 Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome to Friday morning or at least this morning here. I'm in central time in Texas. We've got a good session today. And I tell you what, a lot of stuff I'm gonna give you today, you really need if you're moving forward in 2022. I don't know when you're listening to this. Maybe it's 2030 when you're listening to this. But in 2022, you're gonna need these things. So I'm gonna give you a list of the stuff you need and what you need to do and all that good stuff. I do want you to participate. I tell you participation is probably the biggest thing you can do to increase your chances of success. I see so many people who will come to one of these sessions, they never chat, they never ask me a question, they never say hello, they never do anything. Make it a point to get involved. And let me give you a little example. As life goes on and you move forward, you're probably in a job or you're probably doing something that when you were 10 years old, you never even thought about doing it. And that happened because of all the life choices you made, you started doing things. Working online, making money online is really a series of decisions. And the first decision you gotta make is you gotta do something. Okay, you gotta do something. You've got to try to sell something online, you've got to write a report, a blog, build a website. And what happens is when we do these things, like participating in the chat there, but when we do these things, it leads us to other things. The greatest opportunity for creativity comes out of basic work. In other words, if you just start working on stuff, even if you don't know what direction you're going, it's gonna increase your creativity. You're gonna find new things that you're interested in. You're gonna find new things to sell or new things you wanna create. You've gotta be involved guys, you've got to be involved. I know we're playing some trips now, I had one planned, and I'm gonna get to this list of things in one second, but I think this is really important. I have a list of things I'm gonna talk about, but my wife and I both know how important this is. Right now my daughter is into fitness and she has reels that she does and she makes money off this and she's got these fitness programs. And she's in St. Louis, Missouri right now with a convention of, I don't know, 10, 20,000 people who are all doing the same thing she's doing because she knows getting around all those people, talking to those people is gonna help her. Just like you being on this live today and you're around like-minded people, and thank you so much, just give me a thumbs up there, I do appreciate that. And let me remind you guys, give me a thumbs up, don't forget to subscribe to the subscribe button, turn it from red to gray, don't forget to ring the bell, turn all bell notifications so you know to notify every time I go live or if I upload a video. But anyhow, that was kind of fast, wasn't a little bit too fast, I gotta slow that down some. But the point is this, you've gotta get around other people, you've got to communicate with other people. Humans are not meant to be alone. Humans are not meant to be alone. If you take somebody and you put them in solitary confinement, they don't have any human interaction, they will generally just go crazy. We need this interaction. You may not think it, you may think love a shy person, JR, and I'm scared to be around people. That's exactly why you need to do it. I was a shy person, I was like that. My wife was a shy person. But if you force yourself into these uncomfortable situations, whether it being just typing out a comment on the chat section here or attending a convention, it's gonna help you. Now, I just said my daughter's in St. Louis right now. We are gonna be in Vegas in August because we are going to a pet convention there because my wife does dog training and all this pet stuff that she does. And then in January, I'm gonna be on a cruise, a marketers cruise. So we're constantly doing these things. We're constantly around these people and it constantly gives me new ideas. And it doesn't necessarily come from somebody who's making more money than me. Money is just a representation of your effort as all money really is. But they may be doing something off to the side and earning a little bit of money, but they've got a couple of tricks and things up their sleeves that they're doing. And I may learn from that. They may learn from me, but you won't learn anything if you don't participate. So right now, everybody at least get in the chat box, say hello, tell me what your weather is, say something, get involved. This involvement is critically important. And I'm getting ready to get into my list right now, but I'm telling you guys, if you're not participating, if you're not chatting, if you're not putting something in that box there, you are missing an opportunity to really increase your chances of doing stuff. All right, so let me pull up my notes here real quick. I got it right here. You know, I see people who do these things and I see these people who participate and man, do they get good results. They really do. Those people who are always participating and asking questions, you know, according to a recent industry report, e-commerce will account for 20.4% of global retail sales by the end of 2022. And you think about that 20% and you say, well, 20% is not that much. No, but you do a lot of stuff that may not be online. You know, maybe you go to a clothing store, you buy groceries, you buy gas for your car or something like that. A lot of the purchases are online now. It used to be like one or 2%. This rapid growth can be attributed to a lot of different reasons. I mean, COVID was one of them. I shouldn't say that. The world illness was one of them. In times of uncertainty, fears of that sickness cause a lot of people to stay at home. But it also helped e-commerce. And if you're involved in e-commerce or if you're selling digital products too, this is very helpful to you. Now, here's the challenge. Increasing your advertising costs and reduce campaign effectiveness. This advertising costs have gone up, but they're not as