're going to spend, you know, millions of dollars on 30 seconds? And I go, well, that's because we know how this is going to work. We've done plenty.

That's not a gamble. That's, that's, that's, that's a calculated risk, right, that you're taking.

Very, very different thing. And that's because we had bought. So we went on tv, we had started testing some lighter TV schedules. We tested some live sports, we tested basketball, we tested baseball, we tested football. Football was very interesting for our brand. So then we went and we sort of kept learning and scaling and learning and scaling. And then when the opportunity came up to put A commercial called Chunky Style Milk onto the Super Bowl. I was like, to my management team, I, you know, explained to them, I go, look, this is a very calculated risk, but here's what we need out of this to perform. And if you look at everything we have done with football so far, the payout looks like it's there. So let's do it. Let's go for it. Let's put a big bet out there. And it has been phenomenal. We have had every single month. Well, even before that, leading up to it, we were hitting record sales, but every single month is a sales record now. And I attribute a lot of that to getting 110 million people to know we exist in 30 seconds. It's pretty fantastic.

Yeah. That is awesome. Well, it's some great lessons and great tips that you've shared with us today. I really appreciate you coming on the show, sharing all your knowledge and telling us more about this journey that you're on. What's the best way for people to learn more about Mint Mobile and to connect with you if they have, you know, more questions?

Yeah. So mintmobile.com for. For the service, I'd also ask people who are concerned maybe about switching to a new carrier. Look at the reviews, read the Reddits. You know, we're very, very transparent as far as getting in touch with me. I'm on LinkedIn. Listeners should know that my name is spelled Aaron, A R, O N, and last name is North. I link in with most. I'm happy to do it. I just don't bombard me with sales pitches right away. I know I'm setting myself up a little bit here.

No, no, yeah, yeah. It doesn't work anyway, so I get those all the time with LinkedIn. We just ignore them, but. Yeah, but thanks again. You know, it's a great story. We love the service. You know, we. We love the whole concept that got our attention, and that's why, you know, you're here today. And we really appreciate it.

Yeah. And if.

Thank you again.

If you guys would have me back, I'd love to come back sometime and give you an update, tell you what's new and exciting. And I mean, absolutely. I think this is a fantastic show and I love being part of your guys's. Your guys's podcast.

Oh, we appreciate it, man.

Thank you again. Thanks for joining us. Well, that was a blast, man. What do you think?

Yeah, I really enjoyed it. You know, this is definitely the case where I always learn the most. I love his iterating, you know, tips. And I think Aaron's a good guy to connect with.

And that's the call resolution metric that he discussed, dude.

Yeah.

Like. Yep. And the hunt for the negative. Those two things were the ones that were like, oh, this guy gets customer service.

So. Yeah. Yeah. And I also love this, the concept of this wireless test drive because, you know, it gets this physical product and the SIM card in your hand with low to no commitment. And because to me, that's what I would be like. Well, this is never going to work. I live up in the hills or whatever, so I love that. Very creative.

Yeah, same. All right, well, thanks. Thanks so much for listening, folks. You know where to find us. It's Business show Co. Send us your thoughts feedback at businessshow co. And go to Business show Co reviews and leave us a review on itunes. We would love to hear.

We would. It really helps. Thank you, folks.