Mindset, AI, & ghost hunting?
Mindset, AI, and ghost hunting— Smart Marketer Live wasn’t your typical marketing event. We break down the big ideas that got us thinking (and laughing) in Denver. You'll get an inside look at the conference, featuring attendee interviews that explore themes like artificial intelligence in business, strategic reinvestment, and the evolving role of mindset in small business success.
Kurt Elster
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Paul Reda
So I went to Ezra Firestone's smart marketer conference. It was awesome. No, you didn't. Yes I did. Didn't ask me all about it. We went to You're the useful idiot who needs to ask me the questions about what I learned there.
Kurt Elster
Okay, but I was the one who was the one. No, you weren't. I have video proof that I was there. That that's deep faked. That's AI deep. You know what? If it's an AI deepfake, I would have made myself look thinner. Alright. That's how you know it's a deep fake. You're like that guy looks too good.
Paul Reda
That's right. Has he been hitting the gym? Yeah, that's me. That's what everyone says when they see me.
Kurt Elster
Have you been hitting the gym? No, all the time. Yeah, when someone says that to me, immediately I'm like, what do you want? Oh, you look you do you work out? Absolutely not.
Paul Reda
My mother-in-law, who's a pleasant person, is is always like, you look great. Did you lose weight? And it and now it's like every time she sees me. And now I just like, nope, still say still fat as I always was.
Kurt Elster
And she's always like, ha ha I to go like, no, I just sized up on my clothes. Yeah, nah. The No, so I did. I went uh the end of October. I went to Denver for Smart Marketer Live.
Paul Reda
So what did Ezra teach you?
Kurt Elster
Well, you know, largely I think the theme was about mindset, about approach and strategy. Even though it was, you know, the audience was marketers, largely digital marketers. What's kind of interesting for me anyway, most of the conferences I go to are like Shopify e-commerce specific. This was digital marketing broader in general. And so I talked to a lot of people outsider space. And it was kind of fun to you know a people who didn't know me, but were still like, oh, this guy might know what he's talking about. uh and uh folks with different backgrounds. Like I spent uh several minutes talking to a woman who managed resorts in Wisconsin Just like trying to get families to come to these indoor water park resorts. Would have never had that experience. But yeah, it was like northern Wisconsin.
Paul Reda
Oh, northern Wisconsin.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, so that's kind of fun.
Paul Reda
Where where is our ghost hunter from?
Kurt Elster
Oh, the our ghost hunter.
Paul Reda
I bel didn't he say he lives in Florida? He lives in Florida, but I think is he Dutch? Swedish? Yeah, maybe.
Kurt Elster
I mean he says in the interview.
Paul Reda
Oh, okay. So I naturally I cannot go to He's from a place with very nice health care health care and then moved to Florida. Yeah. Ooh.
Kurt Elster
Maybe he just likes hurricanes, you know, fun different kind of weather pattern. But uh I can't go to a conference anymore without conducting a series of lightning interviews. Oh I do enjoy those quick those five minute man on the street style interviews are a lot of fun. You know, you never know what you're gonna get. I do wanna know what's just about this conference. You go to a lot of conferences in marketing, business And it's changing, but yeah, often they're male-dominated. And not all of them. This one was unusual in that it either was or was close to 50-50 on a gender split. Um however I didn't manage to represent that here. Right? You know no one no one expects somebody.
Paul Reda
Talk to me.
Kurt Elster
I did not no none of that happen to you.
Paul Reda
I don't know why you didn't get any women doing that.
Kurt Elster
No, no, no. I feel well, you know, just who I can get. It's like a two-day conference. I'm running around and I'm trying to enjoy conference content myself. And so I I feel a little guilty. I just wanted to note it that it's not necessarily representative of of what they have. Um but and now I've gone to enough conferences to know I like the smaller ones. I do, I just the smaller ones more intimate. And oh, I get I get anxious about going to like these big conferences where I don't know anybody. You know, like I don't want to be in McCormick place. I don't want to be in Vegas. And so I like the smaller ones where I know at least I know a few people, and I absolutely know the smart marketer crew. And so I I know they put on a good show. And A lot of fun. Themes were like mindset, AI.
Paul Reda
Well we'll get b we'll get back to those themes after this.
Kurt Elster
Alright, we're in Denver Smart Marketer Live. I am with who are you and what do you do?
Speaker 3
Derek Miller. I'm the founder and CEO of Genius Lab gear. And is this your first business marketing conference? Yeah, first one. Is this your first conference ever? Uh no, I've been to lots of trade shows for science and engineering. This is my first one being like a business-focused trade show.
Kurt Elster
Oh, this is perfect. So, all right, tell me how they're different.
