Do You Need To Be Passionate About Your Product? #BrandBuilderPodcast

If all that you care about is the people who are going in and clicking buttons and buying your product, you will be far ahead of most people because what they care about is themselves. If you switch that and can just care about a person at the other end of the purchase, things get interesting real quick.

Welcome to the Brand Builder podcast presented by capitalism dot com. I'm Max Kerwick and I advise physical product brands to find their story.

I'm Ryan Daniel Moran and I invest in physical products brands. A physical products brand is arguably the most predictable path to a seven figure business. And we advise them, build them, buy.

Them and sell them.

The show goes behind them, tracks their success, and hands you the keys to what's working.

Let's dive in.

Welcome to the Brand Builder Podcast. I'm Ryan Daniel Moran.

And I'm Max Kerwick.

And I understand we got a really good submission question this week that Max.

And I are gonna tackle.

Max, would you give us the summary.

On what's going on?

Yeah. So first off, I want to thank all of you that have reached out to us since we started the podcast, you know, six, eight weeks ago now. Had a lot of people that reached out with some great questions, but there's been a common theme on a couple of them and specifically it's around this idea of passion. Right. We've talked to Roxelle, Right. Who has fused Hawaii, who's really passionate about her audience of new moms and, you know, having a swimsuit that they're comfortable in. We've talked to the guys at Bear Complex and you know, they do CrossFit every day. Exactly. They're avid CrossFitters and they built a CrossFit brand. And so there's been this question of do I need to be passionate in order to build a brand successfully? Right. And then connected to that, there's an idea like, if I'm passionate, do I need to be the face of the brand? Right. And so I think, you know, Ryan and I just wanted to tackle that today and kind of go over it in a little bit more detail.

Yeah. Would you give a little context to.

The actual person who reached out?

Don't share their name, but say a little bit about the situation that this person found themselves in.

Yeah. So this person had reached out and they had built a brand a couple years ago, only selling on Amazon, and it was a space that they were kind of interested in. They had worked as a professional in that space and they thought, okay, well, I'll just, you know, I'll jump in. I'll start selling products in this space. Right. Because this seems like, you know, I want to be my own boss and I want to go into this space.

I want to make money.

I want to make money. Right. And so they found themselves there. They took some sales on Amazon, built a business that, you know, lasted for, you know, it sounds like maybe six months or a year or something like that. And then sales died down. They didn't really believe in the products that they were selling. They didn't really believe that they were differentiated in any way. And it just kind of tailed off. And, you know, so they kind of moved out of that business and, you know, back to full time in that kind of nine to five world. And, you know, really likes his job and everything, but, you know, still itching to get back into that more entrepreneurial space and starting a company. And so that was the question is like, okay, do I need passion? Is passion a necessary ingredient for me to move back into this space? Yep.

And so on the other side of that extreme spectrum, I would bring up one of our backroom members, Travis Killian.

Yep.

Travis Killian, you know, has, I think there's maybe eight different brands in his portfolio. He's not super passionate about every single one of them, but does eight figures a year. Amazon only.

Yep.

Right. So what's the right way, you know, what's the right mindset going to this? Max, how do you answer that question?

Well, are you ready for a long answer? Because I have kind of a long answer.

I got my Black Cherry Ze be all filled up. I'm ready to go.

So I kind of, you know, again, glad you brought up Travis. Right. Because the answer is it totally depends on who you are. Right. And what you need as a person. Right. I think of passion as a necessary ingredient in the way that you need to be passionate about something. Right. You need to be passionate about the product. You need to be passionate about the audience. You need to be passionate about the sales channel, something. You need to be passionate about why the business exists and how you. How you're serving those people. It can go, you know, for the first year, for the first two years even, you can just be really excited about, you know, waking up and checking your seller central account.

The opportunity.

Yeah, the opportunity.

You can be. You can run for a few years on excitement about pursuing a new opportunity and just see. Seeing the growth.

Exactly.

You can be excited about growth.

