 Good morning everybody, JR Fisher here. It is Wednesday, the 26th of May. Gosh, we're almost halfway through the year. Can you believe that? We spent all of 2020 locked up and we're already through half of 2021. It's just, time is just flying. Oh my God. Well, welcome everybody. Hey, I do these lives every day to help you start running, grow your online businesses. And that's why I'm here today. I want you to feel free to put any questions, comments, suggestions, whatever you got going on in that chat box. I really appreciate your participation. So please do so. Put something in that chat box. Don't forget to subscribe. I need six. Count them, six subscribers to hit that 5,000 mark. So I would really appreciate if you'd subscribe. Don't forget to ring the bell. Turn on all bell notifications so you're notified each and every time I go live. I do have a subject I like to talk about. Today I'm gonna talk about romancing your customers online. It's not what you think it is, but it'll help you grow your business. Let's see here, we got David. Interesting, gotta check that out. Loud and clear in Savannah. Thank you so much, James. Don't forget to give me a thumbs up. Smash that like button that really, really helps the algorithm. Like I said, today I'm gonna talk about our customers. I'm gonna talk about what you can do to increase your sales online. Wow, guys, online sales are growing. It's such a crazy rate right now. It may not be what you think it is, though. I think a lot of people think that most people shop online. They still don't. Most people still don't shop online. I mean, e-commerce, James says, yeah, yeah, yeah, smash the like button. Thank you so much. E-commerce is really having its moment, though. In 2020, you got up to $861 billion, which is pretty strong and that's according to Digital Commerce 360. Every year, every year, e-commerce accounts for more in total retail sales, but keep in mind still today, it is only 21.3% of retail sales for 2020. So what that tells you is it's growing and now's the time to get in. Everybody's always thinking, oh, I've missed the boat. It's too late for me. It's not. I mean, now is really the time to get in. You know, it was, like I said, it was 21.3% last year, but in 2019, it was only 15.8%. That's a huge increase and 2018 was only 14.3%. So this big jump of 21% now, that's like 6% jump of one year, that's huge. So it's really clear that people are buying online and if you wanna take advantage of it, now's the time to do that. I mean, it really is the time to do that. So if you're thinking, well, you know, I can't get in now and it's all over with, no, no, now's the best time to get in. People are buying online more now than they ever were. There's lower barriers to entry. I mean, it's so much easier to sell online now than it used to be. I mean, when I first got online in 2009, I mean, you pretty much had to go to like, you know, eBay if you want to sell online. I had a website, but you know, it didn't work that great, you know, it didn't work that well. So it's really changing. You know, every retailer, I will tell you though, that is online is buying for that customer. We all want that customer's attention. The spending power of the customer is getting stronger and stronger. The rules of the game have really been altered. I mean, it's not, you gotta do more for the customer nowadays and that's okay. You know, new channels emerge while others become insignificant almost every day. HubSpot says that 71% of customers don't trust sponsored ads on social networks anymore. So if you're doing like YouTube ads, Twitter ads, that type of stuff, you gotta really do something to get their attention. I mean, you gotta really work on it. If you're doing any ads or you have a website, please put that in the chat section there. I wanna hear your input on that, what's going on. And I'm gonna get a sip while you're doing that. There we go. So your challenge number one is to acquire a customer and get them, get them on your list, but it doesn't stop there, okay? Everybody's thinking, well, once I get them on my list, I'm done. No, no, no, no, no. That is the very beginning. All they're doing is kind of walking through your digital door. You know, they're showing up there, but they haven't really necessarily even bought anything yet. Online stores contain, you know, flexible, ULs, detailed interviews, dynamic prices, customized offers. Even with these levers, only 2.5% of your customers complete a purchase on average. 