BattlBox started to see exponential growth and the demand for John’s time increased. In early 2016, John made the decision to step away from his then sales leadership role with a software company to join the BattlBox team in a full-time capacity. In July 2019, The BattlBox Group acquired Carnivore Club, an artisanal meat subscription box.
Transcript from video:
0:03 [Music] foreign marketing podcast the highly rated
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0:55 grow your business welcome back to the e-commerce marketing podcast everyone my name is Arlen
1:02 Robinson and I am your host and today we have a very special guest John Roman after leading several successful sales
1:10 organizations in the Telecommunications and software space for almost a decade John began investing in companies
1:17 predominantly in the e-commerce Arena a college friend was was launching Battlbox in early 2015 and John newey had to
1:25 be involved so he invested in it offering advisement and a limited capacity Battlbox started to see ex
1:32 exponential growth and the demand for John's Tommy crease so in early 2016 John made the decision to step away from
1:39 his sales leadership role with a software company to join BattlBots and on a full-time capacity so in July 2019
1:46 Battlbox group acquired Carnivore Club for an artisanal meat subscription box
1:52 in October of 2021 Battlbox and Carnivore Club was acquired by emerge
1:59 brands for 18.95 million John currently serves as the chief executive officer
2:06 for the battle box group and is here today to tell us a little bit about how
2:11 to use content and the community to grow your business welcome to the podcast
2:17 John man that was a that was a mouthful right right yeah you you've done a lot
2:22 man in a little bit of time you know as I mentioned in the in the intro there you know starting from uh you know
2:28 joining battle box on a com you know kind of on a small basis in 2015 to you
2:34 know having it be acquired uh by the Battlbox group and the Carnivore uh
2:39 Club uh you know for 18.95 million that's definitely nothing to sneeze at
2:44 you know that's quite an accomplishment yeah it's been it's been a journey sprinkle in the pandemic in the mix of
2:51 all that sprinkling a a TV show on Netflix all right we've we've gone we've
2:57 had a lot of experience chances and guys we were able to grow what's the TV show
3:03 that was on it on Netflix so we have uh Netflix original series it's called it's
3:08 called Southern survival you can open up Netflix it's it's Global because it's one of their series um gotcha you can
3:14 just open up search and Netflix and type in Battlbox or you can type in southern survival when it comes right up gotcha
3:21 gotcha that's awesome man and you're speaking of the pandemic I I could took a brief look at the site of course
3:27 Battlbox sells uh subscription boxes for survival gear
3:32 um and it was really what it is and I could imagine during the pandemic uh I I uh if I'm not mistaken you probably saw
3:38 some explosive sales or growth um or you know at least
3:43 um people were a little bit more thinking of survival types of uh things
3:49 and things that they needed to buy in case you know we're in kind of the uh scenario when everything shuts down
3:55 right the end of times yeah yeah we were obviously I think most Ecom Brands did
4:02 Super well during during the pandemic um right survival gear and uh cured shelf
4:08 stable Meats with carnivore Club um yeah these were both kind of recipe for
4:14 absolute domination when everybody is locked in their homes right and I need to order stuff yeah yeah that's good
4:21 stuff yeah I I think kind of marrying those two Brands together definitely makes sense because I see that with the survival gear and then the uh you know
4:28 the the Shelf stable Meats is a you know kind of a huge thing that definitely kind of go together well uh well that's
4:34 awesome man that's that's good stuff and definitely congrats on the success that you guys have had um as I mentioned at
4:39 the at the end of the intro today we're going to be talking about content and Community how do you marry the two so to
4:47 speak uh to create a really uh strong e-commerce brand and so that's what we
4:52 really want to start out with but before we do get into all of that why don't you tell us a little bit more about your background and you know specifically how
4:59 you got into what you're you're really doing today sure um so man you talk about I guess 2015 right
5:07 eight years ago you know Battlbox launched eight years ago on on this month so if I look back then and said
5:15 okay I'm no longer in in sales for B2B companies I'm now
5:21 uh involved in a direct to Consumer e-commerce subscription Niche brand I
5:26 would have not thought that was even even a thing I uh pure happenstance so I was in 2015 I
5:36 was investing in companies that were for lack of better words crossing my desk
5:41 and really that was only being done through the network and and friends that
5:47 that I had uh grabbed and and connected with at that