Yeah. You can be passionate about growth, you can be passionate about cash flow, all that kind of stuff until things start to go down. Yeah. When it starts to suck. If you don't have any passion, I don't see how you could possibly kind of keep that going. Passing. And the thing that Travis does, just from conversations I've had with him. Right. Is he gets in there and he figures out, like, what is the best product that I could possibly build. Right. You know, I'm selling this thing, I'm going to figure out the best version that I can sell at this price point and we're going to stress test it hell out of it. And it is gonna be. It is gonna be the best version of that thing. And then he's really good at selling them.

Yeah. And the thing on. On Travis, for example, is before Amazon, Travis had an SEO background.

Yeah.

He loves algorithms.

Yes.

He loves hacks. He loves finding the way in and winning.

Right.

That's what's. That's what's exciting to him.

Yeah.

Right. So. So there has to be some talent and skill that you are leveraging that is being emphasized through passion, and that is how you are bringing that to the world. Where I think people die off is that they choose a niche because there's an opportunity. They choose a product because there's an opportunity, and they get the results of that opportunity. Then they go into defense mode. And the defense mode is, what? Well, what if somebody undercuts my price? What if someone sells the exact same product as me? What if someone has more reviews than me? What if a competitor comes in and all you are doing then is you're just trying to milk the result, which was cash flow in your pocket and there was no. There was no wanting in the actual business itself. So you screwed up from day one in building something antithetical to who you are rather than building something that amplified who you are.

Yeah, exactly. You built it for mailbox money. Right. Mailbox money is great until it stops showing up or it becomes too hard and not worth it anymore to get it.

I think a common misconception and this came through in the guy that reached out. Right. Is he saying, oh, I didn't think there was anything different about my products. I didn't think there was anything cool about the products that I was selling. I would say it's actually probably the exception rather than the rule that entrepreneurs are super excited about the product itself. Right. Unless you have an engineering background, unless you're a user of that product. Like Bare Complex guys are a great example of someone who's really excited about just the product itself. Like that, that's the piece that got them going because they're like, oh, yeah, cool. There was a problem that we needed to solve, and we solved it. Right. But just listen to that podcast again. Listen to that voice. Do they get really excited talking about their grips, or do they get really excited when they're at a conference, interacting with their customers, seeing the other people that are part of their tribe? You know, like, what is it that really gets them excited? Is it the product or is it the people? Right. Is it the people that they're serving that are buying? They're giving the positive feedback of, oh, my God, these are the best grips that I've ever had. Right. The product itself can only give you passion as long as it's kind of interesting and you're in development and all that kind of stuff. But it's the people using the product who are seeing results from having that product. That's what most people get passionate about.

Yeah. So when this person reached out and they said, do I have to be passionate, what was on the other end of that, of that question? Meaning, do I have to be passionate about what?

Yeah, I mean, literally, it's like, even though the products I sold previously were of good quality, I couldn't figure out for the life of me what made mine different. And I'm convinced that that was a huge aspect of my life. Yeah.

Got it. So one of the things, the way that I would answer this question is, do you have to be passionate about your business? You have to be passionate about your product? To me, the answer is in theory, no, in theory, you do not need to be passionate. I'll just go on record. You do not need to be passionate about your business. You do not need to be passionate about your product. You don't need to be passionate about any of those things. You don't in theory. But the reality is most people who listen to the work@capitalism.com are small teams. And in most cases, that small team is one or two people. So you are the business. You are the business. You do everything. You do the customer support. You. You do the product development, you do the listing optimization, you do the Facebook advertising. You are the one DMing people on Instagram. Now, in a perfect world, you have a team that executes your vision, and you don't need to be passionate about nothing. You can just focus on the thing that you are really jazzed about. But when you do everything, there better be something in there that you enjoy or you're simply not going to put in the work. The hack for this, in my opinion, is if you can get passionate about the customer. If all that you care about is the people who are going in and clicking buttons and buying your product, you will be far ahead of most people because what they're. What they care about is themselves. If you switch that and can just care about the person at the other end of the purchase, things get interesting real quick.

