Underdog Ecom Podcast

Project 1
All right. Welcome to the Underdog Econ podcast, where two econ brand founders are figuring out in real time. Yeah, we're not here to preach. We're here in the thick of it, making mistakes, testing all sorts of ideas, really sharing the journey of how we've been growing these brands from day zero. Hopefully you learn a little bit, perhaps come away with some ideas that save you time and money. And so if you're tired of the same glittery DTC advice from those nine figure gurus, you're here in the right place. Let's get into it. David. Episode three. So it's been a while since we recorded, I think, a good week or two, so I'm really excited to hear, like what you've been up to. I got some stuff to share with you as well. So why don't you kick us off, all right. Yeah. There's it's been it's one of those times where it feels like every day you get there's just a thousand things to do, and it just flies by. And so I feel like it's been a couple weeks almost since we've chatted last it, which feels like a lifetime in econ land. So many things. So many things. Um, primarily. Let's see for my brand. So I launched a fundraiser recently for the National Parks. It's been a really hot topic here in the United States. There's been a lot of legislation that basically, uh, removed two jobs from the national parks, and they're very important to my brand. Like, my audience cares deeply about them. I care deeply about them. And so. Had this idea to do a little bit more. My brand is a member of 1% for the planet. Doing good for Earth and giving back has been an important part of the mission, and a lot of people it that resonates with a lot of the customers, and it's also just the way that I want to run things. Um, giving back, that is. And so I had this idea to do a little bit more than the typical donation percent that I do. Um, it started off, I ran, I actually created a Facebook ad. That's something else I've also been trying to improve recently is just dig into Facebook ads, create more, test more. Um, I can get to that more a little bit later. But basically I created a Facebook ad that was like, hey, the national parks are they need our help more than ever. We've been giving back to them. Donated $20,000 plus since 2020. Here's, uh, buy one, get one half off. So as the offer and I started running that and after a couple days, it was doing super well. Like my ads historically. I'm not. It's one of my weaker, weaker parts of the brand is my ad conversions just aren't that great. And so I was seeing like really good returns on it. And um, that was really cool because then obviously more goes to national parks, more is donated. And so then I started thinking about what I can do more, and people are really interested in and doing more. And so I teamed up with this really good designer that I've been following for a while, and he offered to basically donate a design for the fundraiser. And then the fundraiser started to get a little bit traction. I was asking around in the community, sort of laying a lot of the groundwork and kind of like teasing it in some ways, but also getting feedback from my customers and ended up launching a fundraiser, uh, ran it for about seven days. It was a donate, donating 100% of the profits, um, to the national parks. Did a preorder for it on a T-shirt and a hoodie, um, and did really well over 150 units sold, I think. And I it's kind of interesting because my brand isn't like it's honestly not in a great spot, and I feel like I'm kind of been in recovery mode for a while. So it's not like I'm. You now have extra space or time to do something that's like super philanthropic. But I also think that like from a brand strategy perspective, it helps a the customers love it. Current customers, future customers. I'm also kind of filling the funnels. In some ways, I feel like I kind of am going to treat it as like a customer acquisition strategy in some ways and see, you know, what's going to be the LTV of these people. Are they going to come back? Um, the the performance. I started boosting a post for it and running an ad for it, and it was mind blowing to see the lift that my ad account overall took during that. Like I had the best week better than Black Friday. Like the brand looking at all of the metrics and stuff that yeah, the cost acquisition cost per acquisition was like $9, which is three times lower than it usually is for me. Uh, I tweeted a screenshot from the triple while, but it was like Roas was up across the board. AOV was up off off across the board. Um, and that margin was like really good. And like all these numbers that I'm like, feel like I'm fighting tooth and nail to try and improve. Boom. Turns out, around a fundraiser, it's really easy. Although the back end of that is, um, figuring out the cash flow aspect of it and the donation aspect of it. The way that I see it like this will help set aside cash for that 1% that I need to donate every year, at least to hit that, to be a member of the 1% for the planet. And so it helps meet that goal already in sort of like a one off fundraiser. All of the metrics were so good, like, and so I'm definitely going to follow up in a couple weeks, months and look at the analytics of the customers that I acquired during this stage to see, you know, as like, what's the LTV going to be like? Can they come back and buy more? And um, it was the numbers were so good. And those ad numbers weren't just the fundraiser ad, it was across the board. I was looking at my ad account and all of the metrics were boosted. Um, it was like someone just, like, infused Red bull into all the numbers I was I was really excited. And after it ended, they all dropped back to subpar numbers. Yeah, it's a really interesting I don't know. Yeah, I was I was gonna say it's it seems like the algorithm. Knows like that you're that there's something else happening at the same thing. When