effective because there's more people doing it. There's a whole lot more people getting into this now, trying to gain customers. So the results of the cost of advertising and reduced return on spin, which is ROAS, return on ad spend. For example, like Facebook is already costs 47% more than it did a year ago. 47%. That's a lot of money. So if you're not doing these things right, it's gonna cost you. Providing Apple updates in iOS, what, 14.5, cross app data sharing is prohibited unless users opt in for it. So you can't target people as well anymore. And some things that happened because of this policy was immediate and advertising across Facebook, Instagram has become much less effective than before because you can't target people as good. That's why this session is so important. So the way forward is to maximize your customer lifetime value into customer acquisition cost ratio. In other words, those customers that you get, you wanna sell more stuff to them and you wanna sell it to them more often. Apple's advocacy for privacy and the world illness aren't going anywhere soon. Okay, so they're gonna be there. So against this backdrop, e-commerce companies have started exploring new and unsaturated marketing channels. Snapchat, TikTok are all popular options for this. So if you're not into that, you may wanna get over there. Amping up your efforts on customer retention is really, really important. And that's another way to get out of this difficult situation is to treat people better and give them more value. If you give them more value, guess what? They are gonna be more likely to spend money with you. So you need to do that. The next trend, okay, because we've talked about an advertising cost, I guess it's a trend, but the next trend would be more e-commerce businesses go global to overcome their bottlenecks. So the total addressable market, which is called TAM, and you might wanna write some of this down, is a common limiting factor of growth. Now, I own a survival food company. I can't sell that survival food around the world because there's import restrictions on food. But my training and my YouTube channel and all that goes around the world. Matter of fact, about 50% of the people who view my videos are in India. So I have a great Indian market. They're great people. I love their food. I have some Indian folks that are working with me right now and I always do. But as businesses reach their growth limits in domestic environment, the world will see more e-commerce brands expand to the global stage. And if you've got a physical product and it's not food, why not sell it worldwide? Why not do that? This going global movement is expected and echoed by consumers. In fact, a recent survey revealed that 76% of online shoppers have made purchases on a site outside of their countries. Let me repeat that. 76% of shoppers have made purchases on a site outside their own countries. That's huge. And I know I bought a bunch of stuff from China and you could have your opinions one way or another but you can get some good deals. Now, the real challenge is really trying to figure out how to go through these obstacles of foreign expansion. The path of international business expansion will not, will not be frictionless. It's going to be tough, okay? Inadequacies of funding for one. I could limit your growth in your companies. Where's my fancy girls in there? Let me see what she's doing. Let me see what she's doing. I saw a comment. I can't see it from my other screen here but I can pull it up on this screen here. She says, I had no Snapchat was still a thing. I had no idea she probably was what she means, still a thing. How exactly do we use this to market your products? Well, you can do it organically by just posting on there and getting your name out there. A lot of people do Snapchat. You can ask, actually run ads also to your Snapchat channel. There's all kinds of different things you could do there. And that's a great question. I appreciate you participating there. She participates. She's going to move forward. Those of you that don't participate, I'm telling you man it makes a big difference, really does. All you got to do is participate, makes a huge difference. Okay, let me get on with my list here real quick. So you got a plan. The way to plan forward is planning ahead to prepare for growth, okay? Besides competition and talent acquisition, it's an unfamiliar market for you when you go outside your global sphere or whatever that is. And it's going to post challenges to management. Cross border supply change could also be difficult for you, okay? So shipping stuff in some of these other countries can be difficult for you. But there's some easy ways around that too. There's many ways to grow a business apart from internet, let me get this word down, internationalization, that's actually a word now, internationalization. You can also work on product development and market penetration, you could do that. Regardless of the route that you take some considerations are pertinent. When will you expand? You got to plan this out. How will you do it? What resources will you need? There are serious questions to ponder and you got to really think about these things, but you're going to have to do it if you're going to survive. The next trend I'd like to talk about is conventional financing methods. We'll take a backseat. I know when we bought our house we got a little bit of a loan on it, not much, but I didn't turn any pay records in. I didn't turn any financial statements, nothing because I had the credit worthiness and I had enough cash. So I didn't have to go through a traditional lender. Alternative financing is gaining popularity among e-commerce companies also. Instead of taking out loans or trading equity for investors' money, many businesses now prefer other means of cash injection, such as revenue-based financing, revenue-based financing, okay, it's called RF, excuse me, RBF in inventory financing. The paradigm shift didn't happen for no reason. When asked about why they switched from loans to revenue-based financing, there's a company called Chaco Up. The company's clients shared the following views. Number one, bank loans are time-consuming