Yeah. You know, you go back to the initial conversation, the inaugural episode that Ryan and I did, right. Where we talk about where do brand stories come from. Right. And where do great. Where. How are great brands built? Right. They're built around their best customers. Right. Do you think like someone at Johnson and Johnson loved, you know, like cotton pads or something like that? That's. That's why they're just so passionate about cotton pads? No, they just, they saw there was an opportunity. Right. And then the brand was built around the people who were then buying those. Those commodities. Right. There's nothing interesting about the products that they sell. Right. They built this brand around caring for families and mothers and all that kind of stuff. And then that's much easier for a run of the mill employee to get inspired by and excited about.

Yeah. When you say Johnson Johnson, I think the baby powder, Right. And it's real hard to be excited about baby powder or baby lotion. It's really hard to be really excited by that. So there has to be something deeper than that.

So.

So, Max, when you're working with people, how do you go into that? Because there's a lot of people who sell the same thing as everybody else. I mean, at this point in the world, there's not all that much innovation. When I think about innovation, the first example that comes to mind is Quest. Like Quest put a new spin on an old classic that was protein bars. Or even the example we love to bring up, RXBar, which sold for $600 million. It's still a new spin on an old classic. It's a meal bar.

Right.

So how do you go in and pull this out of somebody who is.

Selling the same thing as everybody else?

Yeah. So, I mean, this really goes back to seeing your customers as people and not as sales. Right. I think it's really easy using more digital platforms, selling products, looking at the number of sales you're taking every day. You look at each transaction from the standpoint of I sold a product, not I have a new human being that is part of my audience that has opted into what I am selling as a brand. Right. And so it's really diving into, like, who is that person that's buying and what about them can I get excited about.

Yeah. And most people don't know. They have no idea. It's just. It's people who want spatulas.

Yeah.

It's people who want baby lotion.

And I don't. You know, I've talked to 23 year old dudes who are selling baby products. Right. And, and they've literally never talked to a new mother. Right. They've never taken the step to understand what a deeply emotional journey that is. Right. The journey of pregnancy.

Right.

The journey of giving birth, the journey of being a young parent. Right. With this newborn baby that is hugely, hugely, hugely emotional. And frankly, pretty much anyone can get passionate about that. If you talk to a mom, if you see the look on her face when she's talking about her child. Right. When you see the look on her face and hear the words that she uses and the emotion in her voice, I don't see how you could not get passionate about that person. Right.

Yeah. So side rant here. Total tangent for a second. I'm doing a bunch of biohacking this year. Like I, I'm working with a local functional doctor ever on every test. Like, I just keep waiting for them to be like, this is where you stick it up your butt. Right. I've been poked and prodded in more places. Right. But one of them was a brain scan where they're looking at my emotional responses to certain things like how do I get stressed, how do I handle stress?

Interesting.

And the biggest biological.

Biological response. My breathing changed. Different things lit up in my brain. The biggest thing that changed is when I thought about my daughter. Exactly.

Right.

So like me telling that story, we can craft all kinds of episodes in that story, right. That impact me going to the store and buying an Elsa doll or baby lotion or baby powder or whatever the hell it is. It is. There is a very interesting story behind the action that goes to the person on Amazon clicking to buy your thing.

Yeah, exactly. And getting behind that story and just trying to understand like what, what is that, that need? What is the thing that is missing from their life that they're going to fill with your product, with your brand? And that's the thing that all of a sudden you can start to see your business as more than just mailbox money, as more than just the source of cash flow. Right. You have created something that's adding meaning to other people's lives. Right. And that doesn't matter what you're selling. Right. People create meaning or find meaning in all sorts of different stuff. Right. And it's all equally valid. So you're just, you need to find that person, figure out what is the meaning that you're giving in their life. And that typically can be the key to passion, if passion isn't already there.

Yeah. So there's an interesting way that I'll analyze this and it's that I often feel like I am being airy fairy when I talk about this. It feels, it feels very sorry.

I know this isn't a PC word.

