Supply & Demand: The State of Ecommerce

As things heat up with Amazon continuing to see incredible growth, my guest Brett Bohannon and I discuss what is needed to fill gaps. It may surprise you. New career opportunities abound.

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Michael Maher  00:00

Hello everybody! Welcome to The Longer Game, the show where we develop strategies for backgammon players. That's not what we do. We talked about retail. That was lame, but whatever, who cares. We talk about retail, we talk about retail reimagine. And we bring on guests that have various bases of knowledge when it comes to retail. Now I'm in the Amazon space and so I happen to know a lot of people in the Amazon space and that's actually a leading part of the retail direction right now. It's where things are very much heading. Ecommerce is growing, the pandemic is forced, you know, eCommerce to grow and Amazon makes up 40% of eCommerce sales. So it's very natural that we talk about that. However, you know, I don't think brick and mortar is going away forever. Ultimately, it's going to be moving omnichannel but my guest today, his name is Brett Bohannon. He is the founder of Voartex, not vortex, V-O-A-R-T-E-X . Welcome to the show, Brett. And tell us what you do.

Brett Bohannon  01:10

Thanks, Michael. Appreciate it. Um, I thought this was a strategy podcast for badminton. So,

Michael Maher  01:19

Yes, it is. It is. Back. We're going to talk about backhand first.

Brett Bohannon  01:22

Okay. Okay. All right. I just wanted to make sure we were in line with what we're,

Michael Maher  01:29

actually said backgammon. 

Brett Bohannon  01:31

I didn't know what it was. I thought it was badman.

Michael Maher  01:35

You thought it was badman? So then you're on the wrong show, sir.

Brett Bohannon  01:39

All right. We'll have to talk about badminton later. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Yeah, to talk about Amazon, I didn't get in the Amazon space. Since about 2016, a quick run through sold products, I think like you did as well. And then sold that business and then have been helping brands ever since. So I have a very, I love to help brands on the platform. I love to see how it all happens. I love the strategy level of everything that is Amazon. And that's and that's me.

Michael Maher  02:20

When you think about strategy for Amazon, what do you like what actually is that because it's like the word adding value. You know, people say I add value. And that's actually a lie. When someone hires me, and my agency, they don't instantly get an influx of capital into their business. If anything, they're investing in us what we do, and full credit to a gentleman named Keegan, I don't even know his last name, but he's on LinkedIn. And he's a sales guy. And he talks about how when someone hires you, as a service provider, you don't add value, you uncover value that's already there. So we're gatekeepers of sorts. And when someone's got gold in their bag, we just help them to maybe polish it up a little bit and actually be able to, or maybe that's not the right analogy, we help people to access the gold that's in the mind that is Amazon, I could come up with all kinds of analogies. I'm a little bit of an analogy, freak. But you know,

Brett Bohannon  03:17

I think that's a great analogy. Because I think it's all there. It's just people don't know how to, 

Michael Maher  03:23

Already there. 

Brett Bohannon  03:24

Yeah.

Michael Maher  03:24

Exactly. Yeah, that's a don't mind. They don't have the right tools. They don't have the right knowledge of where to dig. How far down do you dig?

Brett Bohannon  03:32

And how to dig? Like, people, you know, people in the space like you and I, we kind of have this roadmap already with Amazon, we understand the before, I would have to say, and I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but like 95% of the questions that brands come to me about Amazon. I have the answer for this because we've been through it. We've been through the wringer. We've been down in those mines. 

Michael Maher  03:56

It's just the truth, man, you don't have to, you don't have to gloat and to tell the truth,

Brett Bohannon  04:01

You know, it's like, because we've been in it. And there are a couple of questions that I'm like, Oh, good question. You know, let me find that out. And, and that's what excites me because that's when I know we still have more than dig in that mind. Know what I mean?

Michael Maher  04:15

Like, okay good. I am not gonna do dry up anything so

Brett Bohannon  04:19

I'm like, All right, I'm gonna find this out for you. 

Michael Maher  04:22

And in all fairness, Amazon, it's very complex. And there is job security for someone like myself or you who know and understand Amazon while it's just how do you what's, what role are you gonna play? What job you're gonna take? Yeah,

Brett Bohannon  04:37

yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's, it's. So to kind of get back to your question, the strategy of it, it's, it's really foundational. You got to check all the boxes, do all the right things and then implement the strategies above that. So you know if let's go back to the mining analogy, if you're sitting there with an axe and you're looking at a mountain. You're like, Well, how do I use this axe? You know, that's kind of like the foundations of it. 