2.5%. So you gotta get a lot of people in there. Platforms for e-com. Is Shopify still the one? It is a one. I would say it's probably one of the most popular that's out there, Richard. And welcome to you, Richard. Good to see you here today, buddy. I assume it's around a little after five o'clock there in the UK, I'm guessing the time. But you know, yeah, Shopify is a really good one. It really is. But there's a lot of other ones out there too. And a lot of people make millions of dollars in some of the other sites. You know, WordPress is a huge site. You know, a lot of people use WordPress. If you're just doing e-commerce, Shopify is probably one of the easiest ones. I think that's a good call. But you know, think about some of the other numbers. You know, driving repeat purchases, that's another thing, okay? According to ClevrTap, the week 12 retention rate is 7.1%, excuse me, percent for existing users, and a low 1.4% for new users. Single-digit conversion rates across the board. That's why companies are fighting tooth and nail for just incremental increases. I mean, we've gotta do such little tiny things now to get these big increases in our sales. You know, merchants provide customer-centric platforms that are differentiated. You know, drive purchases and improve customer lifetime value. CLB, customer lifetime value, that's so important. Because like, I may get somebody on my list today and they may only spend $10. $120, or $50. But over their lifetime, maybe they spend $5,000. So how much is that customer worth? Home Depot reports that getting a customer to buy something, their lifetime value is $10,000. So, you know, what will they spend to get a customer that they know is gonna spend $10,000? That's the average, okay? E-commerce really has to keep up with all these changes to survive, you know, really, and stay ahead. You can get ahead with different things. Value-added services. And that's what I kinda wanna talk about romance in your customers. Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, and the big retailers offer their customers a whole lot more options now of value-added services. They have payment plans. They have shipping insurance. They have product protection. Historically, these services could only, could really be hard to provide. So only large retailers could offer them. But new companies like Affirm, and I used Affirm. I bought a mixed exercise bike and I used Affirm. But they'll do these payment things. And when I bought the exercise bike, it was 0% financing. So I was like, well, yeah, why should I go ahead and pay for it? Why should I do that? But there's also one called Route. There's one called Extend. They unlock value-added services for every retailer and they're in customers. These technologies, the platforms, they offer these white glove services right out of the box and you can use them even as a small e-commerce person. They've really set up these payment solutions, financing things, shipping insurance, product protection things so that no matter what size business you're running, you can actually offer these services too. You don't have to be a big box anymore. You get another sip here. Here we go. Assurance found that extended warranties on average increase a customer's intent to buy by 25%. Now I'm one of these people who never bought an extended warranty. I just don't buy them. Just don't do it. I look at it as a warranty for a manufacturer is the amount of time they expect it not to break. So the extended warranty picks up there but you're gonna pay a lot for them. But that doesn't matter what I like. What matters is that people do like them. What is product protection? Basically, products can be covered in a variety of different ways. Many products have included manufacturer warranties which I just mentioned that cover defects of workmanship and all for say six months to a year or maybe something like that. But product protection plans go way beyond that. They're also known as service contracts and they guarantee a product's working condition for an extended period of time. Product protection can come in many different forms. And I'm gonna kind of talk about those real quick in here. But like I said, if you have any questions about any of that put that in the chat section right there. The first one is extended warranties. Now these service contracts extend the duration of a manufacturer's warranty coverage. I was in the car business for many years and we had extended warranties on cars. And you could get different levels of extended warranties. They start when the manufacturer expires and they extend the coverage of mechanical or electrical malfunctions for a specified time. Now my physical products pretty much are food. So I don't use those. But if you're selling other kinds of products that would lend itself to that, these are excellent things to offer your customers. Now, I would say the majority of your customers won't take them, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't offer it to all customers because some customers won't buy your product unless you offer them. So if you think about it that way, you're not gonna hurt the people that they don't gonna buy them anyhow, but you're gonna gain customers from people who want these things. The next thing they have is called protection plans. That'd be number two. These service contracts protect products from a specified damages or accidents. So each protection plan has different terms. A common plan is the accidental damage and handling. So they call it an ADH plan, which covers damage caused by accidents like drops, breaks, spills, all that. And my MacBook, you can't see it, but I dropped it the other day and it's got like a crack on the edge. And I got to check it out because I think I bought the extended warranty for that. Even though I said I don't normally buy them, I do for my electronics. So since we're talking about Apple, a great example is an iPhone. It can be protected in several ways if your iPhone battery fails from a defect in manufacturing within one year of purchase, that is covered by the manufacturer's warranty. But that warranty doesn't cover accidental damage like what I'm talking about, where I drop my laptop. So if you're prone to dropping your phone, you may want to look at AppleCare. AppleCare protection plan offers accident coverage so you're not paying out of pocket if you drop your phone or crack your screen. What does protection, excuse me, what does product protection matter? Well, customers want product protection. So this is evident by the 120.79 billion global extended warranty market size in 2019. 