It feels very feminine for me to have this conversation about like care about your people. And everything was to take care of itself. So I feel that I will add an asterisk here. The reason why I go in this direction in so much of my content is because I care about fun and enjoying my life. And part of that is making as much money as possible. And part of that is enjoying the businesses that I'm a part of. And the hack to both of those is really, really understanding your people. Because business gets a lot more fun. You get to dial in more of what you enjoy. And the money goes way up when you know who those people are. For every hack out there, meaning the person who's a hack, like the person who's hacked together a business and is trying to sell stuff on the Internet, there is seven failures to that and all of the success stories are on life support. Because I heard, I heard somebody debate recently. It was actually this morning on podcast, they were saying brands are dead. And I was saying, no, brands are more, more valuable now than ever. Which is why you have the valuations on companies. But the brand is the person and the story behind it, not the products on the front end. If you are, if your brand is strong, you can sell whatever you want and be in business and that makes things really interesting. Do you agree, Max?

I do, I do. Dang it.

This is going to be really fun if you did.

Hey, real quick, I'm doing a test in my business right now that I think you'll be interested in. We have a training called Million Dollar Brands and it helps business owners and entrepreneurs get clear on those first three to five products that they're going to build that will get to 25 sales a day at 25 to $30 and thus be a million dollar business. And we sell that for $297. And I recently had the idea of what if at the end of that training when somebody completed it and they filled out a form saying they know what their three products are going to be, they know how they're going to Launch the products, let's refund them the cost of the training. Let's incentivize the action of actually making some decisions in your business and getting clear on. And I did this because someone challenged me with the thought of what would I change in my business if I only cared about my customers results and I didn't care about profitability. And I immediately said, let's incentivize action. And then I said, well, would I really spend however many thousands of dollars a month I spend on Facebook ads, or would I take some of that money and put it into a scholarship fund and then fund some of the cool ideas that came from my training? And it was like this whole world of creativity opened up for me. So this is a test right now that we're running. If you are starting a new business or you are still under that million dollar threshold or even that 25 sales a day threshold, then we have this training called Million dollar brands. That's $297 and it's refunded to you when you complete the training. And I figure if you walk out of that training, you're gonna leave with such a clear business plan that you're gonna want to work with us on ongoing. So you can find this@capitalism.com brands. And depending on when you sign up, we're also opening up strategic windows where you can qualify for a scholarship and have your business funded. So this is all an experiment. If I lose my rear end on it, we'll probably shut it down. But for now, you can find it@capitalism.com brands.

I mean, obviously I come at it from more of a perspective of like, I'm a big believer in just building brands around people, right? You're talking about understanding your customer makes everything else a lot easier, right? It makes it easier to sell to them, it makes it easier to decide what products to develop and all that kind of stuff. I totally agree. But I even think just the reason why the brand exists, if that is based in the person. And I think of Roxelle, right? And I love Roxelle because she, you know, she was a member of that community, right? She was solving a problem for herself. And she can connect with those, you know, those new moms, right, that have just had a baby, right? And they want to, you know, be able to feel sexy on the beach. And they want it even when they don't, right? And they want to, you know, feel like the best version of themselves and she can connect with them on that deep kind of emotional, personal level. It just Makes everything so much easier if you are able to like tap into that passion. Right. I, I think back to Russell Brunson, right. He talked at Capcom, not this, this past Capcom, but the year before. Right. He's talking about the different levels of opportunities on a scale of 1 to 10. And you know, if you have a 10 opportunity and you execute at 2, then you know you're probably still making lots of money versus if you have a 2 opportunity. You need to execute at a 10 to make any money.

Yeah.

To find your own personal 10 opportunity. Right. To me, that's something that's kind of at the confluence of what you're good at, what's your mark, what there's a market for and what you're passionate about. Right. If you don't have that passion component, you're not maxing out your ability. Because when it gets, when it gets hard, what are you going to do?

You quit.

You quit. Right. Because you're like, why the hell am I doing this? Why am I putting myself through this? I don't care about this.

So the summary to this, do you need to be passionate about what you're doing? You don't.

If I'm summarizing, forgive me for putting.

