Josh Hadley 4:45
I love that and I know we talked prior to hitting the record button, and you know, you shared with me kind of a document that you had shared and previously presented at a mastermind group. And you talk about there are only three ways to really grow a business, right? And just to reiterate what you talked about, number one, that’s to increase the number of customers. Number two, increase the value per transaction. And third, increase the frequency of transactions or increase, you know, their repeat purchases from you. So, I’m interested Mitch, to maybe hear your kind of thoughts and perspectives in terms of like, how, how could that apply to an E commerce business? And what are some different strategies that you think people could implement in order to increase the number of customers and ultimately, those repeat purchases as well? Sure.
Mitch Russo 5:36
So the basics are very simple. I mean, you need more customers? Well, how do you get more customers, you need more people to see what you’re offering? Well, how do you do that? Well, you could spend money on advertising, that works, no problem. Maybe it works. I mean, you don’t even know what works specifically. But, you know, if you throw a certain amount of money at advertising, and some of it works and exceeds what you spend on the ads, then you might think of that as at least being somewhat successful. Well, that’s fine, except what I prefer to do is I prefer to do it for free. I prefer to attract clients to my brands at no cost, or little cost. And the way to do that is with publicity. Now, when I started TimeSlips Corporation, I was, you might say an e-commerce seller because I was selling a physical product, which happened to be software. Back then we actually manufactured software, with machines and created discs and books and shrink wrapped and put them in boxes and shipped them to stores and they were purchased on shelves or or sold through mail order. So same basic theory applies. Well I built TimeSlips Corporation almost entirely on PR. And so what I do now, and when I work with my clients, I help them understand the mechanisms or the triggers that they can pull to increase effective communication and at the same time exposure. So one of those ways is to simply be on more podcasts like we’re doing today. Podcast guesting is, is not something where you show up on a show you talk, you offer your product, and boom, your sales go up. Josh, I’m sure is you know, and you’ve been on many shows yourself, it could take 30-40 different exposures before you see any actual results. And the good news, though, is that if you’re doing 30, or 40 shows in a short period of time, like six months or less, then it will build over time too because podcasts are evergreen. And so I have a strategy for podcast guesting that’s very effective. And I have a document that I created, which I gave you access to Josh that you can share with your listeners, which would allow people to follow the format that I lay out in this document and present to a variety of shows where you could be a guest. Now the single misconception about podcast guesting is, hey, I need to be an authority in order to be on a show, well, maybe. But you just need to be an authority and the thing you already are an authority in. So I mean, if you sell lollipops, and you’re an authority and lollipops, and now you have more knowledge about your industry, then you may even realize, so we call that unconscious competence. If you have unconscious competence, and you start talking about it, people are going to know very quickly that you’re actually a pretty smart person. And you have a lot of experience in this very narrow area, which you thought initially maybe didn’t apply to others, but in turn in those terms, it actually does. So my suggestion would be to download the free giveaway that I provided you. And inside there are directories, there are several listed, I think one of them is out of date, but the others are all working. And you could download these directories or you could apply and create a profile online for free or for $5. And now people can find you if they’re looking for speakers on your topic. Conversely, you could open up those same directories and look for shows that you would be a good fit for. And then you use the form that I provided in that download, to apply to be on that show, highlight the areas that you’re skilled in, and we’d like to talk about and what you have as a benefit to the podcast hosts in terms of promoting the show as well. So that’s just one technique.
