Ecommerce is Just Math - Let's Break it Down "Growth on Shopify" w/ Ken Ott from Metacake

Jay Myers: Ken. It's so good to have you on the show.

Thank you for being here. I'm going to get into. Who you are and some stuff right away, but I want to kind of break the ice here a little fun What were you doing 15 minutes before you got on this podcast?

Ken Ott: 15 minutes before I got on this podcast.

Jay Myers: we're gonna really find out who you are right off the bat.

Ken Ott: I was actually taking a shower.

Jay Myers: Okay, you shower it Well, that's nice to know you got cleaned up for the

Ken Ott: A freezing cold shower, actually.

Jay Myers: Oh, are you one of those people

Ken Ott: I'm one. Well, I'm trying to be one of

Jay Myers: not like that's a type

Ken Ott: No, it is. It's it's it's no, no, it's an elitist group. You're right.

Jay Myers: You're better than the rest of us. We're starting this off knowing that you're better than me within the first minute.

Ken Ott: No, I'm just trying to be like those people. No. I started doing that. I, I got a little cold plunge thing. And it's actually just a giant Yeti cooler.

Jay Myers: You're small enough to fit in a cooler, right?

Ken Ott: Well, cause I'm in Tennessee, you're in Winnipeg, so like, you

Jay Myers: We don't have to, we don't have to cold plunge up here. It's

Ken Ott: No, no, no, you do it automatically. So we have to, we have to manufacture it down here in the South.

So that's why. You're actually way better. Cause you do it every day. But no, that's what I was doing. It was a freezing cold shower.

Jay Myers: Amazing. And Jesus, well, that's I, you know, there

Ken Ott: spend an hour on that if you wanted to.

Jay Myers: and there's, there's podcasts about it. So we won't, we won't go too far down that rabbit hole, but it's great to know that you are that type of a person. I have a lot more respect for you now,

Ken Ott: Of course.

Jay Myers: like I could have had anymore. So, okay, Ken, let's, we, you are Doing so many amazing things in the e commerce space, which our listeners are all about.

And I want to pick your brain on so many things. Give us a little quick background on, on who you are Medicaid. And then I want to dive in some stuff, but just for a little bit of context for our listeners, you're not just a guy that takes cold showers.

Ken Ott: Not just a guy that takes cold showers. Although, I do think that's really good for running a business. I think it helps with e com and everything. As you might find in some of this, like, yeah, that's kind

Jay Myers: Tip number one, it's going in the show notes. So it's,

Ken Ott: It's going in the show notes. Cold

Jay Myers: grow your business, take cold showers.

Ken Ott: Yeah, it's called plunging closed showers.

A little bit about me. So, I, I don't know how much you want to get into some of the story because some of like what I, what I teach, you know, to e commerce entrepreneurs and owners, and even just people that are running other businesses comes from that. But I grew up in Queens, New York. And so, if you know anything about Queens, you know, it's like, and this is, I come from there, so it's okay.

I can make fun of it. Like, like it's like, it's, it's the best, sorry. It's, it's, it's got the, all the problems of the city without any of the benefits of the New York city. And so, I grew up there. We were very kind of low, lowish class. And my dad was a pastor and he also worked a nine to five job in a union, just sort of like a typical. If you ever watch King and Queens, it's like kind of similar to that. And so that was the kind of beginning of why I went on what ended up being really like this. life journey of pursuing business and very quickly that led me to e commerce like early on. Like I started working with well, like the reason I pursued business because I wanted freedom from that life.

Like I wanted to I remember these situations. I don't know. I think this might resonate with you because, because I know you pretty good now. But, I remember these situations where early on like, we, there were people that needed help. Like, there were like people that needed money, or needed food, or needed a place to stay, or something like that.

And we had no ability to help them. Like we would, we would, Like, we would have these situations where honestly, people needed to help us, but we could never lend a hand. We had to watch bad things happen. And that always impressed on me. Like, I don't, I, it was such a disgusting feeling. I, I was like, I do not want to do that.

Like, I do not want a life that, that I cannot have resource to apply when it's needed. And, and that's, that's a, so he, that, that gets nothing into business, but that is like why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Jay Myers: Amazing. I really that hits home with me personally a lot because I feel well, I know me and you are both like people of faith and I, I there's, you know, s sometimes. I grew up in a Mennonite church and entrepreneurship, or like, you know, that getting ahead in life, it was sometimes a little bit frowned upon.

Like, why do you have to, why do you have to stand out? Or why are you just worried about being successful? And, and that type of mindset was very prevalent as I grew up and. You know, there's, I always felt that there's a ton of different ways that you can do good. I could go work in a, in a soup kitchen and, and, but is that the best use of my talents?

Or I can you know, grow a business. And I know some people are not passionate about a business at all, and that's, everyone is different, you know, different fruit. And I so for me personally, I grown a, a business and I'm able to do. More than I ever could have before right? So like I that totally resonates with me what you what you said.

Ken Ott: Like, so, so, oh man, there's so just so much stuff in what you just said too. Like, I grew up in a church that was similar. And I would say a lot of kind of people that grow up in a faith community, that tends to be the case, right? You get this, this this idea that being rich is bad and having ambition is self motivated and bad, thusly bad.

Jay Myers: Mm hmm

Ken Ott: And I believe that's a lie of the devil. Like I think that's straight up. Like if you wanted to. really neuter people who could actually impact other people and help them, you make them think that being, having resources is a bad thing. Right. So, yeah. So anyway, yeah.

Jay Myers: yeah, it's and and you know, even for people who Not religious in any way. I think people struggle with it, too And and it can be in their social They're, they're, they're social groups. I, I sometimes use this, my, my wife in 2007, she started a dance studio and she worked like very hard to, to start this.

