Ep. 2: Streaming Ads, AI Shopping Assistants, BrandBusting Stanley, and Being an "A" Player at Home
Welcome to BrandBusters with your hosts, James Schwyn and Sean Lee. They shoot it to you straight about the latest in CPG, eCommerce, and life - without the corporate jargon, buzzwords, and bullsh*t.
In Episode 2, James and Sean take on the machines and a cultural zeitgeist brand. They cover:
1. The impact on consumers and brands of Amazon Prime Video (and others) showing streaming ads
2. Chatting with products before you buy them with Amazon's new AI
3. They "BrandBust" the Stanley Brand, discuss its meteoric rise, and its latest negative PR (ooooh spicy)
4. They talk about balancing family, life outside of work, and tips on being an "A" player at home. If we're being honest, this segment is probably the most important segment. (Who cares what you did at work if no one wants to be at your 70th birthday party)
Show Transcript:
Welcome to Brand Busters with your hosts, James Schwyn and Sean Lee. Together, we must open into the latest in CPG, retail media, and life. Today, we got something special cooked up for you, and I'll let Sean take it from here. Perfect, James. Excited to be with you with episode 2.
Thanks for, thanks for tuning in here with us on LinkedIn Live and also listening wherever you get your podcast, Apple Music, Spotify, or YouTube. So today, we got a great episode for you. We're gonna talk streaming ad revenue and how a lot of the streamers are starting to charge consumers to go ad free and what the implications of that mean. We're gonna talk about Amazon's AI shopping assistant on the product page, and then we're gonna brand bust the Stanley Quencher mug in the Stanley brand. A lot of good stuff to dig in there.
And finally, we're gonna round it out, which is talking about being an a player at home. A lot of us try to be a players in our jobs and at work, especially in the sales and marketing realm. But are you showing up and being an a player at home? So exciting action packed episode for you. Let's dig in.
James, do you wanna take it away and start talking about streaming ad revenue? Yeah. Big announcement from Amazon, announcing that we'll be rolling out an ad supported plan for Amazon Prime Video. What that looks like is, a $3 a month option. So whether you have a monthly subscription to Amazon Prime Video or you're already a Prime member, you have the ability to tune into that.
Fear not. The spots are only supposed to be 2 to 3 minutes, which is still shorter than those on linear TV. And I think the interesting thing here, Sean, is advertising now constitutes 8% of Amazon's total net sales, actually surpassing their subscription revenue. The streaming industry as a whole, I think, is really struggling, to develop some viable financial model, here with all the the licensing and distribution issues, constantly, in play. I think projections really projections are this will, help Amazon gain an additional 3,000,000,000, in revenue, in this year alone and actually grow to 7,000,000,000 in 2026.
I think the the other call here, if we're looking at our friends over at Netflix, is, 40% of their, their subscriptions their new subscribers have actually been on the ad supported program, and, quarter on quarter actually grew 70%. So I think a lot of people that are streaming are now opting into the ad support option, save a few dollars on the fixed expenses monthly, and honestly tune in to see what what brands have to offer now. How are they iterating and innovating, on this new platform? Yeah. I think it's I think it's super interesting.
I mean, the cost to create content is just extremely high for original content. And like you said, if you're licensing from the the big movie theaters or Disney or anyone like that, you're you're paying a huge premium. So oftentimes, unless you're Netflix, you're you're probably a money loser in the streaming space. So it was always clear Amazon's endgame was to use this to make the Prime subscription kinda more robust. It but they were always gonna monetize it somehow.
Right? Like, it's it's right for the taking. But I think a couple points that I would make, it seems like we're back full circle to cable TV again. So, you know, except now it's more complicated. You have to pay for multiple streamers.
You used to be able to watch without ads, which was a benefit against cable. It used to be cheaper than, you know, paying for cable. Now when you have everything from Netflix to Amazon Prime to Disney Plus to ESPN Plus to Paramount, you name it. There's a million of them now, all at 9 to $20 a month. You can see why people are opting into the the ad versions, but I think it's just a worse experience for the consumer.
Before, I could just pay for cable TV, and at least all my channels and all my content were in one place even if I had to watch ads. Now I gotta log in and out of a bunch of different apps. Like, I I think there's gonna be some sort of blow up or consolidation in the space at some point just because they've created new consumer friction and pain points that didn't exist before without the benefit of, hey. This is cheaper than cable. So we're kinda back full circle from a consumer standpoint.