Josh Hadley 9:26
I love that. So just as Mitch talked about, he does have a free super valuable PDF that he’s sharing with everybody. It’s a free e-book, okay? And it’s called, you know, profit stacking, right? And it’s your profit stacking secrets, how you can supercharge your authority and attract a flood of customers all for free. And so I will link that in the show notes for everybody to go get a copy of that, but I can’t encourage people enough to go take advantage of that. Now, Mitch, I want to kind of double down on that, because I love what you just talked about there. We, I asked you the question like, okay, so I’m an e-commerce business, I’m selling physical products. How do I increase my number of customers? The immediate thing that I think comes to everybody’s mind is, well, I need to start doing Facebook advertising, maybe do some TikTok ads now need to do some Google the list goes on and on ad after ad. Hmm. I love that you immediately went to PR, free publicity. Right. And one of the secrets with that is, you know, specifically you called out podcasting. So with that, Mitch, I’m curious if we can maybe run through like a hypothetical situation. And maybe there’s a couple hypothetical situations we can provide. Let’s say we’ve got an e-commerce brand. And let’s say they’re, they’re selling Christmas greeting cards as an example, or just greeting cards in general. What are ways if that’s a brand that you’re working with as a client, and they want to increase their PR and getting on podcast? I think it’s self-evident to most people that hey, if I’m an influencer, and I’m a business coach, right, I should go on to podcast and showcase my expertise. What if I’m just a designer? And I’ve just designed some beautiful greeting cards or birthday cards for somebody? How would that apply? For somebody in that situation?
Mitch Russo 11:25
Well, you said just the designer, I assume you’re saying a designer and someone who sells the physical cards as well as that, right? Yeah, okay. Okay, good. So if I were to open up any of the directories that I linked to, in my guide, one of the first things I would look for are Christmas shows or holiday shows, and see who is talking about that in the holiday space. The other thing I would do is I would look for shows on art, I would look for shows where the host is talking about art, creating art, selling art, growing an art based business, I would talk on those shows as well. The third thing is, is I would talk about people who are already selling art, or look for shows where you talk about marketing your art, which is different as well. And there again, there’s probably a whole nother group of shows out there, there are over 2 million podcasts listed overall in on Apple podcasts. And even if you did nothing else, and just went to Apple podcasts, and started going through the list by category, even if you’re creating, designing and selling greeting cards, you will find shows that I think we’d be happy to have you speak.
Josh Hadley 12:33
I love that. And then for the listeners of those shows, do you feel like that like just kind of repeated exposure of hearing your brand name leads to you know, more customers that end up going to your business, you know, and purchasing those products, because, you know, if you go to a show, and it’s talking about, you know, how to market your, your products, right, and your creative designs and how to monetize those, do you feel like still those end users and the people listening to that podcast are still the target audience that would say, oh, yeah, I want to go, you know, check out some cute greeting cards or something like that.
Mitch Russo 13:11
Hard to tell. And the only way to, you know, the only way to really know is to try it, you know, that’s the solution to all problems in the software space, is we don’t know if it’s going to work. Let’s try it. And it really comes to receiving the solution to all marketing as well. We don’t know if that’s gonna work. Let’s try it. So try it a few times, maybe there’s an angle that you haven’t thought of that you will think of. When you get on the show, maybe the host will ask you a question that opens up a whole area for you to discuss that would be very valuable and very attractive to listeners. Now, keep in mind, as an e-commerce providers and e-commerce reseller, your brand is less important than your products. Ultimately, you can build a brand. But truthfully, what you really want to do is you want transactions. So even on a show like that, if they list your website, if you’re able to describe what you do, and some of the fun things that you’ve created, and how they’re for different occasions, and how you can go to the site, and get ideas for person for presence or gifts. I mean, all of these are ways to boost your authority with those particular listeners. And at the same time, when someone comes to the site, don’t just show them a card, show them reasons and how to use that card to increase their community, increase the connection with the people that they love, or more importantly, to get them to buy. So there’s lots of reasons why. So if I wouldn’t, right now, if I were in the, you know, if I were just browsing and found a Christmas card website, I would pass it by why? Because at this moment in time when we’re speaking we’re not in Christmas or even near Christmas. But if I broadened my offerings to greeting cards, or even holiday greeting cards, I would then have more people to speak with. At hand if all you did was create and sell Christmas greeting cards might make sense to look for a company, a larger company, maybe Hallmark would like to purchase or license your drawings, your brands, your designs.
Josh Hadley 15:11
I love that. Lots of great ideas and strategies super valuable. Mitch. My next question is you talked about podcasting as a way to increase free PR. What are some other ways that an e-commerce brand could increase their PR outreach outside of podcasts?
