#474 – Turning a Family Brand Into a Media Powerhouse with Kelsey Farrar
Join us for an engaging conversation on the AM/PM podcast as we explore the world of podcasts and newsletters with Kelsey Farrar, a seasoned expert and son of industry veteran Norm Farrar. Kelsey shares his unique insights into the evolution of newsletters and how they have become indispensable resources in the e-commerce industry. Learn how valuable content can transform newsletters from simple marketing tools into must-read resources that truly engage and inform subscribers. Discover how Kelsey was inspired by my presentation in Puerto Rico to revamp the Lunch with Norm newsletter, enhancing its value and engagement.
Listen in as we discuss the power of newsletters as a tool for building brand engagement. We highlight the importance of tailoring content to resonate with audiences and strategies like audience segmentation and interactive elements. The conversation touches on the importance of analyzing metrics to understand audience preferences, using current topics like TikTok shop bans to boost engagement. Kelsey also shares his journey from teaching English in Korea to collaborating with his dad on his personal brand during the COVID-19 pandemic, gaining valuable social media and branding insights.
Finally, we navigate the dynamics of hosting a podcast with nearly 700 episodes and the lessons learned from interacting with hundreds of guests. Discover the significance of having robust systems and processes in place to ensure business sustainability while avoiding the distractions of fleeting industry trends. We also explore the intricacies of building an online presence through platforms like Amazon affiliates and TikTok, highlighting the patience and persistence required for content creation. The episode concludes with reflections on the contrasting dynamics between Lunch with Norm and Marketing Misfits podcasts, emphasizing the importance of personal branding and networking in the digital landscape.
In episode 474 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Kelsey discuss:
- 07:56 – Consistent, Light Newsletter With Industry Insights
- 11:55 – Building Brand Engagement Through Newsletters
- 15:36 – Family’s Transition During COVID Shutdown
- 21:45 – Business Success on Podcasts and Social Media
- 24:20 – Navigating Business Trends and Growth
- 30:26 – Social Media Influence and Product Experimentation
- 32:31 – Navigating TikTok Shop Expectations
- 39:35 – TikTok Brand Management and Affiliate Outreach
- 43:31 – Podcast Dynamics and E-Commerce Trends
- 45:13 – Comparing Podcast Formats and Audience Engagement
- 48:17 – Podcast Format Pros and Cons
- 51:01 – E-Commerce Industry and AI Advancements
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 474 of the AM/PM podcast. This week, I’m speaking with Kelsey Farrar. We’re speaking about newsletters, we’re speaking about podcasts, we’re speaking about AI, speaking about influencer marketing a whole range of topics that I think you’ll find really interesting. Kelsey is the son of my buddy, norm Farrar, and he’s been in this industry for about five years and doing some really cool stuff, so we’re going to share and doing some really cool stuff, so we’re going to share with you some of that today, so I hope you enjoy this episode. Look who we have on the podcast today, Mr. Kelsey Farrar. How are you doing, man?
Kelsey:
I’m doing fantastic, Kevin. Thanks for thanks for having me on. It’s an honor.
Kevin King:
So have you been a guest on a podcast before? Is this your first? I know you you’re you’ve done like 500 plus podcasts or whatever but have you actually been a guest guest?
Kelsey:
You know? I have, I have. I have done a few smaller ones. Yeah, it was great. The AI and e-commerce podcast.
Kevin King:
Yeah, that’s grown a little bit now. I remember when they first started out that was like pretty small, like they were getting just a handful of listens, and now it’s it’s grown. Joe’s blown up on LinkedIn especially.
Kelsey:
Yeah, especially her newsletter, which I subscribe to, it’s full of great information, but I’ve seen that just grow and grow and grow and it’s really impressive.
Kevin King:
Yeah, she’s done it. She’s done a good job. She actually got upset with me. She’s a really smart girl. She came to Puerto Rico. Uh, you were at Puerto Rico and, yeah, I did that newsletter. Uh, a deal in Puerto Rico and she’s like you know what that’s a good idea, I’m gonna do a newsletter. She was one of the several people that I’d talk in doing newsletters. She ended up doing one and then she sent it to me. And then, a year ago, at Accelerate, she’s like Kevin, let’s have lunch. I want to talk to you, um, so we went and had lunch and she’s like asking me about some things and, and, well, she really wanted to speak at BDSS in Iceland is what she was really after? Uh, and a couple other things. But then she said, Kevin, why did you unsubscribe to my newsletter? I was like, how do you know I unsubscribed? she’s like, because I checked, I saw that you had and this is before she had blown up. And I said, well, you know, I have a rule that you know, I get like 30 or 40 different newsletters and if I haven’t used something or gained something, some nugget of knowledge, in a month, I unsubscribe from the newsletter. And she’s like I think she took that to heart because then she made some changes. I don’t know if I was the one that caused it, but shortly after that she made some changes to what she was doing and it’s way better now. I’ve resubscribed now and it’s actually she does a really good job, but I don’t know if that was because of what I said or if that’s just natural progression. Then she blew up, so congrats to her. Well, speaking of newsletters, you do you do a little newsletter for Lunch with Norm?
Kelsey:
I do. I’m the behind the scenes of the Lunch with Norm newsletter and, I have to say, with your, your event in Puerto Rico with BDSS, when you first talked about newsletters, I think you gave everyone in the industry a kick between the legs and I know we were stressing out when you’re up there pointing out all the different newsletters and I was just hoping and praying that you didn’t pull up the Lunch with Norm newsletter. But we’ve also made some changes. Gosh, that was two years ago now probably.
Kevin King:
Yeah, it’s two years ago. It’s 2023, summer of 2023.