120 billion, okay, that's huge. This market is projected to reach 169.82 billion by 2027. So it's just growing according to Allied Market Research. So if you're not offering these things, offering them can gain you customers. There is a clear market demand for this stuff. This makes it a crucial element of your e-commerce experience. Plus offering a warranty can also help you grow your sales. Like I said, some people won't buy unless they have these things. Let me give you an example. So for video game consoles and set top streaming boxes, including an extended warranty increases the likelihood of purchase, get this, by 22% just offering it increases your sales. Now, here's the funny thing. Some people will go ahead and buy your product because you're offering these warranties but they don't buy the warranties. They just assume that since you're buying these warranties the products are gonna be good. The likelihood increases by 21% for smart TVs and DVRs, okay? So people are so worried about those. Now I gotta tell you, my TV is not a smart TV. I've had it for years. I bought it, gosh, I wanna say 11 years ago and I'm mad because it won't break. I want a new TV. I want it to break so I can do TV. But it's like I can't justify it until it breaks, right? Actually the same thing happened with me with my laptop. I had a Mac Air for years and it wouldn't break but it started to slow down and that was enough to make me go out and buy a new laptop. So I didn't get a new one. But it's obvious, okay? People like these things. They like these extended coverage and it does unlock more revenue streams for you. Now, here's the cool thing. Number one, products are protected. Extended warranty coverage gives consumers a peace of mind, okay? Additional coverage ensures customers will always have products they love and they're gonna continue to work because of cover. Coverage can be personalized to a customer's needs for a given product like animal biohazard coverage for appliances, okay? So maybe if somebody pees on your computer or something, you know, it's taking care of it. Let's see, lately my extended warranties are injured. Oh, injured. I think you mean insured by Asurion. Yes, any opinion JR. You know, James, they're huge. They're really big in the cell phone market. I've seen them there. I don't know much about them and I gotta tell you, I don't often have a problem. I mean, none of my stuff ever breaks. I think Apple, I have little issues every now and then but they always seem to take care of it. But Asurion's a big company. You gotta also look at deductibles too though when you're buying these extended warranties. A lot of times they'll have a deductible of 100, 200, 300, $500, whatever it is, you gotta check that out. But product protection improves the customer's experience by turning what is potentially a negative product experience into a positive one. For example, okay, with the company called Extend, customers can chat with Virtual Claims Assistant 24-7 to provide a fast response and give replacement products out the door quickly. Turning an unhappy customer into a delighted one, which is nice, right? This high quality service can facilitate stronger ties between customers and retailers so that can actually help you out. Number three actually, it can help drive more profits too. Product protection expands businesses by driving net profit increasing conversion and improving customer experience. For example, the company that sells the CPAP machines, SoClean, they partnered with Extend to enhance its strong reputation by providing great customer support. They wanted to ensure that should something go wrong with their devices, their customers would have an easy path to navigate to getting things resolved. SoClean with Extend was able to test their warranty offering. One experience drove a 167% increase in revenue. That's huge, just by offering something, guys. That's all you're doing is actually offering something to somebody, get another sip here. And I don't know, have you bought any of these Extended Warranties? Put it in the chat section there. If you're not watching this live, you'll watch it later on, put it in the comments section. I will come back and answer stuff in the comments section, guys. So don't worry if you're not watching live. I know everybody can't watch live. Number four, actually, it can also increase your purchase conversion rate, which is pretty cool. Consumer confidence to purchase