She spent like her savings to actually, she borrowed money from her parents and her friends, and she started this dance studio and like she, she quit her job, she, you know, you know what it's like, you, you put, you risk everything. After the first year it, you know, it was doing okay, but she had enough money to buy a new car while she leased a car, actually.

She didn't buy the car, but she leased it. It was a nothing fancy, but it was a, it was a Mazda three, but a brand new one. And the studio is kind of in this small town, just outside of where we live. And one day she pulled up to a store and she parked and someone else who kind of knew her and knew the studio, saw her in her new car and said, Oh, she's Business business, business must be good.

You got it. You got a new car, like must be, must be nice for you kind of thing. Right. And that same day she was in the city and she went somewhere else to a grocery store and saw someone else she knew. And that this other person saw the car and that person said, Holy cow, good for you. Like you, you risked everything.

You spent your savings. You borrowed money from your parents to start this business and you bought yourself a car, like. Congratulations. Like, like I'm so happy for you, like two totally different experiences. And I think if we're around too many of the first type of person, we start to believe that ourself.

Like, we just think that we, we, we trick ourselves to thinking we're humble and we're not, but it's actually not, it's a limiting belief, right? Like it's, Oh,

Ken Ott: bit further. So you're probably right. Like, like I, you don't have to be spiritual. You don't have to religious or anything like that. Like this is a, this is a, a disease that is. Spreading. It's actually slowing down now, but it's like been spreading over 10, 20, 50 years. This idea that if you have things, if you're good at something, if you own something, if you produce a lot of resource, if you rich, if you're rich or you have a lot of money or whatever it is that you're automatically bad and you're taking from someone else, it's an app.

It's a lie though, because the truth is, is like, Man, I, I, I'm so, as you can tell, like, I'm so interested in the spirituality and psychology of money and, and resources, it's just very interesting. And so if you think about, like, what you created, right, at Bold, I know your whole story and I, and we've known each other since the beginning, you created something out of nothing, right?

Like, and anyone listening to this, any business owner created something out of nothing. They didn't take someone's stuff to create it. They, they created it from literally their creativity, right? And then that creation actually produces money for like, hopefully resources. If you do it right, like resources for you, but resource for your team, it creates, it produces products for the people, those people, like it produces and it produces, right?

So the truth is that producing and making more creates more, it doesn't take away. And so I think that's the lie. And, and. And truthfully, like, so here's why this is relevant, I think, to the audience, right? Like, so if you're running a business and you have something called cognitive dissonance, right? Where you, where you're running, if you're running a business, but you believe you don't believe that having a lot of things is a good thing, maybe you want those things.

Maybe you want to do good or maybe you want some resource that kind of stuff But if in your mind you think that people that have that are somehow bad or it's somehow not right You're not gonna be able to do it. So you kind of have to align that and We can see this everywhere. Like why wouldn't we?

Model people who are doing great things rather than tear them down I've got this quote on my wall right here. You can't see it, but it's a Teddy Roosevelt quote called the man in the arena. Anyone who's, yeah, so you know it. So anyone who's listened to this, like, go look that up because like that kind of says it all, right?

Like, it basically says, hey don't be the critic on the outside. Be the person in the arena actually doing the thing. That, cause that's, that's what's valuable. And that's where you actually get fulfillment too. So, and so I find like when, when your wife's story, like when people are like, Oh, like must be nice.

Like to have that kind of car, like those are the critics on the outside. They wish they were doing the thing. So let's do the thing.

Jay Myers: So now you're taking this history and you're helping entrepreneurs grow their online business. And you've, I want to talk about this. Is it, do you call it a course or a challenge

Ken Ott: Yeah for sure.

Jay Myers: That's okay. So give me the back, give me, explain it. And then I want to, I don't want you to give away everything, but it's, it's a four day course.

So I know there's no possible way you can give away all the information in

Ken Ott: No, yeah, we couldn't even if we tried.

Jay Myers: hopefully you can share some, some stuff with it, but what, tell me about this challenge.

Ken Ott: Some of the, the biggest things. We can kind of work through them, but so, so just as context, like, I started this company called Medicake, which is a premier e commerce growth resource to hundreds and hundreds of brands. We've worked with hundreds of brands over the last 20 years.

Many of those brands are the brands that people listening to it like you probably have those products in your house right now these are like everything from few million dollar brands to ten fifty hundred million billion dollar brands and So we've done that over 20 years and we still do that. That's like our private clients division and and we still do that Although small it's like it's a it's it's it's we get paid a lot to do it for a small group of people and and certain types of brands.

And so what we did recently was I've been consulting with like the owners of these companies for years and years, and I've got a real desire to really spread and, and open up what we can do in our, like, kind of influence in these areas. Because honestly, I think that like, again, I may, hopefully this is, this is really, really helpful to the audience.

But like, like, if you think about this, like consumer brands have the biggest impact in, in society of any type of, of, of business out there. Because they're in everyone's house. Like they're, they're, they're the, they're the commercials that people are watching, like, and so, they have a disproportionate impact on people, and they also often, like, so I'll just say like, Like my desire is to our, our whole thing at Medicaid is what we call healthy growth, which is like, I don't know if you've noticed Jay, but like I have like a an e commerce, it can be easy to generate a lot of revenue.

It can be hard to generate a lot of profit. I, I would hear story after story of like these success quote, success stories where you like skyrocket to the moon and then like crash and burn a couple of years later. And so. I think that's kind of prevalent. So like our whole philosophy is like, how do you build scalable and profitable businesses?

That's a Medicaid philosophy. And so with this challenge, we launched a challenge because we were like, Hey, how do we open ourselves up to like more and more people? And so we're starting this entire new endeavor, which starts with this five a four day challenge, you know, hint, there's actually a bonus day that we often do, which is a fifth day.

And this is where we actually, it's called the grow your e commerce business challenge. We actually take You through owners and leaders and entrepreneurs, right? We take them through building a profitable, truly profitable, scalable, like, how do you do this? How do you construct, we go through the blueprint of what a profitable and scalable and really healthy business.