Mitch Russo 15:31
Okay, what I did, and we had worked very, very effectively, and still does a press releases. Now, you might say, well, Mitch, everybody, you know, everybody has products. I mean, why would they print my press release? Well, there’s a reason why they would number one, you live somewhere, well, maybe your local paper would be interested in what the local residents are doing. And so a press release, even reprinted in a local paper, will get you free publicity. To go one step further, find an angle that works and connect it to the news. So if there’s, you know, something going on in the news, and you could figure out a way to connect your product to that. I mean, it would be fantastic. Then, the news organizations would pick it up. So let’s describe for a second, most people don’t realize this. The people who write stories for publication are generally never employees of the publication. They are, in fact, freelancers. And what are they doing is they’re searching for stories that they could write and sell to publications who are hungry for stories and willing to pay? Well, what happens if you did that work for them? You think they’d like you? They would, right? So how about you write the story for them? How about you describe a unique angle that maybe they didn’t think of? Maybe you’re a black-owned business, a female-owned business? Maybe you know, you’ve got the idea while traveling through the tropics, I mean, it doesn’t matter. Find an angle and write about it. And if you could connect it to, to local, or you could connect it to our current times or current events, even better.
Josh Hadley 17:08
Yeah, I love that. I’m even thinking, you know, with ChatGPT. Now, I mean, how easy is that to have a whole article written up real quick, right. And then you can over you know, look over that tweak and refine some of the wording in there and really, like hand deliver it with a bow to these people that are, you know, creating these articles and getting them out into the media. Right. Now. I know that, you know, everybody that’s kind of, there’s a lot of noise as well. Right. So the major publications are constantly getting bombarded with a press release after press release from organizations, whether it be like myself, or many of the other 1000s of businesses out there. So how do you differentiate yourself and actually get the attention of some of these bigger, you know, agencies and news outlets?
Mitch Russo 18:03
That it’s actually a very insightful question. And here’s why. You’re right, the world is flooded with press releases, if you go online, you can see directories of thousands of press releases. On the other hand, what no one typically doesn’t, which really helped me a lot when I was doing this is I would look at the press releases already out there. Or I look at the news stories already out there. And I figure out who is actually responsible for those stories, not always, but generally, you will find that the same person is creating a lot of this content. And I would bypass the whole press release cycle at first, and get in touch with those writers and say, Hey, I noticed that you’ve been writing about XYZ, I’m in that space. I’ve been in that space for seven years, we have extensive experience in that space, I just want to let you know that I have a new product coming out. And I’d love to talk to you about it or maybe show it to you. Or maybe if you’d like to send you a sample and see what you think. Now what you’re doing, obviously, is you’re building a relationship with a writer, well, that writer already has clout and influence at a publication, Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been in that publication over and over again. So you still might need a press release, and still might be a good idea. But now instead, what you’ve done is you’ve sort of opened the secret door behind the press release mechanism, and actually built a personal connection with someone of influence at the publication. Now you may say, well, Mitch, this takes a lot of time, and I’d rather just place a Facebook ad. And to this, if you have the money to do that. Go ahead. I didn’t have the money. When I built TimeSlips Corporation. I had a total marketing budget of $10,000. And I wasted it on the wrong thing. In the first 30 days of opening the business. I was so naive. I thought if I spent it on one ad, it would skyrocket the business and we’d be you know, the size of IBM tomorrow. Well, it didn’t quite work that way. And instead after I lost all that money, that’s when I really learned that I had to learn how to market how to produce a impact in the marketplace, how to find these people and pitch them, and then get them to write about me and my products. That
Josh Hadley 20:13
is a brilliant strategy. And I love you know, there’s two things there are two takeaways for me. Number one, is learning through experience, like you said, you know, you’ve kind of spent $10,000 on a single ad, hoping it would revolutionize your business. But then it brought you back to reality, and you didn’t give up, right. And you started to think more creatively, which I think ended up opening a lot more doors and opportunities for you. And so I think like, that’s a whole other tangent of like, just never giving up and understanding like, there’s a higher power. And, you know, if one door closes, another door will open. But only if you keep moving forward, and you keep knocking, and you keep trying. So I love that aspect of it. But I also love the brilliance of doing the work that most people are not willing to do. Most people only want the easy button, they only want to create an ad and they just want to click the buttons like alright, publish my ad on Facebook to millions of people now, right? That’s the easy button. In my opinion, the hard work is how do you go build a meaningful relationship with somebody that takes time, and you’re gonna have to do a lot of grunt work, and you’re gonna get a lot of nos. But if you can establish a relationship, it can open up a whole new world of opportunity for you. So, Mitch, I’m curious, like, how do you identify those individuals? And how would you recommend reaching out to them in today’s day and age? Well,
Mitch Russo 20:13
again, it’s just so easy now. I mean, you have a browser, so you open up your browser, and you just start searching your category. I mean, if you were to do a search on Google, even and simply place the topic of your product, in that search, you’re gonna get out hundreds of thousands of results. Well, now you just need to do a little bit of a human search through those results in find the topics that fit your brand and your products the best. And then you could dig even further and find out who is producing that content. And more, again, more importantly, who is very much specialized in what you do, and contact them. It’s basically the same process over and over again.