Words in your mouth, Max, but no, you don't need to be passionate about every aspect of it or the product. But there has to be something that is driving you forward and allowing you to put in the work that is going to be required for you to have a meaningful business.

Exactly.

And if you don't, what happens? This is, this is my way of segment segueing into that other part of the question. Can you just bring in a face of the person who can speak to it?

So I think it depends on how you're asking that. Right. Because, like, purely from a marketing perspective. Yes. You do not need to be the face of your own business. Like, there's no reason why every single person that owns a business needs to.

Be the face of the business.

Right? No. Like, most people's personalities are not set out for that. Most people's, like, audience building is not why you got into the building a business in the first place.

Yeah. Just as a side note, the Gerber baby is not the founder of Gerber.

Exactly. Exactly. There's a million examples like that. Right.

The Geico Gecko is not the actual founder of Geico.

Funny to hear that.

Right. I was not aware.

I was not aware. But is it a great shortcut if you're an attractive person that's also a member of the audience and you're well spoken and you like being on camera.

I'm so glad you asked me, Max. Yes, it is, right?

Yes, yes, absolutely. All of those things are great. And it's a great hack. Right. That is far and away the exception. And that business becomes much harder to sell. Right. If you are intrinsically linked with the business itself. If people think of your face as soon as they think of the brand, that's going to be a harder thing for you to extract yourself from when you're trying to sell the business or after you have sold the business.

So I want to go on record in saying I think Faces of Business, and I'm making quotes with my fingers right now. Faces of Business are overrated. They're vastly overrated. I'm reminded of a buddy of mine, Riley Judd. He's my resident retail expert. He's been on the podcast in the past.

He's the one who helped me get into about a thousand retail stores across the US and he loves to tell the story about Melania Trump's perfume line and how they just thought that putting Melania on and they would. Didn't want to call it Trump, they wanted to call it Melania.

Yeah.

And now calling it Melania was just going to be this magical thing.

Wave a wand and sales go up.

People buy it because it's Melania. Or he tells a story about a supplement company putting Jennifer Lopez on all of their packaging.

Yeah.

She's the ideal avatar to everybody aspires to be. She gets hotter the older she gets. And both of those companies tanked. Yep. Both of them went to nothing. And the reason for that is because it was about the face. It was not about the person or the person buying the product.

Yep.

There was no audience. It was just, I'll slap a person on this and people like that will buy. That's not how it works.

Yeah.

At all.

Exactly. And I think that's a great kind of segue into, like, the way to think about, you know, quote unquote faces, or even if you just want to broaden that out to influencers that you're working with. Right. It's not about the influencer. It's not about that person. It's about their audience. Right. The reason that you're working with that person is because you think that their audience looks very, very similar to your core audience. The people that you're serving. They're just. That's another distribution channel for you. Right. To get to people that you can be passionate about. Right. To get to people that believe the things that your customers believe.

Right.

And to serve those people.

You use the phrase distribution channel. Right. And I think people mistake distribution channels for the business, but the business is the product and the purchaser, the person behind the purchase. Those two things and the distribution channels are all the variety of different ways that you combine those two things. And influencers is one of them. Not again, like you said, not because of the person, but because of who's following them, how engaged they are, what their fears are, what their desires are. And when you get that, by the way, cool tip number one, if you recognize that you can find the diamond in the rough influencers that you can.

Sponsor for real, real cheap while everybody.

Else is going after the vanity metrics of the person with 100,000 followers or a million dollars.

Million dollars for a Kardashian to put one post up or whatever.

Yeah, right. And without any sort of idea of if that person matches my ideal customer demographic. You have no idea.

Yeah, you have no idea. And I would actually argue that you do have a pretty good idea of like someone who has a massive following like that. The chance that they are as laser focused on kind of the people that are going to be interested in what you sell. Right? The people that you can play a relevant role in their life. I would much, much, much rather have a bunch of people with smaller, more focused, engaged audiences than one with a giant, you know, kind of general audience.