Speaker 3
Oh, so well we started with uh kind of a motivational talk and then we did a meditation in the second one. Uh talked a lot about mindset and that's completely different from a science and engineering conference. Uh that that was a big difference and is actually a good Way to start, honestly.
Kurt Elster
You know, it's a little different than most marketing conferences.
Speaker 3
But you know, having been here and knowing Ezra, I wasn't too surprised. Yeah, that's what I was expecting, but it was great, it was a great start for it. Alright, what's one takeaway here? Uh the biggest thing I can do differently in my business is Is using AI and not from a cold start. What's a cold start? So a cold start is when you just load up the browser, you start typing your question, and it knows nothing about your business, your brand voice, or any of your goals. And so if you load up like Claude and you add context to it in the context. Index window, uh, your brand voice, uh, your business plan, things like that, even your website, it can give you much better answers that are relevant to your problem. Give me one interesting person you've met. Uh I met another store owner who is making gold and silver jewelry, and he is is now approaching um NFL brands to do it for the players and customize each one. I thought that was super cool. That is cool.
Kurt Elster
And when you get back, what are you gonna do? What's one thing you learned here?
Speaker 3
I think my biggest takeaway is go start using AI and start using it to get ideas for marketing um and because I I'm just constantly not in a space to come up with new creative ideas uh and using AI will probably kickstart that process.
Kurt Elster
And if I needed to get a lab coat like a really good lab coat.
Speaker 3
A really good lab coat, the world's best uh geniuslab year. com. Derek thank you so much Much. Thanks, Kurt.
Speaker 4
My name is Devin Merklin. I'm the president of X Scale. We buy, build, grow, and sell e-commerce businesses. So one of the brands that we bought was offset. com. It's all automotive aftermarket wheel brand or parts and brands and things of that nature. We grew that brand to about 2x of what we bought it for and sold it within the first 12 months
Kurt Elster
So you just did a panel talk with a some other marketers and operators. F you talked about working a hundred hours a week. The audience practically gasped at a hundred hours a week. So you're shunning work life balance here. J Tell me what what drives that, why you're you're cool with that.
Speaker 4
Yeah, I think I think it it does get a negative kind of ethos around it, working all the time, hundred hour work weeks, but honestly we're as humans we're just built to work, we're built to do stuff and a lot of people like to split it up. I don't necessarily believe in work-life balance. As long as you can integrate with your personal life, your business life, everything that you have going on, um and still love what you do every day and not feel burnt out, then keep doing it. Why why stop? So I've ascribe to finding that thing that you're really passionate about, buying into a bigger vision, and then just integrating your life so that every day is just awesome.
Kurt Elster
Do you go to a lot of conferences?
Speaker 4
I do not go to a lot of conferences. Only every now and then smart marketer is the only one I'll really show up.
Kurt Elster
Alright, and tell me why. What what is it about Smart Marketer that you're like this is the one I'll go to?
Speaker 4
So the reason I come to Smart Marketer is because I've gone to different conferences over the past. There's been funnel hackers live, there's been straight e-commerce conferences and And a lot of it is a lot of just experts talking about things that they've done for their business that you should do. And the problem with that is there's a million ways to win. One expert will say one thing, the other expert will say something completely different, and they're both winners at the end of the day. And what Smart Marketer really does is they pull everybody together and make like an ecosystem that way you can kind of pick and choose who you're really listening to. It's not right or wrong. It's more of just a collaboration of an event rather than just an expert speaking at you.
Kurt Elster
That's a really good description.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Kurt Elster
Is there uh a single connection you made that you're excited about?
Speaker 4
Yeah, a good connection that I made. Um I think I've I've followed Nick Shackelford over the years. I actually I've I have like an old maybe like course or videos of him. on a thumb drive um and just being able to speak with him on stage was a little weird so right next to him. Yeah exactly exactly just just to be able to sit next to him and potentially pick his brain in the future is really cool.
Kurt Elster
I tried chasing him but he he he was moving too quickly. I could not keep up with check. What um is there one thing you're gonna do when you get back to your back home, back to your business that you learned here, something that inspired you?
Speaker 4
Yeah, I think when we get back it's it's go time. So we recently transitioned from agency model to buying businesses and we've been kind of feeling out a little bit with some of the experiences with offset and now it's time to go balls to the walls, get things done, um, and really explore that new journey of from growing e-commerce brands being an intrapreneur to actually buying them and then growing them should be extremely fun so I'm just ready to get started.