From a brand standpoint, I think it's great. Right? Because brands used to be able to captivate an audience, you know, advertising on ESPN, USA Network, ABC. A lot of the younger audience, you probably anybody under the age of 40, has really moved on to streaming, and they're just not capturing the same people with eyeballs on their their 30 second TV spot. So I think this is a a huge opportunity for brands again to kind of go back turn back the clock a decade and really make the 30 to 60 second TV spot shine again and and and use it as a mass awareness top of funnel tool to really showcase their product, you know, the tension and the benefit that it solves.
So I think overall, it's gonna be great for brands. I think it's probably a worse experience for consumers, but, you know, it's tough out there right now. Most people don't want to pay full price for a bunch of streamers. So I think you'll see a lot more consumers opting into the advertising versions, which will make Amazon more money by selling ads and hopefully will allow brands to get more eyeballs and awareness on their products and their TV spots that they were missing before. Well, absolutely.
And I I think the other trend is now it it's arguably more expensive. Maybe not even arguably more expensive to have all these accounts, weave together. I know myself, like, there's there's 3 or 4 staples that I keep, and then I'll I'll binge a show and then cycle one off. So, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. For the consumers, not ideal for brands, agencies, and connected TV providers, performance marketers.
I think it's a very interesting time in the industry and the ecosystem to really dive into what innovations can happen here with, ad placement and interactive ads where you can buy right there on the spot, versus, you know, have have to go via a different device. So we'll be very very interesting to monitor this. Yeah. For sure. I think it'll make targeting a lot better too than than just a national TV buy.
You should be able to to much better target and refine your audience because you all these companies have a lot more data on their purchase habits and age and demographics than just a national TV buy. So we'll be really cool to see. Switching gears though, Amazon just had some interesting news again going with the Amazon theme. They're testing out and trialing a new Amazon AI shopping assistant on product detail pages. So it sounds a little, you know, 1984 dystopian, but now when you're shopping on Amazon, you can go to a little widget on the product page of your product and start interacting and talking to it.
Little crazy, little creepy. I'm sure I'll come around to it, adopt it, but, I think some interesting implications here is you could be on a the page for a a product detail page for a bike and say, I commute 5 miles to work every day. It's slightly uphill. Would this bike be good for me? And this AI assistant, as they're describing it, would scan what the brand has put in in their product copy or any details that they put on the page, and also scan the reviews and try to give you the best answer possible.
So I think it's really cool. I think it can make shopping a lot easier and and maybe remove some friction or or pain points that that get the consumer over to hump the hump to actually try the product. But it's still probably in its infancy, and I'm sure there'll be a ton of bugs and, a lot of wonky stuff that comes from this. If if anybody's played around with chat g p t or or the equivalents, you can get it to say some pretty, crazy things or it can go and start I think they call it AI hallucination, which is probably the same as me after a few drinks, but, it starts saying some things that aren't aren't factual. So curious your take.
Will you be using it, James? What do you think the implications are here? Begrudgingly, maybe I will use it. I I think I'm definitely looking forward to the reels and TikToks that come out with people hacking and having some fun with this. Definitely definitely probably get some laughs.
I think you're seeing that a little bit now. As I always look at reviews, you're seeing, what I'm assuming is AI that's synthesizing, the consumer sentiment already in kind of the summary. I will tell you I'm an inherent skeptic. So, one of my one of my lines, I guess, I wouldn't say motto, is where there's smoke, there's fire. So if I see one negative thing, it always starts off, like, really positive, and then they're always like, but this might be wrong with it.
I'm gonna go down that rabbit hole. I'm gonna click read all reviews, not just top rated, but most recent because I wanna know if they fixed this bug. Is this still a piece of shit? Or, like, what is happening? And I will read those, and it's actually hilarious to read a lot of, consumer reviews on on products.
So I am still probably gonna do my due diligence depending on what the purchase is. But, sure, I I think it'll be fun. I think down the road, it will be a benefit, but, yeah, too too early to tell as with any Amazon innovation. Yeah. I mean, I think implications for brands here.
