You failed because you chased "what" instead of "when"

Change doesn't fail because you're too early, it almost always fails because you're too late.

Hey Explorers, welcome back to Useful Not Famous. We've made careers being useful to other people, and we want to help you do the same. My name's Amara.

And my name is El Jefe. Why do you not have a last name?

Why do I need one? Well, you can give me one.

El Jefe Popular.

Amara Andrew and Jeff Sarris.

No.

No? I am just Amara. I am the only Amara.

I'm the singular, one Amara.

-huh.

Follow me and join my cult.

If you're an Amara, comment below. Amara, Amara, Amara. So, yeah.

So, change. We just changed our intro to this because we're trying to figure out what should it actually be.

Well, yeah. It's helpful to take a beat and just sort of be like, "Okay, well what is our intro?" And then, "Why is it that?" And then, "How do we actually make it reflect what the show is so much more?"

Well, yeah. Why do we call it Useful Not Famous and everything? And it's because, yeah, we've been useful to other people.

We've made a career out of that and made money, but also the wider public, nobody knows who we are.

No. Obviously.

Yeah. But that's important to sort of reiterate, I think, cuz most people are trying purely to go for fame. And so, sort of from the quote, "Change never fails because it's too early, almost always fails because it's too late," it's paraphrased from Seth Godin.

But if you've been focused on getting views and building out a platform and more followers and all of these things, what do you think someone should do?

If you've been focused on views and followers and things?

Yeah, and but you still haven't made anything out of it.

I think this is probably one of the most common things we hear is sort of people are like, "Oh, well, blah, blah, blah has, I don't know, 40,000 followers," or whatever. So, then they're just like, "Well, I want to get to that." And then it's like, "Okay, but why?" Or they do eventually get to that point, but then they're like, "Oh, this actually didn't bring me anything." Like it can bring certain deals with businesses or whatever, but you also have to be, for lack of a better term, like brokering those deals and making sure that those happen and knowing actually the business of what you should be doing.

So, that's basically what like fame without having the business, like we you always talk about, there is no reason for it whatsoever. It's just a pure vanity metric thing, which if you have your business or your way of making money or whatever, if you have all of your needs met, that's fine. Go for it, like fame your little heart out, whatever you want.

But most people, the everyday person is equating fame with success and as a way to make money.

Yeah, fame with money.

Yeah, and that is so completely false and wrong, unfortunately, and then people are misguided to that where you need to first figure out your business. Like what is it in service of?

And how are you useful? That's why we say useful because like even not figuring out the business, that feels big, but how am I useful to someone so they will hand me money?

Exactly. So, like it doesn't necessarily have to be advertisers or anything. Like you definitely can, and that is sort of an easier way to go about it, but you can also have another business on the side where it's like, so we do video marketing for MAVEN, which is our company.

And then you have SPYR, your design agency. But with MAVEN, like we have the business first and foremost, and then it's like, "Oh, okay. Then you figure out your marketing or your advertising," which those are two very different things, but that's a whole other episode we can talk about.

Yeah, I'm just rambling at this point.

Oh no, it's why being useful, and we want to help reinforce that all the things that everyone is going for collectively are almost all wrong. If everyone is doing it, first, that is very, very competitive. And second, more than likely it's not the right path because as soon as you do like a 90° from it, it's wide open pastures, and you realize, "Oh, all I needed to do," we use the term useful, "but I needed to be useful to someone.

If I need to make $100,000, how many people can I be useful to so I get $100,000?" Like if that's just like a round number, and it's like, "Okay, well maybe I could have 20 people." Okay, well if I have 20 customers, then that's $5,000 each. Okay, I could probably do that.

Yeah, we should even talk about what it means to be useful. So, like sorry, just using MAVEN as a pure example, like we've filmed with a lot of realtors and do hyper local video marketing. They're useful to people in their area because we're having them focus on like one or two cities.

Well, why are we useful to them?

Oh, I'm purely talking about them.

No, I know. Like, what are we helping?

Well, we're helping them do video marketing, but the point that I'm getting to is we, like minus us, what we do is we have them be the face of their city. So, they are extremely useful to people who would be their customers and their clients. What is wrong with my throat?

