This One Simple Trick Will Turn Your Customers Into Obsessed Superfans with Kris Dehnert

Kris Dehnert, he is the owner of Dugout Mugs, Bigg Golf, and Dehnert Media, and has been a digital entrepreneur since 2006 where he leveraged the power of a “new site” called Facebook to revolutionize the gym industry. Since then, he boasts over $70M in online sales, is a 3 time Inc. 5000 finalist, made the cover of Tampa Bay Business and Wealth Magazine, been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur Fast 50. Seen on CBS Morning, FOX & Friends, World News Tonight & Good Morning America!

Highlight Bullets

> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

Kris Dehnert’s entrepreneurial journey and background in digital marketing.
The significance of understanding and defining the target customer base.
Strategies for building a loyal customer base and community engagement.
The importance of creativity in product development and innovation.
Effective marketing strategies, including the use of tripwires and upsells.
Leveraging technology and tools for customer relationship management and marketing.
The role of data segmentation in understanding customer behavior and preferences.
Insights on collaboration and partnerships within the e-commerce space.
The impact of perspective on business decisions and personal fulfillment.
Emphasizing long-term vision and happiness in entrepreneurship.

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley engages with Kris Dehnert, CEO of Dugout Mugs. Kris shares his journey from digital marketing to achieving over $70 million in online sales. He emphasizes the importance of understanding your core customer, nurturing relationships, and leveraging innovative marketing strategies. Kris discusses building a loyal customer base, effective use of technology, and creative product development. He also highlights the significance of long-term vision and personal fulfillment in entrepreneurship. This episode offers valuable insights for 6-7 figure business owners aiming to scale to 8 figures and beyond.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

Deeply Understand Your Customers to Drive Sales
1. Conduct regular surveys and analyze customer data to identify purchase patterns and unmet needs.
2. Segment your audience based on demographics and behavior to personalize marketing efforts.
3. Implement tripwire offers and upsells to maximize customer lifetime value.
Leverage Innovation and Collaboration for Growth
1. Continuously seek customer feedback to improve and expand product offerings.
2. Partner with complementary brands and explore affiliate marketing to lower customer acquisition costs.
3. Test new product ideas on a small scale, iterate based on feedback, and scale successful innovations.
Prioritize Long-Term Vision and Work-Life Balance
1. Set long-term business goals that align with your values and contribute to personal fulfillment.
2. Balance daily tasks between immediate revenue generation and future growth initiatives.
3. Focus on creating meaningful relationships with customers and partners to sustain long-term success.

Resources mentioned in this episode:
Here are the mentions with timestamps arranged by topic:

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

Episode Sponsor

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

Transcript Area

Josh Hadley 00:00:00 Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interviewed the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Michael Gerber, author of The E-myth, and Steven Pope from My Amazon Guy. Today, I’m speaking with Kris Dehnert, the CEO of Dugout Mugs, and it is a one of a kind gift for baseball fans. Their flagship product, the Dugout Mug, is is the barrel of a baseball bat, and it’s a drinking mug as well. And it is considered one of the most unique premium gifts in the entire baseball industry. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough, where I specialize in investing in and scaling seven figure e-commerce brands to eight figures and beyond. If you’re an ambitious e-commerce entrepreneur looking for a coach or mentor who can help you take your business to the next level, I bring hands on experience, strategic insights, and the resources needed to fuel your growth. So if you or someone you know is ready to scale looking for that coach or mentor, reach out to me directly at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough dot com.

Josh Hadley 00:00:49 That’s e-comm with two M’s. And let’s turn your dreams into reality today. I am super excited to introduce you all to Kris Denner. He is the owner of Dugout Mugs Big Golf and Media and he has been a digital entrepreneur since 2006, where he leveraged the power of a new site at the time called Facebook to revolutionize the gym industry. Since then, he boasts over $70 million in online sales. He is a three time Inc 5000 finalist, and he’s made the cover of Tampa Bay Business and Wealth magazine. He’s been featured in Forbes and Entrepreneur Fast 50. He’s also been seen on CBS morning, Fox and Friends, World News Tonight, and Good Morning America. So with that introduction, welcome to the show, Kris.

Kris Dehnert 00:01:25 Thanks, dude. It makes me feel kind of special. I didn’t you know, I don’t ever hear it all bunched together like, that’s pretty awesome.

Josh Hadley 00:01:31 Then you’re like, hey, this dude’s pretty cool. I want to get listening to that. Wait. That’s me. That’s me.

Josh Hadley 00:01:35 Well, Kris, you actually, you’ve done some pretty incredible stuff. You and I met at a board of advisors. Yeah. Mastermind event. And immediately I was like, all right, this dude’s doing cool stuff. I’m trying to do cool stuff. We need to, we need to have some conversations. And,

Kris Dehnert 00:01:48 Here we are.

Josh Hadley 00:01:49 Up to this point. So, Kris, you’ve got some wicked smart tactics that we’re going to be sharing with the audience today knowing that a lot of our listeners are ecommerce brand owners. They’ve already hit seven figures, primarily on Amazon. They’re looking to make a shift to be more omnichannel, have success through email or have success on DTC, or even break into retail and things like that. Kris, what’s a quick gold nugget that we can maybe get people salivating at what else you have to offer, and then we’ll dive into your backstory and what brought you to where you are today.

Kris Dehnert 00:02:15 Well, I think it’s kind of relevant to their industry, right? The industry, the product and who their, you know, core customer is because like, everything’s changing, e-commerce always changing.

Kris Dehnert 00:02:23 And I think, I mean, back when I started, you know, direct to consumer or I’m sorry. Yeah. Like DTC, the print on demand world like that doesn’t even exist the way it used to. So I don’t know if there’s a golden nugget, particularly outside of always be learning. Right. And and you know, it’s not a tactic. But what I always tell people is constantly be reflecting. Because if you’re if you’re always aware of your like, true north, then you’ll know if what you’re doing is effective. Does that make sense? Like, yeah, I think that’s probably the advice that I wish more people gave more people is, is understand what a win is for you and what are your metrics. You know, like that’s to me, these are the golden nuggets that helped transform my world is its perspective. You know, you know my backstory a little bit. So perspective is a big deal. And so I’m always trying to, reflect more on what’s happening and realize that how we approach that is the tactic.

Kris Dehnert 00:03:08 You know?

Josh Hadley 00:03:09 Yeah, I think that that is an important like I think it’s an important frame as we dive into your backstory, too, because it is all about having perspective, and it’s all about having like your true north and like, what is it that you set out to do when you originally began your e-commerce journey? Right. And a lot of us get caught up in the numbers, and especially as you attend conferences and you hear this dude throwing out this number and it’s like, oh, how do I compete with that and all of that? And it’s like, yeah, but there’s a plan for you. There’s a place for you. There’s a reason why you’re learning what you’re learning in your life right now, which I think like when you when, when you have that in your mind, it adds a whole nother layer of like perspective, as you mentioned, and sense of accomplishment and joy just as we go through the journey. So, Kris, let’s dive in. Like, why don’t you walk us through like, your journey in e-commerce, like you’ve been in digital marketing since really like digital marketing was a thing and Facebook was a thing.