If Amazon is using the the data you input in your own consumer reviews to answer questions about your product, now more than ever, you gotta make sure that the the product title, the product bullet points, the descriptions, your a plus content that you're feeding Amazon are on point and right because it's gonna be using that to answer questions. So you can't get away with doing the bare minimum anymore. I think also monitoring reviews and making sure that your product's actually quality is, you know, things that every brand should be doing become more important, especially if this AI is going to be able to glean things from your your 1 and 2 star reviews. Right? Because I think as consumers, we probably all look at the 5 star reviews and then go look at the 1 star reviews and then maybe a 3 star in the middle and make our own determination.
Who knows what the AI is gonna do. Right? Like, it's it may get, better or worse over time, but I'm sure it'll give some wild answers, in the short term as it's still in beta mode. You bring up an interesting point on product quality. I think we both I mean, again, having worked together in the past at an Amazon agency, saw just a massive surge in private label sellers on Amazon, and they might be able to have really great COGS and put whatever margin on it.
If the product quality is not there, this is going to, really blow up any any problem. That wasn't that wasn't acknowledged prior, so I think doubling down on product quality, listing quality, and you really have to invest, I think, in infrastructure either in house or leaning on external partners to really stay on top of this, because as finicky as Amazon can be, arbitrarily suppressing just spending listings for who knows what reason at any given time just really brands are beyond their game as this continues to get adopted and rolled out. Agreed. I think I mean, Amazon's already using AI to scan listings and flag listings and, you know, make you submit documentation or flag claims that they don't like. So I only see Amazon getting more and more sophisticated as they they build out their language learning language models, and, it'll be cool to see where this goes.
I think, you know, the world will will be run by AI soon enough, but we'll probably need just as many people to submit prompts and try fix it and and get value out of it. So new jobs will be created, and, it'll it'll be an interesting new world. So moving on from this into our brand busting segment, the brand we're gonna bust today is STANLEY, the old camping brand that is now seemingly everywhere. And, you know, I think we see those colorful 40 ounce mugs almost is is ubiquitous as lululeg lululemon leggings these days. Like, the product's on fire.
The product's everywhere. So I did a little bit of research and found out some interesting tidbits of how this kind of sleepy old, you know, camping brand that people use for camping thermoses, soups to to to keep coffee and and cold liquids really turned into this cultural phenomenon. So their president, Terence Riley, was the former CEO of Crocs, which I found interesting given given Crocs also kinda went through the same transformation. So when he arrived at Crocs, it was kind of a a a dying brand with a $13 stock price. You know, it had these really iconic shoes that were almost its its big detriment too.
Like, people knew what they were, but they thought they were for toddlers and children. I know my kids have a pair. But he came in and really breathe life and and used this iconic product and made it a cultural phenomenon by bringing in influencers, affiliates, celebrities like Post Malone and Justin Bieber, and exclusive drops to really, you know, reenergize the brand with with Gen z and the younger generation. And I think what Terrence did there was incredibly impressive of taking the stock price from $13 to $180 by the time he left. And then leaving for Stanley seems kind of like a weird move.
Right? You're you're on top of the world. You've just turned around Crocs and made it this cultural phenomenon. But I guess it looks like you did the exact same playbook. So it seems like from a branding perspective, the formula is pretty simple.
Take a recognizable brand, supercharge it with affiliates, influencers, and celebrities, and make it part of pop culture. Right? You're big and popular, and you have to become the item that is a status symbol that everybody wants. Like, much easier said than done, but I love the playbook, and it seems it worked. He's he's run it twice with by taking this kind of old memorable iconic brand and bring bringing new life into it and making it a cultural phenomenon.
So that's that's that's the one thing that I thought was interesting. The other thing that I read is that when he took it over, they were considering discontinuing the 40 ounce quencher mug, and and they had stopped production new production on it because it just wasn't moving. But he found out that it had a cult following with moms in Utah of all places. Right? And they decided to launch an affiliate website where moms could make money referring the product.
For for those that don't don't know, like, I used to work in the multilevel marketing industry. Like, Utah is kind of a hotbed for that. So affiliate marketing and product discovery and peer to peer selling is is really big in Utah. So it was kind of that insight that, you know, breathe new life into the brand. And it's kind of in the snowball effect from there.
