The following is a transcript of Episode 27 of Return on Podcast, the show where we help e-commerce sellers improve their ROI in business and in life. For more episodes, subscribe to our YouTube channel or listen on Podbean, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon/Audible.
All right. Welcome back to Return on Podcast, where we talk about the experiences, the obsessions, and the habits of the most successful e-commerce entrepreneurs. I’m your host, as always, Tyler Jefcoat, and I wanna welcome you to this episode of ROP. We talk a lot on my podcast, on Return on Podcast, about this mantra that I have in life. There are riches in niches. There are riches in niches. If I can find something that I can get so focused on, get great at a really narrow vertical, I have a chance of making a great living and doing something I love because I can combine something I’m really passionate about with getting great at that passion so that I can make a living doing it.
And today I wanna talk about a couple of the riches in niches stories related to Amazon advertising and marketing in particular. And to do that, I’m gonna bring in my friend Keith Hartnett with Better World Products. Hi Keith. How you doing today, man?
Keith Hartnett:
I’m doing good. Thanks for having me, Tyler.
Tyler Jefcoat:
You got it man. Absolutely. So you and I have been in the same room friends for a few years now. It’s good to finally get some FaceTime with you, homie. And alright, I wanna talk about niches for a second. First of all, you’re one of these guys that like lives this wild, nomadic, I’m all over the place lifestyles. Like how, maybe before we get into the riches in niches, sustainability, Amazon ads, we’re gonna talk about all that stuff. What happened in your journey where you said, I know what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna start an Amazon agency and I’m gonna go as much not in a house as possible. I’m gonna be all over the place. What, what was going on in your life when that happened?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah. Starting the agency part came out of just hating the selling part so much. It was just way too complicated for me. All I really loved was the marketing and the advertising side of it. But, you know, I had started selling on Amazon as a way to fund my way around the world. So this is, six years ago now, originally getting into arbitrage, and then, after a year converting that into wholesale. Just so I could, have a way to work remotely, fund my way around the world, traveling around. I first moved to Brazil and then I spent a lot of time in Europe, a little in Southeast Asia. And it worked. But it’s a complicated business model to try and make that work with and was way too stressful. So I moved in three or four years ago into the agency model, and I’m really happy with it.
Tyler Jefcoat:
That’s great. One of the focuses that, my understanding, just reading through your website and getting to know you a little bit, one of the focuses of your agency is this niche – by the way, we’re talking about all sorts of angles of a niche here. I mean, you and I provide professional services for one very specific business, right? An Amazon seller. You’re on the marketing, advertising, amazon business management. I do accounting and CFO. But even within that niche of a niche, Keith, you have really carved out this very narrow focus, not that you don’t help other customers, but you have a lot of customers in the kind of conservation, sustainability sub niche if you will.
And so I was wondering if you could help me understand. Obviously we understand like we wanna protect the planet, but what makes building a sustainability focused brand like so difficult, and why the hell would somebody do that? Because I know it’s more expensive. Like how what are the challenges and why would somebody do that?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah, I think you, you touched about it right there on the difficulties is the cost. There’s extra cost of certifications. There’s usually extra cost in your supply chain and your materials. There’s a lot more that goes into just verifying that you’re doing what you’re saying you’re doing. And then there’s, we’re a member of 1% for the Planet. That is actually an expense. We donate 1% of our revenues to environmental causes. We’re a member of the Conservation Alliance. That, again, itself is a membership fee that goes to that. And so there’s just a lot of extra costs associated with that.
But, the people who do this are very passionate about it. And what has happened over time is that has actually become a big business advantage because now, I would say probably a majority of people, majority of consumers care about this a lot more, especially the younger generations. It’s become really important to market how you’re sustainable, talking about your certifications, whether you’re USDA organic, maybe you’re Blue Science certified, you know the Patagonia being like, a mainstay in this one, of doing this successfully.
Tyler Jefcoat:
It’s so cool. Gosh, what was the, what was the documentary a couple years ago? Like Seaspiracy, where you almost have to be careful which organizations you get in bed with, ’cause there are some shady stuff happening there. But it is, I think I agree with you. I’m in my upper thirties. What are you in your thirties also?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah. Yeah. 32.