Kurt Elster
Alright you're an automotive guy. Here's uh a fun trivia fact. Balls to the wall and balls out refer to the throttle on a steam engine. Yep. Yeah. I throw that in there. Uh and okay, final question. You have been on the agency side and the brand side. It's almost a meme on DTC Twitter. Agency start brands, brand start agencies. Is this a case of the grass is always greener or Or is there a trend or benefit there?
Speaker 4
There's a natural thing, at least for me, of I I'm I'm not like good with like managing people. And so I should have known this going into an agency. Um what I really like to do is like tinker and build and grow things and that's what I really got growing that brand living it daily and that's what I thought I had the skills to go do and so the next the easiest thing for me was like oh wait let me just go take these skills start an agency and help grow other brands but But at the end of the day, it's you don't actually do that anymore. Maybe that's 20% of your time, but 80% of the time is now grow the agency, manage the people. And I think that's a common thing is like as we come up, we build the brands, we've got the skills, we can go do the thing. But then you start to realize, wait, I'm not doing the things that I'm good at anymore. I'm having to pay a dumb tax to relearn everything that I don't know.
Kurt Elster
Okay, so what of those those various skill sets, agency owner, brand owner, marketer,
Speaker 4
you know getting on your tools what's the one you love the one I love is probably offer creation I it's like a vague skill set but it's honestly the most fun and the most powerful because you can have amazing ads a beautiful stuff store an amazing product but if the offer is garbage nobody wants to buy it. So you could have an amazing product and you can get that product to speak for itself over time, but if you can't bundle it up and make it an amazing offer, nobody wants to hear it. That's great advice. it thank you what's your site as long as we're here yeah thexscale.
Kurt Elster
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Speaker 5
Alright, Jonas, what's your name and what do you do? Yeah, my name is in Swedish Jonas Brehammer. In English I guess Jonas Brehammer. Um and yeah I've been in in Florida since uh 2000 on a green card citizens since a few years and I run ghosthunters equipment. com. This is the first time I'm doing this.
Kurt Elster
Uh well look at me. Most people do the same thing. They switch back and forth, but look at me. Okay. All right. You sell ghost hunting equipment.
Speaker 5
Yes, ghost hunters equipment.
Kurt Elster
Paranormal research. Yeah. Okay. We have a guest. And you're at Smart marketer, how many of these events have you done? Do you do a lot of conferences?
Speaker 5
I used to do Amazon conference in Seattle back in the day and uh not. not haven't done any uh e-commerce ones um for this is the first one actually not it's not the Amazon focused what I'm doing.
Kurt Elster
And how does this conference compare to your your past conference experiences? What's different about this?
Speaker 5
Well first of all Ezra who leading it is unique and the only reason I knew about him is thanks to your your podcast actually. Oh okay. He's quite the character I love him. Yeah yeah so um Uh yeah this this conference uh is uh there's no booths with with a bunch of vendors selling. I mean that's the biggest difference. Uh And um yeah it's it's small sized, very approachable and uh it's also more focused on uh I mean it's much more focused on uh you as a person uh and uh uh your your uh your mission why uh why you're doing this and enjoy and your lifestyle. So that's just a big one.
Kurt Elster
We were you've now done you know we're at the end of the conference. Give me uh one or two action items. When you get back home to Florida What are you doing differently in your business as a result of this this event? Yes.
Speaker 5
Um I I met one one person here who has subscription company, uh Loop I think they're called. Did you meet Piush from Loop? Yes. They're very good. Yeah. And um yes. So I'm thinking about adding some subscription to our our business. Get some ideas about that?
Kurt Elster
Predictable recurring revenue. Can't be beat.
Speaker 5
Yeah, and uh I I really took in some of the things about um uh philosophy uh and and um thinking about that we have uh values for the business, that we we have more about the business than just uh uh selling ghost hunting equipment. But we have another ambition too about helping the world. Um that will motivate us at another level. Um I'm kind of exhausted from these two days here and dealing with Amazon. Your brain is fried. Yeah, exactly. My brain is fried.
Kurt Elster
On top of it, a true e-com entrepreneur. Yeah, I made some my notes are left here. Uh tell me about connections you made. Is there one person that you're like, wow, I can't believe I met them up, Other than myself, obviously.
