Discussing Unconventional Business Ideas With Cat Howell

Welcome to the Marketing Growth Podcast. I’m your host, Shane Barker. In today’s episode, I’m going to continue my conversation with Cat Howell, the founder and CEO of Eight Loop Social. I want to discuss some more unconventional marketing ideas with her and hear about her upcoming projects. So, tell me a little bit about Pay the Invoice—I’ve heard great things about it, and I’ve been following you on Instagram. What was the premise behind Pay the Invoice? I think I know what it is, but obviously I want you to tell the audience, like, what is the premise behind it? Why did you create it?

Your candor is just really refreshing. Like, “I smoked a joint, and then we decided to do a web series—our doc series.” There you go. Most people would leave out a few details, but I love that you said, “We started off, I was just gonna eat some ice cream,” and then it turned into, “Why don’t we bring on the whole production team with no scripts?” That sounds like a great idea—yeah, it’s awesome. Once again, it’s interesting how you do that. In the beginning, you were over-preparing everything—you know, captions, your voice, all of it—and now you’re just smoking joints and saying, “Hey, I’m gonna do this.” Then people go, “This is kind of crazy.” Do you get that a lot? People saying, “I think you’re crazy,” and you’re like, “Yeah, whatever. Pass the ice cream, and we’ll do this on Tuesday.”

I’ll tell you what it was: a joint. I mean, yeah, that joint would be like—“Should we plan this out? Wait, hold on. Okay, let’s just do it. Who’s down?” Everybody’s like, “Whoa. I guess we’re down.” Then: “Let me hit that, and we’ll see if we’re just as down as you are.” No, I think it’s awesome. It’s really awesome that you… I mean, once again, I know it takes resources. My team hasn’t put me on restriction like yours has yet, but I’m very close. If my team is listening right now, they’re probably cussing me out because I’m the “Hey, I got an idea” guy. My partner would be a millionaire if he got a dollar for every time I said, “Hey, dude, I got an idea.” He’s like, “Jesus, here we go—Shane’s idea. What did you do over the weekend, Shane?” and I’m like, “No, I just saw this one thing and was thinking…”

Let me ask you this: How big of a team do you have?

So, this is going to be funny. There was a time I practically needed a domain therapist—well, not really, but there was a point when I had over five or six hundred domains, about seven or eight years ago. I had some really interesting ones; I’d love to share them because you’d probably appreciate them, but I can’t reveal them all in case kids are listening. One of them starts with the letter “P,” and we may have referenced it earlier in this podcast. Let’s just say it’s bigger than courses and usually free on certain websites.

I used to buy domains because I thought they were hilarious. I bought “MrMeatStraw.com” and “MuchoBooty.com,” among others—never actually put anything on them, but I’d see a domain like “Mucho Booty,” start laughing, and decide, “I’m buying it.” Then I’d go home, tell my wife, “Hey, I just bought Mucho Booty,” and she’d ask, “What are you talking about?” I’d say, “Maybe someone will want it someday!” I figured I’d sell them all. In reality, I only sold one domain—an influencer domain—for a decent chunk of change. With everything else, I was just paying ten bucks a year for each one, which added up to about five grand annually. My wife was like, “Are you going to build 500 websites?” and I’d think, “Maybe I’ll get a crazy idea this weekend, smoke some weed, and throw up 500 websites.” But it never happened.

Eventually, I scaled down to maybe 30 or 40 domains—kind of like rehab for domain buyers. I still have a few I definitely don’t need. One was “HowIBrokeMyBackMountain.com,” referencing “Brokeback Mountain.” I just thought it was funny. For me, each domain was ten bucks’ worth of humor. Why hit a comedy club when I could spend the evening searching goofy domain names? I’d love to find my old list and look at them again, thinking, “Shane, you are so ridiculous.” It was fun while it lasted.

I’m telling you, I really could have done something with those domains, at least. But I wasn’t trying to make them into porn sites—I was more into affiliate stuff. I just liked them. I didn’t plan on building them all out, and they weren’t all porn-related. It was really just for humor. Then I wouldn’t let them go because I’d think, “Well, somebody’s gonna buy ‘mucho booty’ if I let it go.” That’s the premise, right? You don’t really own it forever; someone else can come along and buy it. So there’s only been—well, I sold a good one in the influencer space, got a decent chunk of change out of it. I’m not sure if it paid for all my hosting over 10 years of domain names, but close, give or take a few bucks.

This is like counseling. That’s what the podcast is—counseling for me. So I leave here thinking, “Okay, yeah, I have a problem.” Thanks for confirming that. By the way, Cat, you’re a team player. You are a team player, right? But it takes a team. So what other cool projects are you working on these days? Obviously, you’re in the middle of Pay the Invoice. Any other ideas? I know you mentioned you’re on restriction right now, so maybe you’ll get your hand slapped if you talk about new stuff. But if nobody’s listening, maybe we can hold off on releasing this for three months. Anything cool going on?

Yeah, I have so many things to say—like you just lobbed a softball at me and I’m wondering if this is going to be a home run. You know, I had a lead from someone with a similar product, and I remember thinking, “I don’t know enough about female parts to really help you.” I’m not saying I don’t know anything at all, but I haven’t done extensive research, and I’m married now, so let’s just say I’m retired from certain areas of exploration. Anyway, I think it’s going to be an interesting space for you. Obviously, that’s a main concern for a lot of women. If you can figure out how to market it effectively, it could be big.

