“You don’t determine your worth, I do.”

Social media is funny, especially when older people get on it. I’m not much of a Facebooker but I do use LinkedIn occasionally. recently I saw this quote being shared aggressively.

Most people would think, “well no sh*t.” The idea here isn’t that unique at all. Why would that get millions of likes?

These viral virtue-signaling posts actually have nothing to do with their point taken face value. What we have here is an extremely simple thought but it’s getting an insane amount of praise. Are these words really that unique? No.

The reason? The meaning behind this an attempt to take quantitative analysis of an individual and turn it into qualitative… and guess who does the qualitative judging, the other person.

Quantitative (fact)

  • I’m the mayor of Detroit
  • I’m married and have 2 kids
  • I weight 185 pounds

Qualitative (opinion)

  • I’m a nice guy
  • I’m an attractive person
  • My hair doesn’t look funny

So shifting one’s worth from quantitative to qualitative really means, “you don’t determine your worth, I do.”

“Take away the indisputable facts and let me judge you how I want.” Cruel, huh?

Example Sales Decks: iHeartMedia + Amazon

Having example sales decks can be useful. I’m always asked by industry friends to send over decks, because of how useful they can be to learn from. Even if you’ve been in the industry for 15 years and make a few million dollars a year, you can always learn from how others are pitching themselves.

I also hate getting spammed and iHeartMedia is always spamming me. Maybe someone here can benefit off the spam.

Here are the decks (3 attachments):

Amazon-OTT-Premium-Deck.pdf

iHeartMedia-Luxury-Category-Insights.pdf

iHeartMedia-Assets-Overview-Presentation.pdf

Here’s the cold email they send with it:

Hoping this email finds you and the team at [company] well.

I wanted to reach out today to personally introduce myself and see if it would be possible to set up a time to speak this week or the week after, as I would be pleased to share some opportunities for [company] with iHeartMedia.

Additionally, I also like to share that I love what you are currently doing marketing-wise on social media, as it’s very creative and engaging. I also really respect what you are doing as a company, as [company] is truly a premium product that provides true custom precision nutrition to each individual, and as a person that takes health and wellness seriously, I am definitely going to be a customer.

If you aren’t already aware, iHeartMedia is the number one media company in the US with insight and data on millions of registered users, and health & wellness is a core category for our company. We can hyper-target various interests and demographics including the HNW & UHNW consumers through our exceptional, targeted capabilities with OTT, digital, podcasts, social, influencers, events, etc. I am presently speaking with health and wellness companies about custom opportunities that will generate the necessary interest and awareness to create real results for them, and I know we could do the same for [company].

We also have some incredible partnerships that just came online that raise the bar quite a bit.

For instance, we recently became partners with Amazon & Amazon Advertising, giving us access to Amazon Shopping Behaviors for targeting OTT (Streaming TV) campaigns.

Amazon has created customer audiences based on what people stream, browse, watch, shop, and purchase. As an example, the Amazon + iHeart partnership allows companies to reach the 74% of audiences reached by Amazon OTT who were not reached by linear TV. Furthermore, Amazon OTT complements our iHeartOTT product by adding access to IMDb TV, Twitch, Fire TV News, and Amazon data targeting, allowing us to provide companies with opportunities to generate exceptional interest and awareness to create real results for them.

I believe that this new partnership could provide even more amazing results for [company], and I’d be grateful for the opportunity to set up a discovery/CNA call with you, and any other team members you would like to bring on.

Please kindly let me know what would work for your schedule and I will follow up with a meeting invitation.

Thank you.

Best regards,

I tried Flair – Canada’s newest low-cost airline

I found a fair for about $60 one-way ORD to YYZ. I haven’t flown a budget airline before and I’ve never flown or heard of Flair before, so I gave it a shot. Let’s call this an experiment for the benefit for my close friends/family and anyone reading this.

The day before departure, I attempted to check-in online. I was given an error message which I later learned from the airline staff that it was down for everyone.

I start the day by getting into the Uber and not finding the airline in the list of 100+ airlines in the Uber and Lyft apps. Chicago has 5 terminals and the airport is quite large so I tried to find which terminal Flair flew out of so my rideshare could drop me off closest to my gate.

I started by searching my emails, texts and boarding pass. Everything showed no terminal and no gate. Yes, the boarding pass didn’t give any instruction as to where to go. So I ended up, choosing Air Canada on the rideshare. Once in the car, I continued to search further for flight info. Their site had a live chat thankfully, so I chatted with the agent and after 20-30 minutes I was told it would be in terminal 3. The live chat agent then corrected himself and said terminal 2. How encouraging. He also told me the flight may be operating under Freedom Airlines.