And it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's been fascinating. Sorry, I'll,

Jay Myers: no, no, this is, this is exactly what I want to get into. So first of all, it's, is it, it's challenge. medicaid. com.

Ken Ott: Yeah. It can, you can, yes, it's at challenged at medicaid. com or grow your e comm business. com. That's e comm with two Ms. Yeah. Either one.

Jay Myers: Okay. Now I, I made some notes here. So, of the titles of the four days, maybe we can kind of talk a little bit about each one just at a high level. You know, the first day is about unlocking predictable profit. So you've got. You know, how top e commerce brands achieve consistent growth through big picture strategies and why focusing on traditional metrics.

Can be misleading.

Ken Ott: Yeah.

Jay Myers: Maybe let's touch a little bit on that. Like what's how

Ken Ott: predictable profit is what everyone wants, right? Like that's like, so, so, so let's look at okay, here's how we do that. There's. I'll, I'll kind of say like, like, one thing and then we can, we can dive into some areas that I think might be really interesting. So there are like three core systems of like, and so here's what I've done like over the years of working with these hundreds of businesses, the cool thing about it. And, and I think, I know you felt this too, like, like I, I could have never paid for that education,

Jay Myers: Mm

Ken Ott: like, you know, getting them to be see behind the scenes of like businesses that are doing like, again, hundreds of millions, sometimes billions of dollars. And what's working and what's not, and also the ones that are failing and what's, what's working and what's not.

So over those years, we've just sort of put together this blueprint of like, what is, what are the, what's the blueprint of the business model underneath the best and most scalable and most profitable businesses. And it turns out there's these like, like these same things that they all do. Right. And the kind of key thing is they focus on the foundation.

Like, I think kind of prevalent in e com it's like, you might be more of a marketer than you are a business owner at the beginning. And I think that's a mindset shift that has to change because if you're more of a marketer than a business owner, then you're kind of doing like e commerce type stuff all the time.

Like focusing on like finding out how to. scale Facebook ads or this other hack over here, this tactic over here. And oftentimes you see they're not, you're not focused on how do you grow the business. And that takes like setting a firm, like a foundation. of what does actual scalable business growth look like.

And so there are, there are kind of these three core systems. The first core system is the acquisition system. I call it the attraction system. And it's like, it's not just marketing, but it contains your marketing, but it's way bigger than just like, A marketing engine. So you have this attraction system, a way to bring people in, to attract people to what?

To, to what you do. The second one is the conversion system. And again, it's not, a lot of people will be like, oh, that's a website. It's like not just the website. It turns out it's the website's part of it, but it's like this. How do you strategically bring people in to become fans? Not just customers.

And like, I think that's one of the challenges that a lot of e commerce businesses have. They have a lot of customers, but they don't have a lot of fans. Like a lot of customers who purchase one, like over and over and over, sorry, not over and over and over again, one at a time, but they don't have fans who purchase over and over again.

And the third one is like, honestly, it's the secret sauce. Go

Jay Myers: go say the secret sauce. And then I want to touch on that last one real quick too.

Ken Ott: It's the maximization system. Maximization system is where no one, no one focuses and it's where every business that I've been a part of that has scaled and at massive amounts. Like I'm, you're talking like three, six, 10 times their size in just a handful of years.

It's always, and also done that profitably and also done it consistently. It's always been focusing on that maximization system.

Jay Myers: So is that finding what works and just leaning into it?

Ken Ott: Yeah, well,

Jay Myers: like,

Ken Ott: It's really it's, it's I would say like one of the key things with, with maximization is product line strategy.

Jay Myers: hmm. Hmm.

Ken Ott: one is, I mean, there's a handful of things, but the other kind of like big one is pricing model,

Jay Myers: Mm hmm.

Ken Ott: I'd love to get into a little bit of pricing because everyone, everyone wants to figure out how they can charge more, I would imagine.

And there's a very simple way to figure out how you charge more. But then even just like figuring out, like, how do you create fans out of customers and actually, how do you, how do you bring them into like an ecosystem they can just live there forever?

Jay Myers: Let's get into these. Cause this is, I think really, really viable. I I have thoughts on, on the fans. That was your point. Number two. I'll, I'll, I'll share mine really quick. And then I'd love to hear it says, I think. A lot of brands have fans, but they don't know who their fans are. So if you have, you might have thousands of customers, but you just, you just think they're all your customers, but within that thousands of customers.

There might be 50, it might be 10, there might be a hundred, but there might, there is a group that might be your, your super fans that are referring your products. They're buying over and over. They're heavy users. They've maybe bought the same product twice. They've left positive reviews. They've recommended you on social, like there's like a segment.

And I think one of the biggest misses I see is I, Brands just have no clue who they don't segment their customers to know who their fans are. And, but I think what they're, what they try to do is they just try to sell to more and more and more people. There there's this concept thousand true fans where the principle is.

You don't need more customers. You find out who your true fans are, find out what makes them who they are, and then find more people like them. So, you know, for those listening, I would say you probably have true fans already, like they're, they're there now, like find them and then find more of them.

Like where do they live? Where do they hang out? What makes them who they are? Right. So is that kind of how you're thinking about it? Or maybe

Ken Ott: Yeah, no, it's, it's totally that. And you know, where this concept came from is like, I, I a long time ago, I used to work with like all these, all these musicians. So like Keith Urban and Matthew West and like Luke Bryan and all that kind of, all those people. And what was interesting is They had massive, they had these like rabid fans and and I, and I thought to myself, like, cause I'm, I was also building brands and I'm like, man, imagine a brand that like, imagine if there could be a brand that had fans like this.

And it turns out there are brands that have created that, right? Like, Speaker 2. You look at Apple, right? Apple is obviously a cliche example, but they've got raving fans that line up and they buy all their products. And you know, I've got 15 iPhones or 16 iPhones or whatever. And

Jay Myers: you have every single one?