And the company went from about 70,000,000 when when Terence took over to about 750,000,000 in annual revenue this past year. So I I don't know, James. What what what's your take, and what do you think about the Stanley brand? Oh, man. First of all, did the world need another mug?
Did we? Did we? I don't I don't think we did. Now to be fair, chronologically, they were there first or far earlier than, a lot of the, basically, incumbents in the space. But, you know, what's wrong with these other practical alternatives here?
I mean, I've got I've got my YETI here. Got a great, great coffee cup with some water, dad joke loading. Do you see that? Please take that in. Yep.
Take a swig. I'm not done. We got a champagne flu. This is water. There's no champagne in this.
So I should drink that with my pinky up. And, this is probably gonna trigger some people, but we got plastic bottle. Yep. I don't know. That sound right there.
Fun fact, sad fact, actually, as much as I wanna support the climate, actually, you understand that. I think 5 only 5% of plastics in the US are actually recyclable. So, again, separate thing we can bust down the road. But, anyways, my take on this, is these consumer trends start with FOMO, and they end with NOMO. So fear missing out to nobody missing out.
So I love I love seeing how things have exploded, over the last, I guess, what, probably year and a half, 2 years, maybe a little bit longer, especially maybe being in Cincinnati. We're a little bit behind behind the curve here in terms of trends, in the Midwest. But I think there's a couple of things. Right? I think you and I were talking earlier, there were there's that post where, like, there's that car fire, and somehow the Stanley survived it with ice in the water still intact and, racked up what over, like, 95,000,000 views or share, Sean.
Yeah. Why don't why don't we, actually, why don't we why don't we take a look at that? Because the CEO, I think, kinda being the smart guy that he is using influencers and capturing the moment, did some really cool kind of social spin there. So it's a good lesson in trusting your, trusting your PR team or trusting your social media person Yeah. And kinda knowing the cultural moment.
I'm trying to. Alright. Alright. See here. We will get it up.
Now if you haven't seen this, definitely worth checking out. I believe she got a new car. Like, they actually got her a new car, as well. Right? Our product's quality.
Here we go. Hire you up for me. So as I said Hey, Danielle. My name is Terrence Riley. I'm the president of STANLEY, and we've all seen your video.
Wow. What an ordeal, and we're all really glad you're safe. Thanks for sharing the video because, wow, it really shows how Stanley our Stanleys are built for life. Because what it went through with you, I couldn't think of a better example of our product's quality. But anyway, we're glad you're safe.
I've seen a lot of comments that we should send you some Stanleys. Well, we're gonna send you some Stanleys. But there's one more thing. We've never done this before, and we'll probably never do it again, but we'd love to replace your vehicle. Yeah.
All of us at Stanley, we'd really like to replace your vehicle. So check your DMs for details. Thanks. Be safe. Cheers.
Well, how about that? How about that? About it? How about it? Well done on their part.
Well well, Sean, I've got I've got a TikTok that I wanna share. I'm Go for it. So on on the on my to my comment of FOMO and NoMo, here here's what I got got for you. Alright. Queuing in 3, 2, 1.
Who is this place? Well, look who finally got downgraded. Welcome to the back of the cup cabinet, bro. Is this like cup held? It's an inevitable fate for every trendy overpriced cup.
Oh, it's gonna last forever. Oh, Stan, the man. She had to fight a lady at Target for me. Wow. That sounds like my neck of the woods.
This is a mistake. I I don't belong. I think you're better than us. Yes. I'm double wall insulated.
K. Well, same. With a handle. I have a handle, I think. And I'm shiny.
Oh, but you've never seen what they do to us on Etsy. Well, I certainly know that I am the most expensive cup that she's ever had. What? Who's gonna tell her? Tell me what.
Hey. Somebody get the $300 mug. 300 where do you even find something like that? Not the dishwasher. Hey.
I'm hospital mug. Alright. Alright. I know I'm curmudgeon y and jaded. No.
It's it's a great brand. Kudos to Stanley. You have all done a phenomenal job in terms of building that. The numbers reflect that. I'm just trying to have some trying to have some fun here.
So, yeah. No. I mean, I think the lesson there is, like, one, can you in this world of everything going viral and and anybody kind of really being an influencer. Right? How do you capitalize on that?