I also know it’s tough when you can’t run Facebook ads. I’ve worked in fitness and weight-loss niches, and Facebook makes it really difficult—especially with before-and-after pictures or anything that could “offend” someone. It’s always interesting, because I’m not calling anyone fat, I’m just pointing out a transformation. But Facebook’s like, “She looks bigger in one picture and smaller in the other—we’re not having that.” They’re not going to discuss it with me. Same with cannabis—there are certain industries where you really have to think outside the box.

We might do. We’ve got another conversation.

I might own that, by the way. It might be a picture of just my brother in the US, getting a little glove check. Don’t worry, I’ll only be here for a minute. Sir, don’t look back at us—please, don’t look back. It’s probably…

My brother—you do know my brother. That’s awesome. That’s a whole other story. But I also saw on your Instagram (not that I’m stalking you, just doing research) that you did cryotherapy, right? There’s a place that opened up around the corner from my house, and I’ve talked to a couple of people who’ve tried it and liked it. What was it like for you? Did you like it? What were you thinking?

Yeah, that’s it. You’re quite the salesperson: “No, it’s murder, I’d rather die or cut my legs off, but I like it. You should try it.” It’s like when people eat something horrible and go, “God, this tastes like shit—here, try some.” And I’m like, “Why would I want to do that?” I’ll just take your word for it and put it on my list of things not to try. We don’t need it. I haven’t tested it.

Yeah, I’ll send you some DMs of me and my cryotherapy session. It’s interesting because I’m a runner, too. That’s really why I thought about it—my knees, you know, I’m in my 40s now, so they’re not quite as forgiving as they were when I was younger and agile. It is what it is.

Yeah, see, that’s me too. I’ll try anything. My brother used to live on Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, and something happened with my back—I’ve had a few back issues. It might be from boxing or CrossFit. Anyway, long story short, I used to play footy. You know footy? You ever heard of footy?

No, footy is like, it’s like rugby, but it’s like Australian.

Of course you have to be—yeah, yeah—it’s like rugby. So anyway, I’ve gotten beat up over the years, and that’s okay. I’m alright with that. Now I’m doing Pilates with six-year-old women, which is interesting because I’m used to fifth and sixth gear, and suddenly I’m in first gear. I’m like, “Alright, put your legs up—tabletop,” and I’m thinking, “Oh my gosh.” The funny part is there was this guy who was supposed to be a shaman. My brother had friends over, and he said, “Oh, I can heal your back. Tell your brother to come in.” This was in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco—no drug use, I’m sure. Nobody was on anything.

So we’re doing this, and the guy’s behind me doing weird magic stuff. It was so bizarre—since I’ll try anything once, I thought, “Let’s give him a chance.” Then he starts doing this weird thing like he’s having a baby or a gremlin coming out of his stomach. I couldn’t look at him. My brother was laughing, my mom was laughing, and they both had to leave the room. So I had to continue the session with this guy for an hour. Finally, I was like, “I don’t know how he yelled that long,” because it was a visceral growl from his innards. I’ll try anything once, but I don’t know if I’ll be doing heavy shaman work from white guys with dreads again. I can take it off the list, though.

I didn’t want to bring it up, but I was like, “You know what, I’m going to send you a little wish list. Put whatever you want on it, and I’ll just buy a few things and ship them to California.” So here’s my last question for you—it kind of perplexes people because I come in hot and heavy with this one: if I gave you a winning lottery ticket for ten million dollars, what would you spend that money on?

Yeah, that’s awesome. Yeah, awesome. Well, I’m hoping I win because I would love to chip in for that. I think that’s the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, right? It’s like the basic things that a lot of people don’t have. And I think we just all over the world—we don’t realize how lucky we are. We have, you know, things that we do have here in the U.S., or wherever you’re located. It’s like, you really have to understand there are people who don’t have the basics. We go grab our little five-dollar coffee and do our Pilates, and I complain about this or that. It’s like we have nothing to complain about at the end of the day. Life is good. You know, life is good.

For sure, you should always treat people.

I mean, I was like, “Hello, I want to be number one,” but I know we were kind of fighting between number one and number two—like, “Take care of people.”

I didn’t want to bring that up, but I think this is going to be the spiciest podcast I’ve ever done. I don’t know if it’s going to get much spicier with everybody else. And the cool part is, I’m actually going to send this episode to everyone before I interview them, letting them know this is kind of the premise: we usually talk heavy drugs, orgasms, dildos—it’s pretty popular. I just want to see where they’re at mentally, and we’ll have conversations. If you haven’t stripped in the past, it’s probably not a good podcast for you.

Okay, with that, it’s time to wrap up this episode. I’m going to bring you another crazy conversation next week, so stay tuned to Shane Barker’s Marketing Growth Podcast. One more thing—if you want to take your business to the next level, you can reach out to my team for a quote. We can help you amplify your presence in PR, SEO, social media marketing, influencer marketing, and more. You can find our services at shanebarker.com.