you get like an organic post that kind of goes a bit viral while you're while you're running an ad, then some of your ads are doing better and it's like, I don't know, I it seems to know. And, um, even like even with other ads that are not, they have nothing to do with it. I've seen that before. We've had just post do really well or we, we actually did a similar fun like not similar fun. We did like, uh, for, um, for a uh, charity called uh, tennis in, in Uganda I think, um, and um, and just actually during Black Friday, Christmas time, um, we offered the similar thing where we basically donated a bag for every bag just over the course of every two weeks or something. But, um, but again, we we like everything did better. But I was wondering what you thought if you looked at of those, say, 150 orders that were attributed with specific to the fundraiser, do you know how many of those were new versus returning? I don't know, I need to dig in. I think it was a lot of new customers, because that's a really good question. Um, I don't think it was a lot of returning, to be honest. I mean, I think there's a good amount there, but it seemed like it was a lot of brand new customers to the brand. Um, it's on my to do list. I've been putting out some other fires lately. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, it will be really interesting. And so I kind of think, like, maybe I do this once a year or something for a special like National Park Week or something like that. Um, because the other thing was, I need to look into this more. I only looked at a few orders here and there, but people are ordering more than just those two products, and I was only donating 100% of proceeds from those two products. And so it's just like, you know, people want to get behind and support the national parks. This is definitely a cultural zeitgeist right now in the US. So I don't know if I do this in a year if it's going to have the same like huge lift and huge effect that it does right now, like this is it's going crazy viral and people are super into it. And it's like very emotional and social media right now. It feels like it's all about emotional things like that's what gets shared. That's what people resonate with. And, um, what our current president has done with a lot of the things just gets people like super fired up. Uh, so yeah, so it's I hit it like I knew there was some risk involved. I knew that, like, you know, I, I don't know, I was like, do I spend time on this? Honestly? Like, I should be probably fixing a lot of the other issues, but I'm treating it as sort of a customer acquisition strategy to see, and we'll see how that pans out. And I think and it elevated a lot of like the other stats and other products that were sold and stuff like that. So, um, and it was just it fits the brand ethos and it fits the persona of the customer that cares about the brand. Yeah, even if it's returning customers as well, I think. Yeah. I heard something from the other day about like talking about returning customers. How how, you know, you think about them as, like you own them, but actually, you know, that you have to acquire them again, in many ways. And I think that's like an amazing way to do it, because you're re-engaging them in a way that's actually meaningful to them. So I think even if it's a percentage is returning customers, I think it's brilliant for just building again that affinity with your customer base. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. And even if they're not converting I still feel like there's a ripple effect. And people are seeing the emails and being like oh this brand cares like they're giving back. This is a this is an awesome endeavor. And so I think that there's it just it made sense. It made sense for the brand. Um that was that was the big thing that I was working on. Uh, the other thing has just been digging into product development more, which is like my favorite thing to do. Um, I stayed up too late last night and got up too early this morning, for example, designing new shorts and thinking about, like, not just making athletic shorts, but making a product that, like, people really care about. I've got the first samples in and I've already got like a dozen little, like tweaks and ideas to infuse a lot of the brand ethos and like, infuse the PNW and. Excuse me. And mountains into them. Um, and that's like just it's my favorite thing. Is brand developed or like, product development is creating and designing new things. So that's that's got me jazzed now, too. I saw those shorts on LinkedIn. They did look good, huh? And they did look good. But I mean, I'm I'm a tennis player, so I'm always I'm always looking at, uh, athletic apparel and stuff, but I think they were really good. But also yeah, I agree isn't. But isn't that the fun at the most fun part of all of it? I really I really enjoy that. And you kind of wish that you could just do that like 90% of the time, but unfortunately not. Yeah. No I yeah, that definitely. I've had that thought many times and I actually got feedback from another, um, amazing founder guy who's running like a ten figure apparel business and basically like, I feel like one of the areas that I want to improve in my business is doing more sort of product releases and doing more product development, and just like making the best things and improving them. And I think over the years, I fell into a trap of releasing too many products to try and see what worked. And I think I iterated maybe too much instead of like, making an entirely new design. I should have just changed the color, for example, and done like a small drop of it to see how it resonates. Not um, and gone the more custom route and I don't know. So I kind of feel like a little bit more encouragement from from this guy who knows what he's doing. Uh, to, to head in that direction. So that feels good, because that is a direction