Josh Hadley 00:03:55 So yeah, I mean, tell us more about that.

Kris Dehnert 00:03:57 It’s crazy. You know, when I think back. So I was, I was kind of unemployable. Right? You know, I wanted to do things my way. And nobody ever really wants that. As a as a manager owner, especially the bad ones, they want it to be done their way. And I was in the gym industry. I’ll fast forward to that. But I was in the gym industry and it was just 1 to 1. I was just selling stuff, right? Selling gym memberships. How could I do this more effectively, more efficiently to more people? And Facebook had just come out and it was like 2006, 2007, and I found a way to just communicate with people online to bring them into the facility. And I think I was top sales for 18 months in a row, and which which got me into the general management role. And I was the GM of a club at 21 years old, you know, for like 40 employees at 21, you know, it’s crazy.

Kris Dehnert 00:04:36 but, you know, I did that for a handful of years. And then I realized that, you know, the owner’s not going to step aside and give me the place. So I had to kind of venture off and went into real estate. And that’s where I got into I kind of got into social media. I was I had a real estate coaching program where we in 2008, if you think about that. So what it actually was is we were buying and flipping short sales, so it kind of was a good time for that. And but through social media, I was from a social standpoint, I was more influential than all of the I mean, the guys I’m not going to call them out because I ended up being clients of mine afterwards. But the guys with the TV shows and all this other and I was further along than they were online, like, what is this kid doing? Right? And that led me into my first agency to where I was just doing what I was doing for them, you know, five, eight, ten clients at, you know, anywhere from 6 to $10,000 a month.

Kris Dehnert 00:05:17 That’s good money. It’s really good money. And so that was my first agency, and I started collecting fan pages along the way. And at one point we had like 6 or 7 million fans on Facebook back and forth. They throttled everything, right. And there was a print on demand t shirt company that came out was called Teespring. some people remember it, some don’t, but some on this call probably do. So I was the guy that brought Teespring to the market back in like 2012, maybe something like that. And because I had the biggest pages in the world for like Tim Tebow or Duck Dynasty or all this, all this other stuff. So I just started asking like, what do you guys want? And they said, oh, we’d love a t shirt that said this. I was like, did the t shirt post over here made 20,000 bucks in a day? I’m like, okay, I’m paying attention now. And that was I think that’s how I got into the ecom side.

Kris Dehnert 00:05:55 It’s like, find out what people want, put it in front of them, do it again. It simply put, it was that. And back in the day it was kind of simple. But then as you know, things, you know transpire and the ads change and the platforms change and the saturation in the market. So as it started to get saturated, that’s when I realized, I think having something unique, whether it be a brand or a product or some kind of, you know, IP, right, that that cannot be, multiplied like that because a print on me, a t shirt, it was a race to the bottom at that point saturated market. And I ended up writing their affiliate program for them. So I that’s when I got the first taste of recurring revenue. And I think I made $0.50 a shirt for 2 or 3 million shirts that other people sold that paid me for like 6 or 7 years. It was fantastic. So again, like all these little pieces start to, you know, formulate a model in my head that makes sense.

Kris Dehnert 00:06:44 And, then, yeah. So, a little after that, I got we made some money, got it, and I got into stupid investments, you know, cannabis or restaurants or something stupid and lost it, most of it. And then I got really sick. At one point I was so busy. Like chasing money, chasing fame, success, you know, achievement. All this other. I got really sick right after my little girl was born. She’s ten now, and I just disregarded my sickness. And I went to the Stanley Cup game the next day, and I borrowed my buddy’s Ferrari so I can go to a meeting because it looked cool. And at my restaurant, which is a big deal. And hindsight, you know, it should have killed me. It should have killed me a day or two in a week later, when I went to the hospital, there was some divine intervention that took place. And, they brought me back to reality and actually brought me to earth, which was cool.

Kris Dehnert 00:07:24 And then they saved my ass. And then next thing you know, I’m saying some prayers in a bed, like, get me out of this. I, you know, I’m going to do things a little different, you know, as cliche as that sounds, it’s real, you know? And I said, bring somebody in my path that needs my help with a project that I can impact, you know? And this dude called me out of nowhere and he’s like, hey, I came up with this idea. I turned a bat into a mug. I’m like, all right. And I was like, that was weird. And anyway, we linked up and gave it a good seven year run and he was burned out at that point, which, you know, he achieved what he, you know, took something from nothing to, you know, a multi-million dollar company, got married, kid, new home, everything. It’s like, dude, go be burned out. You won, you won.

Kris Dehnert 00:07:59 And I still feel like that. And we still chat, you know, to this day. But I bought it. I bought him out a little over a year ago. So now I’m kind of back in that, the kind of a restructuring phase. Like, what’s the next iteration of dugout mugs? Is it more of an umbrella? Is it a gifting, you know, empire versus a singular product or 2 or 3? So that’s kind of where I’m at now. But it’s the journey, dude. And I think that’s what people don’t pay enough attention to. It’s like, you know, you’re chasing success, but you are the success, right? The journey is and again, it’s a cliche, but it shit’s real. You know, when you really get in it and live it, it’s real. So yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:08:29 No, I love that. And I think that the best like mindset shift in the framework that I try to use, even for myself, is am I, am I better today than I was yesterday? Right.

Josh Hadley 00:08:39 And it is really challenging. Here’s one of the things I’ve always kind of like found very challenging in my wife’s like, stop signing up for masterminds, because every time you come home and you’re like, why am I not crushing it like this, dude? Because I would go to these mastermind events and I would hear somebody, it’s like, they’re making $100 million, right, in real estate. And I was like, why didn’t I get into that? Right? And he’s some 25 year old kid, right? That’s just dominating it. Right? Or you hear somebody else that’s like crushing it with Bitcoin and rode the Bitcoin wave and literally has hundreds of millions of dollars just because of the bitcoin wave. Right. And I’m like, why can’t I do this right. And I think like comparison is the thief of joy. Right. And you also have to understand like look, there is a plan a tailored plan for every single purpose for every single person. And I think that like business or whatever it is that we’re doing, like that’s the vehicle of refinement for ourselves to become the best versions of ourselves that we can possibly become.

Josh Hadley 00:09:27 And there’s going to be a lot of winding paths throughout the way, but I feel like that’s a it’s a perspective that allows you to, like, sleep well at night, even when there’s a bunch of dumpster fires going on in your business.

Kris Dehnert 00:09:36 Yeah, I you know, it’s FOMO. I mean, if you want to you’re talking about a group of people, probably most of the ones listed on this call that are good enough to do most things well. Right. So of course, I mean, that’s where FOMO is going to live like the most is, oh, I could have done that. And you’re probably right. You probably could have. Right. But I think what I try to advise people again, I’m never going to be the guy that gives you all these tools in the tool belt to go to X, and some people need that cool, whatever. That ain’t this. Like, for me, I think it’s the perspective that I try to focus on. So I, I don’t know if you and I’ve ever had this chat, but about currency, just currency in general and, you know, currency, it’s people think of cash money.