Josh Hadley 22:29
Awesome. Easy enough. Mitch, is there any other advice, tips or recommendations that you would give to an e-commerce brand that is looking to grow their influence in and customer base through PR?
Mitch Russo 22:44
Well, another thing that has worked for me that I was very successful with is finding other brands that are adjacent to mine. So if I sell greeting cards for Christmas, and another company sells Christmas decorations, I might approach them and say, why don’t we do a list swap? Why don’t we put a footer at the bottom of our emails for each other when we send out our marketing and promotional messages. And now what you’re doing and that person is gonna go well, why not? I mean, I might earn an affiliate commission, if somebody buys, and it’s not taking away from, you know, my customer, what they would buy. And I would also at the same time, do that for my partner. And together, we can, you know, probably grow this business, well, you might be able to do that with two or three or four people at the same time, you might be able to even figure out ways to create products that help your partner, and not only help them sell but be more attractive to their audience. So joint ventures are a big part of my life today and have always been an in the guide that I shared with you the profit stacking secrets guide, I talk about all three of these, and that’s free. So if you want to, there’s all the information you need, and templates and in some cases, directories on how to do this, and when to do it, where to do it and why to do it as well goes back to the three things we talked about, right? How do you get more customers? How do you get higher transactions? And how do you get more transactions?
Josh Hadley 24:18
Yeah, I love that. So you’ve got three actionable ways, right? To really help people explode their growth. You’ve got that ebook. And so I recommend people again, it’ll be in the show notes. So go click that link and grab a copy of that free eBook. Thanks, Mitch, I would be remiss if I don’t ask this question. You’ve you’ve built a or you authored a book that was all about craving, ultimately, a raving fan base, right of people that would purchase certifications become to become part of one of those members. Now, I know that that would, you know, can be used in coaching and different things like that. But I think it’s very analogous to, you know, creating a raving base have fans that enjoy your products if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur selling physical products. So I’m curious, Mitch, like, what recommendations and advice would you lend to somebody that is trying to grow a raving fan base. And ultimately, I think that hits your third point of increasing the repeat purchases from somebody.
Mitch Russo 24:18
Right? Right. So and this, again, is going to be a little bit uncomfortable for people to hear, because it takes work. And that work is to communicate. So if you’re the CEO of your company, in my opinion, and this is something that I, I use as a structure when coaching is that you’re really only responsible for two things, just two things, you’re responsible for creating and communicating, everything else should be delegated. So if you as a CEO are not effectively creating things to sell to market, then you are a failure as the CEO, if you are not effectively communicating every day to everyone in your audience, I don’t mean literally sending out an email every day, but communicating to your audiences, to your constituents to your employees, then you will not be effective as a CEO. Most CEOs are introverts, I can’t say as a category, but a lot of them are. And I think it’s uncomfortable to get out there and communicate. But it’s so important, particularly if you’re selling to a base of people that are scattered all over the world, and who don’t buy from you every day or every week. So the way to do that is continuously communicate, be creative, find new ways to do that. Now, with tools like ChatGPT, there’s no reason not to basically create a blizzard of great content that you can then use to tell your story, to share your product ideas to help people maybe even create a reseller network from your existing customers. Why not send an email said, Hey, do you like my stuff? Would you like to sell it to your friends and family members for a commission? Meeting so many different ways that you can communicate? By the way that’s being creative? You just thought of something? Great. Now go and check it out. And what did I say before? How do you know something’s gonna work or not? You don’t. So what do you do? You test it. Let’s test it.