Ken Ott: other thing.

Yeah. I didn't get the new one actually. Which is the first time ever. Maybe that's, that's saying something, but also, you know, you and I are into sports, right? So like, this is a visual. I would love to sit in people's head. Yeah. Because I think that I think that'll help people understand how, like, what a fan looks like.

I wish I could show it, but like, in the challenge, I show it. It's Okay, so I, I lived in upstate New York for two years. Upstate New York is near Buffalo, and you're in Winnipeg, so it's like nothing compared to Winnipeg, I guess, with snow. But like, for me, it

Jay Myers: But you get that heavy, thick snow there. Like

Ken Ott: Oh, I'm sure. I've never. Yeah.

Well, you would. Yes. I think it's worse. I think it's worse. I think Winnipeg is better.

Jay Myers: We can't, ours is like dry and we can't really throw snowballs and

Ken Ott: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's lake effect. And it's just like constantly dark and constantly snowing. And man, I was not ready for it. So it like broke me. And and so anyway, well, the two years I was up there the bills, you know, if you know, Buffalo, everyone's a bills fan.

And you know, And so, and they were really bad, that men. Right now, they're really good. Like, this might be their year, but like, they were really bad. I think Ryan Fitzpatrick was their, was their quarterback. And so like, I went to this Bills game and it was like, you know, 32 degrees and pouring rain.

So it wasn't snowing, it was just like pouring rain and like right above freezing. And it was, it was just kind of completely miserable. The Bills were losing, all that kind of stuff. And I'm watching these guys down at the bottom and they've got no shirts on, they're fully

Jay Myers: Yeah.

Ken Ott: right? The bills are losing their heart.

The bills, I don't know if they had a horrible season and they're just like, they're from like from the beginning to the end, just going hard. And I'm like, man, this is a fan. A fan is someone who will spend their last dollar. Like, supporting you, like, fight for you, no matter what, and tell everyone else that they should as well. And I thought, like, what if, so, so anyway, when we get into fan creation, we're thinking, like, how do we create that? Like, what's the psychology underneath that? And like, how do you actually do that? Because if you can do that, and like I said, brands have done this, right? It doesn't have to be fully painted, but, Like, you know, like brands have done this and it's really powerful.

It becomes very valuable too as a, and all I care about is like building profitable and valuable companies and so, like that's, it's a big part of it.

Jay Myers: I think I don't know. Oh, a big part of that is storytelling is, and not just, I mean, everyone has a story. I think, I mean, maybe some are not as exciting. There's like, Oh, I want to start a drop shipping business because it makes money. Well, maybe that's not exciting, but most e commerce brands. It's a passion.

It's something they have done their whole life or they're, you know, passionate about something. And I think that's a lot of why Apple has such passionate fans is they were such an underdog. You know, they fired Steve jobs. He went and started Pixar. The company was that I think two months from bankruptcy.

Like there's some, there's some number, there are a hundred days left of money in the bank when, when Steve jobs came back on and they launched one of their new computers camera, which one it was, but like people resonate with

Ken Ott: He cut a whole product line down

Jay Myers: Yeah. Like there are the underdogs are taken off Microsoft.

They're taken on IBM. They're And so people bought into that story and maybe they're not as much the underdog anymore. And obviously they're definitely not the underdog anymore, but yeah, that's, that's a big thing is if for me is you can, I don't think I can be a fan unless I know like the story, like it's bills, like those fans, they've, they've probably been part of that team.

Forever.

Ken Ott: For decades.

Jay Myers: yeah.

Ken Ott: I mean, you, you just said something that I would actually go a little bit further for and hopefully it doesn't offend anyone, but hopefully this helps it, like, is like, dropship, like, if you don't

Jay Myers: I didn't mean to offend anyone. Dropshipping.

Ken Ott: No, no, no, no. But like, the point is, no, no, no, this, this might offend them more, but I'm trying to help.

Jay Myers: Hmm.

Ken Ott: I'm saying is, I don't, I actually don't think you can have a sustainable, successful business. without a story. So whether you're drop shipping or not, I think you got to decide on what you want. We do this in the challenge. We actually work through goals and story and who you are and who your customers and actually getting to your story.

Because like, I don't think, I don't think like if you look at any company out there, they have a story. And here's why story is important. Store is important because If you're going to sell something to someone, there's a whole process that psychologically they have to go through, and they have to feel like buying.

I always say, I often say like, people buy for one reason and run one reason alone, because they feel like it. And when I say feel like it, I mean like, they literally have to feel it. Like you, I mean, when, How many times, I mean, anyone listening here, we all know those impulse buys, like we all know those, or we all know when we, we, those feelings when we want something, we want something so bad, right?

Apple does that really well. You know, I, I can just, there's, we have so many of those things. So feel like buying is the key. And so you can't make someone feel like buying without creating an environment that is a buying environment. And to create a buying environment, you need to create emotions. So, how much do you want to get into this,

Jay Myers: Well, I just want to say this is why I always tell my kids when they want to buy something. Let's put that on hold. Let's wait a week and let's see if you still want it. And if you want it, we'll buy it. And almost always they don't want it anymore. So

Ken Ott: hip to

Jay Myers: It's not like a furnace filter that I have to buy, whether I feel like it or not.

It's, it's a hundred percent of feeling and we wait and almost always they're like, nah, no, like that's so, so true.

Ken Ott: Well, there's this, this, this you're hip to it. I do that too. Like, it's funny when you know this, when you know the levers, you're like, okay, I can, I can work with this. But,

Jay Myers: I do it to myself. I add stuff to my Amazon cart and I leave it. I never buy stuff like that. The first day I like build my cart, build my cart and kind of like once a week, I'm like, okay, I'll, I'll, I'll put the order through, you know, save on boxes and shipping or like half of the time I take half of the stuff back out.