Speaker 5
Yeah, yeah, of course. Uh yes, um well I met uh Ben um with Smart Marketer, who is part of their uh hand us their creative. Uh and uh yeah connect a break with him. Him and his wife uh are planning to go to Sweden so I'm helping him with this trip planning there but uh he's also he plays the banjo and I I play the guitar, used to play the guitar so we're connected about that and um Uh I met a guy from San Diego uh who um who makes uh uh videos uh about content so which is
Kurt Elster
Which is more valuable? And there is not a wrong answer here. The content or the connections at a conference? The content or the connections
Speaker 5
Of the conference. Oh yeah, no um well I think uh I mean be equal the both of them um but I mean the connections are like kind of unexpected. Uh like uh I mean I I didn't come here c uh uh expecting that at all. I came here I'm gonna learn as much as possible. I'm gonna like you know try try to uh take ourselves to another level but in I came but I got surprised that oh yeah like uh Are you enjoying your life and from where are you coming from when you approaching your business? And the biggest thing I take away from here is probably a connection that you make. Which I was thinking, uh really? Uh uh uh I was just exhausted coming here from from Florida and uh it was my birthday this week and I was kinda parting kinda hard. So so I came here really tired. The emotional intelligence that is part of this content.
Kurt Elster
Where's the best place best place to buy it? Let me think.
Speaker 5
Could it be ghosthuntersequipment. com?
Kurt Elster
Ghosthunters equipment. com? That's where I buy my ghost hunting equipment.
Speaker 5
Uh yeah, check it out. Ghosthuntersequipment. com Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you, Kirk. Nice to uh be in the show with you. And thanks for listening to the show. Thanks. It's helped us a lot actually in the business. Britt Curry, what's your name?
Speaker 6
Brett Curry.
Kurt Elster
Oh, very good. Where are you what are you doing here?
Speaker 6
Uh hanging hanging with amazingly smart people like yourself, Mr. Kurt Elster. Also I'm just a huge Ezra Firestone Molly Pittman fan and anything and everything smart marketer. So I'm speaking on an expert panel in a little bit, leading a round table, and otherwise just hanging with really cool, really smart marketing peeps.
Kurt Elster
Tell me about the roundtable experience.
Speaker 6
Yeah, so what I love about a roundtable experience is uh you know it's like a table of t ten or so people, everybody comes with their biggest problem or biggest challenge or their biggest opportunity. They frame it in just a minute or two, and then we spend the rest of the allotted time for that person sharing ideas. So firing resources, tips, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? Uh and then I usually kinda as the leader of the table, we usually kind of package that up and and send some. final thoughts to the person. But so cool, you know, I've heard uh in a lot of events that uh hey the answer is in the room, right? The answer you need is in the room. And I think for for uh a lot of things like the the answer is at that table. And so basically my job as the leader is just to facilitate that and bring out the brilliance that's that's there.
Kurt Elster
You go to a ton of events. How does this one differ from other marketing events?
Speaker 6
Yeah, you know I I I love events just because I I love connecting with people. And uh I think we we need to get into a different headspace to unlock new ideas and to kind of spot trends and to think about like what if, what if about this particular topic like AI or or YouTube or what you know whatever the case may be. Uh what I really like about this event though is just the quality of the people and what I mean by that is like the willingness to collaborate, to help, to be kind of an open book. This is a group of people that you want to hang out with, right? They're smart enough that you like you want their ideas, you want their advice, but they're also like, these are the people you want to go uh grab a bite with or grab a drink with or whatever. And so uh it's really, really fun and I think I think the event just kind of takes on like the personality of Ezra and Molly and that's what makes it so fun.
Kurt Elster
And what's one interesting connection you made here?
Speaker 6
Yeah, so I mean one of the things I'm most excited about was uh Russ Hanniberry's talk about AI and instead of just using off the shelf AI like ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini or whatever and just asking it a question, uh creating customized AI where you're feeding it all kinds of data about your client, your business, your customers, your competitors, and then conversing with the AI, and then it's got context. So helping the AI use all of the internet as a backdrop, but then your specific information and now it's like a superpower, superpowered assistant for you. So that's been super fun. And then I'm also just always reminded like Hey, there are connections to be made, people that want to work with you, people that want to buy your stuff, people that want to help you that you would just never fully connect with offline. And so taking the time to be in person creates those connections.
Kurt Elster
And did you do any the Did you do punch bowl?
Speaker 6
I did do punch bowl.
Kurt Elster
Tell me about punch bowl the after party.
Speaker 6
So the after party was fun. I was a little disappointed. There's this there's this nice bowling alley, like like inside bowling alley Nobody was bowling, Kurt. I don't know if like bowling.
Kurt Elster
You went bowling. Yeah, I'm really bad at it.
Speaker 6
That's the best way to be at bowling. Like it's because bowling is just like one of those things you want to make fun of each other. Like you you bowl and you make fun of each other, and so it's better if you're bad, I think.