Michael Maher  05:07

Throw it at the mountain.

Brett Bohannon  05:08

Exactly, exactly. Like and bring that into Amazon. I've seen so many brands where they just throw it on there. I'm like, 

Michael Maher  05:16

It's stuck. Oh, wait, it's coming down, everybody move. 

Brett Bohannon  05:18

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So it's like, you know, figured out how to do the foundational aspects of it, build that foundation. I love the analogy. Why it's actually in the Bible, the building the foundation on solid ground, and not building the foundation on a weak foundation? Because,

Michael Maher  05:37

don't build it on sand. 

Brett Bohannon  05:38

Exactly. It's, it's gonna erode your castle that you build your house that you build will fall. Um, I can't, I can't say that enough. You know, when it comes to the foundations as Amazon, I can go down so many roads with this. But yeah, that's, that's what it is. It's like, you know, and when I've been with brands, I see there's like three different stages of brands on Amazon that I've identified. It's like net new brands, not necessarily new to the platform, it's just newer ones that need a lot of help. And then there's ones that are climbing that hill, and then there's ones that have plateaued, that have gone up that hill. And they're just like, kind of cruising, you know, up-down, sales going down sales going up. And they can't figure out how to break through that next mountain.

Michael Maher  06:24

Okay, so it's not that they've reached the top of the mountain, it's that they're just plateaued, correct? Okay,

Brett Bohannon  06:31

correct. Yeah. And so and so that's how I've looked at it for several years is, and then you can break down different strategies within that, because you can't go to that the one that's plateaued, you can still implement some of all those strategies, if you're going to give that brand. Those strategies on the very top that need a little more help, you can do it to the brand new ones, or the ones in the middle, but it's not going to work as effectively. You know, because you got so much other stuff going on down here, if that makes sense.

Michael Maher  07:02

It does. And part of us and asked about strategy is my I think we've all probably got a couple talking points that we I've heard you say that, you know, new brands climbing and plateaued brands before so you've got your maybe elevator pitch of, you know, where you kind of come into play and something I tell in my elevator pitch to brands, I talk a lot about how the strategy on Amazon is is actually really, really simple. It's the execution of that. And that's like strategy implementation. Maybe, yeah, but you know, strategy is get your real estate looking good. Get your I noticed, like more corporate companies say PDP and, you know, product detail page. And, you know, sellers that kind of came like started from the bottom now. Yeah, like Drake did on Amazon. They said they say listing, my listing my product listing. So it's, it's always interesting, where how people say stuff, or maybe it's not, who cares if your name was on geek like us, then maybe you do care. But it's get your real estate looking nice-looking fresh. And then it's stuff to send traffic to the listing. I mean, advertising, and Amazon is a big part of that. You can send external traffic. You can try to get traffic on Amazon, organically. It's a lot more difficult these days than it used to be. And then step three, optimize. And it's just a continuous cycle those things, you know, real estate, you know, think about it, think about it. Let's go. Let's talk about another analogy. I have a feeling that you really wanted to. So you got a house that you know in the 70s sold, sold for good value looks really great over time. Continue to provide value. I mean, provide a home I guess that's straight-up value. And after a while, it got kind of rundown. Someone went to sell it and say, well, this hasn't been updated a long time. What do you do? You bring in someone from HDTV and they fix it for free. And then you sell your home for profit? Boom. That's how the, if anyone wants to get into real estate, that's how you get into real estate, hire HGTV. They'll sell your house for you for free. That's what I heard. I believe everything I see on TV and on YouTube. And in newspapers. Yeah, they're still printing this.

Brett Bohannon  09:33

I love that. I love that analogy. I did. I seriously love analogies. You might see that on LinkedIn and I'll credit you, Michael. I promise.

Michael Maher  09:43

I didn't spark your love for analogies. I just gave you some good ones. Take it man, take him I don't I don't need him though.

Brett Bohannon  09:49

But, um, this brought me when you're talking about real estate. So true. Um, I think any real estate listing with mediocre listings I'm sorry, mediocre photos? No good.  And reminds me we were, we were traveling, uh, you know, you know this, but we traveled in a trailer for a little while that we tried that sexy lifestyle. I'm sorry, am I allowed to say sexy?