Kris Dehnert 00:10:17 Right. But currency and even just the word current. Right. It just goes and goes and goes. You never it’s never yours. You get to borrow it. You get a turn with it. And the same thing with money actually it just have a turn with it and then it goes back into the current. I think there are several different currencies that coexist simultaneously time fulfillment, family, experiential living, cash money like. And you have to know which of these which of these accounts are empty. And then every time it goes on around, does it drop a little bit into that account? Like sometimes your cash account as you’ve been there is not good, right? But you’re super fulfilled. You got all the time. You’re taking your kids to school every day like that account, that currency. You’re you’re you’re flush. You’re rich in a lot of ways. And I think that’s how I kind of avoid FOMO when the dumpster fires are happening. It’s like, but that’s not the currency that I value the most.

Kris Dehnert 00:11:04 The currency I value the most is time. It’s peace. It’s experiential living the things I get to go do. Right. Come on. You know, the people I get to hang out with. I mean, look behind me. This is chaos, right? But, like, these are the these are the currencies that I value. And reflection and perspective is my point here. My long last point is reflect more. If you reflect more on which currencies are interested in accumulating, well, then you just build things accordingly. And I don’t know, I think it brings a lot more peace and a little less FOMO.

Josh Hadley 00:11:35 Yeah. So I love that Kris. And I think that like tees up our conversation today really, really well, which is like the way you approach business now comes with a lot of perspective, right? You’ve you’ve done like the flashy things, you’ve made a lot of money. You’ve lost a lot of money. Right? You’ve been on your deathbed and here you are today.

Josh Hadley 00:11:50 So it brings you perspective. And so as you approach dugout mugs now, how are you approaching it and what is your what’s your business model. And I think that’s the unique aspect that I want to share with our listeners here, because most of our listeners are on Amazon and Amazon’s a Cruel Mistress, right? Yes. They can bring you lots of traffic, but guess what? You’re gonna have lots of copycats, lots of knockoffs. There’s going to be margin compression as Amazon continues to increase their fees. Right. You don’t have contact information with your customers. So like, your hands are somewhat tied behind your back. So people are trying to like, do more of the things that you’ve been doing your entire career, Kris, which is like digital marketing, owning your customer list and things like that. So maybe walk us through like, what’s your perspective now as you’re building out dugout mugs? What are your revenue channels?

Kris Dehnert 00:12:31 Well, we’re on Shopify. So I’ve always believed I always called it data harvesting.

Kris Dehnert 00:12:36 Right. Like how do I plant the seed? Harvest the data, own the customer. And it’s a much bigger conversation. And maybe we’ll get into the whole thing. I don’t know, I’ve always believed that how you do anything is how you do everything. And I value people and I value relationships in a very deep way. So when I look at my network, like literally next to me right now, Kris Sale, that’s a baseball player. I got a stack of cards. I’ll get him autograph just so I can give them away to people. Right. I have a huge box of cards over here for the Tampa Bay rays, because we go to the games and we just give them out the kids, right? Like, I want that to be who we are, right? We have a very clear. And when you’re in a product industry, especially in Amazon, right? I don’t I’ve never even really sold on Amazon. You know, we’ve done 70 million bucks and not really even on Amazon.

Kris Dehnert 00:13:21 which is crazy. But you know, I feel like you get in the habit of just being a product, product and product out. You know, there’s no face to it, there’s no passion, there’s no barely customer service. Probably I right where whereas with us, you know, we built a brand, we built a culture and that is what I believe people get behind. Right? So back to the data harvesting part from the very beginning, because dugouts like my ninth company. Right. So I’ve been through it before. I believed in like the tripwire campaign, like, for example, this thing here, it’s a baseball bat slice that we turned into a keychain. Okay, with the Phillies on. Whatever the cost of this is so insignificant, I can give it away. For those who don’t know what a tripwire is, I presume many do, but we would trip them into the into the system. We collect the customer data. We treat them with respect and bring them live interviews from Wade Boggs or Pete Rose when he was when he was here, recipe’s Rod Carew, you know, whatever.

Kris Dehnert 00:14:11 Like we always bring content value, value, value. But now I have a million customers. I got a million customers on an email list, an SMS, we hit a button, we make money. Period. So then I can go out and start finding other products like this. This hat we got, we launched a new hat. Legends never die with The sandlot underneath it. So now when you have this massive audience, guess what? Push a button, make some money. So like our strategy has always been internal. Lean into your lean into our internal ecosystem because the CAC, you know, pick your acronym CPA. Your cost to get a customer is going up and it’s just keep going up. Everybody’s buying those eyeballs. So when you’re internal, it allows you to have more margin, more runway, all the things. So that’s kind of our, our strategy now. and it also gives a lot of social proof and credibility. So with dug out, we have 55,000 reviews, which you’re on.

Kris Dehnert 00:15:02 You guys do some on Amazon, right. Like so does everybody else like 55,000 reviews is no joke. In our average is like 4.8 stars. We got a good product with good reviews, but you get that by having that relationship with people. I’d say a third of them talk about our customer service, right? So again, we really built a good community and a good ecosystem and a good culture around the company, and then let it kind of go out from there. So from there you can go to, you know, last week we got 70 hallmark stores. What are they going to say? Oh, this won’t sell. It’s like, yeah, it does. Well, what if people don’t like it? Yeah, we kind of they kind of will. Right. So it allowed us to like flip wholesale. It’s reverse wholesale. You know, we prove the concept by selling it here. And now we’re going to and I say this at trade shows I now we’re going to let other people sell our stuff.

Kris Dehnert 00:15:42 Powerful word.

Josh Hadley 00:15:43 Of that.

Kris Dehnert 00:15:43 This is 50 million in sales with this company. We’re now we’re just going to let you sell it, right? We’ve already created we’ve established a high price point. You know, price integrity is there. Now we’re going to let you sell it and make the money so that we can keep doing what we do best. And we’re like, okay. And we see probably a 50% conversion rate, which is wild. You know, that’s that’s in person like we found it. And we could talk about this if anybody’s interested. But you know, the the getting into trade shows and the gifting trade shows and the promotional trade shows, there’s a lot of opportunity there. and even more so for us because, you know, we have a patented product, we have several patents, we have several trademarks. We’re not going to get ripped off like some other companies do. You know, in that case, it’s even more important from a speed to market principle to because if you claim that market share, you’re going to get ripped off.

Kris Dehnert 00:16:24 It’s inevitable. But you own the market, right? And that’s a that’s a speed of market principle for sure.

Josh Hadley 00:16:29 Yeah. Kris. So many different avenues we can go down here, but I think one of the most valuable avenues that you just talked about is like, imagine if you have $1 million or a million customers on your email list, and all you have to do is come out with a new product, and those people are going to buy. Yes. Now you painted a picture that’s like, oh, that’s very that’s very easy. That’s where rosy, like, all I have to do is go get a million people. They’re hungry. They’re just they’re waiting for me to launch my next product and they’re eagerly going to buy. Now, I know that that doesn’t happen overnight. And I know that there’s a lot of, like, there’s things that you have to do to nurture and lead people up and to that point where they are a hungry, raving fan base. So, Kris, maybe let’s double down there for right now is like, so let’s say I’ve got an Amazon brand owner that wants to scale off of Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:17:15 They love the idea of having a raving fan base because when they launch a product, whether they launch it on Shopify or Amazon, they could tell their customers or their audience, come find me here. So how would you go about, you know, consulting or coaching somebody based on everything you’ve already done multiple times in the past to build a raving fan base.