So, focusing on like, "Okay, well, what do people need and what do people want to know?" Well, people, you live in an area, you want to know sort of what's going on and maybe what you, where you should go or all those different things. So, that's like extremely, extremely useful to people. And that's just one way you can be useful to people is, I mean, obviously, just very literally just one part.

Well, yeah. And that's where, so MAVEN is useful to those people because we make it easy for them to get in front of everyone. So, then we plan everything.

We're like, "These are the ways that it's worked countless times all over to build this platform that will be useful to you because you're useful to them." So, we're useful to you, so it costs you money. Like it's it's a chain of usefulness all the way down in every direction. Like if you go to a Kardashian and be like, "Well, they make a ton of money because they're famous," it's like because they're useful to advertisers.

So, it's like I talk and think about clothing all the time. Well, I'm useful to a clothing advertiser because my entire audience is here to hear about clothing. So, that's a usefulness.

Now, if you talk about your town, like we have a hyper local platform of our own, we only talk about that town, the only thing. 100% of everyone there is there to hear about the town. And then that means we are useful to them because they want to know that, but it's also useful to a new business owner who's trying to be like, "Hey, I'm here.

I think you guys would love this." Well, we're useful to them. It's up chain, down chain, and they're useful to the residents. Like it's just usefulness.

No one cares if you're famous. Like really, a lot of times we hate people because they're famous.

Yeah, which is also sort of a thing. If people are talking about you, whether positive or negative, run with it. Never shy away..

But yeah, so to swing back to the change, the concept of change and not being stuck.

Oh, yeah. What was it again?

You rarely fail because you change too early, you almost always fail because you change too late. So, like you look at crypto and NFTs, if we were just like, "You know, we should get into like, I've wanted to make NFTs for so long." It's 2026 right now, and if we were like, "We should we should try doing that now." I mean, that was 6 years ago.

5, 6 years ago, it is so too late to do it. But you look at AI and everyone pushing back on AI and like, "Oh, they're they're going to steal all the jobs." And it's like, "We need to fight to keep humans doing this menial task for no good reason." You're too late. You like it's already here and it's not leaving.

So, okay, how do I change to adapt and grow?

Well, those are still like trendy things, which we try to shy away from because almost like fame would be in the same vein as trendy, where it's just like kind of avoid both if possible, not that you need to avoid either, but for longevity's sake. But like with being useful, it's taking those things and like figuring out how you can weave it into your business to make it more evergreen and make it last longer and run way more efficiently.

So, yeah. Sorry. I see that as a tool.

So, the AI being the AI is just a tool to run a better business now. It's not a it's not a virtuous thing, either virtuous or unvirtuous to use it or not, it's purely a tool.

So then, how do you interpret the quote, the change? Like, what do you what does it make you think of?

Well, we're always adapting.

Yeah.

So, there was sort of the concept of if 75% of your revenue comes from things that didn't exist 3 years ago, you're always evolving. Like, you're at a really good spot. It's almost like a rolling 3-year window.

So, it's 2026, so 2023 to now. If the bulk of our revenue comes from things that didn't exist before 2023, we're doing something right. If we're stuck on, "This is how I make money, and this is how I'll make money tomorrow, next year, 10 years from now," that's a problem because everything changes, and nothing stays the same, ever.

But can you even operate within the same business and then just sort of change and shift what that means? Or is it purely like, "Okay. We had NFTs in 2022 and then like all in.

And then it's like, 'All right. Get rid of that. Now we're all in on MAVEN.

Okay. Then, like'" Do you know what I'm saying?

I know what you're saying, but there's different offerings in there. So, we started doing MAVEN, like locally, then we realized, "Oh, this product is asked for us to travel all over." So, we started traveling all over. Now we're doing things locally for a hyper local platform.

The travel's still there. The local clients are still there. Nothing leaves, but it all shifts in its ratio.

So, bringing in new things within under the same umbrella is always important.

I'm just I'm only asking because I know when we hear of people who change every 6 seconds what they're doing, and it's like, "I'm going to be a firefighter. Well, now I'm going to be a puppy. Now I'm going to be a disco enthusiast," or whatever.