Michael Maher  10:15

You can say whatever the hell you want to say.

Brett Bohannon  10:18

But we thought we tried that didn't work,

Michael Maher  10:20

This is a kids-only podcast.

Brett Bohannon  10:23

So when we, when we sold it, I did photos really quickly on my phone, I'm like, okay, whatever. And they were horrible. But I was like, I'm gonna throw it up there on RV trader and see what happens. Very little, very little bites, you know, very little, okay. And then my wife was like, Oh, dude, you need to get better photos, send me the photos, I'll lighten them up, I'll do the thing. And we were kind of mid-wave for some curtains on some of the windows on the slide. And so I went in there and just busted out for like an hour, I just put in some curtains. Boom, right after that we got like 10 inquiries, because we updated the photos. That was it.

Michael Maher  11:01

That's, that's perspective, that's like everything in life, your perspective makes a big difference. So if you can see something in a different light, if you've never seen something in a different light, you've only seen it one way. And then it steps out of the shadows into the light. And you're like, oh, this thing is actually this way. I mean, that's like, people who hate other people. And I'm not specifically talking about racism or gender or anything, but just you just hate someone, you don't really know them, then you get to know them. And probably most of the time like, oh, I never thought about it like that. Yeah, okay. They're actually kind of a cool person. Yeah, even people could get on your nerves. I'm sure I get on some people's nerves. Yeah, I get a lot of people's nerves, but I'm okay with that. And it's not trying to please everyone. But if you can see someone in a different light, get a different perspective on them, changes you, changes your feelings, just in the same way, why being kind to people all the time, I truly believe is important. And I don't always win it that I fail sometimes, but you never know what someone's going through. If someone said, hey, this person just skinned their knee, be nice to them, you might think, okay, but you say, hey, this person's, you know, dad just died, you're going to treat them totally differently. Why? Perspective. So if you have to have good perspective on your product, and that's why people stayed home. That's why you staged your product being used in real life, if we're talking about, you know, brand like, Yeti, they're going to put it out in the wild, they're going to show people sitting on the cooler Biofire, they're going to show it in us because they're staging it. So people can see themselves living there. If it's sure, microphones, they're going to put, you know, microphone on stage. And they're going to show someone using it in a studio, by the way, this podcast is brought to you by Telefunken. That's who this microphone is. I bought it because it was read. And I've always heard about Telefunken stuff. And I just wanted to own something that's a telephone call, but it's served me pretty well. So I think I made some good decisions, even if they were superficial.

Brett Bohannon  13:09

I love that perspective thing. Because there's, I think there's a couple different ways to go about it. If you don't know who your customer is, you know, that's, that's okay. And maybe some early stages, but then you can figure it out. So you can switch things up on Amazon, you can change things, you can track it, you can look at it and go, Okay, this worked, this didn't work. You can also go to any other competitor, listing or PDP and see what's working, and see what they're doing and see how effectively they are in regards to perspective for their customer. So

Michael Maher  13:46

Anyone who doesn't know, we're saying they're successful because we're using likely using a third-party software that's giving us an estimate of what they might be doing and sales 

Brett Bohannon  13:56

Correct. 

Michael Maher  13:57

There's a lot of different software's out there, SellerLabs, Helium10, Jungle Scout, plenty of others. And they're just giving us a you know, they're, they're basing it off of some kind of algorithm they've created that determines, you know, the, hey, we're getting sales, this one's getting 100,000 a month, this one's getting 2000. But yeah, I just want to make that clear that we're looking at that based on you know, sales volume,

Brett Bohannon  14:20

Good clarification, and I think they've, they've over the years have developed so well, that the data is even better than it used to be.

Michael Maher  14:28

Probably a lot more factors going into how they're considering that. 

Brett Bohannon  14:31

Yeah, yeah. 100% 100%. I remember there are some that would just, and this, you know, I like to take all that for a grain of salt. I like to use a couple different tools, but

Michael Maher  14:41

if you're for pepper, but that's fine. 

Brett Bohannon  14:45

I like salt and pepper. Um, but,

Michael Maher  14:48

Push it.