goes up when they see somebody stands behind the product. They go, ah, it must be good. So that's gonna increase their considering purchasing. It also makes sense, doesn't really, I mean, if you think about it, because it's like an extra validation that you know it's gonna be good. In fact, product protection actually increases purchase conversion. There's a company called Blendjet, and overall product purchase conversion rates have increased 11% when that company started offering extend product protection plans. So that's kinda cool if you think about that. James says another thing is I can't remember what products I have extended warranties for and where I've hidden the warranty for myself. You know, here's what I do. I use an app, and it's called, let me find this app for you real quick, it's called Msecure, Msecure. All of your passwords, all of your extended warranties, all the things that you have, you can put it in Msecure. Let me put this in here. And I don't have any affiliation with them. But if you search in the app store for Msecure, get that app, put it on your phone, and it keeps everything organized for you. The next thing you can do actually to guys is improve your customer experiences. You know, great product protection improves customer loyalty by turning negative experiences into positive ones, okay? In today's environment, retailers have to give customers options. Ecommerce first saw its explosion with payments, with BNPL financing, et cetera, and now they're seeing the rise in product protection. So that's the next big thing if there is one. Product protection really gives merchants a channel to bring customers back. For instance, when a claim is fulfilled at extend, it drives customers back to the merchant site to get a replacement. Customers can purchase a replacement product, which count as a new sale for the merchant. So that's a pretty cool thing, right? When you get that warranty thing. How about free shipping? That's what gets my attention big time. You're right, James. As a matter of fact, I have a promotion starting either today or tomorrow, and we're doing cases of meat and I'm offering free shipping on all of that. I mean, it's an incredible deal. If you're not on our mailing list, you're looking for survival food, you'll want to get on our mailing list and we're really offering that. People love free shipping. And they've kind of been trained on this through Amazon. But that's not to say I don't get sales every single day where we do charge shipping for our site. But different types of product protection plans are out there, different ones, back in 2019, actually. AIG was the first company to offer these plans to merchants. Until recently, product protection suffered from this archaic claims process and a distribution problem. But we don't have that problem anymore. On top of that, claims processes could take months to resolve and often resulted in frustrated customers. Now, easy to use technology, like extend, increases access to product protection. So any merchant, regardless of their size, location, or product catalog can offer product protection. Anybody can do this now, which is really cool. Thanks for sharing EMSECure. I love it. It's a really good app. I gotta tell you, James, my problem with logins and passwords and all that, I was just too lazy to sit down and start typing them in. I really was, I was just too lazy. And then I think in 2014, hey, it was 2014, I did it. And I'm so glad now. I mean, I'm so glad. I'll give you an example of what EMSECure looks like. You have a screen that's like this, you have to put in a password to get to your passwords, okay? And then I put in my old password, okay? Whoa, that wasn't right. Very good, okay. And then it looks like this and I've got all of these passwords in here. I mean, I got tons of them, tons of them. I mean, I can just go on forever. Literally, I think I've got A through Z at this point. But I've got airline stuff. I've got credit card stuff in here. I got bank account stuff in here. I've even got my social security stuff in here. I mean, it's just everything, everything is in here. All my logins from my websites. But you know, here's the cool thing now. I don't have to memorize all this stuff, okay? It's all on my phone. So I would definitely get that. Shipping must be expensive for boxes of survival cave food. It is very expensive. A case of meat can cost anywhere from $25 shipping on up to close to $100 depending on where it's going. So we really have to factor all that stuff in to even really make a profit. But we do. It works out and I've been doing it for over a decade now. So I think I've got a wrap on it now. But I tell you, even with that, every now and then we have to change shipping companies. Like FedEx may be lower than UPS and then all of a sudden UPS is lower than FedEx. So every now and then we got to get in there and switch it. Product protection can come in many forms. Let's talk about them real quick before I get out of here. You can have a replacement. So these service contracts work well with everyday items that have kind of a low price to them, let's say skull candy, ear buds or something like that. They get damaged, then