So I went to terminal 2, and looked for Flair Airlines. Nothing. Only option was to either chat with one of the big 3 (Delta, United, American) or go through security. So I went to security. Clear and TSA never heard of this airline and let me through after questioning. I admit, the Times New Roman boarding pass doesn’t look authentic.

Once through, I started looking for displays, which I couldn’t find before clearing security. The displays were specific to the brand of airline. United had their own, as did American and Delta. Flair was nowhere to be found.

So, I got on live chat again, this time I was told by a new agent that the flight would be out of terminal 3. So, off I go. When I got there, terminal 3 was entirely American Airlines flights. This doesn’t look good.

I asked live chat for the gate specifically. They delayed 10-20 minutes and came back with nothing. The best solution they had was to ask airport personnel where the gate is. Are you kidding me?

After some pacing and calm frustration, I decided to ask for some help because if I don’t figure this out in the next few minutes, I likely won’t make this flight. The only staff I could find were American Airlines staff.

The American Airlines agents never heard of Flair, but they were friendly and immediately helped by also searching the flight number on Google and other tools on their side.

Nothing. They had plenty of ideas on ways to track down where this flight was departing from, but sadly found nothing concrete. I was on the Flair site, looking for a place to check flight statuses, etc, but there wasn’t anything. The site was extremely broken (most of the client side CSS wouldn’t even load).

At this point, it was 20-30 minutes until boarding begins. That’s a nightmare in Chicago where changing terminals takes 10-20 minutes alone.

It was at that point, I got a text message from Flair. Finally some info.

Hello Flair Passenger, please be advise Flair Airlines is located in Terminal 5 in the International Terminal and our check in counters are 8 and 7A and 7B

The American Airlines attendants directed me as soon as the message came in. I exited the terminal and I hopped in the train to hop from terminal 2 to 5.

Once I got there, I found the counter and the agents were friendly. The airline staff told me they don’t have TSA Pre (Nexus) setup yet. So when I cleared security the second time, there was no way to get through quickly to make sure I make the flight. After all, I only had 15 minutes once they texted me the terminal and I arrived at it.

They printed my new boarding pass which included the gate, which was M3 out of Terminal 5.

Exhausted by this point, I clear security and get to my gate. It’s boarding time and nothing is going on. I wait until departure time, at which point they announce: “We regret to inform you that there will be a delayed departure for this flight due to unscheduled maintenance. We will inform you when we have an update along with a revised departure time.”

Flair was a 1 of 1 test. It was not worth the cost-savings that can sometimes be found with better low-cost airlines. I hope it helps someone who’s considering trying Flair.

I Switched From ReCharge To Swell… Here’s What Happened.

I was recently involved in the migration of a DTC brand from ReCharge to Swell. As many of you know, ReCharge is a billion-dollar payments platform built around subscription businesses. This is the second time I’ve used ReCharge in a DTC startup. Anyone who has worked with ReCharge knows how unaccommodating their support is. Although much of our core business was stable, our business was really limited in terms of functionality and freedom to manage subscriptions.

ReCharge was used for our checkout experience whereas the core WWW was based on Shopify. After talking with some of our affiliates who run large campaigns, it seems to be of general consensus that Shopify is slow and not ideal for brands looking for that extra edge in terms of CVR. So we decided to move this brand from Shopify/ReCharge to Sanity/Swell.

Sanity is a CMS platform used by some large brands. I wouldn’t say the platform is perfect, but it’s not awful. There are bugs you expect when moving from an established eCommerce CMS to a newer CMS. They’re not totally unequipped however, as they did recently raised another $39 million.

After careful consideration, Swell was our choice for a payment gateway that allowed plenty of flexibility around managing subscriptions. It wasn’t until a few days into the migration that we realized it wasn’t as ideal as we thought. Swell has led to a number of issues, some of which I rather not publish to world on the internet as its embarrassing. Here are a few.

The Good

Before we get into the bad, let’s talk about the things I love about Swell.

Weekly calls

Every Monday our team syncs with Swell’s and we review our ongoing needs and blockers. This is not something you get from ReCharge.

Live chat support is always online

Whenever I need a quick answer, live chat is often available to chat immediately. They are really helpful with simple onboarding problems when our team was learning some of the basic operations within the dashboard. Shout out to Steven!

The Bad

Here are some of the struggles we run into with Swell. I’ll update these as their platform improves. So any of these listed below are current issues you likely also experience with Swell.