Tyler Jefcoat:
Yeah. So people that are our age, maybe a little bit, even a little bit younger. My father-in-law’s in his seventies and actually as was an environmental engineer, has really given his life for that as an engineer. It’s really been great to witness, but I think there is a lot of consumer energy now around people that are closer to our age, Keith, for purchasing more responsibly.
And so your business case, it makes sense there. So I’d be broadening this. Obviously conservation is one really really meaningful niche. If it’s something you’re passionate about, why are you not trying to address that customer more directly? In general though, what does it look like for somebody who’s building an Amazon business to say, okay, here’s the cause or the mission that I’m really passionate about? I don’t know if, does any, do any nuggets come to mind when you’re like, take your product and get more narrow so that you can really tell a story that matters to your customers?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah, so the biggest thing in and around Amazon and climate change and sustainability would be the Climate Pledge program that they have. And so if you’re looking to develop a new product and you want to be in this space of sustainability, you should take a note of what badges Amazon currently recognize on Amazon to get this climate pledge certification. So they have a badge that will show up in search, which is a huge advantage, called the Climate Pledge Friendly Badge.
And if you are USDA organic, Blue Science, like we were mentioning, there’s a lot of carbon offset programs that you can use if you have a product line that may be not manufactured sustainably, but you still want to be sustainable. Or then Amazon has its own programs, Compact by Design, which rewards the size and efficiency of your packaging and your product compared to the rest of the category. Which of course has downstream impacts on carbon emissions. So keep an eye out for that. So definitely think about how you’re designing your product. Think about what certification you can do, and this can give you a big competitive advantage on Amazon.
Tyler Jefcoat:
And so maybe just to dig into that a little bit, are you seeing, you’ve been doing this long enough now? Are you seeing, I’m assuming you are, but success stories and kind of evidence that, hey, guys taking a step back, engineering these products correctly, it creates enough of a competitive advantage or enough goodwill with those customers that it’s possible to be profitable doing this? Are you seeing that?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah, it’s tough to say exactly what is the game changer like, so we’ll see. The biggest brands have incorporated this into their marketing, into their product development. And I’ve tried to get numbers out of Amazon on the Climate Pledge. Is there any upticks on anything? They won’t give us anything on that. I would say given the evidence that they’re continuing to push this program and that the biggest brands in the world are incorporating more of this, I would say it’s pretty clear that it is helping.
Tyler Jefcoat:
Makes sense. You’ve mentioned a couple of really concrete things that a brand could do. Sounds like exploring that badge and doing what it takes to get it if you can. Or getting an organic certification or if you happen to be early enough in a new product development, maybe doing some engineering around sustainability. Any other nuggets that pop into your head that are like, hey, if I wanted to pivot my brand into this niche a little bit more, here’s some things I might consider.
Keith Hartnett:
It’s hard for brands who have established product lines who didn’t do this up front, and that’s why I mentioned the carbon offset program. Now this will fall of course into sort of your greenwashing category. Is it good? Is it bad? Does it actually work? I think it’s a good place to start. A lot of that money will go to good causes. Good things will be built, trees will be planted. And those will eventually have an impact. That is really the only way that I can think of that you can get into this if you already have something developed.
Tyler Jefcoat:
So, and by the way, just in specific, if you’re a brand that they’re listening to this and you are, you really have a heart or a passion for conservation, I think Keith would be a great person to add your network. Keith, the day job part of this, what your firm actually does, is you help Amazon sellers of various categories, there may be some focus here, but across across the board, run their marketing, run their advertising, and I mean, I guess my question is, ’cause we’re seeing some headwinds across the market this year, is it still possible to advertise like profitably on Amazon?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah, I mean, it’s certainly not easier. So we talk with our clients a lot about profitability and why it’s so important, especially for the sustainability of their advertising. And the main thing that we tell ’em first is that your listing is what matters the most. Like you need to convert, you need to be talking about all of the benefits of your product, you need to have your images set up, your A plus content, and you have to do some of the other SEO stuff that aren’t keyword research based. But the way you design your title is actually going to impact your ad performance because that’s what they’re gonna see. And you wanna be thinking about as well, like the title gets cut off in search.