to apply for. They take time, okay? So a lot of times we just don't want to deal with that. It's not something we want to do. They don't have eligible assets, okay? So maybe they don't have the cars or property to pledge as collateral for loans. Loan payments and repayments are fixed installments and they would put pressure on their company's cash flow. So they're trying different things. They factor accounts, they factor POs. Equity dilution is also a common concern among founders who didn't opt for angel investments or venture capital. After all, giving away part equity is very, very expensive. So you don't necessarily want to do that. So the challenge, weighing the pros and cons of alternative financing. There's a broad range of financial things you can do tailored to the needs of the new age business. They've emerged over the past few decades. E-commerce owners will need some time to familiarize themselves with these financing solutions. They can get complicated. For instance, in revenue-based financing, funding is not repaid in fixed installments. Did you know that? Did you know that? What it is though is revenue-based financing platforms will share a fixed percentage of your company's revenue until the sum is fully repaid. So this is something you may want to look into. If you've had a hard time getting loans or you need money from inventory or capital, these are both, I mean, they're pros and cons to this approach. On the plus side, repayment is flexible. You don't always have to pay the same amount. Yet your business must have recurring revenue in order to use revenue-based financing. These are some aspects to consider before choosing a financing solution for your company. There are companies out there, let's say you do a lot of credit cards, and they'll say, okay, we're gonna take 3% or 5% of your credit card sales every month, whatever that credit card sales is. So in a bad month, you don't pay much. In a big month, you're gonna pay a whole lot more. But that's one approach you can do. There are both pros and cons to all of this, depending what your business is like. Consider choosing a solution for your company that fits. If a traditional loan works, that's fine too, but you've gotta look at different ways of doing things. The way forward, really, exploring alternative financing solutions to fuel your business growth. Market research has shown. Now, this is as recent as 2021, and let me grab another comment there. I got a bunch of screens going on here. A bunch of screens going on. That was Fancy Empress. This is Paul. Paul, where you been, buddy? Learning to embrace changes is a key factor today to survive, have a great week going. And that is true. Embracing change is not just for business though, right? Embracing change is life, because I don't care where you live, what you do, whatever's going on, the weather's gonna change. The environment's gonna change. Your family dynamics are gonna change. You know, your clothing's gonna wear out. Your cars are gonna wear out. Everything changes, okay? And we gotta stop battling that change thing, because the only thing that is consistent in your life is change. I mean, that's it. And that's true for everybody. That people will say, well, I don't like the way my town's changing, or I don't like the way this person has changed. It's all gonna change. Get used to it. You don't have to like it. Market research showed that in 2021, QT, a quarter, second quarter alone, funding acquired by e-commerce companies worldwide totaled, get this, $16.8 billion. That's a five times increase compared to the same period in the prior year. Okay, people are doing things differently, a lot differently. Okay, and we've talked a little bit about advertising. We've talked about expanding your business, going into other countries. Now we're talking about some of the money. And I found an interesting quote. And I don't know if you've ever read this book, but it's called The Art of War. And there's also another good book I'll tell you about called The War of Art, which is really cool. And that's more business-like. But the Art of War says this, China's monumental treaties on warfare goes like this. Okay, and I think about this. Know the enemy and know yourself in a hundred battles you will never be imperiled. Let me say this again. This is from the book, The Art of War. Know the enemy and know yourself in a hundred battles you will never be imperiled. So what they're saying is a lot of people leave out the second part. They know who their enemy is. They know what the problem is, what the obstacle is in their business, but they don't know themselves and what they can do. So this 2,000 year old wisdom still applies in the business world today. Know yourself and your rivals or you risk losing the e-commerce battle. This constant education of yourself. You know, I've heard people say, well, you know what, I learned how to do something online. Well, that's great, but when did you last change it? Pluses will check out the rest of video later need to bounce for medical procedures. I hope you're doing okay, Paul. Blessings with you. I hope everybody in your family's okay. But guys, this constant learning, this constant education, this constantly figuring out what's new out there. I mean, I picked up a software called Cartra and I want to say 2016 or 17. I had been using everything under the sun. I had used constant contact. I'd used Aweber. I use, what's the monkey thing? Gosh, I can't think of it now. Darn, it always slips your mind when you're trying to figure it out in your life. Mailchimp, that's what it is, Mailchimp. I had used Mailchimp and then I used Infusionsoft and I wasn't really happy with any of those. And then along came Cartra and I will put a link to Cartra below and Cartra did everything all those things did. Plus, they did like eight times more because it had all kinds of softwares built in there that I was paying all this extra money for and I would highly recommend Cartra. If you're interested in a good digital marketing software, you're gonna wanna look below in the description after this video is posted because I have a link to Cartra. You don't have to put in your email. You