Brett Bohannon  14:52

You know, utilizing Keepa like I've seen products that just launch and then like some of those tools will say it's like 100,000 every month and you're like, Well, wait, you know, that's not accurate, maybe when it first launched, and they're doing some Blackhat stuff, but yeah, so. But going back to that, it's, it reminds me of when I was selling I had like, we had essential oil jewelry. And at first we just put it up there and then fine. But then we, we developed it to where we created some emotion and invokes emotion with imagery and the content and things like that. So we created a different perspective around the brand to differentiate ourselves, essentially from from competition that was coming in. So yeah, super important to do.

Michael Maher  15:38

I didn't realize that you also used to sell as well. Was that before? You were working at the previous company? Or you sold while you were there?

Brett Bohannon  15:49

No, I was I sold from 2016 to 2019.

Michael Maher  15:54

Okay, okay. Yeah, that's, do you want to know what I sold when I first started selling on Amazon? Well, actually, I started selling on eBay first, and left, my left my full-time job to sell full time on eBay, then launched on Amazon, which is kind of crazy to think about now. I started selling fashion watches and cell phone cases. And at the time, I think I had like a Blackberry or something. And I didn't have a phone case. And I never wore a watch. I still don't. But I know other people did. So I started selling that stuff. And then I got into some like health and wellness, food, apparel supplements, and then started getting into more like, fitness type equipment. That's fun, nice while it lasted. But I gotta say, I'm way more passionate about helping people grow their businesses. I'm not so product-focused, but I see what they're getting at. And I look at their brand. I say, Man, I know that I can help you to get this thing to where you need to go. But there's a problem right now in this space, and I've seen people comment on it. I've seen you talk about it. I've talked about it. There are people making promises, false promises about what they can do, or they're just burning people. Prospects out there. And they come to me they come to you. And they say, Well, I've had two other people say they can do XYZ. Well, you can't just say that because they've already had other people say that that didn't do it. So you have to build trust with them. But they're creating. They're creating bad. Just a bad. They're being the bad apples of the bunch. Yep. And I love a good envy apple. So they're being like the old granny smiths. Sorry, Granny Smith. You're too tart for me. I can't eat. I'm not going to eat you straight up. crab apples. There we go. Crab. Yeah. I want to sit on Granny Smith. Yeah. I feel really good. But okay, well, now there now we're talking about flavor combinations. Think sweet, and salty. 

Brett Bohannon  18:21

Less tart. 

Michael Maher  18:22

Now. That's, I mean, there we go. I mean, that's like why granny smith apples do on apple pies too, because they hold up their structure. Is this a cooking show?

Brett Bohannon  18:31

Now it is.

Michael Maher  18:32

I did. I did mention HGTV. I think they do cooking stuff, not just home stuff. Who cares? I would recommend the show booth traveler for anyone who likes shows about people doing other things that you wish you were doing. Okay, I gotta check that out. Sounds cool. Yeah, the guy just goes around to different countries and tries different drinks. And he's trying some really interesting stuff. Something it's not like the beer wine of this country. I mean, he's having like coconut wine in coconut lightning in the Philippines. Seven soju in South Korea real he's having real quick

Brett Bohannon  19:06

Before we jump back into that, that issue. To paci. So paci. Is it really?

Michael Maher  19:13

Oh yeah.

Brett Bohannon  19:14

Have you had it? It's too late.

Michael Maher  19:15

Is it from Peru?

Brett Bohannon  19:16

I think it's it's probably from it's from a Hispanic either Mexico or Peru. But it's kind of to paci. And it's like a kind of like a Cambogia style. But you could actually make it on your own with pineapple rinds and sugar, you ferment it, and it creates a certain percentage of alcohol. So it's like a high, like a, if it can be like three to 5% Obviously the longer that's it, but it's really good.

Michael Maher  19:41

In Peru, there is something called spit beer. And it is that like the oldest fermentation method, you it's exactly like it sounds. You take two roots, tubers, you boil them, you start chewing them up, and then you spit them out and the saliva in your spit actually causes fermentation and you can get like 5% on this but They take this basically big, it's almost like a starter dough. But for alcohol, they've got all these fermented potatoes in it in an in a, like a container. And then you mix it with water and it looks like a backwash. But that's what people were doing. 

Brett Bohannon  20:15

That's pretty legit. Rands made Jungle Cruise. That one seen that. But my kids love that movie. But it's they have spit beer in there.