Kelsey:
We were working on the newsletter probably a year before that, but we weren’t really putting too much effort into it. We had a VA kind of helping us out there and then after your talk that changed. I took it over completely and now I’ve. I spend a good amount of time writing up the content, seeing what’s happening in the industry, trying to make it actually valuable that people open and click. But I know yours, your newsletter, is the one you’ve. I think the industry credits you to getting the newsletter going again in this industry.
Kevin King:
Yeah, you’re doing a good job. I mean you, you guys made some changes and you’re doing you’re doing a really good job. But what does it take? I mean a lot of people when you let’s talk about that for a second. And when you talk, when I think of a newsletter a lot, there’s a lot of newsletters. I’m sure you get a lot of emails. Some people might call them spams or whatever but different emails from different service providers and different people and they’ll say this is their newsletter, when it’s nothing but just marketing BS or it’s short and there’s nothing in it. It’s of zero value. What does it take to actually the Lunch with Norm newsletter? And if those of you aren’t subscribed, make sure you go to lunchwithnorm.news or lwn.news.
Kelsey:
Yeah, lwn.news.
Kevin King:
Lwn.news and sign up for that, but it takes some effort. So what’s your process? Walk me through to put together a newsletter, because you got the story from your dad I’m assuming he just records something, but you got to turn that into a little story, um, and then you have the, the news section. You have the. You gotta make the graphics for the top, um, where it’s like a picture of norm doing something crazy that relates to the story. Then you have the where’s, what’s it called? Where’s Norm? Um, uh, you gotta find him in this little graphic. And then you have you’re taking content from y’all’s podcast and that kind of summarizing and some other stuff. What does it take? Just explain what’s your process. Is this a four hour, six hour? Is this an all week? You’re gathering stuff. Just walk me through what it takes to build that and send that out every Monday.
Kelsey:
Yeah, so I have a newsletter tab in one of my Google Docs so that’s always open on my computer and basically whenever during the week news pops up on LinkedIn or maybe an article, or I see something on TikTok, I’ll save it in TikTok, come back to it, add it to my newsletter doc and usually by the end of the week I have all of the content kind of ready. We definitely go week to week. I think you plan yours out or you have like a bank that goes back quite a bit where you have a lot of content to go through and pick from. That’s correct. But we are more week to week with the content finding, like the different tips and strategies. So usually that would take, you know, 10-15 minutes every couple days to find an article. It’s kind of passive when we do that and then, once we have all the content together, it’s breaking down the Lunch with Norm episode that week. It’s breaking down the Marketing Misfits episode.
Kelsey:
I like to use Descript like a transcription software and we use that. I get the transcripts of it. I pull that and put that into ChatGPT or any LLM that you can use and kind of pull out the main points. Uh, normal send over the uh, the story, usually with a bunch of likes ums us and we got to clean it up, make it more of a story because it is really important. Um, just like when you see it on stories on LinkedIn, it starts off with a hook and you’ve got to create a story arc and it does change week to week of exactly what the story is going to be and the flow of it, but the voice is really important. So that’s the main thing that we keep. I might use a little bit of chat just to clean it up a little bit. I actually make a prompt that keeps his vocabulary unless it’s, like, absolutely necessary to remove it, like if there’s a grammatical error. So once that story is cleaned up, um, I’ll go through it myself. Maybe there’s spots that are missing. Um, because I think a lot of people for the newsletter really enjoy that story and I think what you’re getting to with, with what it takes to make a good newsletter, you need something that people will actually look forward to and open up. So I think our strongest component is that story.
Kelsey:
With Norm’s experience the last 30 years, people look to him as a mentor in this space, so we really try to focus on that. We keep it light too. It’s a pretty light, easygoing newsletter, so we do the fun gifts but we really have to make sure the voice is consistent throughout. I spend a good amount on the story and making that worthwhile and then we go through top news articles of the week. So say, if there was the TikTok ban updates, the Sora 2 new social media platform, there’s a bunch of things that we would throw in throughout the newsletter and we’re in a very unique situation where we talk to someone great in the industry every week with a podcast. So we have the opportunity to talk to someone great in the industry every week with a podcast. So we have the opportunity to talk to them, see if they can provide content of themselves to us, and they usually happily send us content. We might fix it up, keep it with the brand voice and then we publish it.
Kelsey:
And yeah, consistency is a big thing. We’ve done it. I think two years now, two, two and a half years in total, but you know we get messages all the time of people appreciating the content, talking about that. It’s their favorite newsletter. This was the favorite issue of Lunch with Norm and I try to reply back as much as I can and keep that community aspect as well, but it’s definitely something that’s also changing too. You can’t, I don’t think you can stay consistent, just like when you sit with Joe um, you have to always be looking to improve, improve and improve your newsletter. So, um, things are always changing. There’s always new platforms and softwares, but that’s kind of the, the, the overall process.
Kevin King:
What do you think the time, the total time is? Four hours, six hours, two hours that you have in each, each one, behind the scenes?
Kelsey:
I would say six hours. I can speed some things up with ChatGPT, but at the end of the day I still think it comes down to that human touch. Um, so I really like to go every go through everything with like a fine toothcomb, make sure the voice is correct and, yeah, I would say six hours is a pretty solid time. How long does it take for you to write yours now?
Kevin King:
About two.
Kelsey:
Two hours, okay.
Kevin King:
Yeah, about three hours. And I use a combination of my writing and AI to help clean up stuff or to summarize stuff or to make notes. But it was in the beginning, it was four to six, but I’ve got it down to a process now and templates and, like you said, I have a library. I’m constantly adding stuff to it daily, but I have probably like 600 pieces of content I could use. But back on the newsletter real quickly, now that you have done it for a couple of years, like you said three years really but in its current format for a couple of years, why should every brand, whether a service provider listening to this or a brand that’s listening to this why should they have a newsletter? What difference have you seen it make in the brand and what you guys are doing, if any?
Kelsey:
Well, first, off owning your list, like the importance of having all of those customers within your hands, that you can move it from you know, Beehive or Substack and you can move it between. You’ll always have that information or their information with you and you can reach out to them and talk to them. And I think you’re also positioning yourself as the authority in the space. So going through the different newsletters, like the amount of visibility that we’ve gained from having a newsletter, and then also positioning ourselves with sponsorships or potential clients or new listeners, it gives them a little bit more reassurance that we know what we’re talking about. They can rely on us. So it’s something that we can also see how people are engaging with the content as well. So obviously, with different newsletters you have different types of content that you’d be posting in and you’ll see one week that you know your open rate is pretty low or your click-through rate and you might have to address some things. Or I know when we post about like the TikTok shop ban, that’s always seems to be a very high open rate. People are very interested. So we can go back and be like okay, so for the podcast, maybe we talk a little bit more about TikTok shop and we can expand on that.
Kelsey:
There’s also just so much flexibility within newsletters that you can have like polls and you know you track every click. So, segmenting your audiences, seeing what their interest is in for brands, they can retarget those. You can retarget those segments of. If you have a pet newsletter, um, maybe you have something specific to a certain breed or a certain animal, um, and then now you know those people are probably interested in that and you can target them and um just have a direct channel directly to them that you can speak to them in their language, um. So I think it’s incredibly powerful and I know LinkedIn has a big aspect or a big component with LinkedIn newsletters now, and it’s pretty common for people on TikTok now that I’ve seen that creators are mentioning their sub stack or that they have a newsletter. So it’s definitely something I see growing in this across industries. People want to have something where, whether it’s a creator or brand, they want to interact with them, have something that, if they really like them, they can dig it deeper and feel a little more connected with those people or those brands. So I think it just adds a little bit of a deeper connection with your audience or your customers as well.
Kevin King:
And it’s value first, not promotion first. That’s where a lot of people make a mistake is they turn a newsletter into all about us here’s our latest software features or here’s our latest announcements, or whatever and it’s not about the reader. And that’s where I think a lot of people make a mistake. And you guys don’t do that. You make it about the reader and that’s one of the reasons you’re getting the comments and then you monetize it. But you’re monetizing it with sponsorships in the newsletter. Or you guys are sending what I call dedicated emails now that are on an off-newsletter days. Someone will pay you to send an email to the list, which can be very, very profitable. I mean my newsletter this year will do over probably about $700,000 in revenue just off of my newsletter, so they can be very profitable profit centers too. So everybody listening, whether you’re a brand, a service agency, you should have a high quality newsletter. It can’t just be a bunch of AI slop. It’s got to be like Kelsey said have that personal touch. Speaking of the personal touch, I mean you’re kind of the behind the scenes guy with the Lunch with Norm podcast, and you guys started that what in like 20, during COVID, I think?
Kelsey:
2020 Yeah, April. So originally I’ll go a little deeper here from even before that. So before that, yeah, I was in a completely different industry, very different from where I am now.
Kevin King:
You’re teaching in Korea, right?
Kelsey:
Right, I was teaching in Korea.
Kevin King:
Teaching English?
Kelsey:
Yeah, teaching English. So I was a kindergarten teacher basically. I did a bunch of different age ranges, but I was there for three years teaching English.
Kevin King:
Which part of Korea?
Kelsey:
I was in Seoul for one and a half years and I was in a place called Gwangju, which is in the South, kind of near the coast. So I was there for about three years. I remember my dad talking about this Amazon thing and just glazing over like didn’t really understand what it was. I don’t think our whole family knew what Amazon was. And coming back, during COVID, my contract was finishing February 29th 2020. And I remember seeing you know the COVID news alerts happening and I decided that was probably a good time to come back. So, sure enough, two weeks later, on my birthday, that’s when the news came out that everything was shutting down and we basically me and my family all moved back in together and I was there as an international English teacher with no job, kind of stuck, and it just happened to be at that time.
Kelsey:
My dad was trying to build his personal brand and he was having trouble with social media. I remember his Instagram picture was like a picture of a dog and he had three surfboards on his Instagram profile and that was it. That was everything. So that’s where I was like okay, I think I can do something. At least in the meantime we can play around with this. So we agreed that I would help him with his social media. I would learn as well. So that’s one thing that Norm has always instilled in me was, you know, you got to constantly be learning. So he gave me this library of courses and said, like, I want you to learn whatever you’re interested in. So, which ended up being social media, but learn something every day. And COVID there was nothing else to do, so I was watching. You know, digital marketer, um, organic content, marketing strategies, um, I, you know, I learned what like a funnel was and I got to basically play around with social media. So it started off as LinkedIn posts. Playing around with Instagram and Facebook was really interesting because there was Facebook Live that was becoming popular and I started seeing more trends. Rachel Miller actually, I remember seeing her course and her talking about the power of Facebook and that Facebook Live, specifically with video, was kind of exploding. So we’re like, ok, well, why don’t we, you know, position you as an authority? He was already speaking at some events during that time or before COVID, but maybe we should talk about some content Also. Personally, for me, it’s a lot easier content wise to get content when there’s a video of it. You can cut it up, get the transcripts put it, make Instagram posts, LinkedIn posts. So it was a win-win.
Kelsey:
We started off, I think, talking about press releases and you know it’s a lot to talk about if you’re new to it talking to a camera for 20, 30 minutes, so that seemed to be a lot. So we kind of pivoted to maybe we should bring on a guest. So we brought in a guest. They could talk about their topics, because we were having trouble coming up with all these different topics to talk about every week. And we’re doing it, I think, like once a week at that point. But once we started bringing on guests, that’s when things started to shift from you know, live video content to okay, maybe we can make a podcast, to okay, we’re, we’re making a podcast. We got to start the branding. So I worked on the branding with our graphic designer. From there we started to be as consistent as possible. So it was once a week at first, started to twice a week and then I remember my dad talking to Danny McMillan and he was talking about you got to just do more, be super consistent, but like, do more and it’ll pay off. So we agreed to three, three times a week and we did three times a week for about four years, which, when you’re coordinating three guests a week, you know that’s quite a bit of guests to coordinate, and it was live too.
Kelsey:
So managing all of these different guests behind the scenes, making sure they show up on time, with a pre-recorded episode like this, where you can schedule it out. If a guest is five, 10 minutes late, no big deal. When it’s a live podcast and the guest doesn’t show up and you have nothing else to talk about, then it’s a big deal and people are waiting for you. We’ve probably encountered every single issue you could think of over the last five years, but it just kind of started to snowball and snowball and I don’t think it was anything we necessarily predicted or we had a timeline of okay, we’re going to start a podcast here and we’re going to do this, this and this. It was just very organic how it happened and you know we pivoted to. We made some pivots along the way. Now we’ve cut back to once a week, kind of focusing on content and instead of editing or instead of a live podcast, now we take time to really edit the episodes for YouTube, to make it more polished and build up that side of things.
Kelsey:
But we’ve built a really strong community over these last five years that we have guests still, or our Beardos, our fans, our audience. There’s some people that have tuned in every single day for like five years. They talk to me at events that they are their routine in the morning, where they put the Lunch with Norm on the TV when they get their kids ready for school because they’re in the UK but we’re on that screen talking and that’s been part of their routine for all of these years and it’s been really great connecting with people. Now, after COVID happened, things opened up and we could finally meet people as well. So it was really cool seeing how something in a basement of a silly little video that we created that people actually watch and they’re real people with real thoughts and connections and, yeah, it’s been great.
Kevin King:
Back in October I think I was looking at some of the charts and you actually. The Lunch with Norm was in the top 100 podcast. Business podcast.
Kelsey:
Yeah.
Kevin King:
Which is not easy to do. I mean, you’re up there with some big boys, you know, up there they’re getting millions and millions of downloads and it’s actually every time I talk with Norm he’s like yeah, the YouTube stuff has taken off, some of this has taken off, you’re starting to get some good traction.
Kelsey:
Yeah, yeah, and I think you know segwaying into some different social media platforms. But TikTok, I think, has made a big difference with how people digest their content and gives people just those little bits of content and the way the algorithm works that it shoots out to you know so many different people and it’s targeted with their algorithm. So I think it’s consistency. It’s trying out new platforms where you can keeping your thumb, you know, on the what is it Keeping your thumb on the button.
Kevin King:
On the pulse? Come on now. Your brother’s a doctor. You got to know that. You got to know at least what a pulse is.
Kelsey:
That’s why I’m not the doctor, that’s why I started, yeah, but uh, I think keeping your thumb on the pulse, seeing the different topics that are happening, obviously AI is huge right now. Um, so, going where one your audience is interested in and wants to do, but also the other half is what you’re really interested in, and trying to find that point where you can speak authentically and they can see that enjoyment of you, but also mix that with covering topics that they’re interested as well, and it kind of goes back and forth. Maybe we focus a little bit too much on a topic that Norm’s interested in and then we try to, you know, correct that and maybe we see, you know this episode gets a lot of views, so do more content about that, and it’s kind of a back and forth measuring that, but it’s always evolving.
Kevin King:
So what is it that you’ve learned by doing this? Like you, you came into COVID started you had no idea about this Amazon thing. Now you’ve been 600 episodes or whatever you guys have done since. You were doing three a week for a while there and now it’s down to one, but it’s somewhere like that, what? What is something that you’re like oh my, that’s really stood out to you in that process of just being behind the scenes and hearing these people talk. I’m sure some of it just bores you to death from time to time, but some of it’s like wow, that was really cool and fascinating. What’s something, a couple of things that stick out that you’ve learned or that really are just like man, that was really cool.
Kelsey:
Yes. So I would say I was in a very unique situation with this podcast. I think it’s very unique to be able to sit in on these conversations with I think we’re at close to 700 episodes.
Kevin King:
700, okay.
Kelsey:
Yeah, there’s some repeat guests obviously, so maybe around 400 to 500 guests in total, but I get to sit in on 400 to 500 guests, learn what’s happening in the industry and see also the similarities of what people are, the overlap of the different content that people talk about and the different ideas and methods. So, um, one specifically it’s not super exciting, but systems. You know Norm drilled that into my head but seeing you know Josh Hadley on the podcast and I think it’s very consistent how important systems and processes is with your business. Having those systems of you know, if I were to step away from this business, can it keep running and is it functional? Are there going to be? Do I have to come back in and put out the fires? I also see that there’s a real issue with shiny objects in this industry. I think a lot of people see, you know these new softwares that pop up in the world and they almost use that as an excuse to not focus on their business that, oh, I got to learn this, oh I got to learn this, oh I got to learn this, and they’ll always be thinking about these new things popping up. Not trends, like AI is obviously a trend, but I’m seeing people are focusing on all these minor AI softwares that, I think, realistically, your business, 80% of your business, is from 20% of you know, um, something that works.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I agree with you. I see people posting and lots of different WhatsApp groups and different things about you know the latest SOAR 2 or the latest VO3 or the latest this, and they’re playing like how do you guys have time to do this?
Kelsey:
Exactly.
Kevin King:
How do you have time to play with this and go post about it and write this stuff up. And this is not AI or some VA doing this. This is them. What are you doing to make money? These are cool little tools, but you take the Ferrari for a spin one time and then go back and actually make some money. If you need to use it and it makes sense, then do it, but it’s like me. Nano Banana has been out for a couple months now. It was before that, but they changed the name but I’ve never even logged into it. I know all about it and I know what I can do and I’ve seen results, but for me it’s like okay, it’s cool, but why do I if I don’t have a practical use and if I got another tool that’s doing the job good enough for what I’m doing? If I need an image for the newsletter, I don’t need to go to Nano Banana. I can do it in OpenAI or Ideogram or whatever it is. I don’t need to go over there and I. It baffles me sometimes how people have and these are people. Some of these are people with kids and stuff and they’re not like me. I have no family or no kids and I can work 24-7. I agree with you there, there’s a lot of shiny objects, a lot of just like waste of time.
Kelsey:
And I think there’s always that potential of, in this industry specifically like this person has made X amount of money in this industry or like in retail or like this person has made an X amount of money in print on demand or this person has made an X amount of money on TikTok shop. And there’s that FOMO, the fear of missing out of oh, I need to be doing that because I want to be making more money and like, oh, I got to do that. But the amount of time that it takes to focus on something, to get good at it, to really dive in and understand the mechanics sure, you can hire someone, but I do think that having your own experience and kind of having an understanding to TikTok shop or you, you want to have some experience of yourself so you can guide other people and delegate those tasks to people. So, and I think AI, these AI tools, are just the perfect embodiment of these shiny objects that people jump to all the time because, yeah, like Nano Banana, but now I’ve, I’m in the same boat, I, I get sent. You know, these softwares are like check out this thing, check out this thing, but realistically, a lot of it is cool but it doesn’t really help me with what I need to be doing. Or, okay, I have to understand that if I want to learn this tool or this new thing that’s out there, I have to dedicate X amount of time to it.
Kelsey:
Is that something that’s going to also take away from my business? Take away from something that’s actually going to make me money? Am I going to actually go through fully with that new thing? Or am I going to learn five, 10, you know five, 10 days of it and then see something else and jump to that and then forget about it and then end up just wasting more time? So I think, sticking to what you’re good at keeping an eye out for trends I think with the podcast it does also I see-
Kevin King:
You’re on the bleeding edge of what’s happening.
Kelsey:
Exactly so when Walmart was coming out, we started just slowly having more and more Walmart podcast guests on. It just happens naturally too. Maybe at an event we meet someone and they’ll talk to us and we’ll have them on the podcast and then, because someone watched that, they reached out to us to come on the podcast and so we’ve been seeing the trends of Walmart, TikTok shop, AI and it’s pretty cool to go back and see, like what we were talking about during certain times, because it does change over time. But not to just take off your full attention to something just because it’s new and shiny, I think is a downfall for a lot of people that they need to be aware of.
Kevin King:
Now you said you, one of the things is, if you’re going to help people do something, you need to have a little bit of experience in it so you know what it takes and so you can delegate it. So you, you branched out um, your girlfriend’s one of the top, uh, social media, uh influencer people out there. And then you branched out and I remember you and your dad like set this challenge to like, hey, we’re gonna become these Amazon live guys and people. You have a garage full of products that people were sending to you. And then you started doing, okay, we’re gonna do. I forgot what the thing was. It’s 100 days or a hundred thousand dollars. What was something?
Kelsey:
Like a thousand K followers.
Kevin King:
Yeah, and you started doing this. You’re like you know what this is freaking work, this is not like paying off. But then you also do some stuff and you went out and did some things. You did some of that with your dad. Then you also did some things on your own and I remember your dad telling me sometimes he’s like, yeah, Kelsey’s really he’s doing really well. He did this like electronics product or something and went viral. And so talk to me about your dabbling and what you’re doing there. And then I know you’ve pivoted into. You and your lady are doing some stuff together. We’ll talk about that a little bit, but talk about that road where you went into that.
Kelsey:
Yeah, so this must have been beginning of 2023, maybe late 2022. But again, seeing the trends of podcasting, we started getting people talking about um, the Amazon affiliate program and Amazon influencers, and Gracie was one of those guests that talked about how you can make money on Amazon as a creator and that you know you can make pretty pretty good money as a creator as well. So maybe-
Kevin King:
Sitting here. Before y’all were together, y’all were like kind of I don’t know what, what it was. Y’all were, y’all were friends, friendly, y’all were sitting on our balcony and we in my balcony, in my house in Austin, some event was like five or six is about there and someone was grilling I think it was Elena. She was grilling on like how much you know she was making and she was spitting out some numbers that everybody’s eyes were popping up like holy cow. Um, I remember that.
Kelsey:
That is the power of TikTok, great content and the affiliate programs. And when those three line up and you make that perfect trifecta like you can, you can make some serious money. So that was initially, I think, intrigued Norm to start this a hundred K? Uh challenge. And guess who got to do all the work for it? I ended up learning, um, all about Amazon affiliates. I learned from Gracie as well. She gave me a lot of tips about, you know, setting up your accounts and I remember there was one time Amazon’s really weird but it gives you like two accounts one for like on traffic and one outside of traffic, for external traffic. And ours was messing up and I remember just freaking out and we had to call Gracie and she was like, what are you guys talking about? It’s fine, like, just do this. And we’re like, oh, thank God. But yeah, I got into Amazon lives. This was during the time when we were doing three podcasts a week. So we were doing three podcasts a week and then on Tuesdays and Thursdays we were doing two Amazon lives and what we were doing we’re reaching out to different brands saying that we’d talk about their product and you know, any sales that will get X amount, percentage of the commissions. And so we started doing that. More and more outreach was happening, more and more brands were taking us up on it and we were just getting sent all of these products nonstop. We had to catalog all of the items. We had a website, so trying to this was before AI or anything. So it was me trying to figure out how to upload these deals to the site and troubleshooting a lot.
Kelsey:
And from there I think we just reached a point where we also were trying to build a TikTok series around it, where Norm, he was just having trouble understanding the TikTok platform and it was something where he could do it and he could do it well, but it would take him just longer to do it. And our systems were a little different. We weren’t going and recording things throughout the app. We were recording it separately, editing it, uploading it to TikTok, and it was just making a thing that could be easier much more complicated. So, from there we reached a point where it was like, okay, this is just too much work, maybe we should focus on, you know, the podcast or other ventures. And so we had this account. I was thinking, well, maybe I can do this like I I’ve done TikTok before or I’ve. I’m on TikTok, probably too much, but I watch you know TikToks. I see it.
Kevin King:
You’re probably watching all the K-pop videos since you were in Korea.
Kelsey:
Yeah, my, uh, my four-year feed is really crazy it’s a bunch of you know, um, there’s a guy that makes stew every day, that just adds some ingredients and you just uh, the things you can watch, but you’re invested, um. So I started playing around with it. I was doing TikTok deals and, sure enough, I was watching a lot of like Mr. beast content and you know, a really important thing in content is trying to just always improve the content that you’re making. So, I always just tried to improve like one little thing every video. And I remember the first video, or first 5, 10 videos, I was getting maybe 50 to 70 views and I was getting so frustrated I thought I was shadow banned. I was trying to talk to people and say, why are the videos not working? They’re good videos and now, looking back at them, they were horrible. The lighting was bad, my voice was shaky, it was um, the volume wasn’t set, the angle of the camera was off. Everything was just terrible about it. But sure enough, I just started finding my voice as well online and during that time, just constantly trying and improving, I was able to get some success. So, I remember my first video got like 10,000 views and I was like, wow, that’s really crazy. And then, a few weeks after that, I got 100,000 views and then I got 500,000 views and, uh, you know, it was right around Q4 too. So, then we started getting commissions from it and it started building and building and building. Um. I still have the account and I’m gonna get back into it. But TikTok shop, unfortunately, you know, axed uh Canadians out.
Kelsey:
It was a lot of brands were looking specifically for US specific content or creators, um, for TikTok shop it’s not available, uh in even still, so that kind of slowed that momentum down and decided just to move away from it. But I learned a lot from that time of, you know, building an audience, creating video content that I think is really useful that I can now transition over to you know, YouTube content or TikTok shop and helping other brands to you know make better content. And that’s what I was talking about at the Helium 10 elite with you um, about those fundamental components to good videos that so many brands are missing, um, that don’t understand, that are very eager to jump to AI and use this awful AI slop and then complain about why their content isn’t working. And that’s exactly how I felt when I was making those first couple of videos was why isn’t my content converting? But it’s really just bad content. TikTok knows good content and if it’s not performing, it’s you.
Kevin King:
But, like you said, you listen to Mr. Beast but he always says his first hundred videos were like garbage and that’s what he always preaches. It’s like, look, just get out there and just do it and your first stuff is going to be probably pretty, pretty, pretty petrid and pretty bad. But that’s where you cut your chops and that’s where you figure out what works. And then, as soon as that one goes, then you kind of got dialed in and that’s what’s elevated him to where he’s where he’s at and that’s what a lot of people I think the same with newsletters or the same with podcast or the same with anything they give up too soon. Uh, people, you know, I think the average newsletter or after podcast only lasts seven episodes. Um, it’s work. And then the same thing with newsletters. I know several people like after my talk, my trainer, several people starting newsletters and most of them aren’t doing them anymore because life gets in the way. So, it’s finding that one thing and, like you said earlier, all these shiny objects, finding something that works and sticking with it, and sometimes you’ve got to stay with it for a while to build it and to get it rocking and rolling. My newsletter wasn’t making $700,000 the first year it probably made $40,000 or something, but now the systems are in place and it’s, it’s rocking and rolling, um, and people are coming to me. Uh, you know I’m not really having to solicit a lot of advertising. They come into me.
Kevin King:
Um um, so that’s where you got to get it. But you, so you’ve taken this social media and then now you have uh and you’re doing something with Gracie. You’ll have a company together or something?
Kelsey:
Yeah. So we have Spark Talk.
Kevin King:
Spark, Spark, Talk.
Kelsey:
Yeah, so that’s our, we’re a TikTok shop uh agency partner. So, we look at brand management, a lot of affiliate outreach, um helping brands, consulting with brands, helping them with their own content and what they should be doing and how they should be positioning their brands um or their videos with their audiences. A lot of it is focusing on affiliate management. Selling on TikTok is very different than selling on Amazon and getting through to the brands. That it is a completely different system. That’s at play with TikTok shop is the most important. The importance of product seeding, the importance of finding the right creators, doing the outreach, having the right products to just make the difference on TikTok shop. Yeah, there’s a lot to TikTok shop. It’s not for everyone, but it can be really powerful. I know there’s just on the creator side. There are creators making insane amount of money, uh, just doing affiliate program or affiliate sales with the products. So, it is possible. Um it just it takes that learning or understanding, or having someone understand what TikTok shop is, to transition your brand over.
Kevin King:
So, what are some of the expectations? When a brand comes to you guys and says, hey, I saw this podcast on Lunch with Norm or somewhere, people are talking about TikTok shop, I think I need to be there. There’s this halo effect for my Amazon. What are sometimes their expectations that are incorrect? I remember you and I and Gracie and Norm were at an event, a Christmas party in Florida, and there’s a potential client there that was trying to hire her and just had these expectations of like, yeah, you can make anything go viral, you know. And Gracie’s like, look, no, I can’t. And so these expectations. But he’s like, yeah, but it’s you. And so what are some of the expectations that sellers come into when you’re talking to them that are unrealistic and how should they adjust their thought process on TikTok?
Kelsey:
So, you nailed one, a big one was virality. People think that if you make a video, you can go viral on TikTok, which is completely true. But even when you look at influencers and you say I want Gracie and she’s going to go viral, that’s just not how things work. There’s a couple of elements at play there. Influencers are very good at creating the content that they create as soon as a brand comes in and starts telling you what your content should be for this video. That’s one factor where automatically, like the video is probably going to flail. There’s, you really have to trust the creator’s process and also understand that their audience doesn’t like ads. I don’t think anyone on TikTok would say they like watching ads or product placements in their videos. They need to make their content the way they can to get the most out of it, to show their value, and you need to also have the understanding that the video that you have in mind might not be the right video for that creator. So, understanding the role of influencers and the size of influencers like there’s the large, huge influencers and there’s like the micro influencers.
Kelsey:
Micro-influencers yes, you can give them a script, you can give them kind of a guide of how the content is going to be done and created, and a lot of them it’s their first or second video that they’ve made, video, that they’re getting a sponsored video or they’re working with a brand and it can be really exciting. I was in that position where the brands were reaching out to me on TikTok and I was really excited and I was basically like, yeah, you could pay me like two dollars, like I, I, yeah, absolutely, and I’ll do this and this and whatever you’d like, and I’d be happy to do five edits and, um, because you’re just so excited about this idea that you can be a star on TikTok and you’re working with brand deals.
Kevin King:
So back on the podcast thing, one of the benefits of podcasting and podcasting with a AEO answer engine optimization now is a critical thing for building personal brand authority and some of the smartest people in the space that I follow and that I work with and know are saying that every brand needs a personal side, every brand. So, if you’re selling, you know microphone stands, you no longer can be just the microphone sure company. You need a personal brand, a person, a person behind that or a person that’s representing that, and podcasts are one of the ways to do it. So if I was sure, I would start an audio podcast and I would have a host that’s the host and basically the spokesperson, for sure, and that’s going to help with AEO and going to help with a lot of stuff on that. That’s where everything’s going. But podcasts are also great to actually get to know people. Like you said earlier, you get to meet a lot of people. It’s an excuse to talk to someone for an hour and that you, in a lot of cases, you’re not going to get you know a lot of these guests if I called up Neil Patel and said, hey, Neil, I just want to go have a beer with you and talk with you for an hour and a half and you’re like I’m kind of busy but if you say you wanna come on a podcast, yeah sure I’ll do that and then you get to pick your brand sometimes selfishly for your own questions. Sometimes it will help, other times, help the audience and then you make connections and sponsorships come out of that and other deals come out of that, and so what do you see the difference? Like working on the podcast? You do the Lunch with Norm and then you’re also helping out with Marketing Misfits that Norm and I do together. What do you see the big difference between those two, other than, as Norm always says, I do a lot more of the talking on Marketing Misfits. What do you see as the biggest difference in those? You know my chef is a big fan of the Marketing Misfits and he’s like he loves the banter. He loves, like you know, when Norm and I goof on each other and stuff, and so he’s a regular listener to that and several other people say the same thing. What do you see the big differences are between those two podcasts?
Kelsey:
I think the live component for Lunch with Norm is unique. So, some people I know really love seeing the like in real time the conversations happening, the mistakes, the bloopers. You know, when the guest doesn’t show up or you know, Norm’s internet cuts out and I’m thrown in and talking with the guest and they, they love that. We also have the, the chat option too. So, um, we had the. We still have the wheel of Kelsey where we give away something at the end of every episode. So viewers are wanting to come back. Uh, they like to enter and see if they win. And there’s a real community. When I’m looking at the, the chat, people talk to each other. They make friendships between each other. I even moved it over. We moved over to Patreon for a bit and created a mastermind and I was on weekly calls with these uh, the Beardos, talking to them about social media and how to build up their social media, and I know their faces. I’ve talked to them in person at events. So, you really get to connect with the audience in a live format. That’s very unique and obviously it’s a little bit more Amazon-focused. Marketing misfits is, I know, the first. It’s still, in a way, relatively new to Lunch with Norm, but it’s really cool that the direction of where the guests recommend another guest and you see that spider web happening and the connections that are happening through these different um guests when they’re when they’re the next guest that’s on, because I know you guys had Neil Patel on your episode and the back and forth between you and Norm is really interesting. It’s I think your chef was right. There’s a vibe, a tone that you two have with each other. Um, that it sounds like you’re just, you know you get to listen in on two, two buddies talking about what they’re interested in and, and, you know, make fun of themselves and uh, people like it for that. But then you guys also have really high caliber guests as well that people look into and um, yeah, I, I know on TikTok, you know we’ve had some videos on Marketing Misfits get, you know, 80,000 views and they really like your dynamics with each other. Also recorded episodes, which makes it really nice where you can pick and choose what you’re talking about beforehand.
Kelsey:
Lunch with Norm. The cons of live podcasts is maybe you wanted to talk about a certain something, you didn’t get to it during the episode and you can’t really say, hey, stop this episode, let’s go back and talk about this, where you have a bit more freedom in the editing room and you can talk to the guests beforehand and say let’s talk about this and this, or how should we do this, this and this. So, it’s a little bit more structured than Lunch with Norm, I think, but it is very different. We try to move into that now with Lunch with Norm, as we’re doing more highly edited episodes. We do like a nice intro in the beginning. We cut out me in the beginning, I get the cut. But it’s also something special that we leave in when it’s live, that people get to feel a little extra special, that they get all of these. You know, behind the scenes or me and Norm talking back and forth to each other, and then the recorded episode for Lunch with Norms are just more straight to the point, direct, and there’s an audience for that. So, yeah, the it is interesting that you know two people are the same person can have such a wide variety of content. Um, like two podcasts that Norm does are very, very different from each other.