And how do you make a product go viral that that it's the it product to have, which I think they've done a phenomenal job of? When you see stuff like that, that reinforces your benefit of quality mug, you know, how do you quickly get the CEO to offer to buy the person a new car? Because what better advertising on that quality or mug when the entire car is charred and looks like, looks like a bomb went off in it, but this mug is still standing. Like, you couldn't ask for better advertising. And then the the millions of PR coverage hits that that got on all the news media, like, it's just free advertising.
That's that's pretty amazing, and also shows that the brand cares about their users. But I think, like all good things, when you are that much in the spotlight and you become such a cultural icon, I'll I'll share a couple things, James, for for the viewers that are that are watching here. And for everybody that's watching, we upload the videos to Spotify. We put them on YouTube, so you should be able to to tune in and screen whatever we're sharing. But one of the things that I thought are really interesting is if anybody's familiar with the the company StockX, this is a website where people trade kind of original sneakers.
So you might find the original Michael Jordans or some Air Force Ones from Nike and, like, limited release drops from Adidas or Kanye West. They're now starting to sell limited edition Stanleys that just kinda shows how much this is went into the cultural zeitgeist that really this this kind of shoe icon website is now starting to to trade on the secondary market these exclusive drop Stanley's in in special colors and everything else. So I just thought that was very interesting. Let's see here. And I'll share one more thing.
Really kinda making the point that just as much is you can be a cultural icon and you can be in the moment and things can go very positive when you go viral, There's also some stuff that can go very poorly. So, again, I have no idea if these claims are true, but recently as as recently as this week, it seems like I I've seen it everywhere on on x, formerly Twitter, that Stanley's are testing positive for lead. So there's there's a big joke out there, you know, the Roman Empire fell because everyone's IQs decline with the use of lead pipes. Now is middle class America gonna fall from, the lead in Stanley Cups? Obviously, other brands are capitalizing on it.
YETI, everyone else is putting out statements saying that their products don't have have lead or use them in the manufacturing process. But it looks like, Stanley put out a statement and basically said, we use lead in our manufacturing process, but as long as the seal is not damaged, nobody should ever be exposed to lead. So still a little scary that they're using lead in their manufacturing process, and I I didn't even know lead was still used since the fifties when people put it in in paint. But, it pretty much puts the onus on the consumer. Like, don't bang your cup or break the seal or or damage the the thermos part of it, or you might be drinking some lead.
So I think Stanley's probably in a little bit of damage mode in in PR mode to try to figure that out. My guess is since all these other companies don't use lead in their manufacturing process, Stanley will move to that pretty damn quickly. But this is, one of the things where, you know, you don't wanna be in the news for this. And I I remember when I first started working at Procter and Gamble and brand management right right out of undergrad, I joined the Iins pet food brand and, you know, it's a $1,000,000,000 brand, one of the top pet food brands in the in the US. And within 2 months of joining, we had a huge recall.
You know, salmonella hits on a ton of our dog food and cat food. We ended up stop shipping 70% of our our total SKUs to to retail, and we were down for, like, 6 months. And, you know, to to make matters worse, we did we made the the smart or boneheaded decision to stop all of our national marketing for the 6 month period when we were out of stock. So not only could people not find their product, because we couldn't ship it until we fixed the the problems at the plant, but we we basically pulled, you know, $80,000,000 of marketing. So people weren't aware of us even when we were coming out, of that.
So people switched. They didn't hear about us. A lot of our marketing would halo, you know, 3, 6 months in advance, and it it it took a lot of impressions. So it was a huge lesson for me is, you know, there's a there's things that can happen in crisis. It can really hurt your business.
I think we were down, you know, 20, 30 percent just from that recall and from pulling advertising, and it took us a good 2, 3 years to to dig ourselves back out from that. So, hopefully, things go well at Stanley. They don't make the same type of mistakes, and, hopefully, they get their their manufacturing process fixed and and remove lead because, you know, I wouldn't mess around with that. Anything that can lower your IQ seems, seems a little scary to me, especially if you're drinking out of it all day every day. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My my take on that, Sean, I think it's good that they're addressing it. I think you always have to jump on the grenade when things go go wrong.