So, so yeah.

Ken Ott: So, like, so, okay. So. The reason why, what you said about your kids and what you said about just yourself right there, the reason why that's the case is there's this paper, it actually, I'm one it's I can't remember. I, it's called the focusing illusion. So some, anyone can look it up, but it, it won like the Nobel prize or it's like something, some very high honor.

And it's just a paper. It's like the first paper ever to like win this, this, this this, this prize. But anyway, what it says is essentially nothing is as important as it seems as when we're focusing on it. So like there's this concept in psychology as it, which is there's absolutely nothing as nothing is absolutely as important as it seems it is to you as when you're focusing on it.

So like you have this disproportionate belief that this thing is important when you're focusing on it. And so, We can use that in, in, in building brands, right? Because like, we can feel, we all can feel that. And like, so if we want to. Sell something consistently. Someone now, now that could be used for, for, for evil, right?

But it could also be used for good. Cause I would say this, cause like, again, this is, we go through a lot of these things, we work together in our challenge, but like, it's like, okay, let's break down how you feel about manipulation. Because manipulation is not always bad. I would submit that if someone's in a difficult place, they've already been manipulated, right?

So, if your customer is someone who you believe will be better with your product, which is probably where a lot of the kind of foundational elements come from a building a business, Like is it a product that you really believe in, but if you believe like, no, this actually helps these people a lot. Like I need to get them to buy it because we have to work with human nature, but we have to overcome the human nature in order to make them buy.

Because we know people like are distracted and they procrastinate and they won't act if they don't move. And it really has to be painful before they act. I mean, it's why, like, you know, most people don't, don't lose weight until they, yeah. A health crisis happens. Like, so all that to say is, is like, when we need to make people feel like it, yes, story is a huge component of it.

There's all these other kinds of like building blocks as well. And but like you must have a story you, you have, like, if you don't do that, I don't think you can build a successful business. I've never seen one.

Jay Myers: Yeah. I agree. Actually I just, Well, I don't know exactly when this episode will come out, but we started doing these, these daily plus ones where it's just me ranting for, for 10, for 10 minutes. And the one, the one, the one that came out there that out today is the importance of building your personal brand, because, which is storytelling.

And. It's a, it's a multiplier to everything else you do, you know? So like they say that I talked to a lot of advertising agencies and they say when they're working with a celebrity brand or someone, someone that has a personal brand, the conversion on their, their ads, their emails, their landing pages, almost everything.

Is roughly double and it's not because it's a better product. It's not because it's better copy. It's not because it's better photography. It's not because of any of that. It's because there's this kind of built in trust and they know the there's the story's already there. Right.

Ken Ott: But it's also cause it's a person.

Jay Myers: Correct. Yeah.

Ken Ott: Right, like you can't, because that emotional connection can't really happen with like a brand.

Jay Myers: no, it's a personal brand. It's a personal brand. Sorry. That's what I'm yeah.

Ken Ott: Sorry, I, what I, sorry, I was just, what I was saying is like, adding to what you're saying is like, even people that have brands, if you developed a personal brand and became a face, people connect with people, which, which is the example that you're, you're you're, you're giving. That

Jay Myers: Yeah. A great one that I often tell people to go follow is a midday squares. I, if you don't, for anyone listening, if you want to see a company that. Does a great job on the personal brand side. Follow me at day squares.

Ken Ott: is awesome.

Jay Myers: I want to, we're not going to run out of time here. I got still lots of time, but like I wrote down a couple of things.

So we're still on day one of this challenge, by the way. So everyone should go sign up for this challenge. Cause we're, I know we're just scratching the surface, but

Ken Ott: It's, it, I, I, I'll tell you what, like it, it would, it'll, we've gotten feedback that it like changed. I mean, this is, this sounds big, but test it out. I'll give you your money back if it doesn't work. Like it changes lives. Like people think completely different about their business and their life after and it, and it scales tremendously.

Jay Myers: I believe it. The second thing you said really struck me and I want to pull up, I have it here? Hmm.

You talked about product mix

Ken Ott: Product line strategy, is it,

Jay Myers: product line strategy. Yeah. And actually the other day here, I found it. There's this quote from Seth Godin and he said, I don't know exactly the quote, but he's don't, he said, don't find people for your products, find products. For your people.

Ken Ott: Oh, so good.

Jay Myers: And, and I, like when you said product line strategy, like it's just, I don't even know where you're going with this, but like, it just like right away, you know, that's something that almost no one thinks about they, they have a product and like their way of thinking about growing is how do I get more traffic?

How do I find more people? When I look in there, you know, Shopify admin, they've got thousands of customers. Why aren't they thinking about more products they can sell those customers?

Ken Ott: product line strategy. So I was, you know, I didn't know if I was in, in, in, in isolation thinking that no one thought about that because I agree, I found that almost no one thinks about that. And and what surprises me, what's crazy about that. And that's why that I say that that's part of this like maximization system that like, if you like, it's where all the money is and all the scale is and all the profit is because all the, all like the marketing is the expensive stuff.

Right, like getting the customer in the door the first time and so many people just live there.

Jay Myers: Mm hmm.

Ken Ott: So, so, anyway, like product line strategy, you said it, the, the Seth Godin quote is, is good because the way I, the way I look at it is here's, here's the, here's the way it often happens is like we, we think of a product, we create that product, we try and find people to buy that product. And what's interesting about that is it's backwards.

Jay Myers: Mm hmm.

Ken Ott: And so, It doesn't mean you can't have ideas and that kind of stuff. But like one of the biggest challenges in, in coaching the, the leaders and even the owners or entrepreneurs of some of these big e commerce businesses over the years has been curtailing ideas and not just launching products willy nilly because Here's the deal.

The, the, the, the right way to do it and the way like these big organizations do it and people that like really focused on profit and, and and scaling well, the way they do it is it's, it's backwards. You find the person, So I, I look at it from like literally here's, here's the interesting thing about e commerce.