they're going to replace it. The next one can be repair. Okay, so these contracts are good for something who has a greater cost than the cost of labor. It makes more sense to repair like let's say a Peloton bike, they replace it. Also plan duration. These service contracts simply extend the manufacturer's warranty. It's the same warranty, they just extend it. Then they have simple product protection. These service contracts allow for a little bit more customization. They offer to extend the duration of the manufacturer warranty. They may even expand coverage options. These plans kick in after the manufacturer warranty expires. So they don't really exist until then. But then they have the accidental damage, which is the one I got to check with my laptop here. Let's see, James says you've got to trust insecure big time. Yeah, I mean, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? I mean, it's like you can't memorize all this stuff. So it's like you do throw trust to the wind every now and then. Every now and then I've had credit cards stolen. But you know, the credit card companies nowadays are pretty good about this stuff. And if you say it's not your charge, they just take it off, you know, unless you're doing this stuff constantly. Now, I got to tell you, one of my cards, I had hacked five times in one year. Five times in one year I had to have the card replaced. And what we figured out was I was using that car, but I went out of town and I was swiping it on gas pumps and people were skimming my number off it. So that's what we assumed. That's what the credit card company said. And the last one, like I said, is that accidental damage from handling, product protection, these service contracts protect against more damage like drops, spills, you know, that a manufacturer actually would, since they cover different set of issues, these plans begin at the time of purchase. So they're always there for you, you don't have to worry about it. So these are some of the things, guys, that you can do to increase or romance your customer. These are things that you almost have to do to romance your customer nowadays. My throat's going out, I gotta get another drink here. And for those of you who know, I had my anniversary last night and then we went out to a really nice dinner, went out and got a ice cream cone afterwards. It was really nice. And guys, I will tell you, we know we talk about business and all this stuff, we talk about making money online. You gotta also make time to enjoy your life. We made time for that yesterday. We made time to go out and just relax. We made time to have a nice dinner. We were in no hurry, you know, the waiters came over and he just take your time and we're like, yeah, we're just gonna take our time, we went to a nice French restaurant. I got these mussels with these French fries that were just crazy good. And I know you're thinking they're just fries, but no, these were French. This was a French restaurant. These things were amazing, the way they presented them in this basket and with this little paper sleeve in there, it was just so good. And these mussels had this creamy garlic butter. Oh my God, I gotta tell you they were good. My wife got this big cheese platter of all these wonderful cheeses. They brought out this bread and it said you could get a quarter loaf for $2 or a half loaf for $4. I said, what's the difference in size? And the waiter says, get the quarter loaf. I'm like, quarter loaf, that can't be much. He brought it out and it was this long. It was just that we couldn't eat half of it. And I don't know how they figure quarter, the whole loaf must have been like this big or something. I don't know, but it was great. But take time for that guys and let me read some of what you got going on in here. Let's see, so what physical products do you suggest for a newbie or do you suggest starting as an affiliate? I like affiliate marketing for newbies, I really do. And the reason I like that is because you don't know what sells, okay? You don't know what sells. You can start off with an affiliate product or several affiliate products and have no investment and you can learn to market. You can learn to email. You can learn to get people to opt in. I will tell you, it's not the product. And a lot of people say, why can't I find a great product to sell? No, you gotta learn how to market. If you know how to market online, you could sell pretty much anything. Marketing online is the skill you need. I have several courses on that. You'll see links in the description of this video, but you gotta learn to market. That's the real key. Products don't really matter. Now I have some great products. I like my products. A lot of the products I made myself because they're courses. But the point is Richard Brown says, freaks, you're absolutely right. That's exactly what it said. It said freaks on the menu. What does it say? Something freaks. I can't remember what it was. But marketing is it. It isn't the product. Then once you learn to these marketing skills, then you can go pick some more products. That's easy. It's easy to find products. That's not a hard thing. Can you apply the principles in not just