Lack of tracking capabilities

Performance marketing, specifically tracking, is of the utmost importance when it comes to growing a DTC brand enough to move it from seed to series A. Things like GTM, GA and the Facebook pixel are essential for any DTC brand. Essential cannot be emphasized enough. I don’t think there’s a single eCom brand that can operate without analytics. Swell presently does not implement checkout scripts correctly, causing marketing campaign attribution in Google Analytics to be incorrect.

Conversion API

If you run Facebook ads, you could run into serious complications. Unlike Shopify, where Conversion API is just a matter of updating your settings, Swell doesn’t offer an implementation for Conversion API. With iOS 14 adopted in full-force, you need Conversion API. The workaround is to use Zapier, but sadly they don’t pass essential information from the order which Facebook needs for matching events to users. These data fields include:

  • The customer’s email (yes, the email address)
  • Facebook browser id
  • Facebook click id
  • User agent
  • IP address

Slow bug fixes

Most of our bug reports are normally well-received by the Swell team but they are not implemented quickly. The smallest of fixes, regardless of how badly they impact workflow take about 2 weeks at minimum to deploy. This is really hard to base a business around.

Reporting is incorrect

If your company cares about KPIs at all, they’ll be incorrect. This is due to an ongoing timezone issue. So for example, if you report weekly KPIs, the stats for purchases for the week December 1-7 may actually include purchases from November 30 or December 8. This means our KPIs every week are out 1-10%.

Overall Rating: 3/5

After bringing up a lot of these complications to the Swell team, we learned most customers don’t use their self-hosted checkout but rather custom build their own checkout. Little did we know.

This post will be updated to stay relevant and accurate to our current experience as a DTC brand using Swell.

Why Guest Post Prices Are Not Fixed

It’s a common misunderstanding among some marketers to assume the guest post price you get is the same that everyone else gets. Owners of guest post sites are extremely good at maximizing profit and spotting opportunities to overcharge. If you’ve traveled from the US to an Asian country, you’re probably familiar with the experience. For those who have not, what happens is when you go to Thailand, for example, is they’ll charge you a different rate if they think you’re a tourist, just because it’s well known that Americans are rich. If you speak Thai, then you’ll be able to get a better price. This is why American nomads often get a translator to help them secure an apartment in Asian countries.

This is the same on the internet, of course. If they think you have money, you’ll be charged a high rate. So when it comes to guest post sites, it comes down to your ability to negotiate. Do you consider yourself a good negotiator?

I’ve been quoted $80 or $100 for a guest post and countered with $30. A lot of these sites will accept anything but shoot for the stars, and some people actually pay the first price they’re quoted. Especially people who are new to guest posts and never negotiated. They’ll take the first price and pay it, which is weird.

So it all comes down to your individual abilities. Make yourself appear less fortunate.

The Best (And Worst) SMM Panels On The Internet

Social media panels are insanely popular right now. The amounts of services they offer range from Instagram followers to TikTok views. The problem in this space, is there are a lot of scammers. I’m going to be updating this blog post with some of the best (and worst services) I’ve used. Every month I spend over $1000 on different social media services, so I think it would be useful if I shared some of my findings with blog readers.

The Best

Let’s start with the best. These are some of the services I’ve used over the past decade or so.

YTBot

YTBot is one of my favorites. They are a custom panel, not a reseller. When it comes to YouTube, they offer some of the best services. However, even though their name suggests YouTube, their services expand beyond YouTube, so certainly check out their offerings. It’s a bit limited in terms of offerings but that’s expected. Anyone who offers a lot of services is likely a reseller meaning the quality will be spotty.

The Worst

There are no shortage of bad experiences on these platforms. Here are some of mine.

SMMRaja

SmmRaja has an awful reputation when it comes to customer service. I have experienced it first hand and also read reviews. My main issue was, even though their prices are unfair, their customer service consciously chooses to not help when given the choice to be helpful or not. I need receipt for my transactions. So if I load the account with $950 then I’d like a receipt sometime in the few weeks that follow for it. However, they refused to generate 2 separate receipts for my deposits. Separate receipts are essential

Given they were unhelpful (and honestly kind of rude) with such a simple request, I know how they’ll act in other requests. Check out the review below which backs up everything I just said.

TrendyIgPanel

Well these guys are straight up scamming. I got taken to the cleaners on a $400 test and then after taking a few more to the cleaners a few weeks later he was banned on the forums for dodgy activities. I don’t think this one needs further explanation.

BulkFollows

BulkFollowers took a 4 week vacation and ditches all his commitments for the time being. This is a standard thing in Europe to just disappear on vacation and drop all responsibilities, but this is odd behavior for anyone from the US, Canada, Australia, UK, etc and generally unacceptable behavior. It’s been a while since I’ve tested the service but you can read a bit more about his escapades on the forums.