I completely agree. So if you're, if you do not have a face of the business, the nut you are trying to crack is connecting with the people who make purchases. Having a face is one of the ways that you can do that, but it is not the only way you do it through the stories you tell in your ads. Here's a good example. We're recording this within the first few days after the super bowl. And T Mobile had the most simple ads and they were all telling the story of people texting one another. And there was like the Lyft driver going to pick up the girl and she thinks it's actually a friend. And there's this funny little miscommunication between the two of them. There's the dad who doesn't know how to use Google and thinks his daughter is Google, so he's looking for eggplant recipes. And it's the story of the person interacting. And every single person who watched those ads was like, I can point to.

A time where that was me.

There was no face. There was no celebrity, there was. There was nothing. Except I can relate to that.

I See myself in that ad.

Exactly. And I kid you not, I had the thought, I think I want to switch to T Mobile because there was like a sense of. I think they get me.

Yeah, exactly. Versus. And by the way, that ad placement costs just as much, right? But the cost of creating that ad versus, right. How many of those other ads they have to pay half a million dollars per celebrity or pay licensing fees for all that kind of stuff where you just watch it, you're like, oh, that's cool, I can't remember what brand that was for. Yeah, right. Versus that sense of, hey, T Mobile gets me. Right?

That's often common in, like, in Facebook video ads. People will hire agencies, they think they need to make a viral video. They think you need to do a.

Dollar shave club ad.

And that's again, one of the ways that you can accomplish what you're trying to accomplish. But for most people, that's not them. It's not authentic to who they are. They're trying to pursue the system rather than the person. And. And if you just show that you understand the person, everything gets a hell of a lot easier.

Absolutely, absolutely. So to tie that back around to kind of the original question, right, it's like, you know, do I need to be the face of my brand? Right. Do I need to be super passionate about this and then parlay that passion into being the face Is like, I can probably say the answer to that is no, right? For some of you, yes. Right. For, you know, 0.5% of you out there listening, yes, that's the path that you need. But for most of you, probably not, right? You need to be able to find something that you're passionate about. You need to be able to take some sort of positive energy from your business. That's not just, hey, I made money today, but beyond that, like, find your passion, right? And you don't need to be the face. You should be looking for connection. You should be trying to find the people that you're going to be able to serve and that you're going to be able to add value to their life with your brand.

And if you are struggling here, really good hack is to go get the customers and make them the face. Here's what I mean. I don't mean yes, having a big contract with them. I mean, get them to pull out their phone, say why they bought it, and get their permission to run it as an ad.

You will be stunned at how effective this is. You will be stunned. I guarantee that it will do better than you. Yeah. Than you for sure than you. And it'll probably do better than any celebrity or anything that you have on there too.

Make it a regular habit to connect with those customers to pull out the story about how your brand fit into their life. And if you can get them to say it on camera or at the very least get them to type it up or call into a number and record their voice, that will do more for conversions than any good ad campaign or even good copy. Because people are looking to connect with people like them. They are not looking to be sold on how you think they need to be.

Man, I think we can just put a pin on it right there.

All right, we'll just do a mic drop there. Max, where can people submit questions or contact you?

So you can either go to my website, brandbuilderstrategy.com and fill out the contact form. I have a contact form for questions there. Or you can email me directly. Maxandbuilderstrategy.com thanks for listening.

Share this with an entrepreneur who is selling stuff on the Internet and needs to do things differently. All right, we'll talk to you soon.

Hey Brand Builders, we hope you enjoyed this podcast by capitalism.com. check out our website for upcoming events and additional content about building businesses, building brands, and investing. My name is Max Herwick and my mission in life is to transform businesses into brands. If you have any feedback about the show, any guests you want to see, case studies covered, topics explored, or frankly, just any questions about branding in general, just shoot me an email@maxmaxrandbuilderstrategy.com again, that's maxrandbuilderstrategy.com and I'd love to hear from you. One quick note, if you could subscribe to the podcast or even leave us a review on itunes. These things really do make a big difference in helping us book amazing guests and then also helping people just like you find the podcast. So thanks and we'll see you next time.