You can't let if you don't control the narrative, someone else will. So, be interested to see what they do. That said, if I die from lead poisoning from a Stanley mug, I will personally come back and haunt them, Hill House style. So just watch out. It's all good.
Alright. So that's our brand blessing segment for Stanley. What's what do you got next for us, James? Okay. So now we're gonna go I I got I got 2 quick things.
I wanna rehash one detail that I don't know how the heck I missed last week. We're talking about solostale last week and the Snoop Dogg campaign. So to pull by Tony Reali on the errors and omission section. I fun fact, I actually saw Snoop Dogg live probably about a decade ago at Bogart's in Cincinnati. Had a complete blast.
Highly recommend seeing him if you can. Live out your best life, but, that's my my kind of blog tidbit that I don't know how I missed last week. That's great. I think I saw Snoop Dogg when I was 18 too. So probably almost 2 decades ago at this point.
But I'm I'm more serious than that. I think, like I said, we like to cover a number of things, you know, in CPG, retail media, but also, behind the curtain looking at life. We're both dads. You have multiple kids. Sean's got 3.
I've got 2. So we're very much in the thick of it, very career driven as well. And I think this week, you know, I see we're both fairly active on LinkedIn, Sean, and I see a lot of, there's a lot of self promotion on there, which I think is which is good. But I think once you actually become a parent and, you know, you're married I I I'm a single dad, actually. So recently divorced over the last year, and have had to learn a lot in terms of, like, balancing that load, on the home front and at work and really bring the the best version of myself for my boys.
So I'm I'm fully available with them while still getting it done, on the work end. And I think too often, we high five and clap each other in the back, when prefer professional achievements happen. But, you know, we don't maybe check our friend group or or guy friends in terms of like, hey. Are you how are you bring showing up at home right now? Are you showing are you giving your a game?
Are you if you're an entrepreneur or an owner of a company and you're touting the best employer of choice, are you a spouse of choice? Are you a father of choice? Are you a friend of choice? And I think too often, we get our our work and our jobs get the best version of ourselves, and our families get this hollowed out skeleton shell. They get what's left, the residual.
And I see it today, like, economic times, very trying. Like, we have to show up at work and bring that, but there needs to be a balance. It needs to be more harmonious. Our kids deserve that. Our spouses deserve that.
We we really need to give them our best, and there's some middle ground there where we're showing up equally as well for them because those are glass balls that you cannot drop. You're talking about, like, legacy and who's gonna be with you for the long run. Jobs will come and go. Companies will come and go. Businesses will fail.
Businesses will thrive. But the the few constants that you'll only have in your life are your your kids and your spouse or your partner. So just this is just more of a check or kind of a rallying cry to make sure that, there's a book on this, Corey Carlson, who's based in Cincinnati, went at Home First. If you take care of things at home first, that is gonna transcend and translate to things going better at work. So I think just tend to the things that matter most and people that matter most.
Yeah. No. I think I think it's great feedback. And just a couple things to add there of of my personal philosophy on it. And it really you can take this to to wherever you are in your life stage and whether you're married, you're single, you've got friends, you've got a significant other, you've got kids, you don't have kids, you've got grandkids.
It's really, you know, what's important to you. And I started doing this really from kind of a recommendation from the Tim Ferriss podcast that I'd heard probably 50 times over the past decade from his podcast. And for whatever reason, just started doing it 2 months ago, which is every morning, I'm I start my day writing 3 gratitudes and kind of my fears that are lurking in the back of my head and then what I would what I wanna get done for the day. And when I write the 3 gratitudes, I find myself I almost never write a gratitude about work. It's always something my wife did, my kids did, something I got to enjoy with my friends.
And I think that should tell you, like, you know, what really matters and and why we all do what we do. It's really to have those experiences. And I think, you know, if I can be 60 years old and my kids and my grandkids wanna spend time with me and they wanna be at my birthday party and, you know, they wanna go out to dinner with me, I think that's a win beyond anything that I did in my career. So for me, the things that I will say, Crude, is every morning, I take my daughter to school. I drop her off at 8:30, and and it's nonnegotiable for me.
I don't I don't set coffee meetings. I don't set meetings before that time. It's it's my time that I get to spend with her in the car. And then dinner time. Like, we have dinner together, and and I put the kids to bed.