Kurt Elster
No, I I wish
Speaker 6
Uh food was good, conversations were good. You know, again, it's just like one of those things where, hey, we're gonna Take a minute to eat and let's just share ideas, let's converse, and let's let's talk about what we learn and what we do and and so it's really neat. Like I had uh a couple of Tak groups of like true OGs in the space. Like I've been doing this since 2004. I've been doing SEO since 2004 and talking to guys like Russ Henneberry and and Ralph Burns and and Deacon Bradley and some other guys have just been doing this forever. So it's really great talking to them. And then there's some people that are like hey just getting started on their online journey. And so fun to connect with them as well. So yeah, party was really rad. I am bummed we didn't bowl together. But other than that, it was great.
Kurt Elster
And then all right, final question. One thing you're gonna do in your business when you get back.
Speaker 6
Well I mean the main thing gonna do is I've got like five people I gotta connect with, right? So five people that are like, hey, we need to talk about this type type of project together. W or uh there's this this tool that will help our clients. And so there's a subscription tool that I want to connect to some of my clients. There's a new marketplace that uh uh by Steven uh that that I think we can get our clients on and so more it's more about like follow-ups and and connecting with some people to then launch some new ideas, new projects.
Speaker 7
Alright Jesse, what's your name? My name is Jesse. And what do you do? I'm a director of e-commerce for some aftermarket auto brands, and then I also am your project manager. Huzzah! Huzzah! And You why are you here? Why come to this event? Why come to this event? Um I think the big thing for me was to be around people that are in the industry that I work in. So As a director of eComm, I'm working with manufacturers and helping open their G2C pipeline. So the conversations that I get to have are quite different than what is the best strategy for D2C. So I wanted to be in a room of experts in the space that I'm working in and just have some brainstorming. Give me one takeaway. One takeaway. Um, I think that one of the biggest takeaways for me was how invested in meta ads a lot of these brands are. Way more so than my companies are. So we spend a lot more of our money into Google ads. And so I immediately reached out to our media buyer and I said we need to talk more about optimizing our Facebook spend.
Kurt Elster
Oh, okay, I like this. Yeah. Outside of Meta, are there other acquisition channels? You're like, all right, we gotta explore that or double down on it.
Speaker 7
Um, maybe not necessarily from This conference, I think there's some that I have started to see some traction in. Direct mail is one of them. I will plug Postpilot. Postpilot has been really well, working really well for us, especially targeting some of our what I call our zombie email subscribers, right? So once people kind of fall off that email. email list but they're still engaging with our website. I find a lot of success retargeting those customers with direct mail so that's a really good channel. We do find a lot of success with Google Pay, but I'd really like to expand it to Meta and then I'm also wanted to expand it to YouTube.
Kurt Elster
And you met Ezra Firestone in person for the first time.
Speaker 7
I did, yes. We've interacted on on calls. Um he's crossed over with a ton of people that I know, so it was nice to have the opportunity to actually meet him face to face.
Kurt Elster
What is Ezra Firestone like?
Speaker 7
What is Ezra Firestone like? Ezra is a giant ball of energy in a hippie body. That's accurate. Is that describing right? That's accurate.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, and he's full of love and energy which is really great. Alright, you get you get back to the office on Monday. What?
Speaker 7
Um outside of following up with my media buyer, uh another thing that came up as I was thinking through this, it might also because I'm meeting with my accountant tomorrow, is just really getting a good understanding of the PL and the marketing objectives and how those are going to overlap and educate each other. How so? So one of the things that I can't remember what the speaker was taught who the speaker was, but they were talking about how accounting is what has happened and what is happening, where marketing is what is happening and what the future will be. So You need to understand what's happening in the market from your marketing perspective. So where are you growing? Um what's the acquisition looking like and all of those different metrics, but you also have to understand what your costs have been and kind of where everything's at. So those two marriage. I think is is a little bit of a shortcoming in our in our company right now.
Kurt Elster
Did if you had to pick a a theme that you a recurring theme What would it be? Through the conference? Yeah.
Speaker 7
Ooh. A reoccurring theme. Well, I think outside of the straight marketing strategy um in digital space, there was a lot of theme with mindset, right? And really enjoying what we do and bringing energy to it. Um One lady asked me today what did I bring to the world or what do I bring to the world? I'm like, wow, that's a really big question. I would like to believe it is outside of my role as a director of e-com, right? Like I don't like to think what I bring to the world is my job I like to think that it's the energy that I bring and the excitement for what I do. So I think that was kind of a recurring theme throughout this as well. There was a lot of make sure you enjoy what you do.
Kurt Elster
Would you come back to Smart Marketer?
Speaker 7
Yeah, absolutely.
Kurt Elster
That's perfect. Cool. So who are you?