5:52 point in my life um so in in early 2015 I I think there
5:57 were a total of six companies that I invested in in some capacity and uh the other five complete
6:06 epic fails lost lost all of the money but but Battlbox was was the lucky one
6:12 right Battlbox did well and uh you know continued to exponentially grow to
6:19 Pure pure happenstance the the the strange thing is taking oh I knew at the time which was
6:27 um very little marketing more just how to sell to
6:32 to decision makers right to medium large c-level suite decision makers I knew how
6:39 to how to have meetings with them and how to how to sell a solution and you wouldn't think that there was much
6:45 correlation um but but learning the marketing and the direct to Consumer sales piece it
6:51 was very very natural and you're taking a lot of the same learnings in just obviously it's not Apples to Apples but
6:58 they transitioned it made sense on a lot of the same tactics and we ways you
7:04 would look at problems yeah yeah yeah that's a good uh Testament to the fact like you said that some of the the main
7:11 marketing fundamentals can cross over no matter what
7:16 um you know industry that you're in what you're selling you know as long as you kind of focus on some sort of core
7:22 fundamentals right they do carry over so a lot of people don't realize that but
7:27 yeah they definitely do it's you know there are definitely some unique things of course when you're selling online
7:32 direct to consumer that you know you do have to be mindful of as far as you know
7:37 kind of reaching customers social media that type of thing but yeah when it comes down to it you know it's the same
7:43 fundamentals and the bottom line really is it all comes down to focusing on
7:48 having that great product you know you don't have anything unless you have a solid product and that really meets the
7:54 needs of a community absolutely and uh you know so so speaking of community this is kind of where I think
8:02 where you guys uh um have kind of set your your your pace
8:07 and have been able to have the explosive growth is because of the community and so a lot of Brands these days kind of
8:12 hear about this they hear about okay building a community they've listened to the blogs the the podcasts and
8:18 everybody's talking about a community whether it's through the blog and this unique specific content
8:25 um but if you're kind of in the beginning phases and you're like all right where do I even begin
8:31 um to start a community you know even by maybe even starting by creating any content what what do you do what would
8:38 you be your initial advice when you're looking to start a community for your brand sure so there's a a bunch of ways
8:45 to get to the same the same end goal of building that Community um to your point one of the one of the
8:51 easiest is just through content right and it's content that is engaging it's
8:57 content that's going to get people to interact with it um it's not just a
9:04 15 second video hard sale of of your product right people don't want to see
9:09 that um you look at how consumer behavior is changing and shifting and consumer
9:15 behavior is it's constantly moving right it's it's never in the same spot but we're seeing this trend and it's
9:21 occurred for a very long time now but it's continuing to Trend in the direction where
9:27 consumers want to purchase from a brand that they can connect with identify with
9:33 have some sort of bond and this not for all products right
9:39 um You might not care about that for your toilet paper or your peanut butter or insert one of those Essentials that
9:46 you kind of need you gotta almost look at the need want scale and and see where that product fits on on that scale and
9:55 the the farther you're away from absolute need and closer to want the
10:00 more important is to connect with that consumer right because they have lots of options and if anything that we've
10:08 learned in the last couple years uh especially with the amount of podcasts and and content you're seeing on it
10:14 everybody's talking about how easy it is to start a business uh e-commerce business and take my course and do this
10:21 and do that and they make it sound very very easy and the barrier to entry is is
10:26 is pretty minimal but the reality is it's just adding another option to the consumer to make a decision on and
10:35 that's where that Community Building piece is is Paramount so back to
10:40 original question it's content right content is the easiest engaging content
10:45 um but not again not not a hard sell on a product right your test content Test
10:51 the full spectrum of things you think an audience your audience might
10:58 engage with right it doesn't have to be it's very deep down on the niche of what
11:04 your product is it can be just things that you think would be relevant to that audience to the demographic that you are
11:10 marketing towards um and and testing it and finding out what people want to engage with there's
11:17 you know past that there there's other ways to to create community