Kris Dehnert 00:17:32 If that were me, there’s two things I would do. one of them, and again, you’d have to adjust this to your business. But what we did, I don’t even have them with me. we have a QR code. It’s inside. Like inside the mug. I don’t have one, but normally inside, we put a welcome thing. It’s like, hey, a little bit about the company. That’s. It’s a QR code. And it said, activate your lifetime warranty. Right. And they scan the QR code to activate the lifetime warranty. We probably see a 40% take rate on that. And it’s just opting them in to email and SMS.

Kris Dehnert 00:17:58 And that’s a great way. So we do we do deals on CBS and Fox and Friends and Good Morning America and The View. And like they have their own distribution system similar to Amazon. Right. Or HSN or whatever. they’re very particular about you promoting because they have to protect their customer. So the a great, easy way around that is to do, activate your lifetime warranty. Now, we know most people aren’t going to ever do anything with a lifetime warranty. but you’re capturing the data. That’s a big one. the other is gamification. I don’t know if you’ve heard that term before.

Josh Hadley 00:18:33 Yeah.

Kris Dehnert 00:18:34 I love gamification. I’ve been doing that. I’m not even kidding for 12 years. Probably back before it was even cooler a buzzword. And I did it with my my Duck Dynasty page. So I had the biggest page in the world for Uncle Syed from Duck Dynasty. And, I would do this. I called it a duck hunt. And again, gamification, if you don’t know about it, we’re not going to go down that rabbit hole.

Kris Dehnert 00:18:54 Look it up. It’s awesome. There’s some cool videos on YouTube. You’ve probably seen them like they paint stairs and that’s looking sound like a piano. And everybody’s on the plane stairs day one. And then they paint it. But everybody naturally just goes down the piano so they can hear the noise. Right? I think just subconsciously and consciously, people want to engage in fun, gamified activities, because that’s just how we’re built as humans. But anyway, look up gamification is awesome. So what I did is I would post a cartoon duck, and everybody else had to type the word bang to shoot the duck. And that’s how they entered into a contest. Right? And that really got me thinking. It’s like, oh wow. Okay. So I would say I would do it every day. I would tell people, say, hey, at noon we’re going to do the duck hunt, so get your guns ready. Right. And, you know, I’d post a picture of me like this and get your guns ready and get ready or whatever.

Kris Dehnert 00:19:32 And then at 12 or at 1155, I would drop a shirt. Everybody’s there, right, ready to go. And then I would just drop a shirt instead. They would buy the shirt. And then at noon we would do the duck hunt and I would give away some tchotchke. Right. It was pretty cool. but you could use. So then I started doing gamification with, with dugout. So I have access to a lot of players. So I would just get a bunch of autographed merchandise, like the cards I was just telling you about, and we would tell people, text the word wind, whatever our short code is, man, we pick up 10,000, maybe 8 to 10,000 people every time we do that. And it’s just it’s just giveaways. Giveaways or freebies or, you know what? I wasn’t gonna pull it out, but I’m gonna pull it out and show you. So I got this thing behind my desk. I’m gonna leave that right there as a reminder for gamification. Oh, you can’t see it.

Kris Dehnert 00:20:14 Let’s see. Can you see that?

Josh Hadley 00:20:16 Yes. Yep. We can see that. Yep.

Kris Dehnert 00:20:18 So again, like, practice what I preach a spin wheel where it’s like, hey, I just jump on Instagram, spin the wheel pick if you pick the right team. But with the engagement. So long story short, what it is, is those are two ways that I harvest data seamlessly, right? One through their distribution and scanning the code, and the other is through just gamification. And just differentiating your approach a little bit really goes a long way, man.

Josh Hadley 00:20:43 So you’re saying, like with the gamification, are you posting just on Facebook and you’re hoping people share it on Facebook opt ins?

Kris Dehnert 00:20:49 I’ve even run ads to it. You know, we gave away one time. We gave away, World Series tickets, a big screen TV and a $200 bar tab. Okay. Right. And then we would run ads to that campaign and we would run it for like, you know, now to get the play offs about to start.

Kris Dehnert 00:21:03 And and we would do that. It was pretty cool. So you can get creative with it. And a lot of times, especially if you’re importing products and everything else, your cost of goods is pretty insignificant. I mean, this thing right here all in maybe cost me with the key ring and it’s like $0.30, $0.40 with the royalty and everything. $0.50 maybe, so I can give these away like Skittles. And just up for $0.50, I’ll pay $0.50 for a customer all day. All day. Right. So that’s how I would do it. Is is the tripwire, gamification and tripwire to get them into the ecosystem. And it’s allowed us to build a big audience. I mean, and to have an audience that size and our open rate is over 50, 52%, something like that.

Josh Hadley 00:21:38 That’s unreal.

Kris Dehnert 00:21:39 It’s unbelievable.

Josh Hadley 00:21:40 Okay, so.

Kris Dehnert 00:21:41 Let me let me have one thing for that. So when it comes to email, don’t if you can’t sell it, don’t give it away. Remember that you can’t sell it.

Kris Dehnert 00:21:48 Don’t give it away because that’s everybody’s problem. They just find this crap. And it’s like I got I got two kids, man. My house is covered in crap. You got kids. Your house is covered in crap. It’s what it is. So, like, we don’t need more, right? So if you can’t sell it, don’t give it away. That’s a great value tip, to to keeping your customer base happy when you do these kinds of things.

Josh Hadley 00:22:07 Yeah, I love that, great, great advice and recommendation there. So let’s say I’ve got people on my list now, right? I, they either came through the warranty or they came through on a, you know, a giveaway, ad right on Facebook. They’re on my email list. Now what?

Kris Dehnert 00:22:23 Well, they’re very different people. I think segmentation number one comes between your last question and this question. Understanding who is where. a 42 year old woman is the number one buyer of my product, by the way. We know that.

Kris Dehnert 00:22:36 So my next point is ask. So we’re going to come back to that. But a 42 year old woman is the number one buyer of my product. Why in the world is that? And if you think about it, I could see that the husband that has everything. What can I possibly get him? Fifth anniversary. We got married in our 30s. fifth anniversaries. Would, getting married, groomsmen, gifts, wedding gifts, buying it for their their kid or graduation gifts or whatever. It kind of fits into that. So understanding who is where on your list is super important. We segment by team. so we know there’s 30 MLB teams, so we know who buys which teams. And we also know through SurveyMonkey or just gathering the data, which we are still going to touch on. Gathering the data has been so important because we know that 83% of the time is. Our products are purchased as a gift, okay, and are in our reorder rate. Our customer reorder rate is a little over 20%.