Speaker 8
What do you do? Hey there, I am John Grimshaw. I am the Chief Marketing Officer of Smart Marketer, which is a lot of pressure to be a marketing company and be in charge of driving the marketing. But really I kind of work on Strategy email, working with agency clients and helping drive our info product strategy. And what are we doing here today? So we are here for day two of Smart Marketer Live. First time we're putting this conference on. We brought 310 people together to talk about what is coming up in the industry. How is it going to change in 2025? How are we adjusting ourselves as business owners and marketers and strategists? T Because we believe it's not just about coming up with the right tactical answer, right? We got that. We got tactics for days, but you need to change your mindset going to 2025. Open yourself up to possibilities of adding more to your business and turning it into an engine for growth, profit. fuel, not just pulling money out, but putting it back into the team, back into the people.
Kurt Elster
And what is what's one takeaway you've heard today? Or at this event.
Speaker 8
One takeaway. So it's tricky because I gave a presentation, but I don't feel like I want to just talk about the stuff that I had. So I would say I actually did really enjoy some of the tactical content that my team presented. It's one of those moments where you're like, Oh damn, that's what they're doing? That's amazing. But uh there was a strategy I really, really liked where we were going through and taking people's cart abandoned sequence. And I like this because it does affect dollars in your pocket. We went through and we tested adding a discount to the cart abandoned and what we did is basically just add in a discount code, a small message redo, it allowed us to boost the sale rate from those by about one point eight per uh times, which means an extra, you know You know, thousand, two thousand, three thousand dollars per email per week in your pocket depending on the size of your business. So huge if you're feeling like men has gotten more expensive, things are struggling, you're feeling like you need that profit back in the business, updating your card abandon sequence with a little bit of a discount lever. Absolutely the move to make.
Kurt Elster
Give me one interesting connection you've made.
Speaker 8
So it's been really fun because we've gotten to meet Sammy Herrera, who is the meta-rep that we work with with the Smart Marketer Agency, and I already knew she was smart, I already knew she was great. I knew she lived But we had a chance to really dive deep and connect. And it was super fun to talk not just about what are we doing with Meta, how are we making this work as an agency, but kind of looking ahead to the future, talking a little bit about how we're gonna be creating systems that help us pull more data into the meta platform to make it small. So Facebook knows you guys are failing the heat as far as CPAs and they have a plan. So always comforting to hear that somebody has a plan to make things better for you.
Kurt Elster
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Paul Reda
So when you say mindset What the hell are you talking about? Because I'm just like mindset. Like, I'm gonna win. I'm gonna be successful. Sing them sing a song about how you're a magnet to money, and it'll show up.
Kurt Elster
Oh, so I see you're you're manifesting. Yeah, exactly. Manifesting your success.
Paul Reda
I gotta have the winner's mindset. Sure.
Kurt Elster
I I hear Ezra talk a lot about this. You you hear mindfulness is a uh has been a buzzword for some of the years. Being actively considering, like, okay, you have obviously you have business goals, you have personal goals, you have financial goals, and all of that in entrepreneurship gets wrapped up together with your personality. And that, if you're a prickly pear, if you're stressed out, you got anxiety, there are all kinds of reasons that this can go sideways on you. And so with mindset, One of the the impactful phrases I've heard from Ezra, because he's exited his business, he's obviously very successful. He says, Hey, if you're not happy here and now, you won't be happy there and then. Meaning If you are miserable now and telling yourself, if I just sell this business, if I just get this one deal, I get this big payout, then I'll be happy and successful, guess what? You're gonna be miserable and rich when you get there. And so there is when you are self-employed, when you are an entrepreneur, there are not enough people, at least not in the past, talking about the importance of you gotta get your head right. You have to go into uh business with this this positive mindset where you have prepared yourself positively and you know what your goals are and like you are happy, especially if you're the the business owner, right? You're this leader. Now, how are you going to engage with other people? How are you going to inspire them? Like whatever you bring to the table in your team, they'll kind of get a inform the rest. So if I show up and I'm like, uh, I'm bored of Shopify, it's not gonna work the rest of the team's not gonna be real motivated.
Paul Reda
Well yeah, it if if you're a miserable miserable person, just like in general. You are going to be a miserable business owner. Correct. That's everything in a nutshell.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, but there's a lot of people who are just like, that doesn't matter because the business is profitable and I make money. And there's just there's more to business and there's more to life than that. And so it's it's refreshing to see some of that content, you know, especially when twenty years ago a lot of business content was just you know a more like, hey, do whatever it takes to win, damn the torpedoes.
Paul Reda
Twenty years ago. Twenty minutes ago.