11:24 so we started it's now a Facebook group but it originally was a I think Reddit
11:29 style Forum so right when we launched the brand shortly thereafter we had
11:35 battlboxforum.com and it was a very old school bulletin board-esque
11:41 um platform where if you were a customer you could come in and then
11:47 back then actually it just was it was open to anybody right so you're having these like-minded individuals people
11:53 that like to go hiking or camping or maybe they're maybe they like survival gear but really all of the buckets of of
12:01 demographics and and likes and interests that our customers had this was a place
12:06 for them just to meet other people and uh now it's shifted years later it's a
12:12 Facebook group it's an exclusive um perk if you will of being a active
12:20 subscriber to our subscription box you also get access to the screw um but but either versions of that right
12:27 you're building Community there right you're putting these people together um whether they're interested in your
12:33 product in buying or they're just interested in your product or your content if you can get them all in the same room
12:40 you're gonna quickly see like they have some commonalities and and friendships can be formed and and relationships and
12:48 then all of a sudden you've created um you've created this community you've created these groups of people and um
12:56 it's not easy though right it takes a lot of work in the infancy it's engagement is huge but it's you don't
13:03 just you don't just create it and hope that they come right you have to you have to
13:08 make it make sense with with the group we were we were in there every day every single one of us posting interacting
13:14 with someone wanting to post that it wasn't one of us we're definitely responding commenting engaging with them
13:20 letting them know hey this is what happens when you do that and it almost starts snowballing right
13:28 um you see someone else do it and then they post and they get everybody engaging and it's it's just a it's a
13:33 Snowball Effect and next thing you know you know uh a group of 20 in Southern
13:39 California are meeting next month to go hiking and you see cool things like that and you're like man that's that was what
13:45 we were trying to accomplish yeah um and it's it's a weird approach because
13:51 businesses need sales sales is the lifeblood that's how you grow the business but we we always take this
13:59 approach where all of our decisions are are based upon how does it impact
14:04 content and Community for us and by focusing always on those two the sales
14:10 almost come indirectly now don't get me wrong we run Facebook and Tick Tock campaigns and Twitter ads and ads across
14:17 the Gambit and middle funnel and if we do all of that uh but it's it's segmented and it's at the correct time
14:25 um we were really focused on this low barrier to entry top of funnel that's
14:31 massive and we'll let people based on their their behavior on our site or on
14:36 platform determine what segment they go into and at some point it does we do ask for the
14:43 business we do offer them deals but we don't we don't lead lead that way which is a little bit non-standard yeah yeah
14:50 I'm glad you mentioned that because I think that's kind of be the focus when
14:56 you're Crea when you're trying to create these types of communities where yeah you you can't really lead with the sale
15:02 because that's going to turn people off um it has to be more organic as you guys mentioned you started with the basic
15:08 forum and you know you got like-minded people together you know people are into camping and survival type things and you
15:15 know they they saw the commonalities that each other had and then just kind of went from there and then of course as
15:20 you guys were kind of I guess moderating it putting content out there suggesting
15:27 ideas putting posts um then that's kind of I think where you or any brand that does something like
15:34 this comes off as the authority and then that's where I think the power is where people will be like you know you guys
15:39 have become kind of the go-to uh group for you know survival where not only are
15:45 you guys the authority but there's other individuals that are in the group that are are providing a lot of value to it
15:52 um so it's not just you guys it's people that are in the group yeah it's it's you you nailed it and I think that that
15:58 applies that mindset applies to whether it's direct to consumer or B2B like
16:04 provide value ask for nothing just provide value and it's crazy
16:10 what what accomplishes from from that um yeah just it's the it's the way
16:16 business is done as the as the behavior of purchasers changes they that's what
16:21 people want yeah yep exactly and what I see a lot of times uh because it's been
16:28 talked about a lot with the face group book groups there's all these other platforms to create your own Community
16:34 create your own portal a lot of brands are trying to do it where like in in your case you said with your