direct sales? Yeah, I mean, my whole background is sales. I taught sales. I was on the road for nine years. I taught car dealerships. Had to sell cars. I taught the managers, the owners. My whole background is sales. And all of that has really helped me in selling online. However, selling online is a lot different than selling in person. You have to do different things. You have to get people's attention. You gotta get opt-ins. You gotta send them letter after letter after letter emails. It's a whole lot different. James Brain says, you're giving me the hungries for fish and chips. Shame on you, JR. Oh my God, fish and chips are awesome, aren't they? That crunchy outside batter. And I'm gonna get off track a little bit, but my wife likes fish tacos. And she doesn't like any of the ones we go out and get because they have mostly fish. She likes mostly batter. But I'll take some cod fish in a simple recipe, like some flour, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and put a can of beer in there and get that too. I like a thinner type coating. And then when you put it in the hot oil, of course it fluffs up. Love that stuff. Just love it. Les Moules Fries. Yes, that's exactly it, Richard. It was muscles and fries. You're exactly right. And I think that's what it said on the menu. Les Moules Fries. And let me just see here. I wanna check one thing. The restaurant was called Blue. And I know I'm off track. We can do what we want, right? We can do what we want here. But I wanna find this place, B-L-E-U. B-L-E-U-B-O-N. And I wanna find San Diego. And you guys may, hey, you may be in San Diego. You may wanna check this place out. But there it is, Blue B-L-E-U-B-O-N. And I want to look at their menu. And I wanna tell you exactly what it said. I wanna tell you exactly what it said. This is what I got. And it was not cheap. It was like $30 for muscles and fries. I was like, wow, they really, they believe in their muscles and fries. But it was good. And I'm finding it here. I'm finding it right now. Yes, it was Moules Fries. You're totally correct about that. It was Palms Fries. That's what it was. So they call it Palms Fries. P-O-M-M-E-S Fries. And it was $28.95. $28.95. Hey, did I get your cooking channel by mistake? Get on your cooking channel by mistake. Oh, I know, right? You see what one of my interests is now, right? You got me sidetracked. You got me talking about food. And that cooking channel, I'm gonna hit it hard. I really am. It's gonna be a lot of work. It's a lot more work to do a cooking channel video than it is to do one of these I'm gonna talk to you on the screen videos. But yeah, I'm definitely gonna hit that hard. So guys, that's how we romance our customers. We offer them more options. We give them more things. No way I plan on returning to San Diego. Why? San Diego's beautiful, beautiful. Richard Brown, potato chips, potato chips. Yeah, I know. I think fish and chips are a big, thick fries, right? The real actual fish and chips. I say I'm off on the food again. But San Diego's beautiful place. You should visit. Yes, it's a nice place. It really is. I would give votes for San Diego, not for their taxes, not for their house prices. All of the houses in my neighborhood are in the millions and I don't think they're worth it. I just don't think they're worth it, but they are in the millions. Great as always and many thanks. Thank you so much, Richard Brown. I appreciate that. Got a couple more subjects we're gonna hit this week. Guys, if you have ideas for subjects too, you want me to cover, put that in the chat section there. I will entertain it. I'm going through this morning and I'm answering a lot of comments I got. Matter of fact, I answered some already this morning. I love talking to you guys. I really do. And you talking to me, it makes me feel good. So, you know, do it, do it. Put comments in there, put comments on the videos. Don't forget to like this if you haven't done it and I need six. I need six subscribers, guys, to hit the 5,006. I've been talking about this for a week or two and we're slowly getting there. So what am I complaining about, right? Make sure you subscribe down there. Hit that subscribe button. If it's red, click it, turn it gray. Ring the bell, turn on all bell notifications so you're notified because you won't be notified unless you turn on all notifications. But once you do that, when I upload a video or when I go live, they're gonna send you a notification. They're gonna say, hey, this guy did a video. And it really kind of saves you time because you don't have to go looking for it. You don't have to go, hey, I wonder if JR did a video. You'll know, you don't need to look, okay? So that's really important that you do that. Cooking channel will give you the opportunity to practice self-discipline. Yes, yes it will. And I think I've got some but I can always work on my self-discipline. You're totally right. I can certainly do that. Guys, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate each and every one of you. Love your comments, love your interaction on this channel. It just gets better and better and better. We have more and more fun and I appreciate each and every one of you.