Kurt Elster
Twenty minutes ago. Yeah, that content's out there too. Like yeah, it can only do so much hustle and grinding, right? But it is It's inspiring to be in a room full of people who hear that same thing and go, Yeah, that does make sense. Like I I would not mind being less stressed and happier with the same business, right? I just think Ezra's a a unique individual for sure. And it is, but he's uniquely suited to be one of those people where when he tells you, hey, here's what after thinking about it for 15 years, here's what I think are the keys to be happy. Well, you you pay attention to it. And a lot of it was like investing in other people, in trying to make other people happy without necessarily sacrificing your own happiness leads to, you know, like general greater happiness. A rising tide. But in this case, the context was like, all right, family and your your team, your business.
Paul Reda
Yeah, I can't tell you how many stories I've heard of Ezra being like, oh wait, your dream is to become what? My business needs one of those. You're hired. Like even if you don't know, you're like, but I don't know how to do that. I just want to do it. Well, the perfect place to learn how to do it is at my business.
Kurt Elster
Come on. Yeah.
Paul Reda
Like he's like the pipe pipe.
Kurt Elster
The Pied Piper. Yes. Yes he is. In the best way. I don't know, are Pied Pipers ever evil?
Paul Reda
I mean he did murder all the town's children.
Kurt Elster
Okay, Ezra's not done that. Mindset was a theme. A recurring theme was reinvesting back in your business as opposed to like using it as a profit-taking machine, which depending on where you are in your business, what it's doing, it it's easy to fall into a trap of profit taking as opposed to realizing, oh, this is an asset. I can reinvest back into the business, scale it up, and then when I go into my next round of profit taking, ah, I'm gonna be doing more. Even more profit.
Paul Reda
I can't tell you how much that drives me insane.
Kurt Elster
What?
Paul Reda
People that don't reinvest in the business. Drives me nuts. Because I mean we've talked to, we've had people reach out to us, try to become clients. And we're like, hey, yeah, you're in bad shape here. Like, you know, we're not guaranteeing anything, but given your current revenue levels. A small lift and making all your stuff better is like a million dollars in revenue this year. We could totally do that. I think we think we could increase your revenue by a million dollars this year You're gonna need to pay us forty thousand dollars to make that happen. They're like, oh, forty thousand dollars. I can't I can't pay that kind of money. It's like Pitywise and pound foolish.
Kurt Elster
It's a mindset. That's a mindset issue.
Paul Reda
Yeah.
Kurt Elster
Where you're not sit you're just going like, well short term, I lose that profit. It's a but you're not thinking long term. But yeah, absolutely. I mean that that is the kind of thing theme and thing that was discussed here. In addition to the usual suspects like, you know, here's how to optimize email, Facebook ads, and of course AI. Lotta AI s lotta AI mentions, a lot of AI stuff. Um that was the only time, you know, because I'm very into it where I was like, oh, I wish this was less strategic and more hands-on. Like, hey, j I already know what you're talking about. Just give me your prompts. Like there's a guy who explained essentially custom GPTs without ever really mentioning custom GPTs. And the whole time it it was driving me crazy because I'm like, yeah, yeah, I agree with you. Just give me your prompts, right? That's that's all I want. I wanna see how you wrote it. I wanna see how you prompt it. That's what's fun about ChatGPT, right? I've gone off topic. You just talk to it like anybody else.
Paul Reda
No, I don't I have I've I have humans to talk to. No, never that actually know things instead of a uh a filter of a giant corpus of words that goes, well statistically, what's the next word that should come? Oh, there you go. Oh, it's thinking. It's statistically thought of what would the next word be? It's thinking.
Kurt Elster
At no point has I do I claim it thinks.
Paul Reda
You do.
Kurt Elster
Oh I know it doesn't. You tell me what it told you.
Paul Reda
You told me it told you it loves you and then you're gonna leave your wife?
Kurt Elster
None of that happened. Uh honestly my big takeaway, there's a guy with a successful business selling ghost hunting equipment. I think that's great. I'm like so glad to see you know everybody else is like I sell t-shirts.
Paul Reda
Do we know if he's successful? Okay. He said he w did he say he was? I think he said he was.
Kurt Elster
Look everybody says how tells me how successful they are. I don't know how many actually are. But the way I say it, I meet like a dozen millionaires a day based on what they say. Based on what they tell me. Yeah. The No, I just thought that was that was a lot of fun. I like the quirky businesses a lot. Ghost hunting equipment definitely falls under quirky. So at this point normally I share with you my biggest personal takeaway. But we're recording this over a month after I got back. I don't remember what my personal takeaway was. Oh shit.
Paul Reda
I think it it sounds to me like the biggest personal takeaway It doesn't stick with you because it's something we've already achieved, which is mindset.