So what you’re advertising on, what you think you can compete on needs to be farther afront in your title so that that’s what people see, and you know the stuff that you’ve buried in the back of the title, maybe you wanna tune down the advertising there, or maybe you wanna run some experiments and switch those things around if you want to try and rank somewhere else.
Tyler Jefcoat:
That makes sense. So what is the – here’s been my thought as a CFO. I’m helping about $120 million a year in Amazon sales is from the CFO standpoint, and Keith, what we’re seeing is, you know, we had two straight years where there was just supply chain headwinds. We had additional container cost. It was taking forever to get product in, but by the way, we were in the midst of a pandemic where we had a lot of additional demand. So that was helpful. And so we responded to that spike in demand and spike in volatility to our supply chain by buying a crap ton of product last fall.
So last September, almost everyone in my portfolio bought too much stuff. Demand was a little softer than we expected in Q4 and Q1, and Amazon has had to tighten down their FBA ship in some ways, increased fees. And so that’s problem number one and that’s a major problem for margin.
Problem number two is I don’t think it’s entirely predicated on the Apple Facebook attribution issue, but I think that’s part of it. I think just having slightly softer demand has also just placed more pressure on Amazon ads, right? A dollar of ad spend was just easier to get in front of the right customer and to convert a year and a half ago than it is now. And so my, I guess that’s all leading me to to ask you the question, if you have any thoughts about that, but also what actually is working? What are you seeing that’s becoming increasingly important for sellers, for brand owners that are kind of still trying to compete?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah. On the advertising side it’s become increasingly important as the big brands have gone into Amazon, as the CPCs have risen, the cost per click, that you just need to be better at advertising. So your way you’re structuring your campaigns, the diversification of how you’re advertising, whether that’s the advertising types, sponsored products, sponsored brands, sponsored display, and then taking advantage of all the different ways to advertise within those.
And then of course, structuring your campaigns so that you can easily, we call it pulling the levers. So we wanna pull as many levers as we can to get the results that we want. That means that we need to be able to control bids and control budgets very granularly. Some campaigns that are spending a lot, we might wanna shut that budget down because it’s not performing right now. We can keep the bid the way it is ’cause it still needs to compete or maybe just reduce it a little. But if we’re gonna hit our numbers, it needs to stop spending money right now. And you can only do that if you’ve structured your campaigns in a way where everything is spread out. So we’re talking, at least dozens of campaigns, probably in the hundreds. If you’ve got a large catalog, it’s gonna be thousands.
Tyler Jefcoat:
Yeah, so having more, I think what I’m hearing you saying is having more sophistication and granularity in your campaign structure, that makes sense. It gives you the power of being able to see on that more granular level what’s working, what isn’t working. But by the way, I just wanna say this, Keith, I talk to a lot of friends that are in your world and it’s refreshing to have a marketing guy kind of give a shit about profitability, to be honest with you. I talk to so many like agency guys that were like, yeah, we’re not really too concerned about that. And they wouldn’t say it like that, but the evidence doesn’t point to that. I mean, has being efficient financially always been a core part of your model there?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah. Yeah, I know when I first got into e-commerce, I was really into Profit First and that whole methodology. That has stayed with me throughout, especially dealing with the headaches in wholesale and the margins there. And so I can understand, what they’re going through and what their margins might actually look like. And so a lot of what we’ll do now is that we’ll actually say, hey, can we get your COGS so that we can actually track the profitability? ‘Cause we wanna make sure that we’re not increasing your revenue and destroying your company.
Because some brands, especially now, cash is gonna be tight. I’m sure banks are starting to tighten up a bit more and a bit more, and going into next year, probably even more. You need margin.
Tyler Jefcoat:
Guys, I think that’s a – don’t miss that nugget. I was talking to an agency owner, oh, it must have been about a month ago, so it wasn’t just yesterday, but I was flummoxed, I was flabbergasted that he doesn’t grab the Cost of Goods Sold information from his customers. And for him it was some kind of a security concern. I don’t know what the reason was. It didn’t make any sense to me because at the end of the day, if you don’t understand what your margin is on the product, you can’t possibly make meaningful strategic decisions related to advertising. And I would take it a step further to say that everyone always asks me, the most popular CFO question ever, by the way, and you get this one too, Keith, is how much can I afford to spend on advertising? And, and the answer to that question is, it depends completely on what your product margin is.