Like, that I don't know. I'm just trying to make sure it's not like, "Well, I'm changing all the time," cuz like that's where that's where I want to be very crystal clear, cuz like you do need to iterate and change because there is that 3-year window of like just with celebrities even, bringing it back to fame. But like after 3 years, they need to reinvent themselves or you're just like, "All right.

Like, bye. Get out of here."

It's called the iron law of stardom.

Yeah. I was like, "What the fuck is it called?" But just to make sure that because if you're constantly changing what you're doing, like you do seem unreliable and kind of fran- like I know people like that where they're just like, "Well, today I'm making trees, and then tomorrow I'm capturing rainbows." And then it's like they're always onto the next thing, and it feels very like MLM sort of vibes.

Well, yeah. It's not starting over because that's the thing is it's fun to start, but it's an evolution, never resting on the thing that, "This is supposed to work. Like, I paid for a class, like a online course, and I learned this in 2021.

So, this is what I do to make money forever." It's like, "No." Like, there was a window maybe that it worked, but now that had to evolve, otherwise it's already too late.

Well, yeah. That's insane.

And but like we have the sunk cost fallacy. Like, "I spent all this time building this thing one specific way, so that means I need to force it to work," which isn't accurate at all. There's different things.

There's different opportunities at different times. Like, there's a cloud brokerage in real estate where there was a window of time if you joined the brokerage, and you recruited more people, you made a lot of money, and you could still be making a lot of money. But now the promise to everyone today is, "Join the brokerage under me.

I make money from you, you bring in a bunch of people, you make a bunch of money." It's not happening anymore. Like, it's already hit its terminal velocity. So, the people coming in now, it's an empty promise because they'll bring people in, but they'll never they'll never have six-figure monthly checks coming in as the person who started in 2020 with this brokerage.

Yeah.

But it'll still be promised because it's like, "Well, no. This is what I did. You should do it, too." Well, every path, once it's tread, it's already taken.

It's done.

So then, that's perfect for the quote because it's like you want to be an early adopter. So, like going back to NFTs, that like if you bought a Bored Ape or a CryptoPunk or whatever at the very, very beginning, like I remember we were so early, we saw a Bored Ape where it was like $3,000 or something. Like, it was very attainable, and it went up to six figures like within a couple months.

And it was like, "Well, fuck. I guess we should have bought that."

Yeah, for clarity, we didn't buy because we don't do speculative things like that.

Yeah, because it is extreme- because now the person, there will always be someone with these trendy things, there will always be someone at the end left holding the bag. So, that's what we want to avoid because it's like, "Well, this bubble will pop at some point," like specifically for that crazy wild west vibe that was going on.

But that's like with anything. So, like now, as you were just saying with the cloud brokerage, people got in very early, which that's the tricky part about like investing or even just being part of something very early that's speculative, is it's high risk, high reward, which we both very much shy away from, which maybe we should just jump right the fuck in, but it's it is really scary to like jump in like that.

But those people got such high rewards, and we know that they did and do.

And a few people, though.

Very few people, but they were in at the perfect time, not only monetarily, but then they sort of became the poster children of these brokerages or this brokerage. So then, oh, what were you going to say?

I just wanted to go back to the high risk, high reward thing.

Yeah.

So, high risk, high reward, so that means high risk, there may be zero reward, which you're putting a lot of chips in there.

Exactly.

Where we are low and slow.

Yeah.

Low risk.

We're steady.

Yeah, low risk, slow reward. We are long-term because every and this is something that I don't think we talk about enough. Every single thing I've ever built as a business still runs to this day,

-.

And it's been 17 years. And everything brings in monthly income.

-.

There isn't anything that brings in zero. It's not all huge. Some things had a nice peak, but they all still do.

-.

And that's important to remember. Like, I've built a bunch of different platforms to be useful to different people in different ways. Most of them overlap.

So, design, and websites, and web hosting, and all the technicals of running your business. And then we have our marketing. And then we have a health platform with a nurse.

We have another platform with another partner. Like, every single thing brings in monthly revenue. And they've never stopped.

Nothing has gone to zero because also, we've never turned the switch off.

Exactly.

Because why? You don't throw away what you've done. You evolve and change.

And I think that's what I was trying to communicate when I said like, "I know people who are just jumping from thing to thing to thing to thing," because

They have no patience.