16:40 subscription service that includes access to the community a lot of brands
16:46 are doing that um but where what I see and I want to see a lot of Brands failing is
16:52 they like you said they put it out there they just expect it to just automatically you know come together and
16:59 people for just immediately jump into it and so what I see a lot of Brands doing is they'll start it and I'll go to these
17:06 different communities and there's just just like no activity at all and then you know it's not moderated and there's
17:12 no engagement in there and then you know they may do it for a little while and then you just they just leave it yeah I
17:17 I definitely agree that it's it's the type of thing that you have to be heavily involved in your team's got a
17:23 post you've got to have that engagement and you know it's just gonna it's gonna take time it's definitely not a way to
17:30 to kind of build an instant Community um I know different things that a brand can do or events that'll happen maybe
17:37 you have an appearance on a you know a national or Global stage or show yeah you can get a lot of viral activity over
17:45 the short amount of time that can happen I see a lot that happens to different brands but as far as the community
17:52 growth after that Viral event is is where you still got to put the work in
17:57 right it is it's still a grind it's a long game yeah it's not it is I mean if there's you could probably we could
18:03 probably name a dozen aspects of of business um that it's the same thing right
18:09 exactly what you said people start putting it in and they don't get that instant reward instant gratification and
18:16 they they give up yeah yeah it's true it's true and it's a tough thing because you know we all know um as an e-commerce
18:23 brand there's a lot to it you know you don't have a lot of time you got to be constantly concerned about your sales
18:29 your Revenue the profit and things that take time you know a lot of times the
18:36 brands May kind of pull away from when they start doing and they say okay I'm not I'm not seeing the ROI in this is this really even make sense then yeah
18:43 Tick Tock is probably a best a great example of us for that so we
18:50 so we had let's see I'm trying to date this okay so so I grabbed our you know Battlbox
18:59 no e that handle at Tick Tock in early 2020. sat on it we made zero posts until
19:05 February 2021 so two years ago this month and
19:11 at the time you know probably everybody thought I was a little bit crazy at least
19:17 internally because like I'm I'm super super confident I feel we're already late to The Tick Tock game in
19:24 February 2021. I was wrong about that we weren't we weren't late we were still on time with getting up but I felt like we
19:32 were late um and and we know we we weren't as early as as I would have liked but
19:38 talk about just trying to figure this out we're going to this platform that at
19:44 the time is is is mainly just a bunch of um younger generation uh dancing
19:52 right and I have this I have this and I was like no like our customers are there are going to be here too and
20:00 um we didn't dance that wasn't that's not our brand we're not we're not going to do that I think I Brandon is the face of
20:06 our brand I think I got him to do one silly dance one time and it was it was painful but it's just that's just not us
20:13 and uh for literally six seven eight months
20:19 um and I've documented some of this because we were going and trying to learn and uh
20:25 just trying to navigate this without much success but we just stuck to no
20:30 we're gonna continue to do this consistent posting we're going to try all these different
20:36 um types of videos on here we're just gonna keep trying it because there's something there and it's the same thing
20:42 we just kept going and thank goodness we did eventually hit up hit a hit a banger of a video and then a few months later
20:49 another one another one and now it's our biggest Channel which is just mind-blowing that um two years ago it
20:57 was Zero posts and six months of failing to now become our largest it's the same
21:04 thing just most people would have probably given up but that's right you just can't when you're when you when you know they something needs to be done and
21:11 is right you just have to kind of have Blind Faith at times and continue down that Journey yeah yeah for sure for sure
21:18 yeah and that's a good point with Tick Tock initially you know when somebody thinks about your brand what you guys
21:24 sell um the survival gear um camping type things you're like all
21:30 right tick tock you know the younger demographic are they even thinking about the stuff your first start is like yeah
21:37 this is not going to work so I definitely see where you're coming from as far as you know still trusting your gut and just knowing that yeah this this
21:44 this Tick Tock this there's definitely a community there for us to stay the
21:49 course my entire team just thought I was crazy for six months right yeah I understand I'm talking to many other