E commerce is just math. It's just math. That's a simple math equation, like third grade math. And like, and, and that should be, and once you're aware of that math, like you can master it because like you can create any profit you want and any revenue you want, just, it's just math. And that's what I love about e commerce is so powerful.

And so if you, if you look at like product line strategy and you say, okay, how do I get products that are profitable and scalable? I gotta, I gotta ask myself the question. Like, what do I want to. Make like what is the profit I want to make what's the revenue and then how and then what's the what's a product?

And I say I'm not thinking about a thing I'm talking I'm thinking about like a number like what what does that product have to sell for and what is the profit have? To be on that like I like to see at least 80 percent really 90 plus percent profit on on ecommerce product it's, it's, you might, and some people think that's bad.

Something, some people may think I'm crazy. Like it's hard to build a business without that. And so you, you, you figure out the math and say, okay How much do I want to make and what's how, what's the number, what's the product profit and what's the product price. Okay. And then the question is, is like, what's a big group of people?

that can afford that, that have an expensive problem. And then it's like, okay, what's the product. And then as you launch product line strategy like after that initial product there is, we have a whole bunch of kind of philosophies, which, which go into like, I call it the four product system. And so we go into like what the four product system is, and I'm happy to run through it now if you want to.

But like essentially, when you're building a product line strategy, you can't just launch product after product at the same time, you need to build it in a way that obviously fits together and also fits the math that we need to create in order to create the business that we need to create.

Jay Myers: Yeah. And I would say. When you do it, well, the first type of pricing model that you referenced where you're thinking about your margin and markup is cost based pricing, which is traditional way of pricing things. You think this widget costs me 10 to make, I have to sell it for 18 to get my 80 percent markup, which what it costs.

It says nothing about what it's worth. Like it's just, it has nothing to do with it. It might only be worth 5. It doesn't matter if it costs 10 could also be worth a hundred dollars. And so there's value based pricing, which I always, as long as your price is aligning with value. And so

Ken Ott: Hmm.

Jay Myers: a good example of this would be like.

Air Jordan shoes there for all intensive purposes. The same as I don't know, Skechers, maybe not. Maybe people are going to unsubscribe after they hear that, but they've got rubber, they've got cloth, they've got laces, probably cost almost the same to make maybe a little bit more, but Jordan's sell for 300 Skechers sell for, I don't know what 50, but the value that you're getting from them.

Is the social prestige, the status you're getting so many other, there's, there's more value there. Right. And so, I would almost tell, say, just to add to the pricing thing is just scrap the cost, forget about it. Think about price completely unrelated to your costs and then figure out. If there's room now, can you go out and manufacture this product, buy it, whatever, and, and make money.

But think about the selling price first. Right.

Ken Ott: Absolutely. Can we stay here for a

Jay Myers: Yeah. Oh, I, I a hundred percent. Cause this is, I think, you know, pricing, if you ask 10 growth strategists, like what's one of the best ways to grow, they'll, they'll say. Pricing, pricing, pricing. But I saw Patrick Campbell from, he had a company called profit. Well, he posted one time that less, it was like, it was something like three out of every 100 blog posts is about pricing strategies.

So like, there isn't enough talk about it. It's just like everything else. And then it's like, Oh, and then, Oh, okay. I'll price this because I mark it up 1. 8. Like it's like a last minute thought. Right. So the

Ken Ott: A last minute thought, and, oh man, dude. So, so we spend so much time in this area. Like, in, in our business, with the consulting, in our challenge, in everything we do, because, because what you just said, Like you said so much, so much that rarely people say like pricing has nothing to do with what it costs, like you said, and it has everything to do with value.

So, so you said something that I thought you were reading my, my, my mind. So, I, cause I say this to people. So one of the things I learned, you asked a question, you said something on it. I'm going to, say it back to you. One of the things I learned a long time ago. And it was really fascinating. I learned that like really wealthy people look at price very differently than everyone else in the world.

Right? Now that's not because they have a lot of money. It's because they think differently. And so, and it was fascinating to me. So like a lot of times, like when, you know, most people will say they see something and they'll, then the question will be like, what does it cost? And that's the wrong question. And you said it, you said, what is it worth?

Jay Myers: Yes.

Ken Ott: And that's the question that I found like the, the, and I just, in my life,

Jay Myers: a quick example of

Ken Ott: Oh, please. Yeah.

Jay Myers: It's like we, we pay for cleaners at our house and sometimes people will say, you pay 300 for cleaner. Like it only takes four hours. Like I could clean that for less. I'm like, that's not the point I get. I get four hours of time with my kids. I get time to work on something I need to work on the value to me.

Far more than

Ken Ott: No doubt.

Jay Myers: to clean them. I don't, I'm not thinking. Yes. So like, I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm tracking.

Ken Ott: But most people don't think that way. Like most people think, what does it cost? And so the problem with that is, and here's why the problem is like, I would suggest, and we go through this, like, like, like think about anyone listening to this, if you run a business, like it would be really valuable for you.

to actually become someone who's willing to pay premium prices so that you can charge premium prices. Cause you can't do the two, like you, like you've got to change your mind

Jay Myers: be a cheap person and charge and have a premium.

Ken Ott: can't,

Jay Myers: It's so true. I

Ken Ott: It's actually one of the reasons why we charge so much on our consulting private client stuff.

Like we charge several hundred thousands of dollars and sometimes millions of dollars to consult and And you might, and anyone that's listening may be like, you are insane, cool, like that's no problem, like you, but like the, one of the reasons, but come to the challenge because the challenge is like very, very inexpensive and you get tons of value.

But one of the reasons we do that is because people that are, are, are willing to see worth or, or see worth over cost are the ones that are going to win. Like that's, it's a, it's a, it's a filter. So the reason this is important is because I'm trying to logically step this through, why, why someone would care about this, well.