that I love to be in, an area I love to be in. Um, but yeah, I'm curious, uh, you mentioned that you've been you've had a crazy couple weeks. I'd love to hear more about that. Jack. Yeah. Um, I want to get back onto that product release because it's something I've been thinking about this week I want to get your thoughts on, but I'll go back to kind of a big challenge I had this week that just, like, drove me up the wall was, um, we changed our domain, which I would not recommend to anyone. Wouldn't recommend it. Anyway. Um, it's a nightmare. You think. You think you have it all covered. You plan it out, you think you have it all covered, and then you realize you did not have it covered. And it's just a disaster. Like this was in January. We originally changed our domain, um, because. Because our domain is cancer. Com and, um, I originally had a domain called my cancer. Com because cancer is actually taken by it's a football like a soccer magazine in, in Latin America is like massive. And so I was never, never going to get that domain. But I wanted a domain that was maybe slightly more broad. And, uh, if we went out, you know, broad beyond bags, we went beyond bags. We'd have, you know, the domain would kind of fit with that a bit better. And so easy doing Shopify like very, very easy to do. And I don't didn't really see the organic traffic drop off or anything like that email. Completely different story, completely different story. So, you know, with all of these changes with, with Klaviyo where you have to have a branded sender domain, you have to add the DKIM mime records, you know, all these records, you have to add I did all that. We did all that. I mean, I made sure everything was set up with GoDaddy. But I then went spoke to Klaviyo support and they said to them, um, are we okay to start sending emails because I don't want to send anything until I know this is okay. And they said, yeah, you'll be fine. It's all it looks like it's all set up. So we started sending emails and the first, the first email I, we already scheduled already scheduled 2 or 3 emails out for that week. Um, and so to try and like get at it's hard by trying on a cadence where I'm at least a couple of weeks ahead with emails, unless there's like some new product that's come in and we just try to act for you just to act on it. Yeah. But I try and be slightly ahead. So I'm not thinking about like, what emails are we going to send this week. But so those were scheduled to be sent. And I look I go by, I log back in, it says 100% of emails bounced. And I'm just thinking, oh my God, what has happened? Oh, 100%. You know, this is this is like our engage list as well. We normally have like 5,050% open rates. So we've got like we're not only fine, right. And we've been sending emails for, you know, for years now. So um, yeah. And so I'm thinking, oh my God, what have I done? And I look at our deliverability score. And of course, the problem is I'd seen this after the second email that we could send it. So now we have two emails that basically 100% bounced. And so I'm trying to figure this out. I'm speaking to Klaviyo and all this sort of stuff. And they're saying to me, um. Yeah, it looks like actually your records aren't there. Like your DKIM records. Even though you got branded center Maine, none of the records are in GoDaddy. And and and I said but I see them they're they're they're in the they're added in the records in GoDaddy. And they're saying to me, yeah, well we don't know why, but it's saying when we when we like run your domain, it says that they're not there. And so I speak to GoDaddy and they're like, oh yeah, no they're good. The records are there. So you're fine. I said, well, I've just been told they're not. And I'm going back and forth between GoDaddy and and Klaviyo, and they're both just telling me they're both there and yet they're not there. Nightmare situation where this was actually in January I had this issue, but I so I delivered you score went like plummeted down suddenly were getting 10% open rates on our emails like so I start so I speak to I speak to Klaviyo. Turns out the GoDaddy basically had like a glitch. And and even though all of the records were there, they weren't registered. So it's supposed to take 24 hours a week had passed. They had they hadn't been. So that so that domain was basically like buried like buried on arrival. Um, and so and so I tried for about a month in February and this, this affected our like sales massively because, you know, 30% or so from our revenues from emails and suddenly 10% of people are even opening them. Yeah. So I started saying like 15 day engaged. So like the most engaged customers possible, getting higher open rates, building it out, building out, building it up. And then this week I it's just not going anywhere. Right. So I do the worst thing I could have possibly done is I try and go and find somebody on, on, on um, Upwork who is like supposed to be good at who's supposed to be good at, um, basically making sure you've got like the right records and stuff in your domain, like checking your domain domain health and stuff. Ruined it, obviously ruined it within a few hours. The person I don't know what they were doing, but they removed so so I was I sent an email to someone just from my posts, just from like my Gmail can show email and it bounced. I'm just thinking, oh my god, I can't even send a personal email to anyone right now. So I was this is on like a this is on Tuesday and I'm just having like a nut breakdown because I can't send anyone any emails. I can't send any like emails through Klaviyo. So I did I spent about three hours rolling everything back, so I went. So I went to cloud. I said, what if I just go back to our old domain, what's going to happen? And they said, oh, it should be fine. Your domains got like really good reputation. You've been using it for years. If you go back and