21:55 brands but I've I've also talked to other Tick Tock uh evangelists so to speak and they they preach the same
22:02 thing and they say yeah it's um it's not going anywhere anytime soon and there's a lot of businesses that you may not
22:08 necessarily think of that can benefit from it but they can you know for sure yeah it's it's just kind of mind-blowing
22:16 how how amazing their algorithm is compared to
22:22 you know um all of the other main social platforms algorithms like I've never
22:28 seen something whereas a consumer Within a very short period of time that for you
22:35 page has been curated and tweaked and it's exactly pretty in line with what
22:42 you want to see and like you and I are might be identical people right very very similar but like our tick tocks are
22:49 going to be vastly different because it just knows based on just little variables how long you're on a certain
22:56 type of um Tick Tock and then the next one that they that's similar how did you interact with that one like it changes on a dime
23:03 and it's just it's impressive so with that being said I have confidence that it's going to
23:11 figure out who wants to see our content and show it to them yeah yeah for sure sure now you know early on of course you
23:18 mentioned what you guys did as far as the kind of the tools that you use to get this off that you mentioned you
23:24 started off with just a basic kind of Reddit type Forum you then it kind of expanded that on to you know Facebook
23:30 groups and some other types of communities um if you can kind of speak to some of the tools or other resources that you've
23:37 used to really make all of this happen to kind of keep this community going moderate it and manage it
23:44 um you know what were the tools that you use and how all did it work sure so so
23:49 the Forum was just uh and I wouldn't suggest that um we're now on the Facebook Facebook
23:55 group yeah and I know some people are pretty polarized on should you have your Groupon community
24:02 on Facebook yeah I mean like they do a really good job right it's really easy to moderate
24:09 um there's all kinds of mechanisms in place to um to to ensure it's a great experience
24:15 where you can have rules in place where if someone if if anybody says a list of
24:20 I don't know maybe 70 words on a comet at all on our group the moderating team
24:27 gets it instant notification of that and it's reviewed it make sure it's it's not um negative or inappropriate or or
24:34 something else that's against against our policies um so I'm a big fan of of Facebook for
24:42 for the groups and you know maybe at some way we'll while grow it but um we don't have all of our members in it we
24:48 have about 8 000 or so that are on the group so it's it's not a it's decent
24:55 size um and uh I I enjoy I enjoy it now there's
25:00 there are the issues people complain all the time I'm not on Facebook um
25:06 but unfortunately you know at a certain point you have to try to just appease
25:11 the masses you can't you you just have to manage that way yeah but other than
25:17 that it's it's really all all of the platforms to your point earlier like yeah even Tick Tock now is Tick Tock
25:24 gonna be successful for every brand no right like just like Pinterest performs
25:30 great for some of our Brands and does not perform well for others and um same with Twitter you I think you put
25:36 content out on all platforms and you you find what's working and which platforms
25:43 and I think you double down you lean in on you lean in on those and then you don't just write one off I think we've
25:50 we've had a back and forth relationship with Twitter where it's never it's never
25:57 given us what we were hoping for but we continue to test on it we don't just write it off like there's still audience
26:03 in there for us to for us to come connect with yeah yeah that's a really good point you know because yeah with
26:10 anyone that does any marketing you do know that of course you got to do testing it's just testing it's always I
26:16 guess the the phrase with all of this stuff is uh ABT always be testing
26:22 um as far as you know this should be ABC when you're selling always be closing but ABT we're always testing and yeah a
26:29 lot of times you may think that okay you can test on a certain platform uh try different campaigns for a certain amount
26:35 of time it doesn't work pivot move to the next one and then naturally you may think all right I'm not going to go back
26:41 to that because you know we tried that it's not going to work but I'm glad you mentioned it because
26:47 um just because that one campaign that you tried several months ago didn't work you didn't get the right Community
26:53 didn't resonate with the audience at that time doesn't necessarily mean it's not going to work several months later
26:59 because there's a lot of factors that can can change that you know there's definitely in new people on the platform
27:06 form the platform may have changed a little bit their algorithm is on constantly changing as well so yeah you