Jay Myers: Can I say why I

Ken Ott: lever, yeah, please,

Jay Myers: it's because it's what you sell then are you selling? So like the cleaners, they, they need to message they're selling. Get your time back, get your time back with your kids, not get a clean house.

Ken Ott: 100%. It's the result.

Jay Myers: Right.

Ken Ott: It's the result, like the payoff is what I call it.

Jay Myers: correct. And it's the, it's the, the, the brands that are selling like the t shirts that are just talking about the fabric it's made out of and that they're selling, they're selling the cost.

No one cares. They want to see the

Ken Ott: No one cares what it costed. No one cares what it's made out of. Because no one cares about this podcast as awesome as it is. They care about the results of the podcast, right? Like, Like, no one cares about our, our services or our challenge. No one cares about our widgets that we sell, they care about the payoff.

And, you know, this is all, these are all different things, but they're all very related. Because, like, why, why should we look at price? Like, I, I, I say, like, you can literally, I could, I could teach you how to charge anything. Right. And there's no, there's no like special magic around it, but it's, it's really, it's really easy because, and why would you want to charge anything or why would you want to be able to increase price?

Well, it's, it's seems really, really dumb to me to, to set your pricing off of cost. It seems even dumber to me to set your pricing off of competition. Like, why would you let your competition set your price? Like, that is insane to me. It's like, anyway. But that's what the, that's what a lot of. That's common, right?

And it's, it's not, you're not bad if you're doing that. It's just like, let's think differently about it. But, but the reason you want to focus on price is because the biggest profit is the biggest lever to profit, which is what you said earlier, Jay. And it's worth looking at how we can impact profit very, very quickly.

And so like when we look at price. And we, when we change our mind about like thinking about how to, what are things worth not, not what does it cost, what is it worth, then we're able to help our customers do the same. And that's the goal. And so to your point, like now we have to start positioning our products.

Here's the cool thing about price. To your point, like it has nothing to do with cost. So like take that completely out of the equation and now just put it on a blank slate, slate of paper and like, know, in isolation and say, here's, here's why it's so powerful. Yeah. All it is is words. What words can I use to position my product so that it's perceived as valuable as I want it to be perceived?

Jay Myers: Yeah.

Ken Ott: And, and that's really like liberating, that's really powerful once you realize that,

Jay Myers: It's so true.

Ken Ott: You just, you can change perceived value. And it's funny that it's perceived value, right? Cause it's

Jay Myers: It is. Perceived value is the only value there actually is.

Ken Ott: only value. And that's your point about the Jordans. You know, there's this t shirt company called Supreme, which I'm sure you've seen before that they have, like, I mean, like just normal t shirts that sell for like thousands of dollars, you know, Rolex, I, I use Rolex example a lot.

Cause I just, I like the brand. I'm very fascinated with it. But Rolex, you know, it's, it's like, like the cheapest watch is like a 12, 000 watch and it doesn't keep time as well as a Timex. Who would, so, so like the pragmatic would be like, who would pay 12, 000 for a watch that doesn't keep as much, well, good, as good time as a 3 watch or

Jay Myers: I know so many people that wear a Rolex and it's, the battery's dead. They're not wearing it for the time.

Ken Ott: Right? Well, I mean, even like, it's, so, so here's what's, here's what's,

Jay Myers: symbol. It's not got nothing to do with time. Ken.

Ken Ott: Right. They, they figured out value, right? Like it's like, it's not the watch. Right. And here's the, here's what's really interesting about Rolex. I'm into, I'm kind of into Rolex. I'm just interested in. In, in, in it. And I like the brand and everything, but like, here's, what's interesting about them.

You can get like really good replicas, not like cheap knockoff Chinatown replicas. You can get like really good replicas. I don't think they're legal, but you can get them where like the inside and out. It's like a hundred percent same material. They've like, and it's like 2, 000 instead of like 12, 000. And you would think.

That if those, because you can't get a Rolex either, it not only is expensive, but you can't even get one. Like you can't walk into a store and buy one. And you would think that the replicas would kill the demand for the Rolex, but that hasn't just increased it. And why is that? It's well, that's because of brand and that's a whole separate.

subject for another time. But all this to say is, is like, it's, I think it'd be worth looking at pricing and figuring out how you can change your mindset. You being, however's listening, how you can adjust your mindset. Are you thinking about how you price, how you buy things the right way? And then how can you impact that for your customers?

And I would say a great study would be look at premium brands. Like maybe you're not a Rolex, Rolex. But I would say study those brands because they've mastered perceived value. And when you can master perceived value, you can literally price your product however you want. And, and yeah, I'll just kind of leave it at

Jay Myers: Well, I'll just add one thing. We, I talked to a brand one time and actually we've done this as well too. This has happened to us, but we they, we kind of just like challenge them to like, Actually double their price and just, just straight up double it. And they were, they said, no way I, we won't get any sales.

We double our price. Long story short, they did. And their sales actually went up because price is a part of that perceived value. Like if like a bottle of wine in a store that. Is 40 versus 20. I, maybe there are some people that can tell the difference, but at the end of the day you just appreciate that more because you paid more for it.

It's not necessarily because it's actually any better. It doesn't taste any better to you. It's, it's more valuable. So just increasing the price actually increases the perceived value too. So I would just encourage people to like, don't be afraid to experiment with it. We did this one time with one of our And back in 2013 or 14 we have a, an app on Shopify.

It was called product discount. It was still actually live, still there. And when we originally launched it, it was five, five 99. I think, I can't remember. This was a long time ago. Like just right now it's 1999 a month, but then we increased it to 25 99. And then Blair Beckwith, who was the head of the app store at Shopify.

Emailed and said, Hey, why don't you guys try charging 99 for it? And we're like, why? He's like, well, we just, this was early on. There was maybe only a couple hundred apps and they wanted to see like, well, we're just curious if people would pay a hundred dollars a month for an app. And I was really good friends with Blair.