use that, you'll be fine. So I literally got rid of everything and just literally three months worth of wasted time and went back. It just rolled it all back. And then I sent an email, 50% open rates again just from the old domain. And and I changed. I had to go into like Google Workspace change back to an old domain that suddenly I'm able to send emails again. No problem. Like. Case in point, do not change your domain unless you absolutely have to. And if you if you and just and you have to do it slowly, don't do it. Don't do it in one go. You need to almost like warm it up over time. Don't make any risks with it. Just horrible, horrible experience. That was my week. Wow wow zero out of ten would not recommend. Yeah that is a nightmare. That is like there's like a few things in ecom that are like absolute nightmares. Uh, and that would be on the list. What's funny is I've been thinking about switching my domain for a long time, for several years, because I'm on a subdomain, because, uh, a long story, but I'm on a subdomain right now and want to move to maybe a main domain, but I also want to rebrand a little bit and, um, change the name, but like, so it's like, oh man. And I actually went through the email migration last late last summer from, uh, drip to klaviyo. And so I did like the whole warm your domain and switch to a new sender kind of thing, but it was the same domain. It wasn't like this craziness that's like, oh, man, that's so hard. That's like just like swallow and move on. Also, the developer in me, when you said GoDaddy was screaming, friends don't let friends use GoDaddy. Um, yeah. Because it's just been it's like a thing in the web developer community, like GoDaddy is just appalling at everything, and the only reason that people use them is kind of because they've captured the mind space and they've got like the ad dollars and that sort of thing. So if you're listening, don't use GoDaddy. Yeah. If you've got a choice. Yeah. If you've got a choice to I didn't. I mean, I said of ages ago and so I thought of migrating over to another domain provider. But yeah, I can agree. It's the nightmare. And yeah, that was a killer. But I think also people think about domains as in is in sort of organic search traffic. And I think nowadays like that is something that's a valid thing to worry about when you change domains. But I'm like, Shopify is amazing at redirects, um, you know, all that sort of stuff. So to an extent, it's actually it's actually your kind of reputation as domain. You kind of build it up when you're building a brand and you and then if you, if you try and change domains like it doesn't keep that reputation, you're starting from scratch. Um, so it's that's the tough part. What did you what did you switch to and from. And then you switched back I take it as well. What were the two different domains. So as catch bags dotcom is the one I always, we always had. Um yeah. Switched switch at least through Klaviyo and and Shopify at least to Mike. And that was the one where we could have we could have gone with that if we'd done it very slowly. So I think the way I, I don't know exactly the, the best way to do this, actually, I don't know whether you set up a separate. Email account and you just like drip send and just build it up over time while you keep your existing klaviyo account or whatever. I don't know the best way to do it, but. Or you just take a hit for two months while you send to like only your very most engaged customers and and don't and don't and just but even then I mean you build it up over over a lot of you have like a history as a domain. You don't it's not something where a domain that's been around for two months or like at least ascending domain that's been around for two months, is going to have the same authority it was going to get get the same deliverability as one that's been around for much, much longer. So it's hard. It's hard. I don't know what big brands do to be honest. Yeah. Not switch I guess, but I think yeah. Not so. I think you're right. But I think you're right about it taking, you know, it takes a while. You have to go really slowly. I don't know how to do it when you're switching from domain to domain inside klaviyo. But like when I did the migration, I like turned everything off on drip and then like, sent a very pointed email to a very small set of people one day and then slow. And I would email is basically like a it asked a question that was open ended. And so people would reply, which is like the ultimate yes, boost in the domain email deliverability. And so people were replying to it and then it was like 1% of people and the next day was like 2%. And it was like. So I slowly opened up that window over time and like watched the. The benchmark scores or whatever, and klaviyo very closely over that like month span. But it did it did take a while. But yeah, I don't know how to do it when you're doing domain domain inside Klaviyo. Um that's crazy. Dang. Yeah, it's tough stuff. So that's that's the main challenge I've been I've been working on. The other thing I wanted to say is, uh, before we get on to topic of discussion, but was I think I'll be thinking about a lot is I think this is similar to where like the experience you had with with running the fundraiser and also in terms of like you're talking about product development, product drops and things like that, and the kind of similar sense that I think this is sort of hype that you have to maintain, uh, in e-commerce with, with existing customers and new customers. And I think it's sometimes undervalued because there's a brand that I've been looking at a lot recently. I think you might have heard of Montana Knife Company. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I mean, they're like a yeah, they're on every there are a lot of podcasts and they're doing. Yeah a lot at the moment. So but what I like about I mean it's not necessarily replicable for a lot of us because they're launching like a new product every single week of the year on a Thursday sells out on that Thursday. Somehow they turn it all around and produce another product by the next Thursday. Not necessarily possible for us, but there is something I've taken away from thinking about that a lot is actually these this product drop sit thing is actually not only applicable to those type of brands. And I think actually there's a lot of value for us because even if you're going out of stock often, like we've had a situation where we sort of out of stock in November, December and so many customers are asking different stuff and they're coming in and dribs and drabs, and we're having to learn. So what I've tried to do is actually launch, and obviously the email fiasco is not help, but I've been I've been trying to, uh, launch these things on certain days and always have a lead up to the launch of these even. It's just a product coming back in stock. But also we're updating these products a little bit when we put them back in stock. So there is a new factor. And the effect it has is enormous people. Um, if we just launch that product and run ads to it, it would not have the same effect as if we if we if we built up, you know, uh, a few days beforehand, we're we're letting people know we're gonna we're launching new product. And if you do it with a K, especially if you can do it, even if we if you try and do it on average once or twice a month, I think this kind of newness, uh, just constant newness has such an effect on your overall sort of sales capacity. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. Definitely that that makes total sense. And that's like very in line with what I've read and what other people have kind of told me. And I think I saw it a while ago where someone was basically like treat every product release like it's the biggest thing ever. And like, yeah, prep prep the people, get them warmed up, tease it like, you know, and it's it's a ton of work to do all that. Like tease it on social, tease an email, especially a ton. If you're doing kind of this all by yourself or you're like, medium underdog, um, if you will. But it's so important because there's nothing as attractive to customers, I think, as like a new thing. And that will just like keep them stoked and keep them interested. And you're right about like Montana Knife Company. They do have a crazy release cadence, which is why they're kind of like. Hot and trendy right now because it's like, wow, how are they doing that kind of thing? And that's how they attract customers. That's how they get on pods. And um, but, you know, they started somewhere and I'm sure that they, you know, have that's why they're on the pods telling that story kind of thing, which I haven't listened to. Um, obviously. But there's there's background there and it's like you can all start somewhere kind of thing and you can just, like, build up to it and get going. Um, yeah. The only thing that's add to that is I think in the first year they only did maybe a handful of product launches because they didn't have the stock. But I think that's where it benefits us because as underdogs we don't carry huge amounts of stock. So the chances are we're going to have limited numbers of stock big brands. You know, they don't necessarily have that almost that luxury in the sense they they're buying massive purchase orders or they're producing massive amounts of product, whereas we are by default producing lower quantities. And so it gets easier to kind of have that FOMO factor because just it's true. We have we can't keep much in stock. We were launching stuff in limited numbers. So I think we have to use that to advantage I guess. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah that makes a ton of sense. Cool. Moving on perhaps. Should we move on. Yes we, we do want to keep these episodes to like 30 ish 40 minutes. I know we went super long. Uh, someone talked a lot in the first one. Me raising my hand. For those not watching on on the YouTubes, you can catch us on the YouTubes. Uh, if you want to see our ugly mugs. Um, and so, yeah, we we will try and keep these shorter, more snack snack sized, which is not really 30 minutes is not I don't anyways. Uh, now for something completely different. So the next thing that we were going to talk about today was using AI in E-comm and how we're doing it. For me, this has been I think I've hinted at this before. I started using it a couple months ago. Um, Stuart. Oh, man. Under the gun. I can't remember his name. Uh, Stuart, I think, uh, his Twitter handle is, like, shortened, so it's like, oh, I didn't like the first name, but I can't remember. Sorry, Stuart, if that's your name. Um, he helped me a lot. Set up ChatGPT for the business and how I use it. And it's been unbelievable in terms of how I use it nonstop. I mean, I've already sent like five prompts and it's 8 a.m. today. Uh, and so I'm using it daily and so that I thought that would be a really interesting topic to get into and share a little bit about how I'm using it, how I started using it. And hopefully, you know, it'll help other people especially I feel like with our. Businesses and being basically like solo founders and stuff. There's a million thousand things to get done. And so being using the eyes of force multiplier and kind of like sort of also as an advisor has been really helpful to me. Have you been using it, Jack? Yeah. Um, it's been it's been yeah. Over time, more and more and more, it's really compounded. So it really started very simple. And I think, I think all of us were kind of learning as we go along with different ways we can use it and what's working. So yeah, look I've got a bit we both got a bit of a list here of stuff where we've put together of like ways we're kind of using it to make a team of one into a team of team of