Exactly. And like it is it's a long game. It's frustrating, yet it's extremely rewarding.

Cuz yeah, like you have things that you set up at the very beginning when you first started, and they're still running efficiently. They still are generating income, which is really cool. And like you do have to tend to them, but it's also not the longer you do it, the less the less tending.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like I want to be careful how I say it, cuz it's not that it doesn't take time, because we are always working on everything 24/7. But the beauty is we can start up these other things.

So, like starting up the hyper local platform that we have, we have the runway to be able to do that because you've spent 17 years, which I didn't even fathom that it was that long, but like you planted your seeds, you watered it every day, you were out there in the field tilling, weeding, plucking, pruning, whatever the hell else.

I have a garden client, as you can tell, so I know some garden things. She's taught me a lot. But you're out there constantly for years doing all this stuff, and it kind of sucks at the beginning.

Like, I know you've said that you were at your computer 12 or 14-hour days, food sent in front of you, still working, working, working. But that–

But it didn't suck. That actually I just want to clarify that. I liked that.

But most people would hear that and be like, "What the hell?" So, yeah. That is a good clarification.

Well, you got to be passionate. If you're doing that, you need to be like, "Oh no, I'm excited to make this happen," cuz I just had a job before that.

Yeah, but it's like when people say putting in like sweat equity, like that's what you did. And that's also what we've done with MAVEN, too, like traveling all over the place. Like people are like, "I feel exhausted for you." And I'm like, "Yeah, you me both, sister." But that's like that's what you have to do.

Yeah, you have to have the passion for it, first and foremost. That is a very big precursor. But then literally just having the patience to build things and understand that there will be ebb and flows in what it is and how it how it produces.

Like you can't just do it for the money, which I know that sounds absolutely insane cuz I think that sounds insane where I'm like, "Then what's the point of starting a business?" But there are there is more out there for the people that are like me where it's like, " no, you want to have the money." But having like the passion and the want for it and then also just identifying when things should be changing and what you can do that's like the next stepping stone.

We talk about stepping stones a lot. So, what's that one tiny step that's right in front of you that you can see as the next way that you should be going? Always forward movement, and everything is forward movement if you believe it is, but just taking that next little bit.

Well, yeah. And the patience is so big, because if you're only focused on–

And it's not easy.

No, well, to I think it depends.

It's simple, but it's not easy.

To me, patience just it's like, "Of course, patience." But I know I know most people are not patient. And that's fine. It's just different.

But if you're if your entire anchor of why you do anything is money, you need to sort of pull back and be like, "Okay, this you'll run into a wall and keep running into the same wall because you know money's on the other side of the wall, and you're ignoring every other turn down the hallway cuz you know the money is right there." When you might just need to take, to mix metaphors, like a stepping stone, like turn left down the hallway and go away from the money, because, "Oh wait, this door at the end of that hallway actually is what the door to that room." But you had to make a left turn, walk 20 feet, then go in the door, and now you're there.

Instead, someone is on the other side of that wall banging away on it for days and months and years and decades, and you were like, "The door is right there. You just never looked."

And that's how you get so burnt out on what it is you're doing. And yeah, like even if there's I think in content all the time. So, like I know some people we've worked with they're like, "Well, no, I'm supposed to just only talk about what it is that I do." And it's like, "Yeah, you absolutely can, if you're passionate about it.

But most people have this other secret little passion that they don't tell anybody about, they don't post about it, or they rarely do. But that's where you see them come alive. And then it's like, "No, you should absolutely be talking about this like little secret passion that you have, because that's like it's so fun to watch people be obsessed and passionate about something." Like, we can all relate to that where when I see someone, even if I have no idea what the hell they're even talking about, if they love what it is that they're talking about, that is like so fun where it's like, "I don't know what you just said, but I can I can feel it." Like, it's infectious.

It's how you make people feel that they remember that..

Well, we need to make people feel something. That's the whole point of any sort of marketing, advertising, is make them feel something. And marketing is everything you post on social media.

So, like, marketing isn't some fancy term that only happens when. It's like, "No, if you're posting, and you're posting a photo of your coffee, that's marketing." What is it marketing? Nothing!