Josh Hadley 27:14
I love that. So is your recommendation to encourage people like, you know, is email marketing, right to create that raving fan base and just continuing to communicate your message to your subscribers? Are there any other strategies to like, have somebody that’s just a raving fan of your brand?
Mitch Russo 27:34
Well, I mean, I’m not a fan of, of TikTok, because it’s not my generation, number one. Number two, I’m not really happy with the idea that a foreign government is harvesting that data. But TikTok happens to work very well, for building a fan base. On a secondary level. YouTube, many people have built huge businesses, by creating content and sharing it on YouTube, and then sharing that content outside of YouTube and get drawing people to your channel. So if you are out there, and you’re creative, and you’re and you’re creating content, and you’re communicating, make videos, do it live, if you want to send them as an email, you could do that too. Right? And remember, Josh, we haven’t even talked about spending money yet. Right? Does everything we talked about is basically free. So you could do all these things without having to spend much money at all. I mean, truthfully, if you instead of wasting money on ads, you take that same amount of money and put it towards a little more professional production of the videos that you create. That might be a bigger lift than any ads, you can run. Unless you’re unless you have a huge budget. Unless you’re carpet bombing America with your ads. You’re not going to be as effective as simply increasing the quality of what it is you already put out.
Josh Hadley 28:48
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I love that. Yeah, there are so many platforms out there, it’s kind of would you tell people to like really hone in on a single platform, instead of going broad? At least to begin with?
Mitch Russo 29:02
Well, I think you have to find your platform. You know, for different people. It’s different platforms. For some people, it’s Facebook, for others, it’s LinkedIn, for others, it’s tick tock, and YouTube. I mean, find your platform, it may mean that you’re scattered a bit at first, but that’s okay. Find where you resonate or who with that platform resonates with you, and then focus on that. And that’s really the best way to do it. Because it doesn’t really matter what the platform is, as long as people are watching, by the way for e-commerce folks. Pinterest might be the best platform of all. I am not a Pinterest user or or I don’t really have a Pinterest board or channel or whatever, because it’s not the thing I do. But for people who sell physical products. Pinterest might be amazing. Yeah.
Josh Hadley 29:50
And Amazon announced their partnership with Pinterest. And so expanding Amazon’s ads on Pinterest. I think there’s an obvious reason you know, why Amazon is doing that it because obviously it’s being successful for other sellers that have been creating Pinterest ads and trying to create an audience there. So I love that. Mitch, I’m also curious, going back to, you know, one of the books that you have authored the invisible organization, what are some of the high level like takeaways that you would share with our e-commerce entrepreneurs and CEOs that are looking to establish their business and grow their team? Right, they probably got to seven figures with just a couple of team members. But in order to get to eight figures and beyond, they’re going to need to scale their team. So how do people do that in a virtual world without not necessarily needing to open up an office space? Sure.