five. Yeah. Yeah, hopefully. Uh, so backing up to like when I first started using it, basically we had trained it on everything related to the brand. And so this involved dumping tons of information, tons of copy, all the things from the website that I've done, all the copy I've written, um, website examples, like as much information as we could give it and also setting it up with a prompt that was it was a fairly extensive prompt that basically it was like, you're an expert in these 20 different things, you're advising this type of thing. Um, and here's a ton of content about the brand. And I've also over time given it and it's just continually learning. So as I give it tons of information and and things to respond to and stuff, it learns from that definitely get some things wrong. You got to be careful. It definitely gets things wrong. Um. But I owe another tip would be like I uploaded the reviews for the brand to it. And there's lots of examples online about different things like this, but that's just like it's just more helpful to give it the more information. Um, and so what's to get? Super meta? I not like the company like the word I used ChatGPT earlier to create a list of how it helps me run my brand, which is funny because it has a better memory than I do, that's for sure. Yeah. Um, so I'll just run through the list, I guess. I think that might be the best way of doing this. And then, uh, see, see if how you're using it differently and that sort of thing. And maybe we can. Sounds good. Learn from that. Um, so in the Department of Marketing and Customer Engagement, I have it doing things like ad and social media copy, um, all sorts of things, like ad copy, responding to ad comments, um, and then email responses to customers, chat responses to customers. A lot of times I will write a draft and have it just improve it. Or what's been really nice is I feel like it sort of sets a little shield in front of me for like the delusional customers and the terrible ad comments that you get, which feels like are way more common than real life in terms of ad comments and. Like that type of comment right there that would, you know, normally take me off and it feels like a jab at me, but I sent it a shot, but it writes a response. Great. I'm sort of removed from the situation. That's been really helpful. Yeah. Um, email and SMS campaigns setting up like, content calendars for those things, but also writing subject lines and copy lines as well as products, uh, posts or like just social media posts in general, um, product descriptions for different products, product titles, uh, community engagement. So I've got a private Facebook group. It helps me come up with ideas for that sometimes helps me write copy sometimes for that and other types of community engagement things. Um, it helps me structure sales promos. Sometimes I'll be like, hey, is a Bogo or a buy one, get 150% off or buy two, get one free. Like, what are the best strategies here? Here's like the margins. What should I do here? Um, it helped me with setting up Black Friday planning. So planning for sales and promotions, uh, also strategies for cross-selling and upselling and helping with operations and logistics. It's helped me analyze different loan offers and financing offers. Uh, calculating Apr like comparing and contrasting those types of things, doing customer service, uh, which I kind of already said. And also, um. With accounting. Sometimes I'll ask it like what category should this be logged under? What's the best way to do this for accounting purposes? And then I've also helped. It's also helped me write code for the website. Uh, so doing all sorts of different things related to that. Um, just strategies for the website, landing page copy like flash sale copy, promo copy, troubleshooting, different UX, like coming up with strategies to solve different things. Um, it's it's been that's like in the, in the weeds on a high level. It's been basically like an advisor, I'll say like, hey, you know, this morning I was like, what? What ways can I infuse more PMS and mountains into these shorts? And it came up with a bunch of ideas. And so I just kind of like grabbed one of those ideas and ran with it and customize it a little bit more and, and took it. And it's also done that with product development where I'm like, hey, I want to make a lightweight jacket. Like, what are some inspirations from similar brands out there that are doing X, Y, and Z that I can look to for inspiration, um, and product development as well. Like, hey, I want to, you know, here's the lead times for this thing. I want to work on this thing. Like release schedule. What should I be working on? When should I be working on it? And and then there's also high level advising things that I'll ask it all the time, being a solo founder and sort of perfectionist and also having ADHD probably, and all sorts of things, like, I feel like I want someone to bounce ideas off of. And so that's been good for me. And my wife is thankful because she gets a lot of times all the random questions that she has zero caring about, which makes sense. Um, but she's also very helpful a lot of times. But I think that I've helped her load a little bit by using ChatGPT more. Um, she's. Yeah, that's that's that's somewhat I won't say too much more because she, she may or may not listen to this. No, I was just kidding. Uh, all right, you go. Jack, that is a cool list. I have a quick question on that. Do you, on the structure of chapter B? So do you use do you have a folder, uh, in charging where you've uploaded everything and you ask new chats for different things. And then. Or do you have, like, a custom GPT? Uh, for certain tasks? Yeah. That's interesting. It's changed a little bit over time. It originally was just one chat and I ran into the character limit like within like a couple of weeks or like the prompt limit because it was a huge chat. Yeah. Uh, and