Michael Maher  20:23

Or they do, I haven't seen it yet. 

Brett Bohannon  20:25

Yeah, there's one once,

Michael Maher  20:27

I've been on the ride Disney World many times. 

Brett Bohannon  20:29

I love that. Right? Um,

Michael Maher  20:31

 something about Amazon? I don't remember. 

Brett Bohannon  20:35

There is an issue. Um, I, you know, I've seen it, I saw it kind of arise, once the pandemic kind of happened, because there was a flood of people that obviously needed help selling on online, just in general. And then I, you know, there's, it's, so it's my passion to help as many brands as I can, but I'm a father of three, I love the lifestyle half, I just got done with a surf, I was super excited to do that. So yeah, it's harder to be like, I'm gonna have 12 brands and take care of them. Because then I wouldn't have a life, I'd have to build out a team and agency. You know, and you and I have seen it, and we're starting to see it even more, there's, there's two, there's two problems, there's the people that are really qualified, are really qualified. And thus, the supply and demand for qualified Amazon individuals, the supply is low, the demands high. So obviously, they're going to get paid more. So we get, we get less qualified people in that in this pool, and you know, people that do have agencies, larger agencies, like you and other individuals are looking for qualified people, but they just can't, it's just the affordability comes into factor. Obviously, you got to look at all that factors when you're running a business. So there's this, there's this in-between of like, okay, well, how do you get people educated? And how do you maybe just get some people that want to help out? Part-time, you know, or, you know, and so the education because they

Michael Maher  22:05

want to learn something new, maybe there, it's like, hey, I want to when digital marketing started becoming a thing, I want to learn digital marketing.

Brett Bohannon  22:11

Exactly. And, you know, people know, I think people are starting to know a little bit more, that aren't in this space, of like, oh, wow, a lot of brands are selling on Amazon, like, Oh, I'm in SEO? Like, I wonder how that works, you know, um, yeah, you know, and you hear all about this, people remote, are juggling multiple jobs, it's like, that's probably what's happening. So why not learn another skill to, to be able to kind of help out brands or help out agencies that are helping out brands with very minimal workload. So I'm actually looking at developing something along that nature, because it's like, if I can help certain individuals, they can help more brands, you know, so um, that's, that's kind of where I want to go with it.

Michael Maher  22:56

I started getting involved at a local university at their some of their job fairs. And I was hoping to find some talent that you know, might be able to, might have some kind of experience and be able to teach them or have bring them on and be an intern, maybe do something. So media, whatever the case might be, but part of the reason I got involved is because, you know, they're now teaching digital marketing, I colleges, but when digital marketing was happening was booming was it was a viable job option for people. Universities weren't teaching that, you know, schools are notoriously behind. So I wanted to say, hey, there's a, there's a career, if you want to do something Amazon-related, there's data, there's logistics, there's, you know, marketing, advertising, account management, all that kind of stuff there, there's a need for that. And so you could be one of those people, that, that, that do that. So I wanted to advocate for that. And just part of what I want to do. And I feel like you as well, it's not just, I, when people say it's not about the money, that's a lie. Of course, it's about the money somewhat, I want to make money, and I want to help provide for my family. So it's, it's definitely not about the money, it's just not all about the money. Part of what I want to do is I want to have a positive impact on people. And so one of the ways that I can do that is helping them grow their business on Amazon, taking care of the people, my agency, well, making sure that they're, they've got good flexibility work, and that they're paid well, and all that kind of stuff. And then, you know, have a positive impact on the community environment around me, my city, the world is my community. So supporting maybe organizations that you know, are helping make the world a better place. And also, being someone that's a reliable source of information for Amazon. Not everybody is my client. Not everyone's my ideal client. So I'm not going to go after all those people. It doesn't mean that I can't put out good information that will help other people as an act of goodwill. And I think ultimately make this face better, because we got a lot smarter people, a lot wiser people that are doing what needs to need to be done. Yep. And they're, you know, we've got a competitive landscape. And we've got more knowledgeable people. And so there's more job opportunities. We're talking about how, you know, we're in sort of this revolution of need for service providers to help on marketplaces like Amazon. Well, when someone first created a car, how did you know? How did the first auto mechanic come about was, you know, with someone from the factory called in to help someone because their cars breaking down? Or did someone just know about building these like, there's this whole, you know, you create something new? Well, there's always going to be a problem, or something that like fixing it, or whatever the case might be, which is why I don't think ultimately robots are gonna take over the world. But that's a, I guess, a, maybe another podcast? Oh, no. Yeah, that's a whole other category of podcasts.