Kris Dehnert 00:23:24 So that means 1 in 5 orders is already a customer. Well, why on earth would that be? Well, it’s because they gifted a product, and the gift recipient had such a response that the gift giver is going to continue to go back to that. Well, because they know it’s a win, right? So now, with that in mind, list A, let’s just call them list A, the gift buyers, the 42 year old women, 35 to 55 audience with the expendable cash to buy an $80 cup during gifting seasons. Now we know when to go hard in the paint. It’s Mother’s day, it’s Father’s Day, it is playoffs. It is wedding season. It’s Black Friday and Christmas. The rest of that time, you know, from a because I’m a businessman. So I look at it and especially since I took over the company in Q1, there’s not a lot of gifting opportunities. Right. Valentine’s day okay, probably we do a little bit, but January, February, the first six weeks of the year, we go hard in Tradeshows, Right? Because the same people that are buying an AR Q2 are buying in retail Q2.

Kris Dehnert 00:24:19 So we spend the entire Q1 loading up our partners for Q2 so that they handle the brick and mortar, we handle the e-com, and then we go back into our cocoon for Q3, the dog days of summer travel ball shirt. We’re gonna do travel ball stuff, corporate gifting because they plan that six months before Christmas. And then we go back into the tradeshow circuit, now, you know, July, June, July. And then we come out of it and it’s playoffs, it’s World Series, it’s Black Friday, Cyber Monday, it’s Christmas. And we know that we’re going to do 60% to 65% of our revenue in that last 60 days of the year. So, but my point to all that is understanding who you’re talking to and when they want to hear from you, what they want to hear from you, and how they got to that particular segment. Because if you’re if you’re a gamification, you know, and again, I’ll give some funny references and they’re funny to me, maybe not to others.

Kris Dehnert 00:25:08 I don’t really care. You got you got your the people from target over here that are buying and then you got your Walmart squad who’s over here that got here from the giveaway and the gamification and the Dollar General squad who’s just like, hey, I want some free shit, you know, whatever. And with that, you know that your lower price point items are are impulse buys for list B and C, and you know, you’re going to hit them up all day long when it’s 50% off on Black Friday, 70% off race beat the clock on Cyber Monday. We’re not going to talk to them for the majority of the year because I understand who they are and their buying habits. Not that they’re good, bad or indifferent. I know why they are where they are and how they got there and what their interests are. Free plus shipping Bogo 70% off flash sale Groupon. You know what I mean? Yeah, they go to coupon birds before they check out on anything. Yeah, right.

Josh Hadley 00:25:56 They go.

Josh Hadley 00:25:57 Are you saying, like you said, like you let it go dark? Like, are you saying you don’t like I can’t, I opted in, I was one of the freebie suckers, right? I got in through one of your freebie offers giveaways came in. Am I going to receive another email from you and tell you have a flash sale, which yes and no.

Kris Dehnert 00:26:13 So we believe that putting content out there is important too. So my buddy, for example, The Sandlot, David Mickey Evans wrote, narrated, directed The Sandlot, fantastic dude loves me to death. We’re great friends. He jumps on and just kicks at me for a half hour. So when we do things like that, I’m like, hey, we’re going live with David. Mickey Evans wrote sandlot. Probably going to give away some cool free sign stuff on the on the it’s not a podcast, but like on the live you should jump on check it out. We’ll blast that out to everybody. Everybody shows up. Has a lot of fun comments.

Kris Dehnert 00:26:36 This I bring some people on, they get to talk to the guy that wrote The Sandlot. You know, we got I do it with players all the time, Pete Alonso and Mariano and Wade Boggs and guys like that. So we’ll put that out there because there’s no call to action or nothing to buy, right, necessarily. but you know, in life people do business with those they know, like and trust. So if we get them engaging and they remember us like, these guys are cool, these guys are cool. Hey, some cool guys trying to sell something, they’re more likely to buy it, right? now, if you zoom all the way out, my theory is you market to people until they buy a cry or die, right? It’s like, somebody. I forget who it was. and something. I heard the same analogy, but it’s like getting on an airplane. We all get on those all the damn time. You’re on an airplane, it’s going to take off and it’s going to land.

Kris Dehnert 00:27:16 The takeoff is I’m getting on your list. Then getting off your list is when it lands. There’s only so many minutes in the middle of this flight where they can sell you a credit card, sell you some peanuts or not peanuts, but a drink or a cocktail or whatever. There’s, there’s it’s finite. They’re going to get on and they’re going to get off. What you do with them in the meantime is going to determine how much value money, not money. Let’s be honest, money you extracted during that time period. So you market to them and so they buy or die. Now how do you get this to extend the trip. You don’t you know they’ll saying if it looks like marketing it’s safe to ignore right. Don’t in saying the same don’t sell. If you can’t sell it don’t give it away. Stop shoving crap in people’s face spammy behavior all the time because it’s going to shorten that span. If you’re if you’re constantly, you know, giving value and things like that like the Gary Vee, you know, jab, jab, jab, left hook, jab a little bit, you know, give value, give content, give deals, give some stuff away.

Kris Dehnert 00:28:09 Right? But it comes time for that left hook. Swing hard. and it’ll extend that trip a little bit.

Josh Hadley 00:28:15 So how many different segments do you have on your email list that you’re trying to speak to? Right. Because I could see how segmentation helps, but it also starts to become really complex. If you have 100 different segments and you’ve got to talk to all different hundred segments, we probably have different ways.

Kris Dehnert 00:28:28 We probably have 40. They’re segmented by team. They’re segmented by age. They’re segmented by gender, when possible. And then we do some layering like we know, we have the we have 30 day opens. We have 60 day opens, we have 90 day opens. That means who’s opened it at least once in the last 30 days, at least once in the last 60 days, at least once in the last 90 days. So they’re engaged. and then who was on the list from a tripwire, a free plus shipping, a giveaway, a promotion. And then we have who is on our list that are have ordered at least three times or more.

Kris Dehnert 00:28:58 These are raving fans. We have we’ve we have customers that have ordered over 50 times with us. Wow. It’s crazy. Why would somebody do that? It’s a gift that they know is going to crush these people they’re going to buy no matter what. I could send the email out upside down and they’re going to buy something because they always do. It’s the ones in the middle that need you need to have the right narrative. and honestly, a good funnel, you know, the the tripwire stuff. Fantastic. For a funnel. They get in on something free and then we obviously we hit them with an order bump right off the bat. AQ or, you know, one click upsell or some kind of order bump. It’s like, hey, we’re already shipping you something. We’re already giving you free shipping. If you want to throw a mug in there to see what that’s all about, how about we do half off if you if you add it to your order right now, you know, order bumps work.

Kris Dehnert 00:29:40 So, you know, we’ll get some action on that. But you get them right into a funnel where it’s just like content, content content offer content, content content offer follow up two weeks follow up, you know, 30, 60, 90 after that to just kind of keep them engaged and then you purge the list, you know, cause you’re not going to pay to keep it there if they’re not any good.

Josh Hadley 00:29:55 So I love that. And are you using so you’re using Shopify. Who are you using for your email service providers at Klaviyo.

Kris Dehnert 00:30:01 Klaviyo and go high level. my CMO, Jim, he likes to go high level, and there’s some, some, cool features that we’re leaning into with go high level. I also have something called yot po po po. We use yacht po for our, like, reviews and stuff, but they’re they’re it’s a pretty robust program. You know, we don’t use it to its full capacity. That’s my fault. But, yacht is a pretty cool program that we do a lot of outreach.