And so he's like, can you guys try charging a hundred bucks for it? I said, okay, sure. Why not? Let's literally just go in the admin and change the price. So we changed it to 99 and our installs went up. We got more installs and so, there's, don't be afraid to experiment with it.

Ken Ott: I know we only got a few minutes, but like, but like, okay. So you don't want cheap people buying your stuff. You want people who value it, buying your stuff and people who value things are skeptical when it's too low. That's one thing. The second thing is there's this guy called Dan Kennedy, who's like the, you know, godfather of direct response marketing, you know, long time ago.

And he said this a long time ago. He said there's no strategic advantage to being the cheapest. Or the second cheapest, sorry, the second cheapest. But there is a strategic advantage to being the most expensive. And meaning, like, you know, like just, like if you take price decreasing to its logical conclusion, it's like everyone loses in that race.

And we know that, like, this, that's not a, that's like somewhat a cliche thing to say, but like, it's still scary in practice. A lot of people don't do it. But if you go and become the most expensive. Like I would, I would challenge people to do that because here's one strategy that we, we employ and it has to do with being the most expensive, but we call it becoming the only one.

And so there's a strategy, which is, this is like one of our, one of my, I don't know, most successful strategies ever. Like, like of making it rain in companies and building really valuable companies and like creating tons of profit is literally trying to become the only one. And so what that is, is. You say, you ask yourself the question, how could I be the only logical choice for my target customer?

How could I be the only logical choice? If I could, then there's no competition in that category and I can charge whatever I want.

Jay Myers: Blue, blue ocean, right? You're in. Yeah. Ken, I got to have you back on the show because we got through day one. Of your course

Ken Ott: I would love

Jay Myers: or your challenge. I, I, I want to encourage everyone listening. Definitely go check it out because Ken's OG, he knows this, he knows this game inside and out. And. Actually, before we go, I want to plug your podcast too.

I listened, listened to it this morning, the grow, grow Devo podcasts. I

Ken Ott: the Grow Time Biz Devo.

Jay Myers: growth time, biz Devo. I listened to the one December all about being part of the vine. And actually I loved it. I think It's a you know, the, the, the principle and that you talked about in the show was like how the importance of pruning and you take biblical principles and apply them to entrepreneurship.

And I just thought of so many areas in my life that you need to, I need to prune. So other areas can grow and other areas in my business at bold that we probably should prune and pruning is hard, but the vine doesn't grow unless it's pruned. And

Ken Ott: pruning is not always bad. Sometimes when we're pain we're in pain, we think that bad things are happening, and it's it's like pruning happens regardless. Man, I appreciate that. Like the the Grow Time Biz Devo is a is a weekly devotional for business owners. It's by, it's by an entrepreneur for entrepreneurs.

And so like, you know, aside from like Medicaid and all, not aside from, but like underneath it all is I just believe that the Bible is a success manual. Now people listening may not believe that, but like, it, it is, it creates success so you don't have to believe in it to actually apply principles from it to actually be successful.

And so the Grow Time Biz Devo is. And yeah, I, that, that's sort of like a personal, personal thing I've been doing for the last couple of years. And I

Jay Myers: great. I listened, I dropped my daughter off at school and listened on the way, on the way

Ken Ott: I need to have you on it.

Jay Myers: Well, there we go. I, I ever, I've already left a five star review for it. So it's, yeah. I'll put a link to the show notes. If anyone's interested, I, I just, I wanted to make sure I plugged it because I think that definitely is something that could change people's lives.

It's so good on you for doing that. Like it's,

Ken Ott: Well, I've, I've had really, really good feedback on that as well. And, and again, I don't. I say this in like, really humility, like I wasn't, I actually do those for myself.

Jay Myers: Hmm.

Ken Ott: I do those for myself, and I was doing, and I was I was like, why not record them? And then and then I, and then I was like, I want something for my kids to, you know, Look at like when as they grow up because I would teach them these things I'm like what I want to record them as if they're listening and so And then I've heard a lot of people get a lot of value out of it.

And honestly yeah It's it's just wisdom from the Bible. So

Jay Myers: It's cool to think that, imagine your kids, 40 years old, You know, as long as you keep that RSS feed up for that podcast, like they can go back and listen to your thoughts. Like one day my kids might have an online store and they'll come and listen to past episodes of my show. Like it, that's a weird concept that hasn't happened to me yet, but it, like this age of podcasters now they're kids 20 years later, it's, it's a really neat.

Ken Ott: but it's truly a legacy that we're all leaving like if you're real in a business And so you'll have one name Like, Bill, don't, don't mess it up. You know, like, don't, don't sacrifice your name and your integrity for, for whatever short term thing.

Jay Myers: Well, Ken, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for your time.

Ken Ott: Man, it's been my pleasure. And I'll just say like, with the challenge, we have a guarantee. So if you choose to attend and you there's a VIP option where you can actually talk, like we'll actually spend an hour with you or we'll break it down with our team. And it's the same team that's serving like these million dollar clients.

You can work through business problems. If you choose that option, I'll give you a 10 times better than money back guarantee, which is what means is like if you attend the entire thing and you do all the homework and you're, and you're participating and you've got your camera and all that kind of stuff, and you don't think it's worth 10 times the value at the end, I'll give you your money back at the end.

No problem. No questions asked. So hopefully that you know, just

Jay Myers: If that doesn't relieve some of the pressure, then I don't know what would

Ken Ott: Okay.

Jay Myers: amazing. I will link everything in the show notes. And, and all i'll say is Ken's an absolute gem. If anyone has a chance to join that do it. It's

Ken Ott: Right back at you, Jay. I appreciate you so much, man.

Jay Myers: You likewise. Thanks for coming on Ken

Ken Ott: My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. Bye.