If you have – so let’s just say for instance, you sell a product for $100. If you only have $20 in your Cost of Goods Sold, or 20%, you’re gonna have much more budget for ads than if you have 40% stuck in Cost of Goods Sold. And it’s not even close. And so for me, by the way, the combination of those two key metrics, what is my landed Cost of Goods Sold per unit plus the juice, plus the advertising needed to get this product to move, the sum of those two variables cannot be more than 50% of your sale price. It cannot be. In absolutely no scenario unless you’re a very high volume reseller can that work. And for most brands that are scalable, the sum of those two variables, landed Cost of Goods Sold and TACOS, is actually less than 40% of the total sale price.
And so if you’re looking for how do I scale a brand? Could I potentially have a product that could make it to eight figures? My question to you would be, pull up your P&L from the last 12 months, hopefully it’s done properly, and look at that 5000 line just for the, I’m not talking about Amazon fees, just the landed Cost of Goods Sold, plus that TACOS number, and if that percentage is, between 35% and 45%, you’re in great shape. If it’s more than 45%, you may need to take a look at your margins and make sure you’re not overspending. Any other thoughts on that, Keith?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah, that’s totally true. So we’ll track TACOS for our clients, but we did realize that was not enough and that we needed to see the hard numbers, like we needed to see the actual profitability. And it just can’t be stated enough how important that is.
Tyler Jefcoat:
So important. So important. Guys, if you do yourself a favor, make sure you know what each of your ASINs is generating. And I know it’s estimated because of some of the ad attribution, but what is it actually generating in profit after ads, after Amazon fees, and hold your products accountable. Keith, new topic here that’s kind of related. First of all, what’s your final comment on that? don’t wanna move on too quickly.
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah I was just gonna double down on, on what you were saying. If you are working with an agency or professional and you don’t wanna provide them your cost of goods, like you said it yourself, I can’t make good strategic decisions if I don’t know those things. I can only make bad strategic decisions. Like I will still make strategic decisions based upon what you wanna measure and what you’ve provided me, but the more information you give me, the better job I can do.
Tyler Jefcoat:
And that may be a good interview question for your potential marketing partner is, hey, do you have a mechanism by which I can give you enough information about the product margins that you can help me optimize, not just around growth. We understand, we may have to spend a little bit to grow, but optimizing around ultimate profitability, and for Seller Accountant, it’s even maybe a step further than probably is fair to expect of a marketing agency. But what is that profit related to the amount of inventory invested so we can get a true ROI annually for that product.
Hey, pivoting here a little bit, one of the top of the funnel, I think really important topics that always seems to be evolving on Amazon is A plus content, and now we’re maybe, on the horizon here soon is this kind of premium A plus content, something related to brand stories for Amazon. Can you tell us what’s current in that area right now?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah. So it’s it’s really exciting. So there’s always been this like really nice premium A plus content that the big brands got access to, and it gave them – you could put video in your A plus content. Everything looked better. The images were actually responsive, which is pretty important on the internet. And I think it was end of August, if you qualified, in September they would give you access to premium A plus content. And so the two ways that you would qualify is you would need to have your brand story, and more importantly, need to have your brand story on every single ASIN. So double check that. We’ve double checked that on a client, and they have hundreds of ASINs. And so that was like, you need to be thorough because if you miss one, you’re not getting it, and you have to wait another month.
Which leads into the other thing is that Amazon doesn’t give us a timeline on how long they’re offering this. So they just say every month, we’ll give you access to this if you’ve meet the criteria, the brand story being one, the other being that you need to have successfully published 15 A plus content versions. So if you go into the A plus content tab, you will see each line. That would count as a successful publish. The easiest way to do that, of course, is if you have more than 15 ASINs. Variations count, so if you’ve got a lot of variations, that’s fine too.