Kris Dehnert 00:30:25 So, like, we have all these automations that when people buy seven days out and said, hey, you should have got your order already, what do you think? And it prompts, that’s why we have so many reviews is because you just, you know, like, you know, Amazon does it on on automation. But it’s a little a little more custom, a little more user friendly on our side. That to me because I use it. so those three in particular probably are our go to.

Josh Hadley 00:30:45 Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Give me some ideas of like.

Kris Dehnert 00:30:48 Can I use emotive.

Josh Hadley 00:30:49 Emotive.

Kris Dehnert 00:30:49 For SMS. But there’s there’s all kinds of, you know. Yeah. And they’re all negotiable. So get a good price.

Josh Hadley 00:30:54 Okay. Do you think that Klaviyo is worth it. Worth the other recent price increases as well?

Kris Dehnert 00:30:59 Well, I don’t know. And here’s why. It’s because that’s not my lane. I think it’s really important for people to understand what they’re good at and way more importantly, what they’re not good at.

Kris Dehnert 00:31:07 And one of the things I’m not good at is SOPs, tech and platforms. Which is funny because I make my money online. But but again, it’s you know, I got some great people in place that that handle that. What I’m good at is sales promotion, negotiation contracts and, understanding people and connecting with people like that. That’s where I live. And then I handle what they handle.

Josh Hadley 00:31:30 I love that, yeah, I think that’s a good that’s ultimately what every business owner needs to do is like, specialize on what you need to specialize in. Right. What your what your gift. Now, Kris, as we wrap up that email conversation, what are the content ideas that you can send out, right. Like the Gary Vaynerchuk jab, jab, jab, right hook, the right hook to the offer. Right? When when you’re sending something for people to buy, that’s the offer. So you talked about like, hey, bringing the director of the Sandler on hey email goes out.

Josh Hadley 00:31:55 Join us live on this time, right? That’s good content, right? There’s a jab. What are some other jabs that you’ve seen that have been effective, that allow you to deepen that relationship with somebody so that when the offer presents itself, you get the people that will buy 50 times.

Kris Dehnert 00:32:09 Well, it’s that’s a loaded question for me because it’s easy. There’s baseball games every single day. Aaron Judge hits three home runs in a game. Be the first. So so we did it. And I’m a back it up just to touch. We did a deep data dive into our customers. Right I have a 65 page reports a few years old now, but we have a 65 page report. That is everything you can imagine. It’s spider the web and crawled and followed our people. We uploaded our audience and it chased them around for a month and then took all that data, combined it, and charted everything out. The biggest, driver for our people was first to know, first to buy.

Kris Dehnert 00:32:43 They want to be the one in the friend group that. Hey, did you hear about this? Isn’t. Is that the recognition that comes with that? That was a big thing for our particular audience. So we know that if we can, you know, you know, not not that Pete Rose passing was, you know, obviously a good thing, but we worked with Pete a lot. I went on live to and I talked about Pete and my relationship with Pete and what we got a chance to do together, and I commended him. You know, wish his family the best and stuff like that. Not that we’re breaking news, but but if you’re if they know that they can get updates in and around baseball from us, it’s a no brainer with I now, I mean, please, you could get that done easily. You know write me five. You know, compare these top players from the 5060, 7080s and 90s and give me an article about it. And it’s like, you know, Mickey Mantle and Ken Griffey Jr.

Kris Dehnert 00:33:25 What’s the similarity? And we post a blog to I wrote, you know, it’s it’s something that is content based, promotions. One of the things I’ve been doing, and it probably will be relevant to some folks on here is Shopify Collective. We talked about Shopify Collective. Right. I could offer something if you had, baseball related, you know, whatever. Right? We could literally put it on like a guy that makes my hats. You know, he he dropped a bunch of other hats, and I was like, oh, cool. Let’s put him in collective. So boom. And I launched 25 hats on my site. So, we sent an email out and said, hey, not mugs, but you need to check this out. Everybody’s always asking where these hats are coming from that I’m wearing. Here’s what, here’s where you can find them. And it’s a link to our site. They buy it, we make the commission and just, you know, so there’s a lot of ways I’m doing, you know, sometimes it’s a giveaway, sometimes it’s a new product drop first.

Kris Dehnert 00:34:10 You know, we’re not we’re not launching this until next week, but we’re telling our list about it today because it’s limited. You know, some promotional stuff like that. you don’t don’t like it, don’t buy it. I just want to let you know first because we’re going to sell out like we always do, you know, do these product releases, content, fun, funny videos, even some sometimes just as stupid as, like, some funny memes to start your week off. Right?

Josh Hadley 00:34:31 Interesting.

Kris Dehnert 00:34:32 It doesn’t you don’t have to overthink it. Right. But again, it depends on the people who is there. Why are they there and what are they interested in? You know, so we’re I’m always big on, polling, surveying, asking questions. And you got to shut up and listen, Who’s there? Why? They’re there. What do they want? What are they interested in? And if you ask them, they’ll usually tell you. And then just listen. And so bring it back to him.

Kris Dehnert 00:34:55 You know.

Josh Hadley 00:34:56 Kris, I love that. And I think that that’s like you, most people over engineer things and they overcomplicate things than they need to be. Right. And I love that simplicity and that answer in our previous podcast episode with the owner of Build Grow Scale, they are all about conversion rate optimization. Okay, so what Matt talked about in our last podcast episode was this ninja hack that was like, it’s stupid, simple, but like his like tripled the uptake in abandoned car emails and also produced like millions of extras of revenue. So it’s as simple as this goes back to the customer service thing that you just touched on. What Matt talked about, his optimization is that when you hit the thank you page, okay, after you’ve purchased and gone through all the post, checkout upsells and all that stuff on that thank you page, there’s a pop up that says, what was the one thing that almost prevented you or stopped you from buying today? And then what he said is like, as we get people these like 10 or 20% of the customers actually complete that survey.

Josh Hadley 00:35:55 That survey dictates our entire roadmap of changes that we’re making to our website. Because like, I’m just I’m listening. Like, where’s the friction coming from? Is there a lack of clarity about like the return policy or the shipping or whatever it is? And he said, like by just increasing those, by just listening and implementing those, the feedback and the resolutions to that feedback, he’s like, we’ve been able to add millions of dollars to businesses when they first come to work with us, which is very simple optimization. So it’s like it ultimately comes down to like, are you listening to your audience.

Kris Dehnert 00:36:24 And.

Josh Hadley 00:36:25 Serving what they want?

Kris Dehnert 00:36:26 Sometimes people just, wait their turn to talk, which is funny. You really. You’re right. And by the way, I love Matt. So, Matt, you’re out there. Watch and love you, buddy. but yeah, yeah. That’s simple. Business doesn’t have to be hard.

Josh Hadley 00:36:40 Yeah. Kris, we’ve we’ve dove into some meaty topics already today, but is there anything else on your mind that you feel like our listeners need to need to hear from you today based on your experience and wisdom and decades, really, of digital marketing and e-commerce.