Neutral

SMM.net

These guys are pretty solid, but they’re just ridiculously expensive. The owner has a spotty reputation on BlackHatWorld but I know he does well financially. There are certainly some hefty margins on these services.

JustAnotherPanel

These guys are the kings of reselling. They’ve had a bad rep for poor quality but it’s getting better. They’re pretty massive and have been around for a long time.

GoToTop

Really liking these guys customer service after a rough start. Sadly they only accept crypto which is why I stand fairly neutral but this is a great product so far. Happy this relationship turned around. They offer custom filters and push notifications that a lot of different panels don’t offer.

Here is a friendly reminder on how to place the order properly:

  1. In the field -LINK- : URL to the Instagram account OR post where you want to redirect people
  2. In the field -QUANTITY- : Amount od DMs
  3. In the field -USERNAMES- : just put the link of the account you want us to collect users from
  4. In the field -HASHTAGS- : specify the text of the message for sending

As it’s mentioned on our website and BHW, the pricelist is following:

Instagram Mass DMs with PUSH notifications
50k DMs – $2.8/1000
100k-300k – $2.3/1000
300k-5M – $2/1000

For your balance of $500, we can send 218k DMs with Push notifications. Or you can try any other smaller amount. For example, if you order 200k, then you will have $40 left on your balance.

Don’t forget that we have different filters that you can use if needed 🙂
Filters are already in a price, there no additional costs for filters.

Conclusion

Had an experience, good or bad? Let me know! Reach out on Twitter.

Ontario Locked Down Its Population Cumulatively For 15.1 Million Years To Save 222k Years Of Life

Ethics behind lockdowns has been a common topic for the past year and a half. I wanted to introduce some utilitarian philosophy to the discussion, backed by the facts so readers can draw an opinion on their own.

A bit of a disclaimer – there’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to lockdowns. Some people values believe it’s more important to have more years in your life while others believe it’s more important to have more life in your years. Your opinion will also differ based on how your lockdown experience was. If your health diminished because your gym closed, causing you to lose 20 pounds of muscle, then lockdown affected you more than most. If you experienced domestic violence, then it was harder for you than for others. If you or a family member lost control of their disease (like cancer or Crohn’s disease) due to cancelled screenings, then it was worse for you and your family than it was for others. If you were one of the 1 million Canadian children who called the Children’s help phone in 2020, then again, it was harder for you than it was for most. If you were one of the businesses that went bankrupt, and you lost your livelihood, then the lockdown was harder for you than most.

I used Florida as the worst-case scenario, who was mocked in media for their decisions, which experienced 2.69 deaths per 1000 over Ontario which had 0.67 deaths per 1000. These two provinces/states sit on opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to lockdowns. This table will show you the decision they made.

The difference between Florida’s and Ontario’s death rate is the reason Ontario decided to lockdown harder than any other province or state in North America. As you can see from the data, the 29,384 people saved are the reason behind dramatic lockdowns in Ontario.

These people (who are dying from COVID-19) have an average age of 84 in Canadian statistics, and according to Actuarial Life Table from the Social Security Agency, are expected to live another 7.56 years without COVID-19 implications.

With the average age of COVID-19 death being 84, it’s worth pointing out that life expectancy in Canada is 82.

Doing the math, you can see Ontario locked down for 15.1 million years of life to save 211k years of death (ratio of 71:1).

What’s the right answer? You decide. Ontario and Florida had opposing opinions. Florida sided with the 99% and Ontario sided with the 1%.

If you decide it’s worth locking down 14.6 million people for 29k lives, what would you define the threshold as? 1000 lives? 1 life? If you could lock down an entire nation for a year to save 1 person, would you still do it?

Let me know your thoughts and where you draw the line, in the comments below.

The Drive Behind Canada’s Housing Market

According to data from MLS, the average house in Canada costs $716,828.

The 28/36 rule has different version but generally speaking:

The 28/36 rule states that a household should spend no more than 28% of its gross monthly income on total housing expenses, and no more than 36% on all debt, including housing-related expenses and other recurring debt service.

Meaning after a 20% down payment, a mortgage payment for the remaining $573,462 would be $3,181 on a 30-year fixed mortgage. For $3,181 to be at max 28% of your gross monthly income, you’d need to make $11,360 per month or $136,320.

This level of income would put you in the top 5% of income in the country.

So what does this mean for home buyers? If you aren’t already in the marketing, you need to make a lot of money.

Anyone my age (mid 20s) who owns a home either:

  • Makes over $100,000 a year
  • Jointly makes over $100,000 a year with a partner
  • Had financial help from parents
  • Got into the housing market several years ago
  • Any combination of the above

What’s causing this?