Some people you’re just not gonna have a big enough catalog, but if you want, you could try to go the Amazon Launchpad path. They will give you access to the premium A plus content as well. And that will not cost you anything. There is a bit of a situation where if Amazon pulls back access to A plus premium, they might charge you to edit it. So keep that in mind when you’re committing to this. Don’t delete your old A plus content. Leave that there. It can stay there. ‘Cause if you want to change something, they might say, hey, it’s quarter of a million dollars to roll this out, and you’re probably not gonna be able to afford that.
Tyler Jefcoat:
That’s a good nugget there. Yeah. So you mentioned if you – so Launchpad, but with caution, if that’s an option. And you talked about brand stories. I recently saw an article that you guys posted on brand story on Amazon. I’ll make sure that the link, it’s really long form guys. This is a super well put together piece on with screenshots and everything on how you can improve the brand story elements of your catalog listings and that kind of thing. Anything else related to that in particular? If someone’s like, oh wow, I feel like I keep hearing about brand story, but I’ve been a little bit asleep at the wheel. What do I need to know? Why do I care? Anything else pop in your mind related to that?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah. So we’ve got it all there in the article, but keep in mind that it’s a bit weird looking if you’re used to A plus content. Like the modules are different and they scroll from left to right, so you’ve got a background image. You wanna make sure when you’re designing that it looks really good and the highlight is on the left side, ’cause that’s where, that’s what will show, especially on mobile. And then you want to think about the different little modules you put on and what you want to target here. For example, one of the big things might be you wanna drive traffic to your storefront across your catalog. You can link to the different pages doing that and put those images there and just make sure it looks good when you’re doing that. And then some brand info is also great. That’s the whole point of it.
Tyler Jefcoat:
Awesome. That’s great. So it sounds like this is an opportunity that if you’re not already on board with both of these by the way, they’re connected, but Amazon brand stories, if you want a step by step again, we’ll post Keith and his team’s article in the show notes so you can get to it. And then this kind of premium A plus content, there’s, Amazon’s gonna iterate this. I was talking to somebody yesterday, a CEO of $2 or $3 million brand, and she’s like, every time I update these damn images, Amazon changes it. And the answer is yes. Amazon is going to iterate this every year if it can to make the experience better for customers. And so if you’re not completely up to date on that, that’s another area just to research.
Hey Keith, I guess this is a little bit of a broad question. I hate to use the word hacker tactic, but like, is there anything that’s working particularly well for your clients right now in terms of marketing, advertising with the various platforms on Amazon? Like what is it that you guys are focused on as an agency right now that you feel like is driving a lot of extra results for your customers?
Keith Hartnett:
Outside of the basic of just getting the foundations right, good images, good copy, focus on your title, make sure you’re understanding how the customer looks at it in search, the sort of thing that we’ve been telling clients a lot now recently is if you’ve got a big enough catalog, please put the comparison chart in your A plus content. You’re spending money driving traffic to your listing, so you want as many of your products to show up on that listing. And this is free real estate here. Please put it in. There’s a lot of nice little fields you can put in that will have an SEO impact as well, will communicate the value of the product to the customer, help them understand it, help them understand it against the rest of your catalog. I know I’ve used it plenty of times when just buying, especially something that’s like electronics. It’s really helpful. And it pushes the ads down, which is great ’cause those are your competitors trying to get on your listing.
Tyler Jefcoat:
Yeah, that’s super huge. Okay, that’s a good idea. So if you have various options that solve the same problem, using that chart feature seems like a really, that’s potentially some low hanging fruit. Quick pivot here. I’m noticing your hat there. How, how happy are you with the Aaron Judge situation right now?
Keith Hartnett:
It’s funny, since I started traveling, I have not paid any attention to sports.
Tyler Jefcoat:
Okay, okay. Most of our people are actually gonna listen to this on podcasts. He’s got a Boston Red Sox hat on. It’s like I’m a big college football fan. So my lens here is that they’ve been interrupting most of my college football games the last two weeks to show every Aaron Judge at bat, ’cause he, he did finally hit the 62nd home run, so he now has the American League record. So I don’t know, the guy seems like a cool dude. Not a big baseball guy, so it’s funny.