Mitch Russo 30:49
Well, that book was written in 2013-14 era. And so that book was written about my experience in scaling a 300-person organization completely, virtually, and running it from a spare bedroom in my house at the time with Tony Robbins. And I don’t mean that Tony was in the bedroom with me, I mean, that Tony was a partner in that business with Chet and I, and Chet and I, both the operators from our homes. So I was able to run that business for two very important reasons. Number one, is because we understood our expense structure. So we actually had no capital equipment. And I realized that may not apply to some of the listeners on this show, you may need capital equipment in order to manufacture what you do. But I suspect not many of you probably get your stuff from China. But nonetheless, what we focused on in that book, more importantly, is how to lead a virtual organization. Leadership is key when making and building a virtual company. In the old days, if you had a physical company, there used to be something called MB wa management by walking around. Now, when I when I built a software company out 100 employees, every single day three, four times a day I get get my butt off out of my chair, and I walked the whole facility, I’d walk all through tech support, all through customer service all through the sales department. I’d stop and listen to calls I chat with people. Why? Because I want them to know that I cared I want them to know that I’m listening. So well. How do you do that in a completely virtual company, you have to over communicate. And when I say over communicate, what it really means is that you’re communicating at the right level, it feels like you’re over communicating, because you’re not used to communicating as often. So what does that look like in today’s world? Well, that that might be a WhatsApp group, or that might be a Slack channel. Or that might be a daily email broadcast, or that might be an open office period every single week, where anyone in the company can sort of tune in, ask questions. That might be pizza day, where you call a puppet, Geno’s, and send pizza to everybody in your organization, even if they’re not with anywheres. near you. There’s all different ways to continuously stay top of mind with the people in your organization and show that you care and show your leadership. Yeah,
Josh Hadley 33:08
I think that’s a great recommendation. And again, it goes back to that, like, overall communication is key. As a CEO, especially with your team, you can’t just hire somebody and say, well, they’re digital marketing experts that they’re going to just they’re going to, you know, everything they touch is going to turn to gold. You need to have constant communication with them one on one meetings and continuing to provide them with guidance. And there’s so many strategies that we could go into in terms of how to effectively communicate your visions and goals. And you know, what things need to be accomplished this week, and month and quarter, overall, and we’ll save that for another time. Sure. But, Mitch, this has been a super valuable episode. Is there anything else that we haven’t talked about that you would love to leave our guests to help them scale their e-commerce businesses to eight figures?
Mitch Russo 34:00
Well, the other thing that most people will run into in an e-commerce business is is I guess, you might call product burnout, meaning you sell a product, maybe you have one product to start with, and you sell it to pick a number of 1000 people. But then you say, Well, okay, I have to now find that 1001 person or 1002 person, but instead, why not get more products, you already know those 1000 people. So constantly be looking for products that are complementary to your market. And by the way, with a little bit of forethought, you can build a brand around what it is that you create by keeping a product mix in that same category. So if you’re selling shoes one day, and then you’re selling pants the next day, well, okay, that’s fine. You’re in the clothing space. But if you’re selling one type of shoe one day another type of shoe the second day then you become a specialist in selling shoes. People will want to check in with you and see what new shoes you have before they make a purchase. So there’s lots of ways to Stay on top. And by the way, it goes back to communicating right? Create creating new products and communicating. So what did I say before the role of the CEO is to create and communicate, there you go.
Josh Hadley 35:09
I love it, it all comes full circle there, create and communicate. Now, Mitch, as we leave this episode, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from each episode. Here are the three actionable takeaways that I noted. Let me know if you think I’m missing something. Number one, grow the number of customers that you have for your business. By implementing some free PR tactics that Mitch shared with us on this episode, there was podcasting, there was reaching out to news agencies, even local news agencies, and getting your press releases in their hands. And then third, he also talked about doing joint ventures with complementary, you know, brands in the same space that offers similar but related products, and maybe create some type of affiliate structure and email sharing with those to increase the number of customers that you have. Action Item number two, is just what you talked about, I think that most CEOs need to take a step back and ask themselves the question, How am I creating and how am I communicating in my business? And I’ll double down and say that as the CEO, you one of the biggest things you touched on it, Mitch was creating new products on a regular basis. Because if you just continue to rely on what was selling well, five years ago, I promised the market is going to shift, and there’s going to be an increased amount of competition. And slowly but surely, that product is going to fall into decline mode. So if you’re not actively creating new, you will just continue to have attrition with your existing products. Yep, action item number three, this was probably one of my favorite, like little hacks and golden nuggets that you shared, but it was take your existing email list that you have, and why don’t you communicate out to them and see who have that list would love to be an evangelist for your brand. And maybe they become an affiliate of your brand. And so rather than thinking, Hey, I’ve got to go find all these Instagram or Tiktok influencers to work with? Why don’t you first start with your list of subscribers that have been following you and ask them to promote your products and you start giving them a cut that in turn creates an even more loyal fan base of people that have already purchased your product. And now they’re evangelizing your brand at the same time. So I love that action item and gold nugget there. Mitch, is there anything? You think that I missed? I think you got it all.