It’s mainly supply and demand. During the pandemic, the demand for single family homes rose. Low interest rates can cause aggressive growth, but thinking interest rates are the leading drive is simply due to lack of knowledge/history.

Here are two charts showing lack of correlation:

Historical Home Prices: US Monthly Median from 1953-2021 - DQYDJ
Interest rates are going to go crazy soon?

In the 1950s, interest rates were low, but as you can see, housing prices generally remained untouched.

Now that the data has debunked interest rates as the primary driver, we can look at the real issue, supply and demand.

Canada isn’t losing houses. If anything, we are building and continue to live in old houses. I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw a house demolished and turned into a farmer’s field. If anything, people are buying old houses and fixing then flipping them. So supply is not decreasing.

Demand comes from population growth generally, in addition to people buying/owning multiple houses, sometimes as rental properties. While “boomer money” presents a problem for future generations, it’s not the primary driver.

Population growth comes from fertility rate and immigration rate. Looking at the fertility rate, it’s constant.

Let’s look at immigration.

Canada’s population (2019) – 37,590,000

Canada’s immigration (2019) – 313,600

Canada’s immigration rate – 0.83%

USA’s population (2016) – 323,100,000

USA’s immigration (2016) – 1,180,000

USA’s immigration rate – 0.36%

Canada’s immigration is 2.3x that of the US’s.

Immigration in Canada is necessary for the aging workforce but at this velocity, it’s not sustainable.

Recent election promises discussed a plan to build 1.5 million houses. At $300k per house, the project cost would be $450 billion. For comparirson, that’s 62% of the US’s military budget (a country 9x bigger in terms of population and 12x in terms of GDP), aka money Canada doesn’t have.

The solution to get us out of this mess? I don’t know. The solution on a personal level? Make a bunch of money hopefully, or move.

How to Hire a Programmer Online

I’ve hired over 300 remote workers over the years. In this article, I want to briefly look at a few things I do when hiring for programmers, specifically on Upwork. If you haven’t checked out my book, The Non-Technical Founder, I suggest you do as many of my tips are explained in detail there.

Tip 1: Look for programmers with no active work.

Often programmers take on too many jobs and they’ll lose track of your work. I try to find someone who can dedicate at least 30 hours a week to my job. Even if they have a full time job, 30 hours per week is something many can commit. That’s less than 5 hours per day.

If they have active work, it may also be a sign of tardiness and disorganization. Programmers who focus heavily on a project then wrap it up are organized people. As a computer scientists myself, I know programmers can be messy. So finding one who is organized in their work is important and one way to measure that is by how many active jobs they are involved in.

Tip 2: Give them a technical test.

It can be difficult to determine what they’re worth. Once you see their code and analyze it, the picture becomes clear. If you don’t understand code very well, it’s often best to work with someone technical, like a consultant to help you with the hire.

Often times programmers and computer scientists will bill $25-30/hr but code at the level of $18/hr. When I’m hiring for a role, I’m open to the idea of a programmer within $5-50/hr, but the quality must match.

Tip 3: Hire urgently.

Do not wait for your schedules to line up. I sometimes post jobs on Thursday or Friday so I can do interviews leading into the weekend. Only the truly motivated will make the time to join you on the weekend.

I will generally allow for flexibility in the time of day, as most of them will not be on my local timezone, so as long as they make an effort to chat within the next 12-24 hours, then I’m happy. You can sense the effort and cooperation even over text.

Tip 4: Talk to them on the phone.

Phone communication speeds things up. It also established a higher level of connection. This is something I wish I did more earlier on in my entrepreneurial journey. Real programmers are used to chatting by voice or on call. Especially during the pandemic, programmers collaborated at home with coworkers via Zoom and other tools to improve efficiency.

It’s Easier to Play by the Rules Than to Argue the Rules Are Stupid

Governments, friends, family, and employers alike all set forth rules expected to be abided by. In the situation of government rules, those are the toughest to change and require intense lobbying which may not even work without immense existing power. For example, laws set in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. You may not agree with the rules, and you can spend your time explaining to others why they’re silly but if you choose to not abide by the rules with the purpose of setting an example, the personal punishment you will have to endure will not be worth the little to no changes your actions will invoke. You could have spent your time on something that will in fact better your life rather than trying to take on a problem too big for your abilities. Focus on a problem with a size you can handle.

Governments with rules set forth in law are not the only rules we should probably play by. Friends and family have deep emotion invested in certain opinions or topics, say politics and such topics should be avoided – even if you believe their thinking is ignorant or not correct. Life is hard, but it’s even harder for stupid people. So let their poor thinking exist and continue to play by the rules.