But that is marketing. It's marketing you. You show someone your coffee, you show someone your dog, you whatever it is.

But then if you want it to be in service of something, you're like, "Okay, how can I actually make this useful to someone?" And then it's just like, "Oh, hey, I am at this new coffee shop. I've never tried a banana cloud latte before, and this thing right here is kind of amazing. Like, if you have one by you, you should try it, or you should come to this shop." And like, it's useful.

Someone's like, "Oh, that's fun. Let me send this to someone else."

Shout out, Lala Land!

But that's being useful. Now, is it in service of something? Maybe not yet.

But maybe you're trying to be the useful person in your town with hyper local content to make change. Like, to positively impact others. Which I want to sort of pivot right to coffee.

I like It's funny that you said coffee shop.

Because this week, we have a brand new coffee shop in town. It opened Friday. So, you're listening to this on Monday.

It comes out on Monday, whenever you're listening. But the Friday, 3 days ago, this coffee shop opened. 7 days before that, we walked over there and saw the paper on the windows, and the inside was almost done.

So, Amara reached out.

And mind you, this place is supposed to have been opened for like since last year, basically.

Yeah, so this has been months.

I've been waiting!

It's been 6, 7 months since it was supposed to initially open.

5 or 6 months since it was supposed to open.

5 or 6, 7 thing. You don't know what it is.

Grandma, that's like 2 years ago. Please stop.

Hey, when it happened in the corn maze, that was like peak 6, 7.

Anyway.

So, so 1 week before they opened, Amara reached out and DM'd and said, "Oh, could you tell me a little bit about when you're opening? And could I get a sneak peek?" And at first it was because I have this platform, this is what we do, and we help places open. We want to get people in your doors.

And at first it was like, "Well, we might be opening like next weekish, maybe." And then it was, "We're opening Friday. Do you want to come in Wednesday?"

Which also, I need to say, I stepped way out of my comfort zone sending that DM because it was extremely direct and we don't like asking people for anything. And I was asking this business owner, "Can I come in and do a sneak peek?" Which I need to remember, this is promotion for their business.

It's for them. Not It's not asking for anything.

But this is something that I know people we work with and have worked with have had the same exact thought process where or like if anybody listening is wanting to get into hyper local content, it's not an imposition to ask them to promote their business, cuz so many people feel like, "Oh, well, I need to buy something or I need to do this because they let me come into their shop." You can and should buy something, but not for that purpose, because I've heard that from so many people where they're like, "Oh, well, I'm imposing on them by coming in and filming." And it's like, no, no, no, no, no.

If that's what you believe you're doing, then maybe you are.

And people have literally said that verbatim, and I'm like, "No, no. This is you are highlighting that their business exists on your platform. They should be happy with that." So, don't feel like when if they don't, that's fine.

But I just mean, don't feel like you're imposing because you want to have want to film there.

Well, and I just want to say, know that you're being useful. Like if you think it's an imposition, you might present it as an imposition.

Exactly.

When you know it's, "I am I want to get more eyeballs here because I love this thing that you do." It's instantly different. It's a different way you even present it is, "I love your banana cloud latte."

Lala Land.

"I would love to showcase this. Could I just pop in?" if you're asking even. So, this was 7 days before they opened.

It sounded like maybe they weren't even going to open this week.

Yeah, now that we've talked in person, I was like, "Oh."

I think the ask of, "When are you opening? I want to feature it," blah, blah, blah, combined with the little sneak peek when we just did an outside the place, we're like, "Looks like it's almost open." That video alone, again, we don't care about fame, however, this platform is hyper, hyper targeted. 100% of everyone lives within driving distance or walking distance of this coffee shop.

Everyone. In the first video, without even seeing inside, was seen by 30,000 people. It was shared hundreds of times.

It was It reached so many people that impacted, it seems, the opening of the rest of the coffee shop. So, then it was like, "Oh, actually, we're going to open Friday. You can come in Wednesday.

I'll give you I'll give you a whole tour, explain how it works." That video goes out the Thursday, the night before it opened. Did another 30,000 views. And then what happened on Friday when they opened when there's no fanfare, no one knows that they were even coming at all.