Kurt Elster
Well, okay, yeah, mindset it which is a thing I had long already accepted as that is important and it just a continuous thing you work on and think about. Um but in addition to that, I don't just I love meeting the people, I love the networking, but I always come back energized. And it was nice to do it at the end of the year, because when I came back, I was like, okay, I drove to work and thought through like this is my plan for how we're going to scale our agency business, ethercycle. com. in twenty twenty five and then put that together as a plan by the end of the day when I that first Monday when I got back and then turned around um it started to implement that already.
Paul Reda
So that's still going. Well and you know, to go back to what we talked about before, I think that's the other thing we're really good at, which is we have zero problems reconfiguring the business at any time. Because we're always just like how, I mean, the the two things we ask ourselves every single year is how can we make more money or how can we work less?
Kurt Elster
Or both. Yeah, one g either way you end up at more profitable.
Paul Reda
And so, yeah, it's always like we have a mindset that we're like, oh well, this business serves our lives. Two What do we need to do to make more money? Is there dead weight we need to cut? Then we're cutting it. Is there money we need to spend to make more money? Then we're spending it. Like we have no problems completely changing things up if we think it's going to get us farther in the future.
Kurt Elster
It feels good to hear. We're doing like a lot of things.
Paul Reda
I mean we're so fucking we're so fucking smart, dude. It's not even funny. Oh how smart we are. Leaving that in. And the best part about how smart we are, no comeuppins. We will get no come-uppance. We'll never have a downfall. We'll always be we'll always be successful geniuses no matter what You know what, I think I don't know this man. I think we might be smarter than the gods. I think we're smarter than the gods.
Kurt Elster
I don't know where to go from here. How could I follow that up? Like, well. I encourage our listeners to attend events like this because even secondhand, wow, the amount of confidence you walked away with from just hearing just hearing the interviews made me realize how smart we are. Is this brand safe? Are you being brand safe right now?
Paul Reda
The one thing I am definitely not is brand safe.
Kurt Elster
Hey, we made it through an episode without swearing, I think.
Paul Reda
No, I didn't. I didn't. Damn it!
Kurt Elster
Yeah, no, definitely. Check out uh smartmarketer. com for more more similar events or you know, whatever local small event you could find. If it makes sense, try it. I think if you haven't done one of these events, do one next year. Just pick one. It's The connections are worthwhile. Heck, even if the conference isn't that good, sometimes just breaking your routine and then being amongst even if you don't talk to them, you just hear them being amongst other business owners, you'll come back. and immediately things that need to change in your business will become obvious to you. That's no matter what conference I've gone to, even the worst conference, just the magic of I went elsewhere, broke my routine, saw other people like me, my peers came back, well, something's changing. Like I've never regretted going to one of these for that reason. And then, you know, if the content, the people, the event is great, and certainly an event like Smart Marketer, those are always so well done. Um Very valuable. I like it. I'm into it. And I'm someone who has travel anxiety, right? I don't want to leave my house. And so for me to say yes, do this I think carries a little more weight when you have the level of social anxiety I do. Well, you know, somebody has to hold down the fort. Yeah, right. So in upcoming episodes, we've got more interviews and more importantly, I want to have you back on the show more. We need Paul Rita. At this conference, do you know how many people I ran into who were familiar with the show, like the show, and then specifically referenced you?
Paul Reda
Don't like that.
Kurt Elster
Yeah.
Paul Reda
Do not like Mr.
Kurt Elster
Not Brand Safe. Do not like bring it back. Don't want Mr.
Paul Reda
Not Brand Safe. Don't want to be recognized. Prefer not being looked at. Not even kidding.
Kurt Elster
Well then stop being so entertaining.
Paul Reda
The people love it. Just leave me be. I beg of you.
Kurt Elster
Not haptic. Alright, take us out. Wrap it up. I want a call to action. Like it subscribe. Five stars. Bye-bye. Good enough. See you next week. Crowdfunding campaigns are great. You can add social proof and urgency to your product pre-orders while reducing risk of failure. But with traditional crowdfunding platforms, You're paying high fees and giving away control all while your campaign is lost in a sea of similar offers. It can be frustrating. That's why we built Crowdfunder, the Shopify app that turns your Shopify product pages into your own independent crowdfunding campaigns. We originally created Crowdfunder for our private clients, and it was so successful we turned it into an app that anyone can use. Today, merchants using Crowdfunder have raised millions collectively. With Crowdfunder, you'll enjoy real-time tracking, full campaign control, and direct customer engagement. And it's part of the Built for Shopify program. so you know it's easy to use. So say goodbye to high fees and hello to successful store-based crowdfunding. Start your free trial and transform your Shopify store Into a pre-order powerhouse today. Search Crowdfunder in the Shopify App Store to get started.