Kris Dehnert 00:36:57 complementary products and companies. I believe with, customer acquisition costs going up and up and up that, we’re in a, we’re in a world of collaboration. You know, we’re in a season of collaboration, affiliate marketing, complementary companies. What where I’m at is, I’ve been looking for products and companies to roll up underneath what I’m doing. one of my newer brands is a kind of a. It’s not just baseball centric gifts. It’s unique gifts across the board. Right? to touch on multiple sports. So now my golf company can play in there. There’s people that come to me with hockey products. There are people that come to me with all sorts of stuff, but all I’m doing is just harvesting the data. I’m going to have millions and millions of customers that like unique products and sports, and then I can just, you know, go in between these different verticals, make it even look like a whole extra entity. But it’s all under one. So I think keeping your eyes on that.

Kris Dehnert 00:37:50 You know, it’s like a bottle rocket. It’s going to go up and it’s going to pop. You got to have the the finale, right? The spread. And that’s what I’m trying to do. Like some products will go higher than others. Faster, further deeper, longer than others. But it’s like, you know, find the ones that complement one another. And that’s what we did with with dugout. I don’t I don’t have one up here, but we just launched coasters not too long ago. We have a mug that looks like a bat. Why not make a coaster that looks like a home plate, okay? Or a bat handle that’s turned into a bottle opener or all these complimentary products? So you’re not just a one trick pony? I think that’s pretty important. Now you could get some products go viral and you can just run with it. And I’m sure several people on here experienced that. But that’s not a company. Right. And it’s not typically it’s not something that is able to be acquired.

Kris Dehnert 00:38:36 It’s nothing that a legacy can be built on. And again, I’m not even really that interested in legacy anymore outside of the four walls of my house. That’s all I care about, really. And some friends. But I don’t need the world to remember my name like I used to. That was the warrior in me. But, I think I think if you’re going to build something that’s worth acquiring. which is what I’m doing, you know, I was quoted in one of the magazine somewhere, and it was, I’m building a business that is, you know, that I could sell. And then at that point, I’ll decide if I want to or something. And you’re building it like that, and it’s. I know that a fanatics or a Yeti or a VC or group or somebody, they want my million or 2 million or 5 million customers, they want the intellectual property. So I’m constantly patent like, this is one of my lid. It’s got a patent on the lid of our metal mugs.

Kris Dehnert 00:39:18 We got a patent on this. We got, you know, patents on our shot glasses. so the intellectual property again, I’m building an IP portfolio. I’m building a customer data list. I’m building internal marketing in between several entities, you know, and that’s what is appealing from an exit standpoint. That’s what will give us a five, six, seven, eight multiple from a strategic partner or strategic buyer. Right. So that’s one of the things that I think I’ve learned over the last, I don’t know, six, 4 or 5 years. Six years. And starting to embrace is how to continue to develop without getting too far off track from your core competency. And you know what I mean? Like, we make baseball bat themed bar wares and unique fun gifts for baseball fans. Well, that doesn’t have to just be a mug. So what I did is and the other and the other part, and I’ll show you a live example of it is, is, always be looking for efficiencies and optimization.

Kris Dehnert 00:40:10 So when we make a mug, sometimes the laser will just cut right through it. It’ll destroy it. So we throw this away, it would be done. Well, instead we started taking and just cut in about 7 or 8 bat slices, bat barrel slices, turning them into ornaments. During Christmas, 15 bucks a piece, you get eight of them. So what is that $120 worth of ornaments off of something that we used to throw away, right. That idea, it’s not brilliant at all. So, yeah, I just think things like that, you know, always be looking for efficiencies, always be negotiating cost of goods. that’s a big thing. And where I’m at now and in my career is looking for opportunities that complement what I’m doing. And then I bring in that equity, bring in that company, buy the rights to that product in that IP, because I know that I have just a springboard over here where it’s like, oh, I can’t get anything and I can’t afford ads, but I got this patent and it’s about to run out.

Kris Dehnert 00:41:01 I don’t know what to do. Well, give me half the company and I’ll show you what to do. Let me go. All right. What else do I do? So I take half the company and I put it on the springboard, and I send it up to the rocket and send it up to the stars through our email list or whatever. And now I have more of a of a portfolio of products and brands and IP and things like that. That’s where I’m at right now is just trying to think, yes, exactly like that.

Josh Hadley 00:41:22 But you’ve got a long, a long term vision. I think that’s that’s what makes all the difference.

Kris Dehnert 00:41:26 You know, I’ll tell you, my long term vision is to be happy. I don’t think people you know, I don’t. It sounds so counterintuitive. You know, I you know, I say I’ve said it several times on several places, several stages and podcasts. Don’t focus on the money. Focus on the happy, because one day you’re dust and money ain’t even yours.

Kris Dehnert 00:41:43 Like I said, it’s just you get a turn with it. That’s it. And some people put it up on a pedestal and they either don’t know any better or, you know, they’re too young. They’re still the warrior crazy mind or whatever. But you’ll realize as you get older and you know, now that I’m not an old man or anything, but I’m in my 40s and I’ve seen some things and, focus on the happy, you know, because because a good day with bad people can still suck. And a bad day with good people can still be pretty awesome. You know, you’re surrounding yourself with people that that focus on happy and focus on fun and focus on, you know, just bringing, doing good, bringing good in the world, things like that. So that’s my long term vision. Now I get to do that by doing something that I like doing something that I love to do and and checking off these boxes and depositing all those, you know, simultaneous currencies. Remember we were talking about way earlier.

Kris Dehnert 00:42:26 That’s what I’m trying to do is how do I acquire multiple currency simultaneously? and kind of help change that narrative a little bit because I don’t think it’s talked about enough.

Josh Hadley 00:42:36 But, Kris, this has been an awesome episode. As we wrap things up, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode, so here are the actionable takeaways that I noted. You let me know if you think I need to add something else. Action item number one focus on serving your customer and your audience, right? If you can create. Imagine any of us listening to this, myself included. Imagine having a raving fan base of a million people that can’t wait for your next product to launch. When you devote as much time and energy as Kris does into his audience and the content, I mean, that is a full time job. Let’s be real. Like thinking about, hey, how do I serve these people? What information can I send out to them? That’s not just crap information. Just to check it off the box.

Josh Hadley 00:43:15 It’s information that’s actually tangible and valuable for them so that when the offer comes and they launch a new product, yes, there is a raving fan base that sits behind it. So that’s action. Item number one is wherever you’re at today, the best time to start was yesterday. So start today and start building that raving fan base and that audience, even if that means you’re starting with one person and start serving them. And that will compound and grow over time.

Kris Dehnert 00:43:37 So to touch on that, I think you’re right. I think it’s understand your audience before you can serve them. You got to understand your audience before you can serve them. And you have to have a long term vision of things because nothing worth having is going to be immediate. You know it’s a long term play because that’s what it’ll sustain.

Josh Hadley 00:43:56 Yeah. I love that and wholeheartedly agree. Action item number two is being able to think creatively and come up with your new product ideas based off of again, going back to the audience and listening to them, understanding what it is that they are looking for.