Brett Bohannon  26:00

And we could talk about that with our Badman, cooking. And backgammon as well.

Michael Maher  26:06

Yeah, I don't play backgammon anymore. I gave that up early on episode, I moved on to chess now, much more sophisticated, but that's part of is putting out good information out there. And so when you see people polluting the space, and saying, you know, oh, we're guaranteed to double your sales in six months? Yep. Here's what you can say. In my opinion, you can say on average, we've doubled our all of our on average, we've doubled our client sales in the past six months. I'm not going to guarantee that to you. Why because I'm not an idiot. And I don't want to over-under what is it under?

Brett Bohannon  26:48

Under promise and overdeliver? 

Michael Maher  26:50

Thank you. I don't want to over promise and under deliver? Yeah, yeah. So a bit of a brain fart there. And, and so so I want to do the opposite. If anything, I want to be able to, you know, set good expectations and hit and exceed those not, I don't want to intentionally, you know, undersell myself. And then Whoa, you did like 500,000%. Better? I didn't know what that would look like, but I guess the $1 to $500,000 in a year. Yeah, that could be 500,000%. So you're working on? I mean, you're not trying to you are working on a way to help build people into knowledgeable Amazon machines. 

Brett Bohannon  27:33

Yep. Individuals, like we spoke about that are interested in it and want to get involved in it somehow. And then also, you know, individuals that have some knowledge, and they just want to gain a little bit more.

Michael Maher  27:48

It would be will be your pitch to someone who they're like, why should I care about? Or, let's just say you're in it, you're, you're in a career fair. You know, hey, you get a job doing some with Amazon, they should say, Well, why why? Why should I care about that? What would you say? Besides knowing and to get better manners?

Brett Bohannon  28:06

That would be first. I mean, it's, it's not going away. It's something that's going to stick around for a while. It's a good skill set to know. It can be translated into other areas in digital marketing as well. You know, there's, there are multiple things. It's pretty secure, and it's a very high demand right now. That's what I would do. In a nutshell.

Michael Maher  28:34

What kind of nutshell?

Brett Bohannon  28:35

That I would probably say a walnut.

Michael Maher  28:39

I was hoping you knew pistachio.

Brett Bohannon  28:42

Sounds allergic to pistachios, so we don't have those too much in the house. You're allergic. Are you saying my son is?

Michael Maher  28:48

Oh, really? Is that? Is that a certain kind of nut?

Brett Bohannon  28:52

Yeah, he was allergic to quite a few for a while. We gave him cashews cashew butter when he was super young and he just broke out in hives. So God tested he was he grew out of most of his allergies. But pistachios and cashews are the main ones.

Michael Maher  29:08

Like I know there's like tree nets. There's pine nuts. Technically peanuts. He's probably not allergic to because they're legumes. Yep.

Brett Bohannon  29:13

Yep. There's, almonds used to be one. But now we just brought it back in very slowly. And he's totally fine with it.

Michael Maher  29:22

I've actually I've read about studies where like reintroduction therapies done like kids allergic to an egg. And they just get like, one bite, like every day for like a couple weeks and I slowly reintroduce it back in.

Brett Bohannon  29:34

Yeah, they do. They do controlled ones at the doctor's to do it. Just like and see. Which is kind of crazy. But if you just do it slowly and you just kind of monitor it. You know? It depends on how severe the allergy is, though, obviously.

Michael Maher  29:50

Yeah. Does the same thing work for drugs? 

Brett Bohannon  29:53

I don't know. I have no idea. But 

Michael Maher  29:58

I don't know. Hear, don't try it at home. Adults. I mean kids because remember, this is a kids only. Kids dare to resist drugs. 

Brett Bohannon  30:10

That's right. 

Michael Maher  30:12

I actually had an old deer shirt that I'm kind of disappointed I got rid of.

Brett Bohannon  30:15

I though I think everyone's disappointed. They got rid of those.