Well, yeah. So, for a little bit more context, their profile, they didn't have any marketing, anything set up. So,

No address, no Google business, no website.

Like literally, literally nothing. If you Googled this coffee shop, I am the only thing that pops up, and that's fine. So, that is what that's what allows us to draw these conclusions, is basically these videos that we posted.

Cuz also, I would not have known if we hadn't walked by that they were going to be opening, and then if I hadn't sent them a DM, I would have had no idea. So, never doubt marketing. Marketing can definitely help everything.

So, we went to the coffee shop when they opened because also, I want to support them on their first day. I don't know what the hell I expected, but it wasn't what we saw. It was jam-packed!

We showed up at like noon or 1:00 because I was like, "Oh, okay. The morning rush will be over," because we're in like we're just outside Chicago, so like we have like pretty busy train station, which is right by that. And anyways, so like I was just like, "Oh, okay.

It'll just be like chill." Jam-packed, slammed, all the baristas, bless them, they were like very happy, but also like I could tell it had been a lot that day. There were like drinks lined up on the counter to be made, like so much business! And I can 100% say I doubt it would have been like that on opening day because none of the marketing, none of the anything was in place.

And that's not a that's not to

Yeah, that's not on them. It's hard.

No, exactly. Because then it's one more thing you need to think of as a business owner.

But also, just one more thing. We also know because for the 30 minutes we were sitting there, four different people who came in spotted you and said, "I'm here because I saw your video this morning or last night."

Yeah.

And then it's like, "Oh! This is only in this tiny window, and everyone coming in is like, 'Oh hey, I just watched your video. That's why I knew they were open.'"

Exactly, which that is pure magic. Like, I don't care what you say, what you think, and I was literally The funniest part, I was in my pajamas for the first video because it was like–

Cuz we just walked past. We didn't plan on making a video.

Yeah. No, but it was like, "Oh, well, we should record this. Like, this would be perfect." Yeah, I literally had no intention.

I didn't have any makeup on, my hair was greasy and weird, and I was just like, "Oh, we should totally just do it," because also, vanity, who cares what you look like? Just the video has to exist. But then, obviously, we re- recorded the sneak peek a couple days later.

And yeah, we went back this morning. They said that they were slammed yesterday.

Well, then Yeah. So, before so that was Friday. And while we're sitting there, a guy keeps coming in and out with bags of bread, milk, all these things, and then he looks and he's like, "Oh, I'm the owner's partner."

-.

And like, "Thank you for the video. I've had to make four runs today," or six runs today to restock because we had no idea this would happen. So, now we went in today Sunday when we're recording this.

So, we went in Friday, we didn't go in Saturday, we went in Sunday again around 12:00-ish. It was jam Every seat was full and people were standing everywhere.

It was a lot.

And we saw the same guy, the partner, the owner, who's helping out for the weekend because, of course, it's opening weekend. And he's like, "Friday was busy. Saturday was busier, busier than Friday, and now today when we're in there on today being Sunday, seeing it jam-packed at 12:25 in the afternoon, and he's like, "Thankfully, today is a little slower." But you look around and you're like, "How could it be more busy than this?"

He was like, "I'm really excited to go to work tomorrow." And we're like, "Haha." And he's like, "No, because it's actually going to be way calmer than this." And I was like, "Oh, god."

Yeah, cuz he has a job. Like he's he's her partner, but she started the coffee shop as her thing. So, he's working his day job.

Yeah. Which that was so funny.

Yeah, he's like, "It's actually going to be a vacation going to work on Monday."

I know.

But like, so we also feel a little bad. It's like, "Oh, you don't want anyone to feel stressed." But at the same time, could you imagine the stress of three customers this weekend?

But also, knowing how a coffee shop functions, you're it's trendy right now. You're going to get everybody in. Like, this is just being super real with any business.

You start, you open, you have your marketing, you get everything in place, blah, blah, blah, you have 7,000 people show up. Let's just say. Well, a very good percentage of those people may not return.

So, you want to capture the people that you can while they come through your door, and you can have higher odds of having more people. Like, I know people from all across the suburbs came to this coffee shop specifically. Like,

They said that.

See them, I see it in the comments, exactly. So, you want to start with a larger pool. It's like top-down selling.