Josh Hadley 00:44:11 So let’s say the majority of your customers are 42 year old women. Okay. Who are they giving the gifts to? Is it for men okay. Survey them. Ask them what other type of gifts do you feel like we’re missing? Right. That would that would make your life easier, right? Is it hats or. And give them some options. Right. And see what it is that that could benefit them most. And then be creative. Look at the waste and inefficiencies. You talked about the Christmas ornaments with the bats and leftover waste. It’s being creative about thinking of ways that can create future revenue in the business. I love the analogy of like, you’ve got to what are you doing today to plant a seed that you will harvest the fruit of that seed nine to 12 to 18 months from now. That’s where that long term vision comes into play. But that also needs you have to ask yourself the question like, is me working through my email inbox and getting to email inbox zero today, planting a seed that I’ll harvest in 12 months? Or is this just busy work that’s keeping me busy and frustrated in my business? Possibly just just to check it off my list? Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:45:06 Okay. So prioritization. My third and final action item is I think, living with perspective. Right. And I think it is not getting caught in the thick of thin things. And based off of your experience and numerous entrepreneurs that I’ve spoken to, so many people look the best analogy and the best, like future framing you can do is imagine yourself as an 85 year old person. Guess what? That 85 year old person doesn’t care about what other people think. Think of them. That 85 year old cares about the impact the people they’ve surrounded themselves with the amount of lives that they’ve touched their family, right? That’s what they care about. So start behaving that way today. If at 85, you’re not going to care about how much money sitting in your bank account, because it’s all going to go back into that current as you talked about when you’re all gone, then what are you doing today that’s going to make your 85 year old self say, good, I did a good job. I’m fulfilled.

Josh Hadley 00:45:56 And when you live that way, you won’t get to an 85 year old person and be living full of regrets, saying, I wish I would have spent more time with my kids.

Kris Dehnert 00:46:04 Yeah, what’s that funny saying? Be the person your dog thinks you are.

Josh Hadley 00:46:08 I love that to know.

Kris Dehnert 00:46:10 Or your kids, you know. Yep.

Josh Hadley 00:46:12 Totally agree.

Kris Dehnert 00:46:13 Are you being somebody that your kids are proud of?

Josh Hadley 00:46:15 It’s true, so true. Kris, as we wrap things up, three questions for every guest. Here’s question number one for you. What’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Kris Dehnert 00:46:23 Pass? No kidding. well, you know, someone gave you a really a really cool perspective on books and I’ll keep it there. And that was books are like friends. Like, if you had if you had the ten biggest thought leaders of all time as a friends group and you’re like, oh, I’m dealing with a relationship problem, or I’m dealing with a money problem, or I’m dealing with a health problem, and you could go ask the Dalai Lama something, right? You would do that.

Kris Dehnert 00:46:43 And that was interesting. Perspective about books. He’s like, books are like friends. You don’t need to read front to back just so you can check that off your list, figure out which problem you’re dealing with, which problem you’re trying to address. Go pull that friend off the shelf, address that problem, put it into action, and then put the book away. I thought that was interesting. Right. somebody resonates with that.

Josh Hadley 00:47:01 That’s a great I love that frame.

Kris Dehnert 00:47:03 Yeah. And so I, you know, me a bit. The four hour workweek. Really I enjoyed that. and then start with Why by Simon Sinek I think was a pretty cool one too. and then the one thing by Gary Keller, you know, what’s the one thing that you could focus on that makes everything else irrelevant? But I think those kind of sum up me a little bit. I don’t I listen to books a little bit more, more recently, again, exactly what I just said at the beginning, more recently I’m listening, like, how do I not? Or what is it? It was right next to me.

Kris Dehnert 00:47:34 I’ll show you right here. Hold on to your kids. Strong father, strong daughter. Like these. These are the books that I’m interested in now. Because that’s the stage in my life in which I’m paying attention to.

Josh Hadley 00:47:45 So good words of wisdom. All right. Question number two. What’s your favorite AI tool or ChatGPT prompt that you’ve been using.

Kris Dehnert 00:47:52 find the red flags and I upload contracts. Love it. You somebody sends you a 25 page contract. I used to have an attorney as a business partner. And he said the longer a contract is, that just means there’s more ways they’re trying to screw you. Straight from the 40 year business attorney. And, so what I do now is whenever I get contracts, I send them over, I upload it to, like, Claude or ChatGPT or whatever. I’m like, find the red flags and it comes back with, hey, this section, this thing is leaning in their favor. This thing over here doesn’t make sense. This conflicts with this paragraph.

Kris Dehnert 00:48:17 I’ve loved that. Right? Because you know how just monotonous those damn things are. You’re going through a contract 25 pages long. So what was funny is I had one that came over from a licensing partner and said, here, sign this. I ran it through the thing and I said, hey, find the red flags. I didn’t even have time to read it. And it gave me like five things. And I just copied and paste and sent it back to him. I was like, hey, I noticed these. Can you explain a little bit? And they changed them all in my favor and sent it back. I was like, dude, that was too easy. But the red flags I think is a pretty cool one.

Josh Hadley 00:48:42 I love that that’s a great use case. All right, final question here, Kris, who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?

Kris Dehnert 00:48:52 kind of back to the books thing, man. Like, I love Gary Vee, right? I like Gary’s approach at things.

Kris Dehnert 00:48:56 I think he’s very sharp. but the grind and the hustle mentality, that’s not me. So I would go to that influencer to get that influence. just like our mastermind, there’s several people in the mastermind, some I really admire for their family values and who they are. Some I really value their negotiation and dealmaking skills. So I go to certain influencers based on the influence they have, if that makes sense. So I do like Gary. He and I have some similarities and some understanding. Jesse it’s he’s not like ecom necessarily. Matt I mean, Matt and Tan are great dudes. there’s a ton, man. It’s to each his own. To each his own. If you want somebody that’s faith based, you can find him. If you want somebody that’s grind. Hustle. You can find. If you want somebody, that’s Captain Outsource, you can find him. But me, if I had to pick one, probably. Gary.

Josh Hadley 00:49:44 Love it. Another good recommendation, Kris. If people want to learn more about you, they want to follow your journey.

Josh Hadley 00:49:49 Check out your cool, dugout mugs. Where can they find you?

Kris Dehnert 00:49:51 At this dugout mugs.com. You can’t miss it. we’re the only ones. And we’re doing it. Or doing the hell out of it so you can find us there. Big golf. that’s my newer venture. A lot of fun with big golf. Big golf. and then LinkedIn. You know, my socials are private. You know, I don’t need the following. I don’t need the accolades. I don’t need the social proof and credibility anymore. I want it, LinkedIn. I know there’s a little bit more business related people there. And obviously the folks on this call probably are over there. So LinkedIn is going to be your best bet. Can’t miss me. I’m the only one.

Josh Hadley 00:50:18 Awesome, Kris, been a pleasure having you on the show. Thanks for your time today.

Kris Dehnert 00:50:21 Oh my pleasure. I hope everybody has an amazing day and, you know, be good.

This One Simple Trick Will Turn Your Customers Into Obsessed Superfans with Kris Dehnert

Meet the Host

Recent Posts

About

Information

Connect with us: