Anthony Constantino returns to the Print Hustlers Podcast after the media buzz that became of Sticker Mule after a certain email was sent to the customers. We discuss having an open platform for your team, bringing outside topics into the workplace, and the state of Sticker Mule so far!
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- ScreenPrinting GPT and 3 Practical Uses of AI…WOW: Matt Marcotte joins the team again to introduce an amazing AI tool to help ALL screen printers
- Doing Things That Don’t Scale + Selling ALL Their Screen Printing Equipment: Davis Slagle of Bee Graphix has online stores down to a science.
Transcript:
00:00:04:04 – 00:00:27:11
Hey Print Hustlers! Welcome back. We’ve got Anthony Constantino out of Sticker Mule, the co-founder and CEO of Sticker Mule. You’ve probably seen his email or heard about it. It’s been going through the news quite a bit recently, where he talks about how he supports Trump. But many of his team as secretary of sports, Biden. And that’s okay. But he wants the political hate to stop.
00:00:27:13 – 00:00:50:22
And then, of course, in sticker mule fashion, includes a deal at the bottom. But, before you listen, this, look, I don’t care who you vote for. That’s not what this is about. I’m very curious about owners and how they involved different, out of work, things that are happening, inside the business. And that is what is super interesting because we’ve seen multiple companies go through this.
00:00:50:22 – 00:01:14:15
And do you do it? Does that help bring the team together or do you not and just totally focus on work? And that’s what we really dive into with Steven and Anthony today. So really excited to get into this. Some great opinions here and we’ll all jump on in. But first, we’ve got incredible ad sponsors that help us put this show on every single week.
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00:02:49:02 – 00:03:17:13
All right. Let’s jump on in.All right. Anthony’s back. We had an amazing first episode CEO sticker mill. Part time pro amateur boxer pro. Are you pro football pro program. Yeah. Let’s go. All right. I watched the video last time. Nice said. How’s it been going, by the way? You still training a lot? Took a little break.
00:04:11:16 – 00:04:32:03
This this. I wasn’t going to fight it, and it’s distract me, but, were you fighting in Mexico or something? Yeah, I live most of the year in Mexico. Or a lot of the year in Mexico. Gotcha. Do you guys have facilities down there? Technically, there is a signal. Mexico, but it’s just, I’m like an investor and gym down there, so it’s all it is.
00:04:32:05 – 00:04:50:08
Do you. What do you feel like you spend most of your time on? Obviously, you know, boxing something, say. But just business wise, it’s hard to say. You know, when I was doing the boxing was 4 to 5 hours a day, so it eats up a lot of time, and then. Oh, yeah, if you want to, like, fight competitively, it’s going to be it’s going to be investment as a job.
00:04:50:08 – 00:05:11:09
Right. You don’t want you don’t want to be in a professional ring with somebody that’s like doing it for their job and you’re doing it. That’s true. One half one hour a day way we get knocked out, Yeah. It’s not a good idea. So yeah, when I do that, that’s for five hours a day. But, yeah, since this all happened, I’ve been, you know, it’s been more work and having, you know, having fun trying to, shift, the vibe.
00:05:11:09 – 00:05:29:11
But, you know, you know, hate that’s been going on for the last eight years. But what about what about work? Why? So, like, Steven and I will talk about. Hey, what are you thinking about? Because sometimes it’s so easy to get into the minutia in the weeds, and it consumes a lot of, like, mental hours. But sometimes it’s, I don’t know, a big hire.
00:05:29:11 – 00:05:44:11
You try to make a step out of it or like what? Yeah. So that kind of follows to so so I tell people like, do you want to like my just principles. Like I like to fix the biggest problems. That was in my power to fix. That’s our hardest to do as a company. So, when I, when I am working, I direct my energy towards that.
00:05:44:11 – 00:06:19:05
I do the same. Actually, in boxing I always try to solve the biggest problem first. So I’m just like constantly maintaining like awareness of the company. What are like major issues? That one that need fixing and and I work on that. So like, right now, like, I think a major issue like for the last election, you know, we we’ve grown to be like the company we like, you know, we want to keep growing and doing more exciting things like Minor Star is happiness and helping people like and, so for the last ten years or so, you can kind of sticker me on and buy.
00:06:19:05 – 00:06:38:22
And so like, we’re in the business of helping companies succeed through our products, but there’s a limit to what we can do there. So in the last, month or so, we launched a storage platform. So we’re now the easiest way to launch your business on, on the internet. And you can open a store on Sticker Mule. So products made by us through your store, we handle shipping, fulfillment and customer service.
00:06:38:22 – 00:06:55:23
So it’s so, it’s a huge problem to solve, making it easier for people to spin up online businesses or businesses in general. So, you know, I like to solve big problems. That’s an example of, you know, how I direct my energy. And the last time we talked, merch was still you were working on it or was starting to surface.
00:06:55:23 – 00:07:15:02
Now, you know, it’s order a shirt on sticker mule. Has that turned into a big part of your business, people? All the shirts. Yeah. Yeah. So people love the shirts. I suspect, as we, you know, as we get into, like, this concept of helping other people make money, spin on store, start businesses for themselves. You know, I’m all about just making people happy and doing useful things, right.
00:07:15:02 – 00:07:32:19
There’s nothing more useful than like, helping people, stabilize themselves or succeed financially. Yeah, we’re going to be trying to look to sell whatever product is going to be a little bit more interesting. We’re going to be looking to sell whatever products, are beneficial for our sellers. So how would you compare this then? I guess it’s almost like you’re turning like printful versus you guys.
00:07:32:19 – 00:07:45:03
How would you compare? How would you compare yourself to them now? You know, I haven’t really thought about that. Like we’re we’re a different platform altogether. But you know, I don’t I don’t like I don’t want you know, I haven’t really spent a lot that’s not I don’t spend a lot of time looking at, competitors in general.
00:07:45:07 – 00:08:03:18
How do you get a sense of what the customer wants from your level? Right. Because I’m assuming huge team at this point, big moving company, a lot of orders and stuff, you know, is it reading support emails? Is it like, you know, it’s not so hard. I mean, it’s really not so hard. Yeah. Support emails. People talk to me.
00:08:03:18 – 00:08:24:12
Just general feedback. Just thing about talk to people. So like anytime anyone wants so anyone time anyone leaves negative feedback that goes into you. Sara I would say I still read like a lot of the negative feedback frustration coming from customers recently. A lot of it was, directed at one particular topic. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
00:08:24:15 – 00:08:49:18
What do you. I’m so confused. Yeah. It’s interesting. I mean, one of the things that struck me, especially from the last episode, is just how, focused internally. It seemed you guys were even down to, you know, you started to mention how that we had to re-engineer equipment so that it fit our high volume, you know, kind of lower quantity way of working.
00:08:49:20 – 00:09:14:12
And we have folks on staff that focus on that. So yeah, it’s interesting. Right. Because it’s easy to get distracted by competitors. But you’re right. I mean you’ve obviously carved out a niche doing that. From the product side, from the marketing side, you know, the hot sauce, everything. Yeah. You know, I we have a fairly whatever you want to call it, flat organization.
00:09:14:12 – 00:09:36:07
So it’s like, you know, we’re a sizable company, but there’s not that many people, and management. So it’s easy to keep a pulse on stuff. You know, people talk to me and say, let’s do this or let’s do that. And it’s a, you know, it’s it’s easy. I also think for whatever reason, I just have a natural ability to understand and understand human nature and like, what people want, like.
00:09:36:07 – 00:09:58:13
Right. I guess it’s sort of obvious, right? People want to make money, so they want to switch platforms in certain areas. Yeah. Do you think that thought process helped you to. Because to be able to spend time, you know, being a pro boxer or whatever else you want to be able to do? I mean, you must have did a good job then of pulling yourself out of the, the, the day to day minutia.
00:09:58:15 – 00:10:18:10
I mean, even I always talk about this is just so difficult is like, you know, I don’t know, maybe you see an order come across and you’re just like, like, what the hell? We have processes. Why was it short? You know, what was this issue to be able to spend that time not on that business in general? Was that a result of focusing on the biggest problems and trying to ignore the rest?
00:10:18:10 – 00:10:35:16
Like, did you find yourself good at that, or do you still struggle with that anyway? Like everyone else? You got it. No, I don’t I don’t know why I had this ability, but yeah, I mean, you just you have to manage your metrics. The hard thing is defining your metrics. But once you, define, you just manage your metrics and like, get people get in the weeds saying like, especially in manufacturing, it’s easy.
00:10:35:16 – 00:10:50:18
It’s a lot of moving parts in a factory. And you can go on not saying there’s a problem here, there’s a problem. There’s, you know, there’s problems all over the place. And manufacturing, you don’t have 100% perfection. And when you have high volumes, right, like let’s say you got 99.9% perfection, but you’re shipping a million orders a year.
00:10:50:18 – 00:11:09:06
That’s this was a lot of defective orders. But you got to look at your metrics and say, you know, 99.9% are good. You got to look at your cost for a general sense. You can’t get wound up about, you know, for example, like, if I, if I’m in the factory and, you know, people are taking an extended lunch, you know, I don’t really care.
00:11:09:07 – 00:11:31:18
Like, it doesn’t. So you can’t look at stuff like that. You gotta look at your overall productivity metrics throughout, you know, whereas like, maybe other, manufacturing managers get in the weeds and they’re like, why? Why are people doing an hour lunch instead of, you know, we’re going to do an hour, 15 minute lunch instead of the hour lunch that we, you know, allotted for them, and we’re losing money on that 15 it’s like, now you got to look at your overall numbers, Anthony, where do you spend?
00:11:31:18 – 00:11:49:14
So like I imagine Sticker Mule is an engineer or a manufacturing kind of marvel. And then there’s the you know, the technology, right. Your actual like your tech stack. And then there’s the sales and marketing. Where do your passions lie? Where do you spend most of your time? I did every you know, I did everything at one point.
00:11:49:14 – 00:12:12:05
Right? Because I started the company. So I did all the customer service for the first year or two. I ran the factory, I did everything. So, you know, once you start doing like, the hardest thing in business is growth. So, in the beginning, girl times are fairly easy. But the hardest thing a business is growth. So I spend most of my time there, but at the same time, I focus on, solving the biggest problems that are in front of us.
00:12:12:05 – 00:12:28:06
So, at times, like, all is coming very easily and we have issues in manufacturing at times like growth is like more of a, a struggle, like. Right. And we need more creativity there. And so I’ll spend more time thinking about what we can do to like, get growth going. You know, we’ve we’ve talked about this for a while.
00:12:28:06 – 00:12:51:15
It’s kind of been a back and forth like since we don’t have investors, like we aren’t pressure to just grow as quickly as possible and do it in an unpleasant way. So I’ve never wanted to, like, grow so quickly. I stressed the team out. So yeah, I kind of go back and forth between focusing on growth when that’s an issue and focusing on back in operations, but like, okay, let’s say like when you decided to bring merch on board and now you’re doing DTG on demand, right?
00:12:51:16 – 00:13:12:07
And I don’t know, I’m going to I’m going to assume Courtney, it’s probably whatever. Like do you go hire people that are experts in DTG on demand and merch, or do you guys try to develop yourself for like, you know, when you’re when you’re like, I want that. How do you what do you do? We got a lot of experience within the company.
00:13:12:07 – 00:13:28:20
So we just, you know, we figured things out. No, I didn’t go getting. We don’t go hire like, experts, consultants or anything like that. We got a lot of talent in the company. We use our network, though. Like, one thing in business, right? It’s called the use of resources. So I got my Rolodex of people that I rely on.
00:13:28:20 – 00:13:47:04
People that work with me, got their people there on. So, I don’t know, we, we, we use our resources, the people that are available to us and we figure things out. We got good relationships with our vendors and so on and so forth. So I don’t know how it is. There are things are we just figuring out, but with with the measure, with the managed, with metrics part?
00:13:47:06 – 00:14:03:08
Is it if a metric that you don’t like or you want it to improve, are you telling the person that’s responsible for that, like, hey, look, all right, by the end of this quarter, we need to get this to this. Then you just hear back next week and see, hey, where are we at? And that that’s the delegation.
00:14:03:10 – 00:14:19:12
Sometimes it works that way. Like first thing, if someone’s got metric in place, like the metric automatically improves. So that’s the one, you know. And then people can always do people can be able to do more than they think they can. And a little funny story, you know, our engineers, they work for years on a pretty cool machine.
00:14:19:12 – 00:14:35:00
And they were very proud of themselves to, to to get me the first version. I said to him, this machine is great, but, we need like one hour, 20 of them, and you’re going to eat up all the floor space. So I said, we you know, I can’t. It’s you, I can’t, I can’t, we can’t order 20.
00:14:35:00 – 00:14:52:17
You know, we’re not ordering on a regular in-house. I said, I can’t, I can’t whatever internally order 20 of these machines. I said, first before we can roll out this technology to the entire company, you got to make it twice as fast and half the size. That’s not possible. They are so proud of themselves. Right. And I said, you gotta make it twice as fast and half the size.
00:14:52:19 – 00:15:09:08
And, you know, they were able to do, I believe it or not. So, yeah, you know, you got to just put like, you put goals in front of people and people, you know, you got a good team to figure things out. So I think, right. I’m not the only person that operates this way. Elon Musk did a pretty good job right?
00:15:09:08 – 00:15:23:10
When it when Twitter had the, multiple data centers. Right. That’s called X. Now they have multiple data centers. And so I just want one. And then there was I don’t like that sort of story. Went to you went to California and you just like, pulled the plug and shut the data center down because people thought it couldn’t be done.
00:15:23:10 – 00:15:38:17
You know, I said, oh, yeah, you brought in the kitchen sink. Clearly. Yeah. I spent like 3 or 4 years to develop a machine. I said, no, this is not this is a great machine, but I want it to at twice the speed and have 2006 months later they did it. So, you know, they were happy, I was happy.
00:15:38:19 – 00:15:55:14
Are you a pretty hard person to please? It’s sticker mule like do does your team okay. Like, sometimes my team’s on eggshells around me because they’re like, we don’t know what he’s going to say. We don’t know if he likes this, if he’s happy. And then he’s also a pro boxer too. So yeah. Like to lean towards that.
00:15:55:14 – 00:16:15:23
No I’m serious. Like, you know, you do have a wild card personality, right? Like you’ve done some wild things and some wild emails, like in terms of how I interact with people like I’ve, I’ve always, address people based on their, their pay grade. Right. So there it’s higher expectations the more you make. Only five people report to me directly.
00:16:15:23 – 00:16:37:12
They know. Right. People make jokes. Oh, this is Elon’s handler. So and so, you know, highly skilled people. Sometimes it is that way. So am I difficult to deal with? Like, if you’re at the highest level of company, like, and you’re, you’re, you’re making, you know, substantial earnings, like, I have fairly high expectations, but these are people I, I’ve known me for a very long time and, and the friends of mine.
00:16:37:12 – 00:16:56:16
And so they I’ve known each other for a very long time. We work together very well. I do, people that want to get promoted. And fortunately directors, I’m going to say be careful what you wish for. But anyways, I look at people, you know, based on their pay grade, if you’re making a ton of money, like, I have high expectations, depending upon where you are in the company, like the expectations, like, change dramatically, which is fair.
00:16:56:16 – 00:17:12:19
But I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you on the flip side, I feel like sometimes, though, I may be afraid to lose that person. And so I’m, I’m not as like holding them to a bar, but that’s probably the wrong way for me to think about. Well, you’re got to feel good too, right? So I’m a big believer suddenly I’m a guy.
00:17:12:21 – 00:17:32:08
I think everyone’s saying like when anything it’s frustrating is always he’s never he’s he’s only fair. Like you. I don’t get frustrated by silly stuff. Right. So, you can’t just be giving up, you know, you can’t be constantly difficult, right? So I’m praising people a lot, too. Yeah. You know, it’s it’s this is. And like, you know, you got I look at it like this, right?
00:17:32:08 – 00:17:49:19
You got a bank capital letter, political capital, emotional capital. People, you know, through praise for doing nice things for them. And then, you know, it gives you the right to be demanding at times. But if you’re just demanding and nothing else, it’s not going to work. But, you know, I do things whatever format you could do little things to win points of people.
00:17:49:19 – 00:18:13:18
Like if you stop by Starbucks and you grab coffees for your team rather than just for yourself, or you give people praise when they do good work. My co-founder is 82 years old, and, you know, he was incredible at doing really impressive things and then getting all the praise to his subordinates. You know, I didn’t understand that at first, but, like, yeah, you know, you got to if you make people feel good, it it gives you the right to be a little more demanding.
00:18:13:18 – 00:18:27:06
I think probably people like Elon Musk make people feel great. You know, they like working for him. And that gives him the right to be a little more the man who at times you brought up Elon a couple of times. Who else do you look up to? It’s like not too many people, yeah, not too many people, to be honest.
00:18:27:06 – 00:18:45:18
Like, I don’t, I don’t really, yeah. I’m not too many people. I still have to read that. Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk, did you read? I see that either I like boxers, you know, Mike Tyson, Pluto. I look up to Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson, people that are very, you know, very successful in different areas. But in the world of business, yeah.
00:18:45:18 – 00:19:07:01
Really, you know, not too many, you know, maybe not too not too many people, maybe from areas gone by that are no longer there anymore for, for me to really pay attention to. But, you know, in business, Elon outside of business, Mike, Mike Tyson, Michael Jackson is no longer with but you know, similarly impressive play talented. Well similarly to, you and Elon.
00:19:07:03 – 00:19:24:21
You’re also very polarizing. And you like to do things like, I just want to do it. Let’s let’s do it this way. And I think part of that was the email that like that went out and seemed to have gotten picked up. I was like, wow, this has gotten outside of like, I think I saw a Forbes article about Business Insider.
00:19:24:21 – 00:19:45:16
Some others, I’m sure there was a bunch of, I was Wall Street Journal yesterday and not only Wall Street Journal, but the most popular article on the Wall Street Journal watch and see coming. All right, let’s get let’s. So in our world, you know, I don’t know where I was sitting when I got the email, but it was then forwarded to me like 15 times and then sent around, like all my text message groups.
00:19:45:20 – 00:20:03:15
And then in every Facebook group for the screen printing world, tell us about that day. Walk us back. It was wild. Yeah. I’ve every friend of my social circle was getting called by their friend groups like, what’s going on? But, you know, so, like, is this after you were in Mexico and did, like, an ayahuasca, like what happened?
00:20:03:15 – 00:20:18:23
I said, man, I’m fighting here. I was like, you know, maybe, I was going to do just a simple exhibition. I didn’t, I was I’m like boxers. Otherwise I was like training for about for a few weeks. I was going to do an exhibition. I was like, I’m getting a haircut, you know? So I looked at right for the for the fight.
00:20:19:04 – 00:20:38:18
And, just as I was about to get the haircut, this whole thing happened. A friend called me from United States and said, you know, President Trump was shot. And so I just wrote the I wrote the whole thing, while I was getting my haircut, came home and posted it. And I don’t remember the exact, you know, events, but like the the funniest part was like, I go home.
00:20:38:18 – 00:20:55:09
I posted it, at night. I was on my girlfriend’s Mexican, and, the next morning she had an appointment to go to. So she said, like, some of my appointment and I’ll meet you afterwards for coffee. So I wake up, you know, my phone was going crazy, so I’m trying to respond as quickly as possible. Then I go meet her at like 12 or 1.
00:20:55:09 – 00:21:09:22
By the time I get there, I got 4% battery. So as soon as I get there, I said, hey, you got the charger? And she said, oh no, I didn’t remember to bring it. And so we end up getting coffee and I end up going to dinner, and we end up going for drinks after dinner. We don’t get home until like 1 or 2 in the morning.
00:21:10:01 – 00:21:26:13
And then she’s like, and I finally plug my phone in and it’s like, the whole world’s going nuts. And they’re like, this guy just destroyed his company. You know? He like, people are telling me to kill myself. And all that amount of rage was like, was unbelievable. And, you know, my girlfriend said, do you think I need to believe what your data actually was like?
00:21:26:13 – 00:21:44:19
Because, you know, people thought like, yeah, he’s just sipping an espresso. And yeah, like, people thought this martini, I was going to like, you know, it was. Yeah, it’s like a traumatic experience for me. That was like how it happened. And then I got mad. I was I was unplugged the day it happened. And, I was really impressed at our team.
00:21:44:19 – 00:22:02:13
They kept an incredible sense of calm. So, as soon I got plugged in the next morning, I, I give them credit. Our PR director, who I just started and had asked me not to send them, you know, not to send this, right. He’s like, of course everything is a big thing, right? It was actually an Axios, but he was getting beat up all over LinkedIn, right?
00:22:02:18 – 00:22:23:16
How can you work for this company? Yada yada yada yada. You know, and then I said, came out sick and he actually asked me not to do it. It was his third day on the job. And so me. All right. First task. You know, this way I get it or anything else, but the guy didn’t even get his employee welcome box.
00:22:23:16 – 00:22:41:14
Yeah, that’s what that. That’s baptism by fire. Exactly what a way to that. Wow. So you always people call me racist. Whatever. But I’m in, I’m in. You know, I’m with that. I’m not even speaking English for most of the time. Like, my microphone doesn’t speak, you know, doesn’t really speak English. So, you know, I live in Mexico and I boxing gym is my job.
00:22:41:14 – 00:23:03:22
And I have my own in a gym in Mexico. And nobody speaks English. No. Jim, my coach doesn’t speak English. So, you know, people are for all these weird names around at me. And, you know, that was the reality of how it happened. Our PR director called me and said, you know, I was just talking to the head of, customer support or head of sales, or he was talking to the head of sales, and he said the amount of hate coming into our inbox was out of control.
00:23:03:22 – 00:23:22:06
So I called our CFO during the, you know, troubled Trump years. Like, the economy was going nuts, like we were we were growing so quickly. It was unbelievable. So we were able to issue $1,000 bonus to everyone back then. I never disclosed at the time, but we were close to a thousand people, so I was it was a significant outlay of of cash, over $1 million.
00:23:22:06 – 00:23:45:06
And not only that, we issued a bonus back then, but we we crossed it off to cover taxes because whatever. So I said let’s do something similar for the support team. So to thank them for dealing with the with the nonsense that their whatever they were dealing with. And so we immediately issue we were said we made a 20 400 hour bonus that everybody on the support team, which was 79 people, was $200,000 for us to do that.
00:23:45:07 – 00:24:06:11
And, that was right. Matt. Really possibly within the company. But, aside from that, you know, the, the segment I handled handled the whole thing really well, like nobody, you know, so stepped let me just back this up a little bit. What? Why did you feel like it’s your own company? It’s it’s it’s your baby, right?
00:24:06:13 – 00:24:24:05
Why did you feel so angry? Maybe a segment of it too. Because I don’t know if everyone who’s listening is necessarily here. Let me, let me let me. Yeah. So, Hi there. Donald Trump was shot. I don’t care what your political views are, but the hate for Trump and his support has gone too far. People are terrified to admit that they support Trump.
00:24:24:07 – 00:24:47:08
Americans shouldn’t live in fear. I support Trump, many as their criminal duo, but also many also, support Biden. The political hate needs to stop. By the way, get one shirt for $4. I suggest you buy one necessary support. Trump. You know, there’s a lot of compassionate people that support on both sides. Awesome. People all over the world love Trump.
00:24:47:08 – 00:25:11:04
But, you know, we should vocalize and stop that hate. All right, Stephen, you know, and by the way, I should preface this to like, what’s important here is, is I think the business angle is really the interesting aspect of being polarizing, because I’ve seen this happen before on both ends. I remember him, you probably seen this Expensify CEO sent an email back in 2020.
00:25:11:04 – 00:25:35:11
He said, you know, it was something like democracy is, you know, there’s an issue, right? You need to vote for Biden. Right? And I sent it all out. And then this their team just got totally hammered, I’m sure. Similar to yours for the next month or so. And it was very polarizing, right? A lot of people, some people in the left, a lot of people were interested in competitors.
00:25:35:11 – 00:26:00:08
I’m sure some people gravitate more to to wanted to use their product again. But there is a great dialog of, you know, how much to involves sort of political aspects and things that are outside of work, in work. And that’s where we found it interesting to discuss more. Okay. See what I just get. Yeah. So like, why do you feel inclined, you know, like okay, campus we’re only 75 employees.
00:26:00:08 – 00:26:21:08
Guys, girls, you know, you name it. Different backgrounds. And we just try to keep politics, like, off the, you know, conversations. Because, we have an office in Chicago and a production facility in the middle of central Illinois. So it’s just different. Different everything. And we all just kind of, you know, we just we just keep it peaceful.
00:26:21:10 – 00:26:42:12
Why did you feel inclined? And my business partner is 63 years old, double my age from the middle of, you know, central Illinois. So like, why did you feel inclined to put your opinion in that and then, like, broadcast it? Was there something that moved you to want to do that? Was this a was this a genius marketing play?
00:26:42:14 – 00:26:55:21
I mean, it ends up being it wasn’t I didn’t do it from a business perspective. I, I tell you, I haven’t been trying to make money for a long time. So I think, like if you look at the world historically, like all the most successful people in business, they don’t operate on the basis of trying to make money.
00:26:55:21 – 00:27:21:19
They just try to do interesting things and solve big problems. You know, admittedly, I’m not an engineer, so there’s a limitation on the types of problems I can solve. But I think, like, right now, this is, you know, the the the hatred for Trump supporters is a big problem. You got a situation where tens of millions of people, like, hate hundreds of millions of other people, and there’s all sorts of nasty slurs to to smear them and say they say all sorts of ridiculous things about what’s been going on for eight years.
00:27:21:19 – 00:27:39:18
And I thought, you know, I’m, I’m, I have the skill set to try to address it and fix it. So I view it as a big problem now is that I’m able to, address and help. So for you, it was like, I have an audience, I can make an impact here. I can vocalize this in such a way.
00:27:39:18 – 00:27:59:06
And I don’t, you know, I don’t think the message was like violent or aggressive, but, like, to get that kind of thing. I’m like, oh, well, I think it was a unifying message because if you look at it right, it didn’t say the thing. Like the expensive guy, the expensive right guy was was a polarizing message, right? Like, oh, if you don’t vote here, democracy’s coming to an end.
00:27:59:06 – 00:28:26:17
The world is coming to an end. You know, I simply have people here like Trump. They like Biden. And the hate in both directions needs to stop. Like what people don’t. People should realize. But a lot of people that have this, like Trump hate don’t realize it’s very unhealthy. It’s like, you know, highly successful Trump supporters like myself people I cuz maybe like myself, you know, like myself, but, we, we by and large, stay quiet, right?
00:28:26:17 – 00:28:45:16
Because if you got hired too, right, you can or you can do the risk reward analysis and the returns not there. So people think about their reputation, whatever the case might be, and they say, I don’t feel like doing it. So they stay quiet. And it makes it easy to smear hundreds of millions of people with all sorts of nasty, really nasty slurs, inappropriate slurs, things that shouldn’t be said.
00:28:45:18 – 00:29:05:18
Interesting. Can you can you give us a little bit of behind the scenes of, did you get any feedback from your staff that were like, I don’t want to work here anymore? This made me uncomfortable. I don’t like my job. Like, did the environment get weird at Sticker Mule? Yeah. So before signing it, you know, I survey people I don’t do anything like completely.
00:29:05:18 – 00:29:20:08
I mean, I, you know, I get people, but I called a few people and I say, you know, I try to get a feel for what people think. I said, hey, I’m the I wrote this, what do you think? And, people aren’t that I see people in general. We don’t talk politics. It’s sticker. So I don’t really know people’s particular political views.
00:29:20:13 – 00:29:34:20
I do know people that like Trump because they come to me and they say they like Trump. But, you know, I don’t know people with particular views, but you can get a sense for what are some of these whatever, more left or more right. But we got, you know, we got everyone here. If you if you got a company with more than four people, you’re going to have everyone like, you got 75 people.
00:29:34:20 – 00:29:55:06
So you got both sides at your company for sure. I got both sides of my company. So I talk to people right on both sides. And the Trump people are scared to send it. The people that are more left leaning, wanting me to send it because realistically, Stick Around is a very diverse organization. We all get along. There’s we have parties, we do events, we travel together, and it’s guaranteed there’s a mixture of people.
00:29:55:06 – 00:30:12:23
I like Trump and I hate Trump at the same party, at the same on the on the same company, at the same event going to, you know, we’re not we’re all remote. So we’re not always in the office together. But there’s people on all different backgrounds in the factory. Everyone gets along, everyone has a good time. So like the people that are more or leaning thought it was a good message, like it’s their inside sticker.
00:30:13:03 – 00:30:37:22
And they said, you know, you’ve created an atmosphere where everyone has a great time and why can’t it be like this? You know, throughout the country, throughout the world. So internally, not much, not much like whiplash or anything like that. Externally, it was crazy to see other sticker companies like making ads to like be like, we don’t politicized by our stickers, you know, whatever.
00:30:38:00 – 00:30:55:11
And, you know, like, oh, buy stickers from here, here, here. What about your sales? Up, down. Did it do anything? It’s too early to tell. You know, that’s really too early to tell. Because there’s a number of things at play, but, like, again, I don’t do I don’t really do anything to, like, try to make money or not make money.
00:30:55:11 – 00:31:09:23
I tend to be what I’m fairly good at making money. It tends to happen. I know I didn’t know what was going to happen. I did this first of all, right? We’re salesmen. Often. Salesmen go down. It’s hard to tell because maybe you get all this PR and sales come up. Maybe you get all this negative notes. I didn’t know that.
00:31:09:23 – 00:31:23:08
Like, I’m the type of person, and it’s like, you know, I’m not really training for boxing. I know I’m a type of person I like. I’m going to do whatever it takes to make something to win, not just for, you know, for for the company, but for society as a whole. I didn’t do this to benefit myself or anything like that.
00:31:23:08 – 00:31:42:12
I wanted to do something positive. So, my concern wasn’t for sales. I do have a concern for the well-being of our employees. And so, I did, you know, I did. I knew I was going to do whatever it takes to make this a win for the company, for our people and for society as a whole. And that’s why I’m talking to you guys, and I’m talking to other people as well.
00:31:42:14 – 00:32:01:21
Yeah. I appreciate coming on a chat. Okay. I got one more question like Bruce, go. If you had the opportunity to edit, undo, go back in time and not hit send, would you have listened to your PR director change the message either to like that? Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah. If would you listen to your PR director? Would you have sent something differently?
00:32:01:21 – 00:32:17:08
I’m sure you’ve thought about that, right? Like it’s not fun to have a bunch of employees that are getting hate, right? No one wants that. Like, what would you have done differently and have been effective at achieving, like, so far, I think thus far. And I think I’ll continue to be affecting achieving like what I wanted to achieve, which is like stopping this.
00:32:17:08 – 00:32:31:22
Like, you know, what do you want to call it, insane or not? This insane hatred, not just towards Trump, but towards like hundreds of millions of people that support and people say that’s like not a true number, because only 70 or 80 million people voted from. But I live in Mexico. I have a factory in Italy. I spent time in Europe.
00:32:31:22 – 00:32:49:09
Like he’s like all over the world. But people love tons of people. I don’t know how many tens of millions of people in South America love the guy. I mean, within that, that community is very, very, very loved. The president of Argentina is the only we’re talking about this. Yesterday, the president Argentina ran his whole campaign on Argentina.
00:32:49:09 – 00:33:05:12
Great. Again. So, anyone so anyways, you know, I think, so the message, you think it would be the same, like you would send the same thing again. You know, the funny thing, like when we meet, when he said we scheduled the email, the, the guy that runs the emails went on vacation. And so the only thing I want to change the subject line up, I didn’t get it.
00:33:05:12 – 00:33:23:19
You know, I was like, whatever. I couldn’t get in touch. So gonna change the subject line? I probably on a more, different subject line. I don’t know how we, you know, the subject line, just Trump 2024. It was just Trump 24. But but you would not take that back. You would definitely send it again. I think, you know, I’m achieving the goals that I want to achieve.
00:33:23:19 – 00:33:42:06
And it’s made the company like stronger than ever, like one like, you know. Yeah, like the company is stronger than ever. I mean, it’s a unique experience to go through something like this. Not every company has gone through it. So like we’ve gone through it. People internally have seen the impact. We didn’t lose any employees. We didn’t. You know, sales are strong.
00:33:42:08 – 00:34:05:06
We’ll see how things go as time, you know, as time, as time progresses. But like, we’re in a good situation. It’s an interesting thing for people like us to, like, I think, like, I’ve talked to people I’ve been. I believe they come from opposing sides of the aisle. And I think, like, people don’t segment view it as, at least people I talk to view it as an interesting, you know, interesting experience.
00:34:05:08 – 00:34:27:19
Not everyone has gone through anything like this. Not everyone is like, woken up in their companies. The most popular article on the Wall Street Journal the next day. I mean, some companies get that all the time, but generally, you know, not hot sauce companies like ours. I appreciate the, the sentiment of we should have better empathy on both sides of like, okay, I hear I hear what you’re saying.
00:34:27:19 – 00:34:47:10
Like, here’s what I believe. And I appreciate trying to bring that into the workplace where it is a little bit more like, we’re just not going to talk about this at all. And so obviously anybody running their own company can decide if they want to do that or not. You know, I mean, base camp was a great example.
00:34:47:10 – 00:35:11:18
And back in April 2021, which was a very polarizing time, they said, look, we are not discussing anything politically or societally related on Base Camp’s products at work. So, you know, you’re our online chat or forums, whatever else. No talking about any of this stuff. When we’re at work, we are focused on work. And then when you’re at home, you guys could do whatever you want.
00:35:11:18 – 00:35:30:21
You call each other, you can text each other whatever you want to do. And they got a lot of backlash from that. Half their company quit. Now, granted, there were 50 or something, 50, 55 people. Half the company left because they said, you know, this is our our also. Our life is intertwined with this. We should be able to talk about this at work.
00:35:31:02 – 00:35:47:11
I don’t know, maybe you can’t win. I’ll be honest. I, I agree with them. You know, you shouldn’t talk about politics at work. In fact, we don’t talk about politics at work. Like, I think it’s anti happiness. It’s funny. You should do in your free time. I agree with them. Entirely. You shouldn’t do it. We don’t do it.
00:35:47:13 – 00:36:04:14
I don’t really know the politics of people at Sticker Mill. Other than, you know, like I said, something about, like, Trump come to me and they tell me they like Trump, too, but I don’t go around asking people what their political interests are. We don’t talk about political. We just don’t talk politics at work. And it’s a it’s a downer.
00:36:04:20 – 00:36:27:18
When we’re out, we’re having fun. We’re telling jokes or cracking jokes, talking about work. We’re talking about our family lives or whatever the case may be. I agree, and I think what happened that I was a kid, you know, and it’s weird because I got this reputation, I wrote all these books. But I think as a question for leadership, I mean, obviously like, political, I like I talked about, you know, building goodwill as your employees so that you can be, you know, whatever.
00:36:27:20 – 00:36:43:09
They obviously didn’t think enough. Good. Well, what are employees if they mean, if they made a statement like that? I thought this email probably brought a lot more politics into the day to day, right? I mean, it had to have, especially on the support side alone. The others. One thing, it’s completely remote not talking to people face to face.
00:36:43:09 – 00:36:58:19
You know, I don’t make sure remote phone calls. I don’t think I would’ve written an essay to the company thing and said, whatever they said. I don’t remember what they said, but yeah, that was bizarre. They lost half their people and I do what I didn’t. But did you feel any guilt or shame for, like, being sorry? Team?
00:36:58:19 – 00:37:16:11
I threw a wrench in today, and, we got to clean this thing up like it’s going to suck for a week or two. Like, did you feel any of that of, like, not necessarily my bad, but, like, I feel like we were on. So we’re we’re third party audited. We do happiness surveys. Right. Like by a third party to see like the general, you know, happiness at a company.
00:37:16:11 – 00:37:34:17
I think it’s like a cool thing to do. I think it’s not what you do nationally, right. Or out of National Happiness or rated C state by state or region by region. How happy people are in particular. A it’s a great way to measure yourself. So I’ll see where that plays out in the data. The next time we were on that survey, the firm that runs it, you know, I was measured as I was a leader and.
00:37:34:17 – 00:37:53:06
Right. You have these other platforms. What’s the one called? The really popular one that everyone uses where you can go on or as I call Qualtrics or something. Oh, there’s, there’s a website. What? Whatever the guy told me I was. I’m the most highest rated CEO he’s ever seen, so, whatever. Maybe it’s. Maybe I’m just lucky.
00:37:53:06 – 00:38:08:14
I don’t know, I think I got a lot of goodwill. Maybe I spent a little bit of it on this particular endeavor. But, like, I did it, like, knowing full well that I’m going to do whatever it takes, so, you know, win back whatever, points I lost, like, overall, like, I think it’s an interesting moment.
00:38:08:14 – 00:38:23:09
And, I think, you know, not to rag on the base camp guys. I think it’s poor leadership. What they did. If you look at like what Trump did or he got shot and he immediately stop the shot when he was okay, and the reaction of the crowd was to stay calm. So I went through this, I stayed calm, the company stayed.
00:38:23:12 – 00:38:50:03
I mean, they stayed calm before me because as I told you, I was out hanging out in Mexico. But, you know, I stayed calm, the company stay calm. Our leadership stayed calm. Nobody quit. And, Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, I see I see the bull, right? Because, like, I see the, the base camp side as a I agree, like, again, I don’t want to, you know, you post this stuff out and clearly there is a fair amount of people who did want to have these discussions actively.
00:38:50:03 – 00:39:12:23
And, you know, that was a very funky time of Covid and protest. And like, it was just very, very complicated. And to your point, like, yeah, I don’t want two hours of the maybe six hours of productive time spent discussing different topics that we’re not going to have an effect on right now anyway. Like, we have a lot of things that we got to do.
00:39:13:01 – 00:39:30:23
And so if you’re not along with this mission, then make sense. And maybe, you know, it sounds like everyone was along with on on your mission or just, you know, was like, yeah, I appreciate your opinion. And and if you’re a leader, you, you have to, like, earn a go to all your people. I think I’ve affectively gone out.
00:39:30:23 – 00:39:50:18
Our leadership should do the same. Do you think, like in the future you’ll send other stuff like of your opinion? Because that is interesting to us. It’s like, hey, look, here’s a, here’s the company and here’s what I, I believe in, like wanting to, promote the goodwill of for whatever topics that come up in the future.
00:39:50:18 – 00:40:08:04
I don’t know, or is it or is it just this one I like? I like some, you know, I like solving big problems. And it’s like, right now the Star Wars platform, like, right. How do people make money? It’s a big problem. So this, this thing all happened and like, we got so much exciting stuff going on sticker, all that my conversations out there just happened.
00:40:08:06 – 00:40:20:23
Where about projects that sticker me off. You know, this is like my separate thing that I’m working on. I’m not spending all day talking about this. Talk about this, about people on Sticker Mill. There’s so much exciting stuff going on. I think that helped, you know, that that’s you need you need you want that environment too, right?
00:40:20:23 – 00:40:37:20
There’s like this idea of like creating stores and helping people make money. You know, like Ricky Barwick is, our top influencer. He just had a he just came to hung out with us for three days. He’s got our best. All right. Now, you know the team at a lot of fun and out with him. We want to get other people on the platform and not just help them make money, but regular people make money.
00:40:37:20 – 00:40:59:10
So it’s a really, exciting time to be a sticker room. We got a lot of cool products coming out. This is this is cool projects all over the place. So, I mean, the team, the team talks about work and it’s fun to do cool projects. So. And are you doing a little bit of like not a press tour, but just going on in interviews and being transparent and stuff like that, just so that people know you’re not hiding behind your words.
00:40:59:16 – 00:41:14:20
Is that kind of a. Yeah. To the extent people want to talk to me, I thought The Wall Street Journal, I want to do that. Like I said, I like solving big problems. I think this is like one of the biggest problems in the world right now. Pretty good. The problem is within my skill set to to address, I like would like other CEOs to follow me.
00:41:14:20 – 00:41:31:03
I think I’m a good case study for for how to do this, because I know there’s not just CEOs, but there’s successful people from all backgrounds, successful athletes, and just high IQ individuals. People that like, know how to persuade. And there’s there’s there’s interesting people or even within my social circles that like, they like Trump to be terrified to say it.
00:41:31:03 – 00:41:42:02
And people are terrified to tell her, bro, I don’t people I want him to tell her girlfriend or they there was a girl. I don’t tell them they’re boyfriend or whatever the case may be. There’s a lot of people that are scared to talk about it. I think I’m an interesting case study in how to do it effectively.
00:41:42:02 – 00:41:59:13
I think, like I’ve said for a while, if everyone that there’s a prisoner’s dilemma, like nobody wants to be the first one to talk, right? So, if everyone, right, high performing in unison, came out and said, hey, you know, I also support Trump and in, in the way that I did it in a fair, fair sense where you’re not being disrespectful.
00:41:59:17 – 00:42:26:21
So to at, to up to the country as a whole or to the world is own, I think, it would solve this problem really quickly. And this like it would be beneficial to both sides because it’s not healthy for the other side to think that all these slurs that describe Trump supporters are accurate, right? It’s like there’s tens of millions of people who do think that like anyone that is voting for this guy is like, is a total monster, or is whatever the r slur or that any of all these slurs.
00:42:26:21 – 00:42:56:21
Right. And so, yeah, more people spoke up, you know, this would go away and like, we would get back to like, being a much happier, how much happier country. This is really a problem affecting America more than the rest of the world. Like this isn’t an issue. Anti-Trump hate, for example, isn’t affecting Mexico. Like, I can walk around Mexico and say, I like Trump, and people are just, you know, mostly people are curious about it or they they might not like him from a perspective of Mexico, someone like them, like, believe it or not, he’s like, he’s very well-liked even within Mexico.
00:42:56:21 – 00:43:13:04
But people might not like what they say. I wish we had, a president like him here, you know, or I’ve heard this type of stuff all the time. So it’s much safer to say you like Trump in Mexico than it is to say in America. It’s it’s you can say it in other countries much more easily, and you can say, here it is.
00:43:13:04 – 00:43:41:18
It’s not good for mental health of a country that people like separate themselves from long term friendships and people and friendships over this, and they separate themselves from families. They’re family members over this. And right, they even write nasty things about, you know, their favorite hot sauce company, which is which is why I like I love having the the open conversations with people who I know from both sides that I work with, but I only do those when I know that they can have the conversations, too.
00:43:41:18 – 00:44:05:10
Because most people are not as open to it. So that’s why I personally like keep it separate from the the work side because of that. But I don’t know if you like, see even you do that too of like yeah, we just don’t we’re not good. We can’t trust that we’re we’re good communicators or working with good communicators that usually you emotionally it gets filled with anger, rage and a lack of logic.
00:44:05:10 – 00:44:23:06
And, you know, it’s like Steve was just like, I just need these sales. What can we do? Yeah, we just drive us to sales. It’s really interesting when you look back in politics and I was I was too young to do this. But like if we ask our parents like, what was it like in the 80s, you know, it wasn’t about these characters and their beliefs.
00:44:23:06 – 00:44:47:20
Like, now it’s just been over dramatized. Because like your person, you might have personal beliefs that align with Trump, but you might just fucking hate the guy because he’s, you know, kind of a character, a lot of a character. And so I think that’s the biggest thing is, like, people are ashamed because the person representing their beliefs doesn’t align with the character that they would they would look at.
00:44:47:20 – 00:45:04:01
And so I think it’s interesting now that it’s like the person and the beliefs are almost two separate things. And I don’t know, there’s all been or I’m going with it. I will say this like I’ve like I think like, you know, I am becoming a case study if you, if you, if you’re a successful person or not.
00:45:04:01 – 00:45:22:09
Just, like I said, not just business success, but successful in a general sense. And you got the potential to persuade people to stop the hate. Like, you know, I think I’m an interesting case study on how to do it and take a reasonable approach. Not just me, Ellen. Ellen came before me. He’s done a great job. Mark Zuckerberg seem to totally despise Trump was speaking positively of him in his last interview.
00:45:22:09 – 00:45:36:08
So I think more people are going to follow after me. Like, hopefully I become a case study for people on how to do it. Obviously. Like if you’re going to speak up, like you’ve got to realize, like you’re the voice of reason, you can’t get down. You you don’t you don’t want to be arguing with people that that don’t want to have a.
00:45:36:10 – 00:46:00:00
Yeah. You got to realize you’re the voice of reason. The people that are reacting with rage are emotionally charged. And, your job is to persuade people to see your perspective. And my perspective is that we shouldn’t, you know, one, we shouldn’t be using these nasty slurs to describe hundreds of millions of people that should go away and and to, like, I run a company where people from both sides exist and the impossible for it to be any other way.
00:46:00:00 – 00:46:20:03
And we all get along and there’s no reason why we can’t all we can’t enjoy each other’s company, you know, outside of work as well. Right? There’s there’s no if if someone was offended by this reading it, is there anything you would like to tell them, like, do you is there any apology to be made or are you pretty like, now this is what I would say.
00:46:20:03 – 00:46:39:22
And do it again. Like if someone was like really hurt by it, you know, like I can’t believe look on the Instagram comments or like, yeah, right. Like, what do you say to those people that you might not be able to rationalize it, their feelings or their feelings? You don’t own their feelings, but they are hurt and traumatized by what you put out there for, for whatever reason.
00:46:40:00 – 00:46:59:22
Is there anything you would tell them or say to remedy that, knowing that they’re in a whatever position they’re in, they feel hurt by this? Whatever. A lot of people change their perspectives over time. And like the reality is, like, I did what I did to help those people more than any other group. Like obviously I didn’t write it to, sway people.
00:46:59:22 – 00:47:18:23
I already like Trump. Like, I’m more like I wrote it. White people that feel it, you know, on the opposite side to, to be less fearful of people on the Trump side. You know, I’m an example of somebody that’s built a company with employees in 39 countries. I speak Spanish more than I speak English. You know, I hang out with people from all backgrounds.
00:47:18:23 – 00:47:37:10
You know, by definition, you know, you can’t have people in 39 countries if you don’t like diversity. Like, I have a very diverse comp company with very diverse management team. And so I spoke up to help those people to say, like, you know, the people that you think are on the other side are not what you think. They’re totally different are people like me and they’re people, you know, they’re people like me.
00:47:37:14 – 00:47:52:07
And so, yeah, believe it or not, I did what I did to help, help the people that, you know, in the short term, maybe they viewed it and they were emotionally, hurt by it. I think if that’s true, the more they listen to me talk, the more they’re going to realize I did it to try to be helpful to them.
00:47:52:07 – 00:48:14:17
And I would encourage those people, like a lot of the people that are most severely, afflicted, you know, the most severely emotionally harmed by this whole situation. Like, they tend to not even listen to, to, Trump himself speak. They tend to only listen to media clips or short passes of what he said, like. And if you listen to him in full, I think it’ll make you feel a lot better as well, because that’s what got me over to his side.
00:48:14:17 – 00:48:28:00
In the beginning, I was hearing a lot of media clips. My friend told me, you know, you got to listen to the whole speech. And like, the first thing I heard was that going back to 2016 when he said, build a wall, right? The media was like, build a wall, build a wall, build a wall. Nobody ever reported.
00:48:28:00 – 00:48:49:19
And I don’t know if you guys know or don’t know, but I think most people don’t know, he said. We got to build a wall, but we needs to have a big, beautiful door because we want people coming into this country. So, you know, the media has a way of manipulating people to, to, and, and, and not so I would say, believe it or not, if you’re hurt by this, I did this to be helpful to that segment of the population.
00:48:49:19 – 00:49:09:10
More than anything, I risk my my own reputation. I risked their reputation, my company and all those people. And in the long run, they, listen to me, and hopefully it helps them, like, relax a little or not feel so, you know, not feel so tense around Trump supporters on the, hiring side. You mentioned before that, you know, you’ll do job fairs to try to attract people.
00:49:09:10 – 00:49:35:18
You’ve got billboards that you, you know, you know, do you buy and and put in the, in the towns. Do you did this did you see any change in the hiring pipeline or, you know, does this help or hurt or just no effective people applying for roles thus far? It seems to help, to be honest with you, because like especially in tech, it’s a toxic anti-Trump environment like in tech.
00:49:35:18 – 00:49:56:23
And we have some very high performing individuals that are applying and saying they want to get out of their current situations and come, come join, stick them all. But like keep it like but I want people understand like second roles is a great place for everybody. I don’t really talk. We don’t. I told even the people that are on the, there’s actually an interesting study that says, like, if you get too far to one side or the other, your IQ that the client’s right.
00:49:56:23 – 00:50:17:22
So if you’re just like listening to far right propaganda all day or far-left propaganda all day, you become stupider. So, you know, I talk and I’m like, listen to both sides. You know, my, my, I talk more to the people again. Aren’t that like Trump? They talk to me. If I feel like anyone’s too far to one side, I, you know, I tell them, look, you should really make a constant, constant effort to listen to both sides.
00:50:18:00 – 00:50:35:03
It raises your IQ to think. To think from both perspectives raises. Sure. You know, cognitive ability to think from both for factors. But yeah, like people I feel like they’re in a hostile work environment and in tech have like reached out to us and they want to join us. You know, but at the same time, you know, we’re great atmosphere for everybody.