Michael Maher  30:18

Why did they get rid of them? Because it didn't fit? Or because they started doing drugs. I decided I really missed misrepresenting myself. I just need to pick drugs or the dare shirt.

Brett Bohannon  30:30

Oh, yeah, I don't know. It's good question. 

Michael Maher  30:33

 undefined always fun to talk to. And I think part of it is because you're running with so much of myself. I'm just kidding. You're always fun to talk to Brett and I would like to tell people where they can find you. If they're looking for you. Is it conversion van? Is it a co-working space? Is it surfing? Is it dumpster diving? Where would it be?

Brett Bohannon  30:55

Um, everywhere and, and nowhere at the same time?

Michael Maher  30:59

Omnipresent and what would be the opposite of that? A anti-oppressive.

Brett Bohannon  31:05

Look at me, physically. I'll be I'm in Encinitas, California. So if you're ever in the area, we'd love to meet up. Go first. 

Michael Maher  31:16

Originally from La Jolla. 

Brett Bohannon  31:17

No, actually, originally from San Diego. 

Michael Maher  31:21

Oh, okay. Yeah, but California native.

Brett Bohannon  31:23

California native. Yep. Yep.

Michael Maher  31:26

I need to make my way back out to California. It's been a little bit too long. 

Brett Bohannon  31:29

Yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty beautiful right now.

Michael Maher  31:32

Can I stay in here? Can I stay in your van? 

Brett Bohannon  31:35

Once I get a van, you're more than welcome to stay. 

Michael Maher  31:37

Okay. That's right. You have to have a van. 

Brett Bohannon  31:38

We got it. We got to get it first.

Michael Maher  31:40

So people can find you there. But what about on the internet where people can go to voartex.com, sign up for the newsletter. 

Brett Bohannon  31:48

Yep. 

Michael Maher  31:48

You're giving people information on the courses that you're doing? Where else?

Brett Bohannon  31:52

Yep, the newsletter is going to be right on top of that. And like the header area. So sign up right now. It's a bi-weekly newsletter. Going to chat to do it weekly. But right now, I don't want to give myself too much. I don't want to disappoint people. So by weekly newsletters. Yeah, follow me on LinkedIn. Usually, it's high-level strategy there, don't go into the weeds. And that's where kind of the newsletter comes in, I go into a little bit more of the weeds of some strategies that I talked about on LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn is a great spot to learn. I think it's become a little bit crowded, and a little bit too much disinformation, from lots of people. And,

Michael Maher  32:33

it's it has become more crowded. I've been using LinkedIn, and posting content probably for the past three years, about a year and a half ago, I really started getting better. I was already doing video, but I really started getting better at doing it. And I've just seen a lot more content being put out there. I don't I don't know of all of it. I do agree there's disinformation. But a lot of it is fluff. It's look at what I did get this account to have this a cost. And let me tell you people, if you're in a cost chaser, you're living a lie, because a cost is not. And that stands for advertising cost of sale, it's how much you're spending compared to your, to your sales that you're getting in ADS. It's basically the opposite of row ads. And so many people focus on that, but it's not, it's not the most important metric. And if anything, I'm talking to my consumer, my clients and saying, we're looking for the best return we're getting a lower return now but we're looking to get a better one later. If you're strictly looking at things from a cost perspective, you're then chasing this imaginary number of why wouldn't be at 10% a cost to which I will say why? And most people don't always have an answer. 

Brett Bohannon  33:45

Yep, exactly. 

Michael Maher  33:47

So we can find you on LinkedIn. What is your favorite? Food? Go.

Brett Bohannon  33:54

Tacos? Oh, that's good. Nine not total A cos but real tacos.

Michael Maher  34:02

All right, we're gonna end it right there people. That was genius. Thanks for coming on, Brett. If you want to find out more about Brett go to voartex.com, the center for his newsletter. Like you said, you can find him on LinkedIn. He is putting out content pretty consistently on there, which I think is great, cool, dude. And this has been The Longer Game where we talk about retail, where we talk about food, where we talk about badminton and backgammon and HGTV and apparently how to resist drugs or give up your t-shirt if you want to do them. So,

Brett Bohannon  34:35

keep those t-shirts. 

Michael Maher  34:37

If you want to find out more go to thelongergame.com You can find us on all platforms or whatever people say then a podcast, who cares? I'm out.

Brett Bohannon  34:45

See you guys.