don't have to credit Cartra or anything. Just click on the link and watch the video. If you like what you see, you can click and you can get Cartra for only $1 trial, I mean a dollar. So you probably would wanna check that out. But anyhow, so I started using Cartra and it freed me up from so many things because there's so many automations in there. It was so many ways for me to make money in there that I didn't know I could and it automated it all for me. So keep your mind open to this stuff just because you learned something just because you like something now doesn't mean there's not something better out there. Now I'm not saying change all your software every single year or anything like that because I will tell you it took us six months to move everything from infusion soft over to Cartra. I mean it was very time consuming. However, we got through that pain and now it makes us a lot more money. I use it, my wife uses it, most of my friends use it now but that's not to say if something great came along tomorrow and it was way better than what I'm using now that I wouldn't switch to it. I would, I would, I would do that because I'm constantly on the outlook for new and different ways to make money online. Is that what you're doing? When was the last time you stopped and you took a look at every single thing you did? How you're marketing, how you're advertising, what your social posts are? Look at all those things, look at your softwares and say to yourself, am I getting the results I want? Is that something I'm getting? I just hired a guy to do some SEO for our YouTube videos and I guess he'll be starting soon but he's gonna be doing that kind of stuff and see what he can do for us. If he does a good job, I'll give him a bunch of videos. I got 1300 videos on here so if he can do something on our videos, that's great. I hired another company to run some ads for us that came highly recommended through a friend. So I'm constantly looking at new things and I know how to do these things but I don't have the time to sit there and run my own ad campaigns. I just don't have time for it. I wanna create more content. I wanna make more videos for you guys and teach you guys this stuff rather than sit there on a daily basis and look at all the data. I want somebody else to do that. Yesterday I hired a guy, right? Put in a couple of ceiling fans, some light switches and stuff and people will say, well, can't you do that? I say, yeah, I've put him in. I've done all that stuff. Matter of fact, I had to give him some instruction because he didn't know what to do but that's okay. The point is that freed me up. I could pay him a few hundred bucks and that freed me up to go do something that could make me a whole lot more money to create content. He can't create content for me. I can do that. I can work on my marketing for my business. He couldn't do that but he could do the ceiling fan so it freed me up to do those other things. So guys, I just implore you to participate and stay on top of things. 2022 is gonna be, I don't wanna say game changer. Gotta hate that saying but goodness gracious, it's changing a lot and if you're not on top of things you're not doing the stuff you need. Man, I'm scared for you. I know in January I'm really excited I go on this cruise, the marketers cruise if you have ever been on it, go on it. Join me at it. It's called, I think the marketerscruise.com or something like that. But check it out. The guy that runs it is Captain Lou and if you're on the right page you're gonna see a guy with a captain's hat on me sitting behind the stage and things. It's really cool. Anyhow, check out the marketers cruise. I'm not an affiliate for it. I guess it could be but I'm not. So check that out too but that one at cruise I'm gonna meet a lot of people. I think there's about four or 500 people growing that cruise and they all do different things, right? But they all market online. That's the one consistent thing. So maybe I'll pick up something there. Maybe I can help somebody there. You know, that's a win for me. If I can go on a cruise and I've helped somebody out and their business increases, that's a win for me. It doesn't always have to be all about me and me doing better, okay? So when you go to these conferences, when you go to these meetings, when you do these things don't always think about what is in it for you. Think about what you could contribute to somebody else. How could you help somebody else improve their business, improve their lives, whatever it is you do. So that's what I got for you today, guys. Hope you enjoyed it. I'm gonna be live again. I think on Monday, let me just check here and see what's shaking on Monday. Let's see what's shaking on Monday. I know I've got some repair people coming on Monday but I didn't put them in the calendar so that's not cool. I think I did put the Tuesday one in there. Let me see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, the air conditioner guy's coming on Monday. That's right, to do the service of our split unit in the cat room. We have a cat room, separate room in our house for just the cats because I'm allergic to my wife's said cats for, gosh, I don't know, 15 years or something like that. But anyhow, so I'm gonna be booked up on Monday with him. However, I will take time out to jump on here at 10 a.m. live and talk to you guys and help you out. I wanna thank you so much for attending today. Those of you who put comments in, I really appreciate it. Don't forget to subscribe. Hit that subscribe button, turn it from red to gray. Don't forget to ring the bell. Turn on all bell notifications so that you're notified every time I go live or if I upload a video. And that thumbs up helps a lot too. Even if you're not watching this live, even if you can still put comments below the video, you can still ask me questions. You guys know if you've asked me any questions or you've put any comments, I answer them, I personally answer all of them. And if you need help with something, I'll help you with it. You just wanna say hi, I really appreciate that too. Guys, thank you so much for being here. I will see you in the next video on Monday morning. Talk to you later.