00:50:35:03 – 00:50:59:01
And I don’t want anyone like, that’s excessively political. Joining you know, joining signal on in the culture here. Have you interacted with Elon at all? No. Right. I don’t know why we’re he blocked us cuz the you crystal way Elon blocked you. Yes, I was blocked. You know, they were blocked anyway. I shouldn’t say this.
00:50:59:03 – 00:51:22:04
Yeah, well, it’s it’s on the podcast now. Wait. So it’s funny Elon Musk like you personally or Elon black sticker mule or like sticker mule mobile. So I mean, I was nobody I don’t know if I’m still nobody. You’re a little bit more than you were yesterday. So wait, you can’t find Sticker Mule on Twitter anymore? Well, it’s on Twitter, but he blocked them personally.
00:51:22:04 – 00:51:37:02
He doesn’t know we exist. We’re dead to him. Except for a, You know, somebody was like, somebody wrote on something or other, like, you know, sticker mill sending Elon hundreds of dollars to keep them afloat because of we are running, you know, a fair amount of ads on X and, are having a fun time doing that.
00:51:37:02 – 00:51:57:15
And that’s going well for us. Interesting business. You know, we are doing well. I shouldn’t give away our secrets. Right? But, Twitter ads are working now because they’re cheap, right? Well, the sides have an exit. I know, yeah, I don’t know if you guys, but I, I was, you know, I built I was like, we built our own social network to try to, like, fix some of the problems with, what was then called Twitter.
00:51:57:15 – 00:52:24:03
And then Elon stepped in and bought it, and so, that’s been interesting. But, you know, I’m happy he, he did that. This is, this is super interesting. I mean, I love hearing from all perspectives on it, especially from the business owner side, when, you know, election years are just very, I mean, even with family, like, family dinner dinners, like, you know, certain family dinners, we just either don’t talk about it or if I know that we can, then we do talk about it.
00:52:24:03 – 00:52:52:01
And we have awesome conversations that way, too. And, you know, from from your messaging from, you know, with Expensify sent from, what Basecamp said, I mean, there’s just so many different ways to go about it. But, yeah, I mean, I appreciate your transparency around it. I’d love to learn at some point down the road, like where at the end of all of it, I know this wasn’t your goal, but I’d love to know how sales are.
00:52:52:06 – 00:53:10:20
Doesn’t matter to SEO, but we just want to know. Yeah, yeah, it’s going to be hard to say because there’s so many influencing factors on sales. Like. Right. Like I said, I’m very excited about our store’s platform making sticker platform, but like, okay, the coupon, how many people use the coupon? Oh, how many people use the coupon a lot, the $4 coupon or whatever for a $4 shirt?
00:53:10:21 – 00:53:30:14
They’re like, look, we oh, we get a discount. We don’t care. Like, you know, like you get a good this click Anthony. But I got a $4 shirt. In fact people bought shirts that said that. An increase in Anthony shirts is through the roof. It’s all our experience. And they sent us, you know, sex toys and all sorts of stuff.
00:53:30:15 – 00:53:44:00
Or sent to me. Sorry. Sent to me that. But the like the internet was a very small sex toy. So I was like, that’s weird. You know? You think it’d be like, I don’t know if they didn’t have the the budget to buy a big one, or they just want to be nice, like start here. And, you know, people surround yourself with something bigger down the road.
00:53:44:00 – 00:54:02:23
I don’t know, but, you know, yeah, all sorts of weird shirts came through, particularly directed at me. You take it on the chin, though. I mean, you just take it. And whatever I would say is, if you’re going to speak up, you realize, like I said, you got to be the voice of reason. Hopefully other people follow what I did and, like, realize, like,
00:54:03:01 – 00:54:25:12
Yeah, you’re the voice of reason. You can’t take anything personal like this. You know, people are are upset for whatever reason. Like some of it’s a lot of it’s not their fault. They they’ve been watching what I really been watching that’s made them feel this way. And like people like me and Elon and other people that are speaking up need to continue doing it so that people that are sold get someone to buy it, like, don’t end it, don’t in the future.
00:54:25:14 – 00:54:38:22
As far as the shirts go, I got beat up for that a little bit because I’m always trying to make money off the situation, but I thought we talked to the team like we were like, first of all, people want deals in our email, so just to be a little rude, we were like, should we just write an email or should include a deal?
00:54:39:00 – 00:54:54:09
We thought it’d be rude to just send an email without a deal for them, but we’re like, well, we got to do a tasteful deal, but it’s got to be funny at the same time. So that was that, you know, we figured like, well, it’s tasteful because at $4 per shirt plus free shipping, it’s obvious we’re losing money.
00:54:54:09 – 00:55:12:02
So, not only did I take the, you know, risk my reputation, but I, we lost a ton of money on that promotion. I mean, for our shirts that cost more than $4 plus shipping. I mean, we lost a ton of money, trying to get them, you know, trying to get the message out, and then. And then you laughed right when you talked about the price.
00:55:12:02 – 00:55:24:18
Remember when you read the email, when you got to the part about the promo, you couldn’t help but laugh. So it was it was the sticker, real personality I thought of, you know, by the way, there’s a deal on shirts. Exactly. We were talking about what the able to do, and we’re like, we got to do the shirt one.
00:55:24:20 – 00:55:48:05
It’s the only one where it’s obvious we’re losing money. And, you know, obvious. We’re just trying to, amplify the message, which is like, to the extent that if you if you’re, if you’re a Trump supporter, particularly if you’re somebody that can might help, the masses and persuade the masses to be less fearful of Trump supporters and be less hateful toward Trump supporters, buy a shirt and like, let your friends know that, like, you’re representative of the type of people I support Trump.
00:55:48:07 – 00:56:14:13
If you’re CEO or a successful person that supports Trump, like, you know, look at like what I’m doing, look what Elon’s doing and try and persuade the masses that, like, you know what I mean? There are, you know, that you don’t have to be fearful or hateful towards Trump supporters like, and that we’re not all that, you know, it’s and that it’s inappropriate to use all the, the slurs and smears that are used to describe hundreds of millions of people, which by definition, if you got a population of 100 plus million people, you’re talking about people from all different backgrounds.
00:56:14:13 – 00:56:41:23
So when you say the r slur or whatever, it doesn’t really make any sense with you. Anthony, regardless of whatever size toy you got sent to, you definitely have some balls for doing this. You know, there’s there’s not too many executives or CEOs that will do that. You know, you’re definitely a wild card. And I think, super interesting to kind of see how you operate is, is really interesting.
00:56:41:23 – 00:57:01:09
And we always appreciate the conversation. I mean, the business you’ve run and the way that you’re doing it, even the boxing stuff, super rad. So we hopefully this isn’t the last time, but we really, really appreciate it. Appreciate you guys. So we can talk. Thank you for the time producers. We appreciate you guys always joining us. Hopefully this is fun conversation and we’ll see you guys next week.
00:57:01:09 – 00:57:19:09
Have a good one. Thanks so much for listening. Hopefully that was informative. Don’t forget to subscribe. Don’t forget to like don’t forget to hit the bell for notifications. If you enjoyed this video, if you enjoy all the stuff we’re putting out, it’s really helpful. We love to just be able to see it. That means that we’re doing a good job.
00:57:19:11 – 00:57:24:21
To subscribe, hit the bell for notifications and hit the like button and I’ll see you in the next episode. Bye.
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