Keith Hartnett:
I know I was at a conference recently, the Sell and Scale conference, and someone walked by to me and he is like, hey, congrats. And I was like, thanks. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Tyler Jefcoat:
Well, it’s funny you said so and I said I wonder if he was messing with you. ‘Cause he is like, oh, I see your Boston thing there. I don’t even know how good Boston is. By the way I’m, I am a Braves fan, but I’m a, I don’t have any other allegiance. But I’m not into baseball as much anymore, and so thank God we finally won last year’s. That was good. I know we’re gonna to the playoffs. My COO, she watches this. I’m sorry, Ashley, I know you watch every game and if I need the stats, I’ll come to her for it, but.
Okay, so a little bit more fun stuff. So again, you’re a nerd. Let’s just call it what it is here, Keith. You and I are nerds. We make a living being nerds. And you like really love studying languages for fun. What is it about you that you’re like, you know what I’m gonna do for fun? I’m gonna go – like, for instance, I was talking to Vanessa the other day. I’m like, Vanessa, what do you do for fun? “I shoot pool,” and she’s good at it. She’s one of these nerds that carries a pool glove around with her everywhere she goes, which is how, it’s like the members only jacket, that kind of thing. But for you, I’m like, what do you do for fun, Keith? And you’re like, You know what I do? I learn Romanian. That’s what I do. Like how did you get into that ?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah, 2020, 2021, I was living in Budapest. So I just have a lot of Romanian friends, and generally when I’m traveling around, I will always try to pick up as much of the language as I can. I probably did this most successfully with Portuguese in Brazil, but I’ve gotten by on Greek when I was living in Thessaloniki. A little bit of Ukrainian, although that didn’t really stick very well. But right now I’m learning Romanian, and I have a lot of Romanian friends. A great one was trying to learn how to make some money online, and I was like, all right, we’ll help set you up an Italki profile, you can teach me Romanian.
It’s actually the second language I wanted to learn after Portuguese because they’re actually very close. So Romanian is a romance language as well. So it has a lot of Portuguese words, has a lot of French words, like you can say thank you in Romanian as merci, same as French and then Spanish words. Yeah, it’s actually, it’s a ton of fun. And then they have some Slavic sounds in there as well because they’re in that region. But I just really like being able to communicate in this way. And I don’t know about you, but like I’m in my head a lot, and I can’t do this when I’m trying to speak in another language, so I’m actually a lot more relaxed when I’m trying to speak in another language because all I can focus on is trying to say the words I’m trying to say.
And it’s usually a pretty fun experience because the other person will be like laughing, at me a little, with me a little on how I’m trying to struggle to communicate whatever I’m trying to say. So it’s a really, it’s a really fun experience.
Tyler Jefcoat:
Love it. That’s such a great – I did do Duolingo for Spanish for a year. I had, I literally had like almost 300 days straight doing it. It was really was fun. I do love, I love learning. I love things that are challenging. And then the fact that you’re able to travel so much right now, Keith, is where you can really get bang for your buck. My little sister lives in Austria, and so we were able to spend some time in Salzburg with her and her husband last year and picked up – it’s amazing. I’ve never really taken a German class, but you pick it up pretty quickly if you’re sitting within someone’s culture. So here’s the question. Where to next? Man? I know you’re back in Boston for a short season right now, but where are you gonna be moving next, man?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah, so I spend a month in Southern Africa. So I go to, actually, it’s a nomad conference that will be in Cape Town. And then we head up to Johannesburg to go on a safari that will bring us into Zimbabwe and Mozambique. And then after that I will head up to France, probably transition to starting to learn a little French. I think that’s a good stepping point from Romanian and be in Europe for a little while.