Kelsey:
And there’s people that love watching Marketing Misfits and never watched Lunch with Norm and there’s people that watch Lunch with Norm but just for some reason aren’t interested in Marketing Misfits. And I feel probably AM/PM and podcast. You know, there’s you’re, you’re, you. You have the same personality, you’re, but the dynamics just a little bit different. And people like what they like, and so it’s really cool to see how people change, or how people decide on what they want to watch, because it is you have to win their time, you have to, they have to like you enough to say I’m going to watch you for an hour. You’re going to be the show that I’m going to listen to on my car ride over to work. And you know, Marketing Misfits sometimes is that podcast, sometimes it’s Lunch with Norm, sometimes it’s the other hundred thousand podcasts out there in the world.
Kevin King:
So what, so being privy to both these podcasts and the newsletter and everything in the space, and you’ve been to BDSS a couple times and some of the other events. What are the tea leaves telling you? I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re like out there where you know, getting exposed to a lot more information than the average seller or the average person, because you’re on every one of these episodes or at least going through them or helping to edit the process. What are the tea leaves telling you that’s happening in this industry right now? If you had to sum it up, what’s going on in the e-commerce selling industry?
Kelsey:
There are going to be two groups of people, the people that have a very shallow idea of AI, and then there’s the people that are going to be able to have the full understanding of AI and create processes, work a hundred times less but get a thousand X return. Um, there’s when I talk to people like my friends, they have no idea still what ChatGPT does, or what you know Sora is or Claude. They have such a. It just isn’t something that they’re interested in, it doesn’t relate to them as of yet. And when I see that in Amazon businesses too, where they think ChatGPT is just like a poem writer. But then you know we have these crazy guests that that our last guest, Jacob Wolitski. He has a software where you can download your data, your Amazon data, and basically have a conversation with your data and figure out exactly what’s going on and steps that you should be taking. Or the AI agents that can do 10 different jobs, and I think processes are going to be very important for that. I think AI is going to have to rely on the processes and if you don’t have processes, it’s going to be chaos or you’re just not going to be very efficient with AI. But AI is scary good.
Kelsey:
I know me and Gracie. She sent over an image yesterday. It was like an Instagram profile and it was over this ice cream with an oyster shell, with ice cream and some caviar and like an oyster on top, and it took us probably 10 minutes to try and figure out if it was AI or not. We had to go through the different Instagram pictures to be like okay, this one’s a little crazy, like is that AI, Is it not? And then we went to like the, the site that’s linked, and it went to this restaurant and so we were like it’s so, it’s a real restaurant, but it’s a fake thing. But no, the restaurant was AI. And then they had like a merch site and then they had real chefs in their pictures and people were saying this is this, is AI, right? And then the chef would reply saying like no, it’s, how could this be AI? Like I’m a real person, and it was a real chef replying. So, they were like collaborating with real chefs, using them in their images and you know, collaborating and boosting their profiles. But this profile had 125,000 people following it and they had a chatbot of a chef that you could reach out and talk to. But it’s so incredibly scary how good AI can be now and the power that it has, and it’s just incredible. You definitely have to. I would definitely recommend finding an AI bootcamp. I know Futurepedia has a great list of courses or anything that you can search on YouTube. But have an understanding of how, what’s going on behind the scenes, because if you really aren’t paying attention, it can leave you really quickly. And I know Sora just came out a couple weeks ago now that we’re recording, but the effects of what Sora is going to have and I think in two, three, four months it’s going to look completely different than what it is now. It’s evolving so quickly.
Kevin King:
I agree. But speaking of that, this has been a great chatting with you here for the past hour, Kelsey. That went by really, really quick. If people want to reach out to you, or they want to, where do they go Lunch with Norm, what’s? What’s the name of the? How do they reach out to the agency? How do they follow you? Are you on LinkedIn or TikTok or whatever? What’s the best way for people to get in touch?
Kelsey:
Yeah, so you can follow me on LinkedIn. It’s all my. I changed over all my URLs to Kelsey P Farrar, so it’s nice and easy. Sparktalk, sparktalk.com. And yeah, happy to reach out if you’re interested in Lunch with Norm, the podcast. If you have a question about it, you can reach me [email protected]. That’s kind of my, my go-to email, uh, right now. And um, I I’ve actually something exciting that I’ll be talking here for the first time, but I’m starting my own newsletter. Uh, I mean, I actually told Norm.
Kevin King:
I thought what you’re gonna tell me is a wedding that you are getting married. I thought I was waiting for this big announcement of like I’ve got something exciting to tell you. It’s just a newsletter.
Kelsey:
Now it’s going to be yeah, but I’m working on a Substack newsletter that I’m excited about, so I’m going to be basically writing content today for it, in this week to write my first issue, but it’s the virality report and it’s going to be on Substack, so you can check that out. I’m going to be building out the social media for it and, yeah, I’m excited for that.
Kevin King:
Awesome man, I’ll make sure I subscribe to that. Well, Kelsey, I appreciate you coming on, man, this has been great.
Kelsey:
All right, yeah, thanks for having me, Kevin.
Kevin King:
Times that we’re in right now, as you can see, just on with Kelsey where he says he sees everything going. I agree AI is where it’s at and knowing how to use the tools properly. Like we talked about, some of them are just fun toys and they’re great tools. But if it doesn’t move the needle for what you’re trying to accomplish in your business, don’t worry about it. Use the ones that make sense and that can move the needle, and the other ones just let everybody else go have the fun. But this is a great episode with Kelsey. We’ll be back again next week with another awesome episode of the AM/PM podcast. If any of you are traveling for the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend holiday weekend here in the United States, be safe, enjoy your time with your family and we’ll see you on the other side. Take care.
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