27:13 do have to consider those factors and don't necessarily like you said write write things off just because it didn't
27:19 work at that instant yeah so a great example of that is is YouTube so for us
27:25 YouTube We Were slow and steady um 50 or sorry not 50 500 maybe 600 new
27:34 subscribers every month like clockwork for years okay and then going into the
27:41 end of 2021 actually the beginning end of 2021 December January 2022 so not
27:47 that long ago um YouTube changed some stuff on there
27:53 I'll go giving a lot of credit way more credit than they previously had done
27:59 with their uh YouTube shorts product okay direct response to they are afraid
28:05 that Tick Tock is maybe stealing their lunch how do we how do we fix this well
28:11 tweak the I'll go so it treats this YouTube short stuff is as gold and the
28:17 creators will follow and we saw 500 subscribers like clockwork every month
28:24 um and we were at about 55 56 000 um subscribers in December January
28:30 December 2021 January 2022 and all of a sudden our reels content or our shorts
28:37 content the same content that we had been posting on reels posting on Tick Tock all of a sudden was being treated
28:43 differently the algorithm changed we shot up to half a million subscribers in
28:48 in the course of a couple months wow not doing anything different all of a sudden
28:54 um the content was just when we didn't give up on it yeah we kept you know trying to grow YouTube and the all of a
29:02 sudden this short short form content now was worth way more to them than it was previously in a matter of months yeah
29:09 interesting yeah it's such a great testimony to to like you said you you had it out there you didn't give up on
29:14 that but then just because the platform made The Tweak where they're like you said trying to compete with tick tocks
29:21 and all this short form content and uh yeah they're giving a lot more
29:26 um I guess priority to those views the views of those shorts and yeah it's just
29:32 those back-end tweaks that you know happen yeah well yeah good that's that good stuff
29:37 I'm glad you mentioned that uh was we get ready to to wrap things up what I wanted to see is if there's any any
29:44 example of you know even with either with your brand or any other brand that you're familiar with that
29:51 um has done just a great job with content and community building and if there's something that you can highlight
29:57 from what you've seen sure so I'll give you a non-traditional answer here um so I do think some Brands and do do a
30:05 good job us we I think we do pretty well we're constantly trying to improve we're always a work in progress but where I'm
30:13 getting the motivation for now is very very unusual so we're talking about
30:20 Brands and building the content and Community piece right and you build it on top of the brand and then the result
30:26 is you know here you're starting to see these creators
30:33 um whether you want to call them influencers or creators um the Mr Beasts of the world right yeah
30:38 yeah they built the content and community and then they built the businesses and
30:44 brands on top of it and by going in that different order they Mr Beast launch
30:50 launches a fast food ghost kitchen model and he's
30:56 Nationwide whether you're whether Ireland you and Orlando or me in Atlanta we pull up ubereats and we both can get
31:03 the same thing and there's not a brick and mortar like it's just mind blame mind-blowing that they're now
31:09 accomplishing it in the different order so so my my advice is look at these
31:16 creators that that have these large followings and look at the type of content they're putting on the community
31:22 they're building um because they're building it all before they build the business which is
31:27 bizarre but I think you can take a lot of the learnings from their approach towards content and Community because if
31:34 you can replicate that on your end you're just gonna have this this fanatical loyalty among your customers
31:41 yeah yeah you're right it's a different take on it because like you said it's yeah these creators you know at the
31:48 outset of them getting out there becoming an influencer posting content they're probably not really even
31:54 thinking about you know building a business per se you know there may be their mindset is to you know maybe
32:00 promote other brands or their products but then when they've amassed such a huge Community then it's I think it's it
32:07 kind of makes sense then that they have that loyal following like you said people are almost fanatical about
32:12 following them consuming their content they're like all right how do we double down on this how do we monetize it and
32:19 it's like you do you almost kind of have an instant kind of customer base if you will you
32:25 know of course you know people have to pull the trigger use a credit card there but that loyalty is already there and um
32:33 that's a tremendous value yeah and maybe and maybe that's maybe that's what I like about it is you're