Tyler Jefcoat:
Beautiful. Wow. It’s gonna be amazing, buddy. Listen, Keith Hartnett, betterworldproducts.org. I’m gonna make sure your website’s in the show notes. Final section for each of these episodes that we do each week, Keith, is you’re a successful guy. You’re doing a lot of really cool stuff, and there are probably a pile of habits or practices that you have. And by the way, any kind of habit stack that’s successful, that can be carried into a traveling nomadic kind of lifestyle like yours is really fascinating to me. ‘Cause I’m a real geek for habit. So what is the, what’s the thing or what are a couple things that are really working for you in your life that you would say people ought to check out?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah. I think this one I started while traveling, and I’m sure you’ve heard it before, but it’s journaling, and especially the way I do it is keeping it as simple as possible. Which, because the most important thing is to maintain the habit. So I started doing this in 2017, and it’s been so amazing because I’m able to look back, I do a weekly review, a monthly review, and then I’ll do a book review at the end of like the journal. And you can see all the life you lived. Like all this incredible amount of stuff you did where it’s normally you say, what’d you do? And you’re like, you don’t wanna spend the time thinking about it, so you’re like, oh, I just, whatever. It’s the same day, it’s the same week, didn’t do that much.
But when you’re intentionally going through it, like you actually feel like you’ve lived a lot. And then, you know, when you’re traveling to different places, you like live a different life in each place, and you can appreciate that more. And think about wow, I lived – I remember after the first year, I felt like I lived five years of life in that one year. And that was just incredible. I know like a lot of people, maybe our age or younger started thinking, they started getting anxiety around not living enough life, right? And so this is a great way to tackle that. And the journaling itself is a great way to just reflect and observe yourself just to get into that practice and being able to make adjustments or see strange things that you do, problems you just don’t seem to be able to solve, and think about them with like maybe less self deprecation and just more acceptance.
Tyler Jefcoat:
That’s so good. So just really practically here, you’re a, you’re a digital nomad, but this is, you’re talking about analog. I have a physical journal, and then how much time per day would you say normally is dedicated to this practice?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah. And the analog is like one of the most important parts of it. Just getting off the screen when that’s what you do full time, just deliberately making sure. I will shut down everything at seven pm so it’s only audio or books or something like that.
Tyler Jefcoat:
How much time a day normally does this happen?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah, it’s probably, it could be anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. Usually when I do the weekly review, I will find a really nice cafe on Sunday to go just spend three or four hours like more relaxed, just drinking a nice coffee, writing down stuff as I go about it and just chilling with that.
Tyler Jefcoat:
Oh, that’s great. You’re taking this to a different level than I am. So I also am a daily journaler, and it has been very life-giving. The other anxiety that it helps me deal with is, whatever pain or like I’m like mad or frustrated with something, whatever pain that’s happening in the moment can always feel like insurmountable. But if you do have that regular practice of going and being like, oh yeah, I remember that thing I was freaked out about two months ago? Like how funny was that? Two things. One is it wasn’t as big a deal as I thought it was, and two, huh, I got through that. No big deal. I’m good. I’m on the other side of it, and so I think being able to see each day in the context of a bigger life has been another gift that journaling has given me as – yeah, man. Any other comments on that before we close shop here for the day?
Keith Hartnett:
No, I think you closed it off quite well though. It’s an amazing benefit.
Tyler Jefcoat:
Love it, dude. I love it. Keith Harnett, Better World Products. Brother, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate you joining the show. We’re gonna make sure your links to the article and to your website are posted to the show notes. But just maybe one final question for you. So the guy, the brand owner, he, she, what is somebody going through right now where they ought to reach out to Better World Products and learn more about your services?
Keith Hartnett:
Yeah. If their ads are just not working for them, if they can’t figure it out, they don’t have enough time, they just don’t understand where the costs are coming from or why they can’t be profitable, just please reach out. We’re happy to help. That is our bread and butter right there.
Tyler Jefcoat:
Love it. All right. Guys, we’re gonna close the episode here, Return on Podcast. I’m Tyler Jefcoat. We’re always grateful to have you join the show. Thank you for your attention. I hope you’ll grab a couple of nuggets related to marketing or trying to niche in or trying to get more involved in the conservation part of branding. It’s possible to brand within the conservation niche. And then maybe these personal habits of, I love the nugget of trying to unplug each night, the something that helps you be present in the moment is journaling where you can understand where you’ve been and where you want to go. And Keith, you’re the man, buddy. Thanks again for joining me. Have a great week.
Keith Hartnett:
Pleasure to be here, Tyler. Thanks for having me.