You want to start with the most expensive, difficult, biggest, whatever, and then you can work your way down to smaller. It depends on what the customer's looking for at the end of the day, blah, blah, blah. But all that to say, it's so great that they have this huge pool of people.

It's been slammed. Like, literally when we were in there, there were people coming in and out like so much. Like, I saw at least, I kid you not, like 20 to 25 drinks on the counter with more coming in.

I can't even imagine if they have online ordering in the future. Like, I know it's a lot. And the owner was in the back like making all the food and she's just like, "Hi!!" But like all good.

It's just like I don't know.

Well yeah, it's exciting. And then again–

I'd be so happy to see. And like, from two little videos, like isn't that amazing?

Yeah, and again today someone said like, "Oh, I love your videos. Like I saw that you posted." Like

Oh, yeah. She was very nice.

And we were just there for a pickup order. We weren't sitting or anything, and it's just, and that's not to like pat us on the back or anything. It's merely to say the marketing is so vitally important.

Your product needs to be great, but if your product's great, no one knows that you're there,

Exactly.

It doesn't matter.

Yes. That is the yeah, this isn't supposed to be a self-aggrandizing effort. Like, it's literally what the platform is for, but it's amazing and very fun to see it working in real time because, or even the candy shop that just opened in town, we went in there, and, the woman said that the sales opening weekend at this new shop, were 35% higher than the other location that they already had, same opening weekend, which I was like, "That's amazing," because we also did a feature of it as well.

She invited us in for a sneak peek, which was really cool. So, I don't know, there is just like so much magic to it, and it just like, I don't know, it makes my heart proud. Like, everyone in town is like, "We got to go!" And that, like, people I don't know, people trust your opinions, and also you want to make sure you like live up to that.

-. Yeah, so we're useful to the town, useful to the business owners.

Yeah, we connect.

Yeah, and then they're useful to the town. Like, everyone is useful. It's a whole chain of events.

-.

If anyone isn't useful, if the coffee shop didn't have phenomenal coffee, it does have phenomenal coffee.

Yeah. I'm really glad they do.

Yeah, if it didn't have good food or friendly service, if it didn't have the things that are fundamental for success, it would not be useful to residents.

Yeah.

But it is.

-.

So, then we're useful to them, useful to them, and connect in the middle. And that's all you want to do. That's That's what business is, is just connecting through usefulness.

Yeah.

And that's why people that's why money changes hands.

-. Exactly. But yeah, just being useful, being passionate about it, cuz you also have to care.

If you don't care, and that's fine, people don't want to do certain types of content, and that's completely fine, but you have to have that passion for it. Otherwise, you can tell when it's like, "Oh, they're just doing it for X." Or it helps soften the blow when people are like, "Oh, they just did it for the money." And it's like, "No, I just I wanted to do this for fun." So.

Yeah, and there's money will change hands sometimes, and money will not change hands other times.

Oh, yeah. Also, we're not going to pretend that this is like a charity or anything. Like, there is a business behind it, but also being able to just be very real with people and be very honest with yourself.

Well yeah, cuz you're building something for a reason, and if you're going to pour your heart into it, you need to actually be able to sustain it.

Yeah, like I have to eat, too.

So, we figure you figure out what makes sense for everyone, like how much is how much is a slam slammed, slam-packed, slam-jammed,

A slam jam.

Like how much is a jam-packed opening weekend value at? Because that's something worth considering. Like everything that you do, whatever it is that you are able to provide, and again, it's not I can make content marketing, like this is what we do and what we talk about.

But it can be absolutely anything. If you're buying or selling real estate, it could be, "Oh no, I can actually get you in this door that no one else can get you in. Like, I will make it happen." Like maybe it's not maybe it's a home that's not even for sale, and someone's like, "I If you ever see that go up for sale, I want it, and I will pay you immediately." And then you're like, "I'll get you in there." You don't even know the person, but you're going to make it happen because you're useful.

Like that's all it comes down to is how can you be useful in the way that you are providing something.

-. 100%.

So, if you don't feel useful, it's time to change.

Damn right.

Because you don't want to be too late.

Yes. Change your little heart out.

Yeah. All right, see you next week.

K, bye.