32:39 looking at this content and Community the content they're creating the community they're building and maybe
32:45 it's because they're they're creating it with with no secret agenda right they
32:52 are just putting their passion into creating this content and consumers can tell consumers can spot
32:59 real real from fake right um I think a lot of times Brands don't give the consumer enough credit they
33:06 know they know when something's not real exactly exactly and yeah you nailed it there and that's kind of where the we've
33:12 seen such growth in like the Mr Beasts of the world that's been able to like you said launch these ghost kitchens
33:17 because yeah they they they're the real deal they've already established that
33:24 relationship with this following the trust is already there they come off as
33:30 an authority on a lot of subjects and so yeah that's that's really what you really need up front and it's um yeah
33:36 like I said it's the reverse order but yeah they've really been able to to kind of uh kind of win over a lot of people
33:44 and and sell sell a lot of product that way for sure um well great uh John this has been an
33:50 awesome discussion you know it's very timely as we've all seen you know with this with the tick tocks building this
33:56 community there's a lot of ways you can go with it and I think what really resonates mates with me and with a lot of I know our listeners as well is
34:04 um you got to start and it's not going to be instant um you know if you don't have anything going don't have a community Facebook
34:10 group just get it going and then just slowly build it build it build it um you may not see an initial return but it's
34:16 something that's a long game and it can definitely help complement your sales and build that trust there with your
34:23 community for sure um well uh you know like I always do with all of my guests is like to switch
34:29 gears and my final question just so our audience can get to know you a little bit better if you don't mind sharing one closing fun fact about yourself that you
34:36 think would be interested to know um I'm an avid Sports Card Collector
34:41 okay so all of these it's not product yeah it's it's my midlife crisis of uh
34:49 I'm I'm acting like I did when I was 12 years old and everything athletes
34:55 printed on cardboard gotcha gotcha yeah I was wondering what those boxes were but so okay so you're yeah I got a
35:01 friend of mine a buddy of mine a gold uh high school buddy of mine is uh in the same thing he's a really Avid uh Card
35:08 Collector as well and uh I never really realized until I started kind of following some of his posts how um how
35:14 much business is behind this oh it's insane what you can really earn on some of these cards and the collecting it's
35:21 uh yeah it's a it's like almost a whole subculture there that not a lot of people really realize that there's a
35:26 there's a big business Behind These yeah yeah yeah that's so that's good stuff man yeah thank you for sharing that and
35:33 uh yeah with success with that as well but yeah it's like it's more than a hobby I know and with like I said it's
35:39 almost like a business name yeah yeah for sure uh well lastly before we do let
35:45 you go if you don't mind letting our listeners uh that want to reach out to you pick your brain anymore about
35:50 content and and Community um building what was the best way for them to to reach you sure so so I'm most
35:57 active on LinkedIn uh I try to be active on all channels but but LinkedIn just
36:06 is is my favorite um I also have uh onlinecasesto.com it's
36:12 just my blog so I'll I'll give use case case studies stuff we're working on
36:18 um what what I like to do though is include stuff like I just don't want to include the victories I want to include
36:24 our failures um because to me that's where we we really get the learnings and and figure
36:30 out how to be better stronger faster later so you know if you go in the
36:35 backlogs of it you'll see like four or five failed Tick Tock attempts um and just trying to document what we
36:42 do and what's working and what's not working okay gotcha well that's great yeah thank you for you know for sharing that I
36:48 definitely um recommend uh that our listeners reach out to you try to connect with you on on
36:54 LinkedIn and uh you know pick your brain you also mentioned that you guys have the original Netflix series uh was it
37:00 Southern survival um they could check out learn a little bit more about your brand and then how people are utilizing you know your
37:07 products and their their day-to-day lives so um yeah thanks for for sharing that as well awesome uh well awesome
37:13 John well we appreciate you coming on the show and I've learned a lot more listeners and viewers have as well and uh we appreciate you on the e-commerce
37:20 marketing podcast thanks for having me Marilyn Roy appreciate it thank you
37:26 thank you for listening to the e-commerce marketing podcast if you've enjoyed this episode be sure to rate
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38:27 [Music]