so I created a project a couple of weeks ago, and I've sort of started to structure different questions inside the project. I'm not I'm not like a ChatGPT expert or whatever I expert. So I don't know if the context in history, but is isolated into different projects because I use it for like for other like I use it for my other business, I use it for underdog Aecom. I'm looking at my projects here, I use it for house things, like I was troubleshooting her furnace the other day that broke. Um, and so I do try and keep it a little bit more isolated now, but I don't know if the context is siloed or not. Um, curious if the listeners know, like leave a comment, let us know. Yeah, I'd really like to know that as well. Um, but yeah. So I mean, I just riffing off that, I, I also had like a single chat and it was almost like a golden chat because it had so much stuff in it. But then again, I one day I hit the character and I was just like, oh no. Because the thought of starting all that again is is a killer. And then of course, I have this folder where I've uploaded tons of stuff and I've been using custom guides recently, more for certain things, but for certain, like where, you know, it's really good when you know the outcome you want. For example, if you for emails is a good one. So if you're um, if you've got like a I have a designer that I work with, um, freelance. So I kind of send, send briefs to and she's got really good actually uploading everything into, into klaviyo and, and she's, she's doing really well with that. So it's been great. But I do the copy and so and I also tell her kind of what images we're looking for and stuff for that. So I have a brief template for the email and I'll, I can put that into a custom GT. So it uses that, that template of the brief every single time. So I have to worry about, you know, putting heading one, you know, and all this sort of stuff. It's there. And then the copy is filtered in there. And of course, if I were to change anything, I just follow up with it and then I keep refining it, but it just keeps refining that template, which is great because then I just have to essentially copy paste the Google doc, share it with, share it with her. So, but, um, yeah, I mean, a lot of the stuff, the problem with the big problem with, uh, the custom GT is there's no history, so it gets lost the like the moment you, you go, you know, you close out BBC and open up again, which means it doesn't. It's not learning compound learning off the charts. It's just going back to the the stuff you've uploaded. Which is frustrating because I think that's what's really missing for us. I don't know I find that frustrating. So I end up going back to the project where where I have different. I have a folder with, you know, all the stuff I've uploaded and I can create different charts based on different things I can. And because I've isolated chats there, they will last a bit longer because they're on pretty much severe topics. So I don't know that. But anyway, going to IntelliJ, what I've used it for, I mean, lots of similar things. Tons of ad copy content ideas. The email marketing I told you that said about customer service is kind of separate. Um, usually within with an app we're using. But one thing I think you mentioned, I've used it a lot is, uh, on the strategy side of things. Like you said, it's really hard to find people that that will be able to understand enough context to be able to give you a helpful answer on a situation you're dealing with. And it might just be you're talking to a supplier and they're demanding payment today, and you can't pay them till next week. And how do you word that in the best way, so that they're going to have the best chance of being, you know, okay with that and really hard to explain that to somebody. You almost have to spend half an hour explaining the backstory before you even get to the question when you start. I mean, and and most people have not got time for that, you know, and I completely sympathize. So I mean, like you said, the wife, my girlfriend is the same. I mean, seven, seven, 7 p.m. when she's back from work, she doesn't want to be hearing about this stuff. Yeah, yeah. So I think it's amazing for. That it's it's just so good for that because it's got the context. You can you know, I sometimes worry about uploading or like copying pasting people's emails into chat because I'm thinking, well, where's this stuff going? But it is so helpful in terms of understanding and better strategizing. Um, uh, product development, like you said. Um, one thing I've also used it for is fulfillment side of things. So as everyone knows, lots of things happening with tariffs at the moment and we're shipping stuff into the US, we've literally just as it has happened. This is another problem we're dealing with. Just as happens, we're now basically importing stuff into the US with tariffs. And so I'm now trying to find out is it better to ship larger amounts into the US in bulk. Is it better to ship directly to the customer. Is it best to ship small amounts by air, some by sea, you know, and it's just so hard and it can have a massive impact on your margins. But if you don't do enough due diligence on that, it could really screw you over, especially right now. And things are changing. So, um, the best thing about what I'm using it for is kind of I can upload different spreadsheets, I can upload, um, cost scenarios Oreos and it can work out 15 different scenarios. I can sort of help me, help me kind of hedge my bets towards the best one. So that's been amazing. Um, we're launching some new products. So product names. Um, I find that kind of frustrating because because sometimes, you know, I go back in circles with it. I think sometimes chat, like you say, hallucinates also, sometimes it repeats itself. So if I've told you I don't like that name, don't mention it again. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, definitely. Um, difficult emails I said about. And then the last one I think, um, yeah, like contracts and things. I mean, just not I'm signing not many contracts, but like, occasionally, uh, if you're using it, I mean, just different stuff with fulfillment or shipping company or stuff and sometimes, um, just it's just good to have someone, you know, be able to read through something and just make sure there's no like or like, for example, if you're doing like, you know, like, uh, uh, capital like eight figure or wave flyer or something, you just want to kind of, you know, what are you going to read through it? Be almost don't almost trust yourself to make sure that you're not missing something that's going to kind of hold you down in some way late, further down the line by eight figures. An example. I don't mean they I was looking into getting capital from them a while back and I in that in their contract, it states that you cannot source capital from any other source while you are while you have an existing, uh, like loan with them. It's a. Yeah. So, so and they said, yeah, yeah, let's just start. And I was like, wow. Well, I mean, that's a big deal because if we can't, if we if we're stuck to you for, for like for a significant amount of time and, and we can't even source capital from other places. So that was kind of I think it's why it's good. Sometimes you can pick up on those things. But yeah, that's kind of that's mostly my list. Mhm. Mhm. It definitely helps to translate and convert to like regular speak because I. Yeah. The same exact situation where I was looking at capital this last week and I gave it a loan document and I had searched through the loan document and skimmed it. You know, it's like a million pages and it's written in legal leaves that no one can actually understand. And I was like, hey, is there a personal guarantee in here? Because I was looking for one I'm not gonna put. A house on the market kind of thing. Bet on my house. Uh. I'm sorry. My family's off limits. Uh, Mr. Loan capital guy. And it looked through and scanned it and found it, and I was like, whoa, that's how they're saying that. Very interesting. I said, see you later. But yeah, super helpful to, like, translate a lot of that stuff and analyze and just like, and you're right, like data analyzation and all the things. And you do have to be careful. It's like an overconfident, uh, yeah. I don't know, junior person sometimes because it will say things and be like, no, this is the way. And I'm like, uh, no, I see you got that wrong there. Um, but it's the vast majority of it is very helpful. And it's been very interesting to kind of I know that it's the popular thing and has been the popular thing for the last year or so, and everyone's like, obsessed. And I feel like every couple of days there's some viral tweet on Twitter that's like, these are the 20 reasons how I will change your life and replace 20 people. And it's kind of like, yes and no. I feel like those are just clickbait, basically. But it is super helpful, especially in our situations. I think, um, to get just expert eyes on all of this and sort of speed things up. Yeah. I think also one thing I forgot to mention on the coding side, I'm not a developer by any means. I definitely am not. But and but it's kind of amazing how much you can do. I mean, a lot of people talk about curse at the moment and I haven't tried curse. Maybe you have. Um, but even with ChatGPT, there are stuff where maybe I feel like a custom built section from a developer, and I kind of want to add a button there and add something. You can easily do that and charge it if it takes a few iterations. You do have to be careful because I do find like if you upload like an entire, like an entire file, like, um, an entire section file, it will it'll just like miss out the middle and then go to the end and like endless and the and the schema and then just be like, yeah, there you are. Yeah. Was missing half the code. But if you if you pick up if you if you pick up on that stuff, eventually you can actually get something that you would have had to pay for. And you've, you've, you've done it in 15, 20 minutes. So yeah, I think it's quite good for that. And it's also made me more confident in CSS, liquid stuff like that. But and I'm not a, I'm not a developer, but because I'm actually going through ChatGPT analyzing this stuff and saying, no, that's wrong. And it's telling me, oh yes, you're right, that's wrong because of X. And then I've remembered that. So it's almost like you actually are learning as you go along with this stuff as well. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I will say, as a developer who's been developing for almost ten years, you have to be very careful with what I do. And I still use it daily in my code too, but it's like a confident junior developer and engineer. Yeah. Um, it's great and definitely helps get to from like 0 to 60, but get up to that 70 mile per hour kind of speed you have to be. It's yeah, I've got to be careful. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Uh, but that's a whole nother episode. Yeah. Um, I think that's it. I don't want to keep going too long. We're kind of at our cutoff window that we said we'd stick to it, but, yeah, lots of good stuff. Um, let us know what you think of the comments, leave us a review on your favorite platform, yada yada yada. Um, all the stuff. I love to hear what you're thinking about the pod and what we can share to improve your lives and help you grow as an underdog. Become person. Yeah. Let us know in a bit. And also like in terms of just comments and leave us on YouTube or let us know how you're using AI, what issues we're dealing with and stuff because we want to build a better community here. So, uh, yeah, it's it's always good to hear what other people are doing for sure. For sure. Thanks, y'all.