So for that 2, 2 and a half win hour window at night, nonnegotiable again for me. Like, I don't I don't schedule anything around it. I don't, you know, prioritize happy hours or anything else. And and for me at this life stage, like, that's the most important thing, and and, you know, it really grounds me into what's what's important in life. And, you know, it makes the work part even better.
Is it challenging? Yeah. You gotta give your all at work, but I think if you don't give your all, you know, with your kids, your significant other, your friends, what's it all for? You know? Those are the people that are gonna be with you in the end.
Yeah. And the the tricky dynamic, Sean, this might be just more of a a generic figure, but I think we're spending more what I what I see in here is that 70 to 80% of our our time, with our kids, is reached by age 12, and 90 plus percent of it by age of 18. So as sports pick up activities, as parents are less cool to be around, they've got their their own friends and social circles. But we're also at the stage, we're both in our thirties, where it's career is very demanding, but this time is so elusive. And, like, the we I think we everyone's seen the video where the professor tries to pour it, make the grains of sand first and the pebbles and then the rocks on top.
Like, the family is the rock. You've gotta make those things first. So I love what you're doing in terms of having kind of those sacred times and rituals, if you will, with your kids because everything else needs to fit in and around that. And, like, tactically, Sean, one of the a couple of things that I do, on the days I have with boys is when we're when we're riding in the the car together to school, we actually do affirmations. So I actually have them recite I wanna help craft their inner voice and make sure that they have all the self belief and confidence in the world.
So we talk about, you know, I'm brave. I'm bold. I'm strong. I'm smart. I'm creative.
I'm loved. Daddy loves me. That's awesome. And they and they say that every single day before we go to school. And then on nights that I have them, no one's gonna reach me between 5:30 and 8 o'clock.
It's not gonna happen. That's my time with them until they're laying down for bed, and then I can catch up anything else after that. So, just really admire what you're doing. You've got a big role, in our building built a company, do a lot of things on the side. You've got multiple kids, so I really admire admire how you're leading at home and at work.
Yeah. No. Appreciate it. I think I'll have to steal that affirmations thing. I think that's I think that's fantastic.
My wife will probably think I'm crazy because I usually go to the extreme on all the, self improvement and development, and she's my counterbalance that that that tells me I'm doing too much. So so always good to have that that person in your ear that doesn't let you get too far out of control. Great. So so with that, I would be remiss if I didn't say, obviously, James and I are trying to put great content out for people to learn from. We do have jobs, and one of the things I like to do is, I own a company called Cincy Brands.
We do 2 things. We acquire better for you brands in the ecommerce space that do 1 to 10,000,000 in revenue that are profitable, that we'll acquire and, you know, operate as part of our portfolio. And we also do services. So we own a company called Vitabox that will buy and resell your product on Amazon and Walmart Marketplace. We work with a ton of companies like Prestige Healthcare, Fortune 500 companies will buy and bundle their product, and then smaller brands that just wanna outsource the channel, we'll buy the product and we'll run the entire channel exclusively for you.
With that, we've gotten really good at at 3PL ecommerce services. So this past year, we spun up a 3PL business where we do direct to consumer website fulfillment, Amazon and Walmart fulfilled by merchant fulfillment, and we do a ton of Amazon FBA prep, bagging, labeling, bundling, probably about a half a 1000000 units a year that we're sending into Amazon. So if you're interested, go to cincibrands.com backslash or forward slash. I always forget that forget that contact, or just go to the regular website, and, you'll get me directly if you fill out the form, and I would be happy to to help you. And, we've helped a ton of brands that are emerging or established.
Great. And then, yeah, I think, for next week, it's Super Bowl week, so we'll probably have a a Super Bowl themed brand busting segment. So let's get ready for some, for some cheesy Super Bowl and, sports jokes from from James next week. Yeah. I'm hoping Sean dresses up as, Jason Kelsey shirtless, beanie with a butt light in his hands.
So look out look out, people. I hope so. For backstory, I went to I don't know if James is still there, but I was in college when Jason Kelsey was was in college and, had been around him quite a bit and and shared some, some beers with the truck off with him. So it was great to see him on national TV doing that and living his best life in retirement. Yeah.
So with that, thanks again. Thanks for listening to Brandbusters.