Mitch Russo 37:40
That’s great.
Josh Hadley 37:41
Awesome. All right, Mitch, my favorite three questions I like to ask each guests. We’ll start from the top number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read? And why?
Mitch Russo 37:50
Okay, well, it’s gonna maybe be a surprise, because it’s not a business book. It’s a book by Paulo Coelho called The Alchemist. For me at the time I read it, and the meaning that it brought into my life helped me understand myself even better. And I was able to take action after reading that book. And it made a huge impact on me. So I highly recommend that book. If you’re looking for a business book, I read many, many business books. The last one that I read that was impactful, for me is called the most Your Most Important Number by Lee Benson. And this is for people who really focus in on getting their business right to really focus in on maximizing profitability and operations. It’s, it’s probably not for the solo entrepreneur, although there’s lots you can learn by reading it. It’s better for a company that has a few people, it has an operating budget, and more importantly, has multiple initiatives going on at the same time. I think you’ll enjoy that book.
Josh Hadley 38:48
Those are two great recommendations. Thanks for sharing that Mitch. Sure. Next question, what is your favorite productivity or maybe a new software tool that you’ve been using that you think is a game changer?
Mitch Russo 38:59
Well, again, I can’t give you one, I probably got to give you a few. So take them all. All right. Well, the first and probably the most significant one to me recently has been ChatGPT they know it’s I hate to jump on the bandwagon there. But it’s been a game changer for many of the things that I’ve done. And every day, I feel like I’m surprised by what it’s capable of doing. Someone asked me to outline for them an entire course or program on a particular topic. And I started doing it manually. So wait a second, why did I just ask ChatGPT to do it. And not only did it do it faster, obviously it it did it more comprehensively than I could have even done myself. I then filled in some of the missing pieces and made it more substantial, but it was shocking how much and how quickly it delivered it. The other piece for me has been Notion I don’t know if you’ve heard of Notion before. Notion has been a game changer. Notion has the ability have created templates and share them, you can create courses and Notion. It’s really an amazingly versatile, powerful tool. So highly recommend you get the free version and start playing around with it. It’s really, really fantastic. And then the third piece, which is the product I created called Clientfolio, as a coach, I have to have a very highly efficient platform to work from. And I couldn’t find one, so I had to build it myself.
Josh Hadley 40:23
Excellent. Those are wonderful tools so much we could dive into there. Now, last question here, Mitch, who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space? And why? Well, again,
Mitch Russo 40:35
It’s gonna sound like an obvious answer. My favorite person in the e-commerce space is Jeff Bezos. I mean, demand has created the industry basically. And while excuse me, while people don’t see him on a daily basis as the mover and shaker he, he was if you look at the platform every day, as I’m sure most of us do, you’ll see innovative techniques and ideas you’ll see, you’ll see Amazon implementing AI in how you shop, which is unbelievable, and I find it’s an incredible source of, of, of inspiration to me all the time, as is Jeff.
Josh Hadley 41:14
Totally agree. Now, Mitch, if people want to follow you in your journey, want to learn more about what you have to offer. Where can people find you at? Well,
Mitch Russo 41:21
the easiest places to go to Mitch Russo 360. mitchrusso360.com, and there you’ll find all my websites, all my products, all my books.
Josh Hadley 41:31
Excellent. And as a another double down on the Profit Stacking Secrets e-book that he shared with us that will be linked in the show notes. You can learn how to increase your PR and outreach through the excellent strategies he shared on the podcast today. Mitch, thank you so much for your time today.
Mitch Russo 41:49
My pleasure, Josh, take care.
Outro 41:52
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